Climate Coverage

Miami’s hidden high ground (The Miami Herald)

Miami isn’t known for its elevation, but there are a handful of ridges in the city that rise to the staggering height of about 20 feet above sea level. As sea levels rise and flooding becomes more common, every foot of elevation has a growing importance in the local real estate market. And these high points, which have colorful backstories and have been thoroughly explored and documented by a volunteer group of mountaineers, contain a stern warning about South Florida’s future.

On the front lines of extreme heat in South Florida. ‘You feel like you’re suffocating.’ (The Miami Herald)

More than 100,000 people work outdoors in Miami-Dade County. Some harvest crops, build skyscrapers or landscape lawns — but during the summer months, all of them battle extreme heat that kills dozens and hospitalizes hundreds more each year. Despite the risks, these workers have no heat-related workplace protections at the local, state or federal level.

America’s green energy hopes hinge on propping up aging nuclear plants (Quartz)

If the U.S. has any hope of meeting its climate goals, it needs to keep its nuclear power plants running for as long as possible. The problem is, they’re getting old. Now, regulators are granting power companies permission to run their reactors longer than anyone ever has — despite documented safety and environmental risks.

Tech Coverage

Miami’s high-tech flood map will help decide which neighborhoods get saved (Quartz)

Miami created an excruciatingly detailed map of every street, gutter and storm pipe in the city to predict which blocks will flood and which will stay dry during hurricanes and high tides decades into the future. The results of Miami’s modeling project will determine which neighborhoods are first in line for much-needed flood control projects.

Coronavirus is putting the power of private philanthropy to the test (Quartz)

When the pandemic struck, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative scrambled to redirect its vast wealth and political influence to confront coronavirus. But just as quickly as private philanthropies can turn the spigot of money on, they can turn it off again.

The poetic process powering real-time language translation in Namibia (Quartz)

A teacher and a data scientists teamed up to translate songs, recipes and stories from Khoekhoegowab to English. Through their rich, deeply human conversations, they’ve built a dataset to train machines to translate between Namibia’s languages.

Oddballs & Outlaws

Rony Abovitz's Magic Leap may reshape your reality (Miami New Times)

This cover story about the founder of a secretive $4.5 billion virtual reality company won the 2017 Hearst Award for feature writing. After carefully avoiding me through months of reporting, Abovitz tweeted, “You have written a strange but oddly warm article.”

The Coast Guard won't let Reza Baluchi run to Bermuda in a floating bubble (Miami New Times)

After fleeing persecution in fundamentalist Iran, an extreme athlete spent his life running and cycling around the world. But the Coast Guard has foiled his attempts to complete his athletic magnum opus: “running” across the ocean in a dubiously seaworthy contraption he designed himself.

Chatbots

How to ask for a raise, according to three experts and a chatbot (Quartz)

With the inimitable Quartz Bot Studio, I made a chatbot to help you decide whether now is the right moment to ask for a raise. If you’re ready, career experts have advice on how to pop the question. If you’re not, they can tell you how to position yourself to ask for one in the future.

Before you ghost your date, practice politely dumping our chatbot (Quartz)

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, I made a chatbot you can dump over and over and over and over again. (Just try not to be a jerk about it.)

Newsletters

Stemming the Tide (The Miami Herald’s climate newsletter)

I helped launch the Miami Herald’s newsletter about the impacts of climate change in South Florida. Each week, “Stemming the Tide” rounds up the Herald’s coverage of the threats posed by sea level rise, extreme heat, flooding and storms — and the solutions local politicians, business leaders, activists and everyday people are coming up with to adapt.

Lost sounds (for the Quartz Obsession newsletter)

Quartz publishes a weekly deep dive on a specific topic in its “Obsession” newsletter. This one is about all the sounds that rang out before humans invented audio recording equipment — and the scientists, historians, programmers, musicians, and everyday enthusiasts trying to bring them back to life.

You can also read more than you need to know about Hell, jai alai, Florida Man, the Everglades, Krampus, hurricane hunters, weather control, laugh tracks, rats, chess computers, low-radiation metal, shipbreaking, space suits, interstellar objects, placebos, JUUL, QR codes, CAPTCHAs, the “bullwhip effect” and a very specific scandal in the annals of anatomical research known as the Brown Dog Affair.

Para los lectores hispanohablantes

Todos los hombres del presidente (El Cronista)

En enero de 2017, cuando Donald Trump tomó poder en los Estados Unidos, yo era un pasante para El Cronista en Buenos Aires. Escribí un análisis de los miembros del gabinete de Trump y las políticas que impulsaron que podrían afectar la economía argentina.

On-air appearances

You can watch or hear me talk about my coverage on PBS, NPR, CNBC and the Quartz Obsession podcast.