Danny Dougherty

@dannydougherty

Graphics reporter in DC (currently razzmatazzing at the WSJ). Lots of data and coding work but often distracted by comics, St. Louis sports and interesting things I've read in the news of the day. I feed on groan responses to my puns.

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Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· 4d

"We saw you from across the bar..."

Mr and Mrs Met sitting relaxed on a leather couch in a room with wood paneled walls

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· 6d

Me, a decade ago: man, Star Trek sure looks silly making them carry around all those data pads now that we have modern tablets Me, now:

A photo of me holding up a Kindle and Kobo with, respectively, a Star Wars novel and The River Has Roots displayed on them

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· 7d

I regret to inform you that Rasmussen stuck to the right but Emerson fell for it and chased him.

Pitchtrax of Rasmussen/Emerson matchup with Rasmussen pitching three inside balls and several inside strikes to the left handed batter

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· 25d

@aedwardslevy.bsky.social I looked up, saw this guy while I was reading on my back patio

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jul 7

Soccer players on a field with fireworks going off outside the arena

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jul 6

lol, it literally does the thing

Top of a wikipedia article that reads:

"Pato Merlín also known as Merlín the Duck (c. 2024) is a duck in Mexico that became a pop-culture celebrity during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Although it became a viral phenomenon, its notoriety raised concerns of animal abuse, due to its objectification and the result of a Nemo effect by other people who acquired a similar bird in order to replicate its status of fame, without understanding its care or needs."

with the section about animal abuse highlighted.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jun 29

Mine needs a little love

A white jeep with tan canvas doors and roof story parked in front of a converted church

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Apr 17

Main guy is an old, cheap 4-string Peavey passive with tape wounds (which really helped ease in the callouses, but now I like the sound). Also have a Dean acoustic which is a dumb instrument for performing but is so easy to pick up it helps keep me honest on practicing.

Two bass guitars on stands next to each other. The left is a dark shiny finished electric and the right is a larger bodied acoustic with a natural wood finish.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Apr 6

"OpenAI expects to spend $121 billion on computing power for AI research in 2028. That means the company anticipates burning $85 billion that year even after almost doubling sales from the prior year. Such losses would dwarf those of virtually any other public company in history."

Two bar charts showing annual profit for OpenAI and Anthropic. Both show negative actual values for 2024 and 2025 then a series of negative values for projections the next few years. OpenAI goes from around negative $50 billion to a little under positive $50 billion 2029 to 2030 and Anthropic goes from a small negative to a sliver of positive 2027 to 2028 which grows to somewhere in the about 20 billion positive range in 2029.

Above the bars are level indicators for most of the projections indicating without model training costs revenues would be tens of billions of dollars higher.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Apr 2

Fact check: False

screenshot of skeet likes showing that it was liked by a single person, the author of the skeet I am replying to.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Mar 13

Inside you there are two wolves

Screenshot from Spotify's new releases section with Kacey Musgraves' "Dry Spell" above James Blake's "Trying Times"

The top album cover is brightly lit and features a woman calmly standing in front of a bull with large horns, the bottom is dark and features a man trying to keep plates spinning on poles

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Mar 11

The two genders www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/t... www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/u...

Screenshot from a news page, headline reads: Tell Us: How Are You Using A.I. for the Tasks of Daily Life?

dek reads: We want to hear how artificial intelligence helps you with tasks like meal prep, translation and planning a trip.

Screenshot from a news page, headline reads: Tell Us About How You Pursue Happiness

dek reads: As America nears its 250th year, we want to hear from you about this particular phrase in the country’s founding document.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Mar 10

Wait until you see what they did with an absolute all-timer iconic skyline flowerposter.com/products/st-...

A photo of a framed print sitting on the floor. The top of the print reads "flower market" and the bottom reads "St. Louis" and the center area features a sketched-style sea of flowers in warm colors before a row of blocky skyscrapers of uniform height with no distinctive buildings

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Feb 26

_Doctor Faustus_, published in 1947, is about art and the human soul but also really about democracy and human dignity

Photo of a page from a book, reads:

Will the reader find it credible that a man can lose fourteen pounds digesting such novelties? Certainly I would not have lost them had I not believed the conclusions drawn at these meetings at Kridwiss's, had I been convinced that these gentlemen were babbling nonsense. But I was most definnitely not of that opinion. Indeed, I had laid their fingers with remarkable sensitivity on the pulse of the age and were foretelling truth by its beat. I would nonetheless have been infinitely grateful—I must repeat myself here—and presumably would not have lost fourteen, but perhaps only seven pounds, if they themselves had been somewhat shocked by their findings and had encountered them with a little moral criticism. They might have said “Unfortunately, it does indeed look as if things are about to take this or that course,. Conseuqently one must step in, warn against what is coming, and do one's best to prevent it.” What they said however, was more of less: ”It's coming, it's omcing, and once it's here it will find us at the crest of the moment. It is interesting, even good—simply because it is what is coming, and to recognize that fact is both achievement and enjoyment enough. It is not up to us to take measure against it as well.” The covert words of these learned men. Their joy of recognition, however, was a sham. They sympathized with what they recognized, and without that sympathy would probably have not recognized it at all. That was the issue. That was the cause of my anger and agitation, and of my loss of weight.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Feb 20

Obviously there is a lot of news this morning and most it is more important but let us also take joy in this

A screenshot of the MLB schedule showing 5 spring training games as happening on Friday, Feb. 20

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Feb 17

leaving this here, because the standard guidance for anglers in the District is more or less "you can but maybe don't???" doee.dc.gov/service/fishdc

Screenshot from the department of environment website, reads:

Headline: Fish Consumption Advisory

DOEE urges limited consumption of Anacostia and Potomac river fish. PCBs and other chemical contaminants have continued to be found in certain fish species caught in the Potomac and Anacostia rivers and their tributaries, including Rock Creek, within the Distric's boundaries. Because of these findings, DOEE advises the general public to limit consumption of fish from all DC waters, as follows:

• Do not eat: Eel, carp, striped bass or largemouth bass
• May eat: Three servings per month of blue catfish, or one serving per month of brown bullhead catfish or channel catfish or gizzard shad or smallmouth bass, or snakehead or sunfish or white perch or yellow perch
• Choose to eat: Smaller fish of legal size.
• Catch and release is encouraged.

To prepare, skin the fish and trim away fat. Cook fish and drain away fat because chemical contaminants tend to concentrate in the fat of the fish. These recommendations do not apply to fish sold in fish markets, grocery stores, and restaurants, since commercial fishing is prohibited in DC waters; thus fish from these venues will not be from the Potomac nor Anacostia Rivers.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Feb 3

a search review page from Pitchfork showing no results for artists, review or tracks for hipsters

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Dec 25

Tis the season

The title card for The Apartment (1960) photographed on a protection TV

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Nov 1

Neighborhoods are good, man (porchfest edition)

A street crowded with people facing the patio of a row house where folks are huddled setting up band equipment

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Oct 29

OK, but this list of songs from 1989 remains very popular to this day

The tracklist from the back cover of Taylor Swift's album, 1989

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Oct 8

Me, sending out questionnaires to the nerds I make play music with me

A Google drive survey form with open ended questions stating "I have other thoughts about band business, which I have written below" then "I have other thoughts about Danny's survey design, which I have written below"

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Aug 25

I have not spent the last 30 years of my life looking up Excel formulae to process data to be greeted with these suggestions

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Aug 12

View of a crowded pool under a blue sky with puffy clouds shot from the second row of deck chairs with the front row in the foreground, well used with towels and clothes hanging off of them. Schools, municipal buildings and trees fill the background.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jun 6

Sabrina Carpenter with some truly funny unintentional political commentary this new music Friday

Album art from Spotify of Sabrina Carpenter's new single, "Manchild"

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jun 6

In addition to a pretty steep decline in last month's federal government payrolls, revisions to earlier months revealed worse than previously realized government job cuts in February and April www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

Bar chart showing monthly change in federal-government employment. Left side from 2023 through early 2024 shows gray upward bars of growth roughly around 10 thousand jobs a month. Middle part shows smaller grey bars and a few purple bars in 2024 as growth slowed to around 5 thousand a month with two negative months. The last four bars are larger, purple downward bars with early 2025 losing 10 thousand jobs a month and the last bar extending past 20 thousand jobs lost.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jun 3

I immediately turned to dust upon reading this.

An album blurb for "Let All That We Imagine Be The Light" by Garbage, released May 30 which say "The latest full-length release from Garbage was influenced in part by singer Shirley Manson's hip replacement surgery."

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· May 21

Which I think is captured nicely in these two charts

Line chart of streaming subscriptions per U.S. household, running from around one from 2007 through 2013 or 2014, where it ticks up to just below two by 2018, then rapidly climbs to about 4.5 by 2022 and then hovers at just below 5 in 2023 and 2024.

A set of bar charts that bend back on themselves showing U.S. subscriber adds and cancellations for premium streaming services where the top bar of added subscribers is then canceled out by the bottom bar that bends back on itself of cancellations. The overall height of the bars goes up from just above 30 million in the first two quarters of 2023 before peaking at around 50 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 with the most recent quarter dipping to above 40 million gross added subscribers first quarter of 2025.

Meanwhile, most of those additions are canceled out by cancellations each quarter with net adds starting at 6.1 million in the beginning of 2023, rising to 8.4 million in the third quarter of that year, then dipping to around 4 million second and third quarter of 2024 with some surging in fourth quarter of that year.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Apr 23

Actually we need to internalize an image that incorporates it is harder to motivate people toward action than for them to lose that motivation.

The backside of an old fashioned metal playground slide, featuring the ladder one would climb up before going down it.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jan 15

Hell yeah! Metro rewind includes better bus info this year! (but also nuts to my recommended new neighborhood to explore being R̶o̶c̶k̶v̶i̶l̶l̶e̶ "North Bethesda") metrorewind.com/rewind/

Screenshot from Metro rewind showing top 3% metro customer, top 13% rail customer and top 3% bus customer. 339 trips taken, traveling 944 miles and capturing 290.8 kg of CO2.

Danny Dougherty@dannydougherty· Jan 13

OK, the exemption stuff in this is actually interesting www.nytimes.com/interactive/...