Disclaimer: any errors on this website are in fact an attempt to transcend the reality circumscribed by the limits of language.
Hi, I'm Drew Pendergrass. My GMO-free, low-sodium, artisanally-crafted website is lovingly built from whatever I decide to post online. It hosts a variety of projects, resources, and ephemera made over the years, including a book, video games, open-source scientific software, environmental datasets, my popular writing, experimental music, as well as my research papers and conference presentations in atmospheric science and related fields.
My work imagines how humanity can democratically govern itself in an age of environmental crisis. In my scientific research, we build computer systems that can use observations of the Earth system to provide maps of pollutants and their sources. Together with social scientists, historians, and designers, I imagine the sorts of institutions and protocols that would allow humanity to democratically manage our economy and its interchange with ecosystems. Most importantly, in my activism and organizing we work to make ecological democracy a reality in my home of Massachusetts. Imagining a better world pushes against the normal boundaries between fields, and with my collaborators we express our ideas in a variety of forms beyond traditional scholarship, including popular writing, fiction, and video games.
I can be reached at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com, or at the academic address in my CV. If you want to follow my work, you can subscribe to my newsletter below:
The latest science!
Pendergrass, D. C., S. Zhai, J. Kim, J-H. Koo, S. Lee, M. Bae, S. Kim, H. Liao, and D. J. Jacob. (2022). Continuous mapping of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air quality in East Asia at daily 6x6 km2 resolution by application of a random forest algorithm to 2011-2019 GOCI geostationary satellite data. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 15, 1075–1091. PDF. Publisher's version (open access). Associated dataset available from Dataverse. Video of 15-minute oral presentation at AGU.
Figure: Daily PM2.5 concentrations during a pollution event in the North China Plain, around Beijing (December 16-21, 2016). Predictions from the random forest algorithm (background, on 6x6 km2 grid scale) are compared to observations made on the ground (circles). We see that the model is able to reproduce even this extreme level of pollution.
You can learn more about my research on the projects page, or you can read through all of our scientific papers and presentations on their respective pages.
Order our book here!
Writing spotlight
Some reflections on moving out of college early due to COVID-19: "Losing a Chair."
A Brief Q&A
Q. Why does this page keep changing?
A. This page is randomly generated by the server on each load. Most of the page's contents are not displayed on one particular load, so for the full experience reload a bunch of times.
Q. Who are you?
A. Well, to start off, I proudly possess object permanence, I accept the axiom of choice, I have never traveled to an exoplanet, I am not a closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifold, and you cannot prove I have sympathies for the former state of Burgundy. Besides that, I am a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at Harvard University, studying under Daniel Jacob, and I freelance on the side for publications including Harper's and The Guardian. For more information, you can check out my projects page or my CV.
Q. How can I contact you?
A. You can follow/DM me on Twitter, but I'm trying to stop using it so much, so it's best to email me at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com (or the academic address in my CV). However, if your email is unpleasant, you should direct it to grievances@drewpendergrass.com, an inbox I definitely read.
This website proudly supports Otto Neurath and the ISOTYPE picture language
Please represent all social facts pictorially in your correspondence with the owner and proprietor of this website. Do your part to help build a pluralistic and anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge.
Some true statements
A Moving, and Random, Quotation
[N]one of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to danice to, when we long to move the stars to pity.
-Flaubert, from Madame Bovary
Read more here.
Play Alchemy!
"So fun you won't even need friends!"
Bonus Content Zone!
One randomly-generated sorting algorithm, please!
Do you have an unsorted list of N natural numbers? Do you just hate it when programs are guaranteed to terminate? Do you get angry when algorithms do better than factorial time? Then you're in luck! The following algorithm has been generated just for you:
- Feed your list into a black hole, permanently destroying the information. The list is as good as sorted now! If people shake their heads and insist you actually sort the list, just generate a new one and proceed to the next step.
- Uh oh! You've triggered a penalty step. Before you proceed, you must perform a task. Obtain one (1) chess grandmaster. You are generous, so you let them go first. After they move their piece, move a random one of yours to a random cell on the board. If this move violates the rules of chess, flip the board in anger and start again. If it is a legal move, continue playing until either the board is flipped or checkmate. If the grandmaster has won, repeat the game. If you won, proceed to the next step. You've paid the penalty.
- Produce N blockbuster action films, each with an advertising budget proportional to a number in the list. For consistency, ensure each film is released in the same theaters at the same time of year. (Practically, this means the list cannot exceed a dozen or so items. If N>12, simply delete all but twelve items from the list). Read off the box office earnings for each film in order, printing the number corresponding to each.
Congratulations! Your list is now sorted. You can find a permalink to this particular algorithm here.
Facts about LaTeX or facts about latex?
Click the line you think is about LaTeX!
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Score: 0 • Streak: 0
All facts lovingly taken from Wikipedia.