Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
>4.2K subscribers
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Remember when you first started using the internet and nobody wanted to reveal their actual identity? Everyone used aliases, because it was weird to share sensitive information - like your full name - on the internet. One of my earliest usernames was bdonn. I used it for everything. I had bdonn@aol.com.
Well, things have certainly changed.
Could you have imagined that we’d get to a world where “over sharing” is viewed as a real - albeit first world - problem and phrases like “I share therefore I am” get thrown around. It’s a pretty dramatic departure from how we used to feel about privacy. And for the younger generation, who grew up entirely with social media, I don’t even think privacy is on the radar.
Some would argue that this is a problem, which is why a group of academics over at Berkeley created a web app called Ready or Not? What it does is allow anyone to enter a Twitter or Instagram username and see a plotted map of where that user has shared from.
Here’s what it spit out for me based on my recent tweets:
The hope is that this will promote awareness around the fact that even one short tweet could be potentially revealing your exact geographic location. But I wonder to what extent people are actually unaware that this is happening or is just that they’re comfortable sharing this information? What do you think?
Remember when you first started using the internet and nobody wanted to reveal their actual identity? Everyone used aliases, because it was weird to share sensitive information - like your full name - on the internet. One of my earliest usernames was bdonn. I used it for everything. I had bdonn@aol.com.
Well, things have certainly changed.
Could you have imagined that we’d get to a world where “over sharing” is viewed as a real - albeit first world - problem and phrases like “I share therefore I am” get thrown around. It’s a pretty dramatic departure from how we used to feel about privacy. And for the younger generation, who grew up entirely with social media, I don’t even think privacy is on the radar.
Some would argue that this is a problem, which is why a group of academics over at Berkeley created a web app called Ready or Not? What it does is allow anyone to enter a Twitter or Instagram username and see a plotted map of where that user has shared from.
Here’s what it spit out for me based on my recent tweets:
The hope is that this will promote awareness around the fact that even one short tweet could be potentially revealing your exact geographic location. But I wonder to what extent people are actually unaware that this is happening or is just that they’re comfortable sharing this information? What do you think?
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