The Helmet Time Machine
One poster for every NFL season since 1960. Helmets, standings, and brackets for every year.
PerThirtySix
Thoughtful, data-driven explorations of sports, culture, and the world.
Latest posts
How The Heck Do You Catch A Fly Ball?
How our brain and legs work together to catch balls without knowing where they'll land
How The Heck Does JPEG Work?
How photos get smaller by exploiting patterns and human blind spots.
How The Heck Do Synthesizers Work?
How simple mathematics shaped the sound of modern music.
What If TikTok Had A Paper Trail?
A thought experiment for infinite feeds on physical media.
How The Heck Do Traffic Lights Work?
How Victorian railway semaphores evolved into modern traffic systems.
The Curry Paradox
Why a less surprising shot can be more impressive than a wilder one, and what information theory says about it.
How The Heck Do Solar Panels Work?
How a giant nuclear reactor in the sky and some silicon makes electricity, and why that's the easy part.
Scoring the 2026 NFL Draft Trades
Every pick-for-pick trade from the 2026 NFL Draft, scored by the best-player test.
NFL Draft Efficiency by Position
Every NFL team ranked at every position, based on twenty years of draft outcomes.
How The Heck Does Shazam Work?
How audio fingerprinting and a connect-the-dots trick lets Shazam identify a song in seconds.
NFL Draft Report Cards
Every NFL franchise graded on two decades of drafting.
How The Heck Does GPS Work?
How geometry, stopwatches, and Einstein's theories work together to make GPS possible.
The Draft Pick Value Curve
What should a team expect from each pick slot? Building a baseline from 15 years of data.
Introducing pVAR
A value-above-replacement metric for NFL draft picks, built on per-snap grades, career stats, and awards.
Is Music Just Sound?
A creative technologist's perspective on AI-generated music.
DC In 3D
An interactive 3D view of the roads and metro stations of Washington, DC.
Simulating The Prisoner's Dilemma
To betray, or not to betray?
How The Heck Do QR Codes Work?
How black-and-white squares encode URLs, error-correct themselves, and survive coffee stains.
America Gets Wealthier But The Poor Get Poorer
An interactive exploration of American wealth inequality using data visualizations.