Charles Berret: Projects ======================== Complete plaintext records for the projects on charlesberret.net. Each record includes an original synopsis, project notes, and links to published or otherwise public source material. Kettle ====== Type: Software Organization: Independent Dates: 2026-present Topics: Local-first software, Human review, Agent workflows, Plaintext Summary ------- A local review desk where agents prepare work and a person reads, edits, and decides. Project Notes ------------- Kettle is a local review desk for work prepared with software agents. It gives that work a stable place to arrive, be read closely, and be changed before anything is accepted. The central idea is deliberately modest: agents can prepare drafts, patches, research, and decisions, but a person remains responsible for reading, editing, and deciding. The interface brings a curated queue, a plaintext editor, and a project-aware review agent into one sitting. Each project keeps its own desk in a .kettle directory, so the review state travels with the work instead of disappearing into a chat transcript. A local API lets other tools submit and inspect items without turning the desk into a hosted service. The system is split across a small core service, a desktop application, and editor integrations. That separation keeps the underlying review contract usable beyond any one interface. Kettle is being prepared for public release as source code, documentation, and a working example of the review process it is meant to support. Original and Related Work ------------------------- - No public source link is available. Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#kettle Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/kettle.txt Data Journalism =============== Type: Systems Organization: Enigma Dates: 2025-26 Topics: Agent workflows, Data journalism, Databricks, DuckDB, Marimo, RECAP, Entity resolution Summary ------- An agentic research pipeline for data journalism: reusable queries, entity resolution, and human review, with published investigations as worked examples rather than the main exhibit. Project Notes ------------- The main work was not a sequence of one-off stories. It was a research system for data journalism: how to ask questions of a large entity graph, keep the path from source to claim inspectable, hand intermediate results between sessions and tools, and keep a person responsible for judgment before anything published. I built that pipeline from warehouse queries through local analysis (Databricks, DuckDB, Marimo) and into agent-assisted research workflows that reused the same checks and criteria across topics. The aim was modest and operational: preserve method across sessions, including what was queried, what a result meant, which verification steps had run, and when a human still had to decide. The public investigations listed below are outputs and stress tests of that system, published under Enigma’s institutional byline. They follow shell companies, mass litigation, licensing carve-outs, and jurisdictional patterns, but they are best read as evidence that the pipeline could carry a story from raw records to a publishable claim. Specific counts and case examples (for instance Schedule A litigation in RECAP, or state registration data joined to federal licensing) live in those pieces; the durable product of the work is the method underneath them. A separate, unpublished reproduction of the NYC Public Advocate’s worst-landlords methodology came within roughly 15 percent of its published counts. It was a deliberate dry run of the same pipeline against open data, not a public ranking. Related systems work at Enigma (reusable research skills, entity-resolution clients, and multi-model evaluation) is described under Content Engineering at Enigma. Original and Related Work ------------------------- How Much Is a Verification Worth? Read an investigation estimating the economic value of a single identity verification from Enigma data. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-newsletter-how-much-is-a-verification-worth How to Sue a Company That Doesn't Even Exist Read an investigation of mass-defendant lawsuits against businesses that appear not to exist. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-newsletter-americas-most-sued-companies-dont-exist Anatomy of a Shell Company Read an investigation of the addresses, agents, and officers that reveal shell-company networks. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-newsletter-anatomy-of-a-shell-company Wyoming's Corporate Boom Read an investigation of the state structures that make anonymous business ownership a paid feature. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-newsletter-wyomings-corporate-boom No Branches, No Verification, No Problem Read an investigation of a Colorado licensing carve-out and crypto-named money-service businesses. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-newsletter-no-branches-no-verification-no-problem The Geography of Corporate America Read a data-driven map of where American companies incorporate and why those jurisdictions attract them. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-newsletter-geography-of-corporate-america Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#data-journalism Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/data-journalism.txt Iceberg Sensemaking =================== Type: Research Organization: UBC and Linköping University Dates: 2022-25 Topics: Critical visualization, Sensemaking, Data practice, Epistemic humility Summary ------- A process model, written with Tamara Munzner, for the below-the-waterline schemas and judgment that shape any data analysis, kept separate from the newsroom papers Charles co-authored as an academic advisor. Project Notes ------------- Iceberg Sensemaking, written with Tamara Munzner, starts from a simple problem: data is only the visible part of an analysis. Beneath it are schemas about what exists, what matters, and how observations should be organized. Those schemas may remain tacit, even while they determine what can be collected and what a result can mean. The model describes analysis as an iterative process of adding, checking, and refining both data and schemas. It treats data as a schematic artifact rather than a neutral representation, and it allows multiple interpretations to remain in play instead of forcing them into a single account. Four scenarios test the model against practical problems: data that was never collected, data wrangling, inconvenient observations, and the apparent objectivity of sensors. The paper offers analysts a vocabulary for examining their own interpretive work. Its aim is not to make judgment disappear, but to make judgment available for scrutiny. Related newsroom studies on data preparation and multi-table wrangling (Dirty Data in the Newsroom, Table Scraps, OpenRoundup) were led by Stephen Kasica as doctoral research. Charles appears on those papers as co-author and academic advisor, not as lead author. They are catalogued under Writing with that credit, not as primary exhibits of this project. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Iceberg Sensemaking on arXiv Read the full preprint, abstract, and revision history on arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.04758 Published article Open the DOI record for the peer-reviewed IEEE TVCG article and its citation details. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3486613 Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#iceberg-sensemaking Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/iceberg-sensemaking.txt Cryptographic Amnesia ===================== Type: Book Organization: MIT Press Dates: forthcoming Topics: MIT Press, Archival research, Oral history Summary ------- A cultural history of cryptography that follows codes and ciphers from specialized instruments into the infrastructure of everyday communication. Project Notes ------------- Cryptographic Amnesia asks how cryptography acquired so many civilian purposes and meanings during the twentieth century. Encryption came to protect secrets, verify identity and information, secure commerce, resist surveillance, and organize political life. The book follows that change through the people who made, used, regulated, and argued about codes and ciphers. The research draws on archives, public records, and long-form interviews with cryptographers and cypherpunks. Rather than presenting a sequence of technical breakthroughs or another history of war and espionage, it treats cryptography as a social practice and a medium of communication. This makes it possible to ask not only whether a system worked, but who trusted it, what kind of relationship it created, and which forms of power it helped to distribute or conceal. The result is a people's history of cryptography and a usable past for anyone who now depends on encryption without having chosen the terms of that dependence. Forthcoming from MIT Press. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Overview Read the publication synopsis, status, and bibliographic record for the forthcoming book. https://charlesberret.net/writing/#writing-cryptographic-amnesia Drawbridge Model preprint Read a related preprint on how cryptographic tools move between civilian and military uses. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/nmbwj Dissertation excerpts Open selected dissertation chapters that form part of the book's archival research foundation. https://charlesberret.net/shared/2018-berret-diss-final-excerpts.pdf Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#cryptographic-amnesia Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/cryptographic-amnesia.txt Content Engineering (Enigma Technologies) ========================================= Type: Software Organization: Enigma Dates: 2025-26 Topics: Claude Skills, MCP, GraphQL, Model evaluation, Agent orchestration Summary ------- The software side of an agentic research desk: reusable skills, entity resolution, and multi-model evaluation that supported data-journalism investigations. Project Notes ------------- This is the tooling half of the same problem described under Data Journalism: how to make agent-assisted research durable enough for editorial work. Between Enigma’s data systems and the people using language models to investigate and publish, I built a content-engineering layer: reusable query and research skills, a GraphQL client for resolving business identities, and an MCP server that compared models across providers on the same tasks and criteria. The point was not to make an agent appear autonomous. It was to preserve the parts of a method that should survive from one session to the next: how to query the entity graph, where a result came from, which checks a claim had passed, and when a person needed to review the work. Scheduled multi-session workflows used explicit handoffs, monitoring, and durable state rather than relying on a single long prompt. Public-facing outcomes of that stack include launch material for the Enigma Government Archive and Enigma’s KYB Agent on Google Cloud. The investigation pieces linked from the Data Journalism project are worked examples of research run through related pipelines; they were published under institutional bylines. Internal tool counts and architecture details rest on work records and are not independently attributed on those public pages. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Enigma Government Archive Read Enigma's account of the public-record archive and the research infrastructure behind it. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-government-archive KYB Agent on Google Cloud Read a product case study of the business-verification agent built on Enigma data and Google Cloud. https://www.enigma.com/resources/blog/enigma-kyb-agent-on-google-cloud Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#content-engineering-platform Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/content-engineering-platform.txt Knowing Together ================ Type: Art Organization: Brown Institute for Media Innovation and EdLab Dates: 2018-19 Topics: Photogrammetry, Collaboration, Embodied data, 3D imaging Summary ------- A collaborative photogrammetry project in which the seams and distortions of a 3D image record how a group tried to see together. Project Notes ------------- Created with Rosalie Yu, Knowing Together invited thirty-five participants to form a circle and pass a camera from person to person. Each photograph captured part of the group from a different position. Photogrammetry software combined those partial viewpoints into 3D models, but movement, ambient light, and the handoff between participants prevented the images from resolving cleanly. We kept the resulting seams, gaps, and distortions. They made the process of collaboration visible inside an image that would otherwise appear to come from a single, stable point of view. Consent and vulnerability were part of the method: participants decided how to present themselves while accepting that the group and the software would produce something none of them could fully control. The project brought the models together with source photographs, written reflections, audio, and sculpture. It was exhibited at Teachers College in New York and at the ACM SIGGRAPH Art Gallery in Los Angeles, where we presented the accompanying paper in 2019. A later essay, The Lifespan of Ephemera, reflects on what a digital model can preserve of an embodied and temporary encounter. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Project site Explore the collaborative photogrammetry project through images, process notes, and an interactive presentation. https://knowing-together.rosalieyu.com/ SIGGRAPH Art Gallery catalog entry Open the illustrated catalog paper presented with the project in the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery. https://charlesberret.net/shared/2019-yu-berret-knowing-together.pdf SIGGRAPH paper DOI Open the persistent publication record and citation details for the SIGGRAPH paper. https://doi.org/10.1145/3306211.3320139 The Lifespan of Ephemera Read a later essay on preservation, disappearance, and the project's changing digital afterlife. https://charlesberret.net/shared/2024-berret-yu-lifespan-of-ephemera.pdf Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#knowing-together Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/knowing-together.txt Equipment for Living (SFPC) =========================== Type: Teaching Organization: School for Poetic Computation Dates: Spring 2025 Topics: Teaching, Photogrammetry, Unity, Media theory Summary ------- A ten-week School for Poetic Computation course about making media as a way to think through memory, ritual, collaboration, and everyday life. Project Notes ------------- Co-taught with Rosalie Yu, Equipment for Living borrowed its title from Kenneth Burke's description of art as a source of practical strategies for recurring situations. We asked what that idea might mean for contemporary media: not only what a camera, 3D model, or game engine can represent, but what it can help a person remember, rehearse, share, or survive. The ten classes paired theories of literature, photography, cinema, and digital media with a technical path from photography through photogrammetry to Unity. Units on communication and persuasion, memory and reflection, ritual and identity, collaboration and community, and dreams and imagination gave each tool a human problem to work on. Rut Karin Zettergren joined the class as a guest artist. Students completed an essay or creative project that developed one piece of equipment for living and made it available to others. The course was not a general introduction to media software. It treated technical fluency as one part of a larger practice of deciding what is worth making and whom a tool might serve. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Course Read the School for Poetic Computation course overview, themes, schedule, and instructor information. https://sfpc.study/sessions/spring-25/equipment-for-living Teaching essay Read Charles and Rosalie Yu's account of the ideas and teaching methods behind the course. https://sfpc.study/blog/equipment-for-living Student work Browse projects made by students during the course, with images and individual project notes. https://projects.sfpc.study/equipment-for-living/ Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#equipment-for-living Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/equipment-for-living.txt SecureDrop ========== Type: Research Organization: Tow Center for Digital Journalism Dates: 2015-16 Topics: Source protection, Digital security, Journalism, Interviews Summary ------- The first published study of how SecureDrop entered newsroom routines and changed the practical conditions of protecting anonymous sources. Project Notes ------------- The Guide to SecureDrop examined both the software and the newsroom practices that made it useful. I interviewed twelve journalists and three technical administrators across ten news organizations, along with five people who built, trained, or supported the system. Nine of the ten news organizations said SecureDrop had proved useful, but most relied on a small number of dedicated operators to check it and move material into ordinary reporting workflows. That narrow operating model was not simply a sign of failure. SecureDrop asks a newsroom to create a protected route around the identifying traces left by email, phones, and ordinary web services. Its difficulty, the care required to check it, and the public signal sent by offering it all formed part of the protection. A promise to shield a source matters more when the technical system reduces how much the reporter can be compelled to reveal. The report was the first published study of SecureDrop's adoption in newsrooms. I later trained reporters in operational security and brought the research into day-to-day editorial practice. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Guide to SecureDrop Open the complete Tow Center report on how newsrooms adopted and operated SecureDrop. https://charlesberret.net/shared/2016-berret-tow-securedrop.pdf Columbia Journalism Review Read the report's web edition and overview at Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/guide_to_securedrop.php Academic Commons record Open Columbia's repository record for publication metadata, citation, and downloadable files. https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D84178B2 SecureDrop research Browse the SecureDrop project's research library, including this study and later related work. https://securedrop.org/research/ Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#securedrop Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/securedrop.txt Typography and the Web ====================== Type: Writing and Research Organization: Journal of Visual Culture, Google Design, and HTTP Archive Dates: 2014-26 Topics: Typography, Web fonts, Media history, HTTP Archive Summary ------- Research and writing on type as both cultural form and technical infrastructure, from the history of Impact to web fonts measured across millions of sites. Project Notes ------------- My writing about typography follows type across several scales: the history of a single face, the choices built into a font file, and the aggregate behavior of millions of websites. The methods change with the scale, from archival and interview research to technical explanation and empirical analysis. With Kate Brideau, I traced Impact from metal type through its inclusion in Microsoft's core fonts for the web to its role as a default in meme generators. The article argues that standards and constraints do not merely make images repetitive. They create a recognizable form within which small changes can become legible. For Google Design, I wrote an introductory guide to choosing web fonts. For the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac, I co-wrote the 2024 Fonts chapter with Bram Stein and wrote the 2025 chapter, published in January 2026. Those reports measure the use of web fonts, formats, delivery methods, variable fonts, and writing systems at the scale of the public web. Together, the projects treat typography as something people read, software executes, and culture makes meaningful. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Web Almanac Fonts 2025 Read the 2025 analysis of web-font formats, loading behavior, variable fonts, and typography trends. https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/fonts Web Almanac Fonts 2024 Read the 2024 data chapter on how fonts are selected, delivered, and rendered across the web. https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/fonts Impact, the meme font Open the full Journal of Visual Culture article on Impact's history and use in image macros. https://charlesberret.net/shared/2014-berret-brideau-jvc-impact.pdf Impact article DOI Open the persistent publication record and citation details for the Impact article. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544515 Choosing Web Fonts Read a practical Google Design guide to evaluating and choosing typefaces for web projects. https://design.google/library/choosing-web-fonts-beginners-guide Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#typography-and-the-web Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/typography-and-the-web.txt