Hi, I'm Al
I'm a disabled New Yorker with a background in social science and public health research. I write to process things, document patterns, and occasionally just blow off steam.
BIFT stands for Before I Forget That: a personal philosophy around writing things down immediately and organizing information in ways that hold up under pressure. It's the principle behind most of what's on this site.
I care about accessible systems, patient and disability advocacy, and the gap between how institutions describe themselves and how they actually function. A lot of my reading, writing, and project work circles back to those themes in one form or another.
Writing
My academic background is in social science and public health research, and those lenses have stayed with me. I'm particularly interested in patient advocacy, disability rights, and the structural conditions that make healthcare and workplace systems harder to navigate for people who already have the least margin for error.
I write about these topics more personally and at length and I archived posts from a brief, experimental Patreon that I made here in my Contraindicated space. In the future I hope to have my footing in life stable enough to something like a Patreon that is active.
Projects and Tinkering
Some things I've built because I found them genuinely interesting:
Bigfoot Sighting Analytics
A data project using BFRO sighting records and USGS environmental data to model geographic and ecological patterns in reported Bigfoot sightings across North America. The dataset is considered absurd but the methodology is not. That's the joke, and also the point: rigorous analytical practice applies regardless of whether the subject matter takes itself seriously.