Jack Sapoch

New collaborative investigation from @lighthousereports.com + @financialtimes.com : we mapped how Israel has demolished village after village across southern Lebanon - much of it after a ceasefire. A thread on the remote sensing damage analysis workflow we built to measure it 🧵

In some of the worst-hit villages, destruction started at the village centre and radiates outward over weeks We cross-referenced these observations by conducting manual annotation of changes on s2 + high res imagery on building polygons in certain villages (see attached)

New collaborative investigation from @lighthousereports.com + @financialtimes.com : we mapped how Israel has demolished village after village across southern Lebanon - much of it after a ceasefire. A thread on the remote sensing damage analysis workflow we built to measure it 🧵

Extending out across months, this was valuable as an indicator for research and inquiry. For publication, we mapped dominant change patterns across a 250m hexagonal grid, with respect to whether dominant change was observed before/after the April ceasefire

New collaborative investigation from @lighthousereports.com + @financialtimes.com : we mapped how Israel has demolished village after village across southern Lebanon - much of it after a ceasefire. A thread on the remote sensing damage analysis workflow we built to measure it 🧵

In false-color imagery, intact villages read as a mix of more saturated colors (vegetation, rooftops, mixed surfaces) When demolished to rubble, that color collapses toward flat grey. We built a pipeline to measure that collapse, computed straight from the satellite bands

New collaborative investigation from @lighthousereports.com + @financialtimes.com : we mapped how Israel has demolished village after village across southern Lebanon - much of it after a ceasefire. A thread on the remote sensing damage analysis workflow we built to measure it 🧵

A time-series viz of all publicly recorded* Bayraktar TB2 flights over western Turkey since late 2023 The tracks show how extensive/persistent these circular patterned surveillance flights are along the Aegean coast + Evros land border

*The data is wrangled from adsb.lol via @obtusatum.bsky.social / @bellingcat.com's Turnstone tool, then processed and visualized in Kepler.gl and finished in Davinci Resolve bsky.app/profile/bell...

From our recent @lighthousereports.com / Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary on the El Fasher siege The animation here is based on 100s of sat images from Apr - Oct 2025. Via cross-comparison, I mapped the berm’s construction in QGIS, then imported into Blender + animated w/ a custom script

Recent border wall construction in southern Arizona is visible not only in daytime satellite imagery, but also at night I made this timelapse w/ NASA Black Marble nighttime lights data, showing light signatures along the border next to Coronado National Forest b/w Jan + Mar 2026

Beyond the physical construction of the wall, artificial lighting is also part of the project’s environmental footprint. @biologicaldiversity.org in particular has published past work on these risks: www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/bo...

Recent border wall construction in southern Arizona is visible not only in daytime satellite imagery, but also at night I made this timelapse w/ NASA Black Marble nighttime lights data, showing light signatures along the border next to Coronado National Forest b/w Jan + Mar 2026

The nighttime radiance appears along the border corridor near the San Rafael Valley and Coronado National Forest, where recent wall construction has been reported. In several places, the lights appear to align with material staging and transfer areas supporting the work.

Amidst strikes on Iran by the US and Israel today, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit released a pre-made 3D animation of strike targets in Kermanshah, Iran

The animation centers on a few buildings (implied targets) displayed as point geometry evocative of LiDAR data The extent to which this is a generated effect meant to convey precision vs data derived geometry is unclear Past work on these IDF animations suggests the former bsky.app/profile/jack...

Last May, Tennessee Highway Patrol joined ICE on the streets of Nashville. We @lighthousereports.com + partners mapped the traffic stops and used 1M+ ICE records, dashcam video, and court files to show how supposed routine encounters became deportations.

By linking federal detention data to traffic stops, we followed people from roadside encounters through ICE custody and onto deportation flights. We found 75% of those detained had no criminal record.

Last May, Tennessee Highway Patrol joined ICE on the streets of Nashville. We @lighthousereports.com + partners mapped the traffic stops and used 1M+ ICE records, dashcam video, and court files to show how supposed routine encounters became deportations.

We also reviewed 50+ hours of dashcam and bodycam footage, showing how troopers used minor traffic pretexts so ICE could intervene, often bypassing basic protections. Recordings captures agents joking and celebrating arrests

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

Over the months, we gathered material and analysis before working with colleagues @srfnews.bsky.social, @972mag.com, and @theferret.scot to bring the investigation together for their respective audiences. SRF International podcast (via Susanne Brunner) www.srf.ch/audio/intern...

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

The TikTok outlines that a specific goal of these animations is to multiply their reach by cultivating secondary coverage And indeed, dozens of major outlets like BBC, CNN and Sky News have aired them, in part or in full, often without context

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

One of the earlier and most-viewed examples was an animation of Al Shifa Hospital, published in October 2023. The “underground command room” was recycled from a 2022 IDF animation of an UNRWA school in Tel Al-Hawa; the street above was built from prefab @kb-3d.bsky.social storefronts

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

Others assets came from scans made by the Scottish Maritime Museum of their boat-building workshop which was downloaded (via @sketchfab.bsky.social) and reimagined by the IDF adornments for underground missile factories.

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

We traced over 30 unique assets to Washington-based 3D creator Ian Hubert, who makes bespoke models created for his sci-fi project Dynamo Dream, available to his Patreon subscribers. Scans of parking lots, antennas, and pipes were repurposed as Hamas and Iranian military sites

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war