wtf is lostmta?

This project creates an interactive map and visualization showing lost and found items reported through the New York City MTA (subway system). Instead of buried data, it gives you a visual way to browse what people have left behind, and where they left it. The site pulls data from the MTA's official lost and found feed and displays it on an interactive map. You can explore items by location, see what's been turned in recently, and get a sense of the patterns across the subway system. The visualization itself is built separately using Observable, a platform for interactive data visualization, and embedded into the main website. If you've lost something on the subway, this could help you check if it's been found and which station to contact. More broadly, it's a quirky window into urban life, you can see what people actually leave behind on trains and in stations, which stations have the most activity, and maybe find a pattern in what gets lost where. The project turns what would normally be dry administrative data into something people can actually explore and understand visually. The code is written in Python and lives on GitHub, with the visualization logic hosted on Observable. The live version runs at lostandfoundmta.com, so you can browse it without needing to set anything up yourself.