Dephemeral

Stop forgetting. Discover everything a public figure has said about a topic.

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Inspiration

Dephemeral comes from a desire to stop forgetting about the things famous public figures/politicians have said in the past. I want to be able to uncover hypocrisy and observe the evolution of people's viewpoints over time.

What it does

  • Allows you to search for a person and a topic.
  • That's about it.

What it doesn't do

  • The data set is very limited.
  • Allow for the addition of new data.
  • Weigh quotes for relevance

How I built it

Just your basic Flask application written in Python, using SQLite for the database and Whoosh for indexing. Frontend is just raw HTML and CSS, no Javascript nonsense.

Challenges I ran into

Gathering the data for quotes ended up being the most difficult part of this. Right now the searchable database just consists of a Twitter dump of some notorious politicians. I didn't have time to add quotes from other sources.

What I learned

  • Time management during stressful conditions
  • How a more advanced search scheme is developed

What's next for Dephemeral

If I were to develop this further, I would want it to be something almost entirely community-driven. People would be able to submit primary sources, comment on quotes, sort quotes into larger topics that may not fit specific keywords, etc. But for now, I'm going to bed.

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