Author: Brendan Barry

  • Double Your Hurricanes, Double Your Fun

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    Brendan Barry
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    In a first, the Gulf of Mexico basin has two active hurricanes simultaneously. Unfortunately, they are both likely to strikes somewhere along the Louisiana coastline within approximately 36 hours of each other. Fortunately, neither is strong as a storm named Katrina that caused a mess of things several years ago now. Over the last few…

  • Reducing Postal Sort Capacity

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    Brendan Barry
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    For my non-American audience, the United States uses a federal system under which its constituent states retain the responsibility for organising and executing elections. And so we have 50 different electoral systems. A select few use the United States Post Office (USPS) to distribute blank ballots to voters and collect them when completed. Five states…

  • Is Covid-19 Surging in New Zealand?

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday, President Trump claimed that Covid-19 was “surging” in New Zealand, a country widely lauded as having successfully contained and suppressed their outbreak. That has allowed Wellington to reopen large swathes of their economy without incident. Until this surge. And by surge we mean something like 30 cases in 3 days. So, let’s compare that…

  • Covid-19 Update: 16 August

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    Brendan Barry
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    So here are the charts from the last week of Covid data in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. When we compare last week’s update to today’s, we can see that Pennsylvania did indeed bottom out and is back on the rise and the same can probably be said for Delaware. Although a fair…

  • Space Force Logo Pt. II

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    Brendan Barry
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    Happy Friday, everyone. We’ve made it to the end of the week. Yesterday, I departed from the usual data visualisation discourse and delved into some branding/identity work. Spoilers, that’s a good part of my career as well. But I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the armed forces branch could…

  • So Cutting Edge

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    Brendan Barry
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    Space Force. Yep, that’s still a thing. I’ll spare you all the long history of Space Force, because we’ve all pointed and laughed at that enough. So much so there is a Netflix show about it. There was an old logo for Space Force, which basically was the logo for Starfleet Command. You know, the…

  • When Is an Opener Game in Baseball Really Just a Bullpen Game?

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    Brendan Barry
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    Whenever someone not named Eovaldi or Perez starts a Red Sox game in 2020, that’s when. We all know the Red Sox are the worst team in the American League. They have only two starters, maybe sometimes a third. And then the last two days of the regular five-day rotation cycle, manager Ron Roenicke throws…

  • Sweet Summer Air of Subway Cars

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    Brendan Barry
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    For those of my readers who live in a city where the subway or underground is a great means of getting around the city, you know you really miss that late Saturday night/early Sunday morning bouquet in the air. Though as this New York Times piece explains, sure it smells bad, but that air is…

  • Covid-19 Update: 9 August

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    Brendan Barry
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    Weekend data means, usually, lower numbers than weekdays. And with the exception of Delaware that’s what we have today. Some drops, like Illinois, are more dramatic than others, like New Jersey. And so we look at the seven-day trend. And that tells a slightly different story. On the one hand we have states like Virginia…