Author: Brendan Barry

  • Trumpland vs. Clintonopolis

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    I was not sure if I wanted to file this under either my humourous Friday posts or my regular weekday posts, but I ultimately decided to go with the weekly postings. Why? It’s simply a different way of visualising the election results, by separating the two camps into two separate Americas. One is the geography…

  • Deportation of Immigrants

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    Donald Trump announced how he wants to deport 2–3 million undocumented immigrants that have criminal convictions or that belong to gangs. I read up on the issue at FiveThirtyEight and came across the following graphic from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, when I review the graphic, I found it difficult to understand…

  • Boston Beer Company

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Boston Beer Company is the parent company of Sam Adams, which is definitely one of those beers I imbibe when I visit Boston. But, as one of the larger craft brewers in the United States, it finds itself under immense competition. This article from Bloomberg examines the situation the brewery finds itself in from a share…

  • Daylight Savings Time

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    You clearly didn’t miss this story from two weeks ago, because we all had to change our clocks. But, you might not have thought much about it. Which is fine, because I think there was an election or something a day or two later. Or was I dreaming/nightmaring? Thankfully Andy Woodruff did think about it…

  • The Sorting Hat

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Well the election is finally over. And since last week I used my Friday post to talk about something serious, I apologise for backtracking just a wee bit to go back to the election. This summer I had a discussion with one of the designers I worked with at the time, Ciana Frenze. We were…

  • Detroit’s Housing Market

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in ,

    A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal published a graphic that I thought could use some work. I like line charts, and I think line charts with two or three lines that overlap can be legible. But when I see five in five colours in a small space…well not so much. So I spent…

  • Election Day

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Well this is it. Well at least for you American readers of this blog. It’s Election Day. If you had told me that this is what it would come to almost a year and a half ago, I would have laughed. But it did. And now it comes down to all of us to vote, unless…

  • The Affordable Care Act You Likely Know as Obamacare

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    It just won’t die. Grandma, that is, in front of the death panels of Obamacare. Remember those? Well, even if you don’t, the Affordable Care Act (the actual name for Obamacare) is still around despite repeated attempts to repeal it. So in this piece from Bloomberg, Obamacare is examined from the perspective of leaving 27…

  • Climate Change

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    So this is the last Friday before the election next Tuesday. Normally I reserve Fridays for less serious topics. And often xkcd does a great job covering that for me. But because of the election, I want today’s to be a bit more serious. Thankfully, we still have xkcd for that. The screenshot above gets to…

  • The National Debt

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    One of the things discussed during the election season—though very minorly compared to other things—is the national debt. Debt itself is not scary. Look at student loans, home loans, auto loans, &c. Look at the credit cards in your wallet. But running a country is far more difficult and complex than a household budget. That said,…