Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: North Korea’s Missile Programme
So here’s how this week was supposed to go. I was going to write about the Northern Irish election Monday and then Tuesday was going to be a piece from the New York Times that looked at the public’s concerns facing an incoming president. This piece I was going to save for later. But then Sunday night North Korea tested…
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Northern Ireland Assembly Election Results
Read on…: Northern Ireland Assembly Election ResultsFriday was election day across Northern Ireland as voters elected their representatives for the assembly at Stormont. The headline results: the Nationalists have gained significant ground on the Unionists. The Guardian captured the tallies in this results page. Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian’s graphics department.
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Get to Dam Work
Read on…: Get to Dam WorkSorry, not sorry. But also, sorry. This piece was supposed to go up Wednesday after President Trump’s speech where he announced he’d like to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. But it didn’t post, so you will get two today. This article from the New York Times dates from about a week or so ago at the height of the flooding…
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Declining British Wages
Read on…: Declining British WagesNow for the actual piece for today. We have a scatterplot from the Financial Times that looks at wage and economic growth across the OECD, focusing on the exception that is the United Kingdom. And that is not an exception in the good sense. The UK had the rare privilege of experiencing economic growth—that’s good—while simultaneously wages fell—that’s bad. But…
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US Foreign Aid
Read on…: US Foreign AidOne of the big news stories yesterday centred on the Trump administration’s budget outline that would expand US defence spending by 9%, or $54 billion. That is quite a lot of money. More worrying, however, was the draft’s directive that it be accompanied by equal spending cuts in neither security nor entitlement programmes like Social Security and Medicare. Nor, obviously, the…
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Marine Le Pen’s Chances
Read on…: Marine Le Pen’s ChancesLast Friday the Economist published this article about the odds of Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front party, winning the French presidential election in April. You may recall I focused on other things last Friday. So today we have this graphic. But this morning news broke about new allegations over fraudulent claims by Le Pen and the National…
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UK By-election Results in Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central
Read on…: UK By-election Results in Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent CentralLabour’s collapse in Copeland in particular is comically bad, but this Friday indulge me in a non-comedic post. Instead, Thursday night we had the results for the by-elections in Stoke and Copeland, two long-held Labour Party constituencies. Generally speaking in a by-election, the government of the UK can expect to see its vote share decrease if not altogether lose seats.…
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Seven More Planets
Read on…: Seven More PlanetsWhat else did you guys think I was going to cover today? The by-elections in Copeland and Stoke? Well, yeah, we’ll likely get back to that tomorrow when we have some results. In the meantime…space! This is an animation from the New York Times about the Trappist-1 system that has seven Earth-sized planets, a few of which could support liquid…
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Scottish Independence?
Read on…: Scottish Independence?I was having a conversation with a mate the other night about what Brexit means for Scottish independence. This mate, however, is an American. Because when American politics are depressing and nonsensical, we turn to British pol—wait, never mind. Despite the overall UK vote to leave the European Union, Scotland (and London, and Northern Ireland) voted overwhelmingly to remain. But since…
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The Russians Are Coming
Read on…: The Russians Are ComingI mean, they’re already here…we will return to that shortly. I hope you enjoyed your three-day weekend, but this is a busy week, folks. Most importantly we have Thursday’s by-elections in Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent, those are in the UK for my American audience, where we will see just how crazy British politics gets post-Brexit referendum. But today is Tuesday, and in…