Examining How We Measure Our Lives
Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation
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Read on…: US Foreign Aid
One 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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Marriage Rates
Read on…: Marriage RatesWell, so about that whole Michael Flynn furore thing I wrote about yesterday…. Time to add another name to the list of people to be appointed—as I said, that post isn’t confirmed, merely appointed. But today is Valentine’s Day. So for all you lovebirds out there, here are some graphics showing how rate of marriages has […]
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Voting on Trump’s Cabinet
Read on…: Voting on Trump’s CabinetMichael Flynn, the National Security Advisor, may have broken the law by talking to the Russian ambassador about Americans sanctions on Russia before Trump took office. One can imagine the furore surrounding the man and the post. However, the post is not confirmed by the Senate, but is appointed by the president. But how has the […]
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Thank Superman, It’s Finally Friday
Read on…: Thank Superman, It’s Finally FridayIt’s been a long, exhausting week. Am I right? Well, thank Superman, it’s finally Friday. So today we have a post from xkcd about Superman. And birds and planes. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
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Snowfall in Philadelphia
Read on…: Snowfall in PhiladelphiaToday, 9 February, it finally snowed significantly here in Philadelphia. In Chicago it probably snowed shortly after I moved out in September. Today’s graphic is a forecast map from philly.com using National Weather Service (NWS) data. I fail to understand the divergent palette—to be fair this is not the only instance of it throughout the meteorological […]