Tag: just for fun

Hog Wild

So admittedly this post should have been up last week, but I liked the lunar cycle one too  much. But today is Friday and who cares. We made it to the end of the week.

In the wake of the shootings last week, someone on Twitter posed the question:

Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?

And with that the Internet was off. Memes exploded across the social media verse. Thankfully the Washington Post took it seriously and found data on the expanding footprint of hogs in the United States.

Pig problems
Pig problems

The article also points out, however, that the firearm that prompted the discussion, the now infamous AR-15, would also be a poor choice against feral hogs as its too small a calibre to effectively deal with the animals.

Credit for the piece goes to the US Department of Agriculture.

Lunar Cycles

Yesterday in the early hours of the morning was technically the latest full moon. And so since today is Friday and we all made it to the end of the week, it seems like a good time to let xkcd educate us all on lunar periodicity.

But what about lycanthrope correlations?
But what about lycanthrope correlations?

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

What’s the Warning Today?

The weather here in Philadelphia has been fairly intense this summer. But, as August begins and summer begins to wane, even the meteorologists will need a holiday. Thankfully, xkcd has us covered on meteorology’s plan to provide coverage on their holiday.

Duck and cover
Duck and cover

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

The Sartorial Trump

Happy Friday, all. We made it to the end of the week. Though if you are like me, i.e. living on the East Coast, welcome to Hell. As in so hot and humid.

So last month President Trump visited the United Kingdom on a state visit. He drew attention to himself not just because of his rhetoric, but also for his fashion choices. Consequently, the Washington Post published a piece about those fashion choices from the perspective of a professional tailor.

Look at those shoulders…
Look at those shoulders…

The overall piece is well worth a read if you find presidential fashion fascinating. But how does it qualify for Coffeespoons? A .gif that shows how Trump would look in a properly tailored suit.

Since this is a screenshot, you miss the full impact. The piece is an animation of an existing photo and how that then morphs into this for comparison’s sake.

I really enjoy the animated .gif when it works for data visualisation and story-telling.

Credit for the piece goes to Ezra Paul.

Or Just Don’t Be a Dick

Long before I worked as a designer, I was a busboy. After that I was a dishwasher. After that I was a barista. Then I became a designer. This graphic from Indexed resonated with me, because, yeah, at a more basic level, don’t fuck with your servers.

 

Or, in simpler terms, don't be a dick…
Or, in simpler terms, don’t be a dick…

Credit for the piece goes to Jessica Hagy.

Studying Will Be the Death of Me

At least in certain fields. Happy Thursday all. For me, however, it’s more of a Friday. I am on holiday the next several days, so until I resume posting mid-next week, I will leave you with an xkcd graphic that looks at how what you study can kill you. I think all my economist colleagues are safe.

Where's design though?
Where’s design though?

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Golden Buttered Popcorn

We are in the midst of basketball playoffs right now. And one of the teams participating is the Golden State Warriors. They are pretty good at this whole basketball thing. One of the reasons is their star player Steph Curry. And it turns out that he is an enormous fan of popcorn. So much so that despite the widespread focus on power foods and healthy eating and wellness lifestyle, he devours the stuff before matches. So much so that NBA minders had to remove it from his hands during an all-star match last year.

He agreed to a request from the New York Times to rank each stadium, from 1 to 29, on the best popcorn. But he then went further and suggested that he rank the popcorn on a five-point scale on five different metrics: freshness, saltiness, crunchiness, butter and presentation. Naturally, the Times agreed. And he prepared a dataset that the Times turned into this heat map.

He's so honest, his own stadium doesn't rank in the top five.
He’s so honest, his own stadium doesn’t rank in the top five.

The whole article is well worth a read for more insights into the player and his take on popcorn. I don’t know a thing about basketball, but if a player agrees to a request to rank stadiums based on their popcorn, but then goes further to create additional data that can be used to turn into a visualisation, he’s probably my favourite player. If only someone had asked this of Pedro, Nomar, or Big Papi back in the day. Here’s looking at you, Laser Show.

Happy Friday, everyone.

Credit for the piece goes to Steph Curry and Marc Stein.

Disc Space

One of my current projects is consolidating and organising all my genealogy files spread across multiple devices and drives into one central location. So I’ve been spending quite a bit of time looking at file sizes and things. And that is why this piece from xkcd made me laugh.

So true.
So true.

Happy Friday, all.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.