Well, it’s the end of another week. I’ll save the bigger posts I have planned for next week and instead end with this little astronomy/geometry gem from xkcd. It takes a look at Saturn’s polar storm that takes the shape of a hexagon, not a circle or anything else.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Happy Friday, all. Another week and we made it.
This Friday I want to highlight a graphic from xkcd that, strictly speaking, isn’t really data visualisation, but it does speak to that world because it’s about the underlying data.
And as with the best humour, there’s an element of truth in it.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Happy Friday, all. Whether we’re talking melting ice sheets or attempted purchases by the Trump administration, the island of Greenland has often been in the news the last few years.
So here’s an appropriate map from xkcd comparing the size of Greenland to the rest of the world.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Happy Friday, all. Apologies for the lack of posting yesterday, I wasn’t feeling well and sitting in front of my computer typing stuff up wasn’t happening. But now the weekend is nearly upon us and to get in the mood I wanted to share this great dot plot from xkcd. It captures something I’ve definitely been thinking about.
For example, on 3 March 2020, I had a friend over to my flat for drinks and to watch the Super Tuesday Democratic primary results come in. Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, will be the first time I’ve had company over in 15 months.
In essence we have check boxes of the normal things we did in the before times and we’re just checking them off one by one until we can feel normal again.
Just please don’t contract a novel bat virus again.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Two Fridays ago I received my second dose of the vaccine. In other words, I’m fully vaccinated and can resume doing…things. Anything. And so this piece from xkcd seemed an appropriate way to wrap up what has been a horrible, no good, terrible year.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
If all goes according to plan, your author today will receive his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, the Pfizer variety for the curious. As such, it feels appropriate to share this recent piece from xkcd.
All joking aside, it should be said that, and as this graphic illustrates, just because you receive your first dose, doesn’t mean you should be out socialising and seeing people later that night.
You are not fully vaccinated until two weeks after your second dose, or the first if you received Johnson & Johnson. And so while I may be receiving my first dose this afternoon, it is going to be close to a month and a half before I’m able to leave my household unit and socialise with others. Probably three weeks for my second dose and then another two weeks for the vaccine to fully take effect.
Doesn’t mean I won’t be counting the days, though.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Damn you Neil deGrasse Tyson (but not really though)!
Because, you know, he advocated for de-planet-fying Pluto back in the oughts.
Which I mention because of this post from xkcd, which corrects common images of planets in the solar system accounting for their population.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Another week is now in the books. We can end it with an xkcd graphic looking at rings and a diagram identifying logos with that specified number.
It’s basically a Venn diagram with sets within sets.
But conceptually, I’d place it here.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Perseverance landed on Mars on 18 February, almost a month ago. The video and photography the rover has already sent back has been stunning. We all know she is the most capable rover yet landed on the Red Planet, but what we all want to know is how cute is Perseverance compared to her predecessors?
Thankfully for that we have xkcd.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Another week is over, and for the past few years I’ve often said we all made it to the end of the week. When in reality, for the last few months, thousands of people were not. We’ve started using Monday to sort of recap the state of the pandemic in a select region of the country. And then we moved straight into how the New York Times addressed the US reaching the grim milestone of 500,000 deaths.
So I want to end this week with a little story told over at xkcd that tries to explain these new mRNA vaccines. Who doesn’t love science, science fiction, and humour woven together into a narrative? True, this isn’t really data visualisation, but it dovetails nicely into the work we’ve been doing and reviewing of late. Plus, levity. We all need levity.
You’ll want to click through to read it all.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
