Fair Warning - Evictions, elections, and... elephant seals
Hello hello! This is later than intended as I was distracted by going for my Couch to 5K graduation run, celebrating a friend's 30th, and recovering from a rubbish week. But hooray for graduation run!
Some non-data stuff I found interesting this week:
Who wins in a fight between an octopus and a bald eagle? 🤷
Krispy Kremes and Nazis: This is a fascinating story
Jürgen Klopp is the nicest man on the planet and I love him.
Don't forget there's now a nice little archive of all the data links I include in Fair Warning.
On the home front
General election 2019: How Labour's 'red wall' turned blue — www.bbc.co.uk
"Some of these seats have not had a Tory MP in decades, and in the case of Burnley it had been more than a century."
The effects of tactical voting sites
Chris Hanretty looked at the impact of tactical voting sites on the results of the election on Thursday. The Lib Dems seem to come out of it pretty well.
Election results 2019: Boris Johnson returned as PM with all constituencies declared
I can't remember the name of the map the Guardian uses here but it's one of those ones which takes into account the population size. Which is always weird to look at but then makes more sense the more you stare.
Lots of visualisations about the election out this week (obviously) but I really really loved this map by The Times. It is so simple, so elegant, so easy to understand! Yeah, I love it.
But then... There was this graph, again by The Times, and I struggled to understand it (why bother with two different shades for each party, when there's no need to distinguish between seat lost/won, and surely the story is about vote share?). It's not bad enough to be a "bad chart of the week" but I definitely raised an eyebrow at it.
Mapping the location, design and decline of London's psychiatric asylums (1831–2012)
Academic research about asylums, with cool maps. I'm here for it. I'm quite familiar with the one in Barnet. I used to go to Barnet a lot as a kid and we'd drive past it all the time. It's now a beautiful residential development!
Over the pond
Ring’s Hidden Data Let Us Map Amazon's Sprawling Home Surveillance Network — gizmodo.com
"Gizmodo was able to produce detailed maps depicting the locations of tens of thousands of Ring cameras across 15 U.S. cities with varying degrees of accuracy." Aaaaaaarrhhhhggh...
Many Renters Who Face Eviction Owe Less Than $600
Really interesting analysis here. Failure to pay rent is the most common cause of eviction, and yet many tenants only "owe the equivalent of less than a month's rent".
All the wrong places: A plurality of Americans—but not of states—want Donald Trump impeached — www.economist.com
I find it really interesting how where you live seems to impact on how much influence your vote has, through the electoral college. It just seems so bonkers to me because SURELY in a national vote, the national, overall number of votes (one person one vote) should be taken into consideration!?
I like the imagery and theme of this, where protests are 'light' on a map of the US. There's also some really nice analysis of topics and where the protests take place over time. The original data is quite interesting too.
Philadelphia pharmacies loved OxyContin — until suddenly they didn’t — www.inquirer.com
I really like the way these graphics change as you scroll. It's a fascinating story which I've never heard before - essentially, OxyContin was made more difficult to crush and snort, and so orders went down for a few pharmacies. Huh. Hmm. Oh.
Odds and ends
Tour Honolulu's Japanese Food Scene With This 1906 Map — www.atlasobscura.com
A gorgeous map created by Takei Nekketsu, which shows the location of Japanese-owned businesses in Honolulu, to help recent migrants to the city. I didn't realise that Japanese immigrants went to Hawaii so early! In the mid-1800s.
Another academic paper, but give it a go: If you look in supplemental material, you can click the arrow right and find an awesome map of Mythical Creatures of Europe - 213 creatures of 68 types, to be precise. You can download it as a PDF and I think it's pretty awesome.
Lightsaber duels in Star Wars leading up to the last film in the franchise, The Rise of Skywalker
Oh my goodness. Sometimes Reuters really surprises me. It's like 95% "some serious and bad stuff is happening around the world, we should look at the data" and then 5% "new franchise film coming out? Let's COUNT STUFF" and I have no choice but to admire that kind of editorial sense. I had also forgotten about all of the hands being chopped off. Stupid prequels.
Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie — stephenfollows.com
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie, or a GOD DAMN BRUCE WILLIS MOVIE?! You'll have to read to find out.
Finally you get to understand the elephant seal bit! So, this is a representation of the sea, and all the things you find at different depths. I found this super addictive and fun to scroll through even though there are a few things that I'm convinced are fake even though I Googled them.
It's *deep*. Scroll! SCROLL!
Bad chart of the week
With thanks to Alberto Cairo for tweeting this one... We are absolutely not doing stacked parliament charts. Nope. Not happening.
Is now a good time for me to suddenly realise that if I moved to the US I'd need to switch around "on the home front" and "over the pond"? That would be confusing, I guess.
That's aaaaall I have for you this week. I'll be back in 2020 with more interesting data stories and links. In the meantime, if you've enjoyed reading Fair Warning this year (even if you just click the links and don't read my ramblings - that's totally fine too!) then you can buy me a coffee to say thanks. You can also become a Patron which means you support FW/me on a monthly basis. The coffee is less commitment and I love a cappuccino :)
Have an amazing Christmas / festive break, whatever you're doing.
Soph x