Fair Warning - Music tastes, vaping, and political predictions
Hello! My weird little quest to become an actual super woman continues apace: 3 runs a week, 2/3 bike rides a week, kayaking, and walking. I have so many bruises, a couple of nice scrapes on both elbows from falling off bikes, and I have discovered muscles I didn't even know I had.
Yesterday I went full bonkers and decided on a whim that after two weeks of running, I could do a Parkrun. I did it - 5km of running and walking, at my own pace, on a stupidly hot day, and while it's not really about the time... I didn't come last!
I feel good because I can tell I am improving every day and so there's a sense of accomplishment as well as the rush of endorphins, but I also sort of feel like I've been hit by a bus. Is this what normal people feel like all the time? My God.
On the home front
Fears that too many British teenagers are using e-cigarettes may be overblown — www.economist.com
New data shows that teenagers in England aren't using e-cigarettes or vaping in significant numbers, and they are also smoking less anyway. The kids are alright.
Rivers used as 'open sewers', says WWF charity
This is a good piece about river water quality which is quite worrying. I've been kayaking on the river I live on, and I accidentally swallowed loads of water while capsizing the other week, so I feel *great* about the fact that "there is no river in the UK that is safe to be swimming in". Juuuuust great.
Ian Mulheirn says UK housing is not a supply problem. No one can prove him wrong
I quite liked this read. I have long wanted to write a piece about how the housing crisis is not an issue of supply, but people have been reluctant to share their data with me. I have done loads of research into it so I KNOW he's right. I just can't nail it down. ARGH. (H/T Gavin Freeguard)
Over the pond
Are You Rich? Where Does Your Net Worth Rank in America? — www.nytimes.com
Weirdly, I did not need the New York Times to tell me that I am not rich because I already knew it, but I guess some people may be surprised by this.
The link in this thread doesn't work for me (to do with being outside the US?), but USA Today appears to have done an interactive piece on the history of slavery. I obviously don't know if it's good or not, but it's interesting enough for me to WANT to read it.
Houston Chronicle Homicide Report: Stories of the Departed
The Houston Chronicle is keeping track of the hundreds of people who have been killed in Harris County this year, adding them to a map and writing biographies about each of them alongside their photos. While this doesn't seem like a data journalism story, it's one of those which takes dedication to verifying details and finding out about people's lives.
Quiz: Let Us Predict Whether You’re a Democrat or a Republican
Just a few questions and the NYT can tell you which way you're likely to vote. To my relief, I got Democratic, with the only thing making me more likely to vote Republican being the fact I'm white. YIKES.
Elsewhere
Here’s Where The Amazon Is Burning And Why It’s Going to Get Worse — www.bloomberg.com
Bloomberg have done a great job with this, in my view - explaining exactly what is going on through the use of beautiful maps and charts.
Which countries dominate the world’s dinner tables?
"America has a culinary deficit, whereas Italy boasts a vast surplus". Not sure I fully trust this methodology but whatever.
Odds and ends
What Does Campaign Rally Music Say About a Candidate? — www.nytimes.com
I absolutely loved this analysis of presidential campaign rally playlists. The NYT looked at every aspect of the songs - lyrics, genre, who was singing - to see what that might say about the candidates. Kirsten Gillibrand has Le Tigre on her playlist and by far the most female artists, for instance. Turn your sound ON and have a read.
The rise of all-lowercase and all-uppercase song titles
Quartz looks at song titles from Spotify and whether they are all-lowercase (like "thank u, next" by Ariana Grande) or all-uppercase (like Travis Scott, though I'm so old I don't know who he is?). The MOST interesting thing about this is the conclusion that the cultural shift from proper case to lower or upper is because these artists have grown up in the era of texts, tweets, and snapchat.
Alberto Cairo wrote a nice and simple explainer on Scientific American which shows how you can easily misinterpret charts. Aside from "correlation is not causation", I like this tip: "Consider whether the data represent the level required to make the inferences you want."
What your music taste says about you
You might need to use translations for this but this uses your Spotify account to compare you to others of your generation across a bunch of variables like popularity, energy, etc. It also gives you the age it thinks you are.
... It thinks I am 61 years old. 😐😐😐😐😐
Bad chart of the week
"Let's compress 14 pie charts into 1 for no reason" (source):
I’m Soph, and I’m a data journalist from London currently in Cardiff. I write Fair Warning because I am really nerdy about data and I love pretty data visualisations.
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