Fair Warning - Space, US road trips, and heatwaves
Hello! I had an AMAZING time up at the Lake District and then Blue Dot Festival last weekend. I learned about time travel and space, and saw Kraftwerk and New Order perform.
I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing - Jodrell Bank tracked both US and Soviet space flights during the space race, and tracked Apollo 11 when it landed. If science is your thing, I highly recommend going!
I was going to link a bunch of photos but really the only relevant ones to this newsletter are of me wearing this t-shirt, and these books I bought.
Random but good news! I have finally put the sheep map onto a shirt, so you can buy it and wear it and let everyone know you're a massive nerd. Here's the UK version. Here's the US version. Don't ask me why I couldn't just use the same one for both, ask Jeff Bezos.
On the home front
Leasehold houses: Will reforms help in the North of England? — commonslibrary.parliament.uk
Short answer: Probably? This looks at the sale of homes that are leasehold and it turns out most of them are in Manchester, Sheffield and the surrounding areas. How odd. Leasehold homes are problematic because of the ground rent and how much control landlords have. I mean, I have a leasehold flat; I pay ground rent to the landlord, but that makes sense since the land is split between multiple flats. Homes are slightly trickier! (Thanks Colin for sending this to me)
This week I discovered that my fellow Brits are incredibly boring and lacking in any sense of adventure. 48% said they wouldn't go to the moon even if their safe return was guaranteed. Why? 23% were just "not interested", and 11% thought there was "not enough to see or do". WHAT?! IT'S SPACE! YOU CAN LOOK AT EARTH AND MARVEL AT HOW AMAZING THE UNIVERSE IS. OR PLAY SPACE ODDITY IN ACTUAL SPACE.
Boris Johnson’s approval ratings are surprisingly high
Obviously I cannot comment on this so: "A prime minister’s initial approval ratings are a poor predictor of his or her future performance... The Tory MPs who backed Mr Johnson in the contest have gambled that his eccentric style will win voters round and revive their hopes of re-election."
In case you didn't notice, there was a ridiculous heatwave in the UK this week (to be honest, I still haven't experienced a full return to normal temperatures but hey ho) and Dan from the BBC did some number crunching on ice cream vans which provided some light relief. Props to my hometown Enfield. Don't judge him for not weighting for population though ;)
Weird stat of the week: Every homicide in the UK costs the police £1m minimum.
Over the pond
How 13 Rejected States Would Have Changed The Electoral College — projects.fivethirtyeight.com
Importantly, though, they would not have changed the outcome of the election in 2016.
What Happened to America’s Political Center of Gravity?
The Republican Party is further right than UKIP and France’s National Rally, according to this analysis of their platforms. (H/T Giuseppe for this link)
This is a nice tribute to the 50th anniversary of the moon landings - including text from actual transmissions (and a data visualisation of the messages) and footage/photos.
Would you live with a Trump supporter? — www.economist.com
Turns out university students looking for flatmates are rather picky... Being a supporter of the opposite party means you're viewed less favourably. Being messy and going to bed early are also broadly seen to be negative traits in potential flatmates. Heh.
The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature's Most Epic Road Trips
So Atlas Obscura is one of my favourite websites - whenever I go anywhere, I check it to see what's cool nearby and it's led to some awesome experiences! So it's great that they've done this literature road trip map. Not sure I count Wild (good book as it is) as literature given that it's biographical, but I didn't make the rules...
What are the local news dynamics in your city?
This is from March but pretty cool, you can find out how local residents get their news, which topics are important to them and what they think of their local media. Useful for local US journalists maybe?
Uh, so, I obviously didn't go to SRCCON in the US but I wanted to take a look through what was going on there and pick up some resources when it ended. I thought these three looked pretty good, particularly the one about percentages and z-scores. The whole list of talks and panels is here, let me know if you find something interesting!
Elsewhere
Use These Maps To See How Much Hotter Your City Can Get Because Of “Heat Islands” — www.buzzfeednews.com
Although this defaults to the US, you can look at Europe on here too. Urban density creates 'urban heat islands' which can add a few degrees of heat. London is pretty bad. Cardiff is alright. New York and Chicago are terrible. Have a look at the map and feel depressed! Hooray!
Imaging the entire Earth, every day
This is pretty cool - see how the Earth is slowly built up from each of the 600,000 satellite images taken by Planet's satellites in a single day.
Magyarország nemzetiségi térképe
The article is in Hungarian, but this is a nice dot-density map of Hungary by ethnicity. Similar to the ones of Germany I put in here a while back. It turns out I really like dot-density maps huh? (Thanks Luke for spotting this!)
Bad chart of the week
That is a ridiculous and misleading chart, and once again Alberto got there before me to label it a "grossly incompetent lying chart".
Those are all the links I have for you this week. Post-festival cold has almost killed me, I've been mildly ill for a while (read this if you're feeling v nosy), and I've just started new medication so I'm currently extremely slow at doing things that involve being awake or thinking. That's why this is so late in the day... (7pm!?)
But! If you enjoyed this week's selection of links, consider buying me a coffee, or supporting Fair Warning on Patreon. Or buy an extremely cool but nerdy sheep map shirt created by Yours Truly (links at the top). I'm on Twitter if you want to send me links or have a chat. Otherwise, see you next week!