Fair Warning - Subway journeys, Serena Williams, and summer reading
Hi hi hi. It has felt stupidly hot here in Wales, but I can't tell if that's because both my apartment and my office are both very hot with seemingly no relief, or if it's actually been that hot.
Regardless, I'm really looking forward to heading up to the Lake District tomorrow with five pals. A cottage off the grid, hot tub, board games, and close friends. What more could one ask for? Though it definitely sounds like the start of a horror film, so *if* I survive the week, I'm headed to Blue Dot Festival where I'll be nerding out all weekend. Thus... No Fair Warning for you next week!
On the home front
Princess Diana is Britain’s most mourned celebrity — yougov.co.uk
1) I blame Richard Desmond and the Daily Express
2) Note that this is a tiny amount of people - 12%
3) David Bowie is second and this is somewhat soothing
12% of men think they could win a point against Serena Williams
Sometimes I feel like all I really need in life is the confidence and self-assuredness of a mediocre dude and I will get by just fine.
Over the pond
Abortion access is more difficult for women in poverty — www.washingtonpost.com
Good piece from the Washington Post about poor women and their access to abortion. In Wyoming, 87% of poor women are more than an hour away from a clinic. I feel really strongly about abortion rights because forcing women to have children is a way of limiting their life choices and forcing them to remain poor. It's about control, right?
How Unpredictable Is Your Subway Commute? We’ll Show You
It's the New York Times, so obviously it's about New York, but this is *chef's kiss* my kinda data vis. The NYT has crunched the numbers and calculated 'good day', 'bad day' and 'average day' length of commutes for a journey between any two given stations.
And even more fun than that - compared it to an 'equivalent journey' on the Tube (not that I can really verify that, only being mildly acquainted with the NY Subway). My only gripe is that there's no way for me to test it the other way. I'm a Londoner, I obviously want to feel better about the many many hours of my life I've spent on the Tube.
Poll: 1 in 4 don't plan to retire despite realities of aging
I read this quite differently to the way this is phrased: I read it as, a quarter of Americans don't think they will be in a position to stop working when they reach retirement age. The angle of the article is that they are unaware of how the 'realities of ageing' might affect their ability to work regardless of whether they want to or not. Other stat: 56% of younger adults say they don’t feel prepared for retirement. WHO DOES??
Elsewhere...
Man on the Moon — graphics.reuters.com
A good read if you're into super nerdy space stuff. I like the 3D interactive moon. Also it's just slightly bonkers to think that we even have these detailed images of the moon.
How Each Country Contributed to the Explosion in Energy Consumption
Not sure I am on board with the moving/timeline marimekko chart because I don't think it's clear enough to spot the country you're interested in, but I like that this examines the energy consumption sources of different countries such as the US and China - the biggest energy consumers in the world. Energy consumption in the UK and France are down, which surprised me.
These Are the World's Most Expensive Cities for Expats in 2019
Eight of them are in Asia. But I always find these comparisons quite interesting because they don't take into account the average wage in the area. I remember going to Sydney (years ago admittedly) and people moaned a lot about the cost of living and minimum wage. MW was around £12 per hour, compared to UK MW, which was... about £5-6. So yes, Sydney is more expensive. But you have higher wages to maintain the same standard of living...
Odds and ends
Net benefits: why Wimbledon’s tennis stars are getting older - and younger — www.ft.com
Video by John Burn-Murdoch explaining how men and women playing tennis professionally have diverged in terms of their ages. Men are getting older, and women are getting younger. If tennis is your thing you will probably enjoy this video a lot, and indeed everything else JBM does.
Hipster Summer Reading List 2019
Wanna read a book no one else will read this summer? Why not try something like... His Vanished Star, written in 1894 and not taken out of Seattle Public Library in over a decade? Why not indeed.
A Matter of Fact? The science behind Netflix’s “What the Health” documentary
I heard about What The Health when I went more plant-based with my diet last year. I was always skeptical about watching it because I feel like these kind of documentaries are a bit sketchy. Turns out I was right to be: lots of it is false, like the stupid statement that eating meat is worse than smoking. There are very good and valid reasons to go vegan without inventing more.
I like this style of visualisation that IIB has done for a few films. Others are here.
The Forbes Highest Paid Celebrities list visualised
Does what it says on the tin. That Kylie Jenner, who as far as I can tell is famous because her family is famous and has never worked a day in her life, is even on the list, is somewhat insulting to everyone else.
Bad charts of the week
Imagine you were doing a PhD. Imagine it was on a complicated topic, like, say, terrorism. You would hope to have something more dynamic and detailed than, er, this:
Please enjoy Alberto Cairo fairly succinctly raining all over Sebastian Gorka's parade over his awful graphics. BTW if you don't know who Gorka is, he's a monstrous Trump hanger-on who should not be allowed anywhere near the White House, but this is 2019 and we now live in the upside-down, so it sort of makes sense.
Bonus bad chart - I can just picture it now... *man pulls out graph* "Look, TECHNICALLY it's NOT cheating, Sally, because there's no intersection between cheating and swinging..."
That’s all this week! If you enjoyed this issue, feel free to forward to friends/family/colleagues. Fair Warning takes me a while to research and write each week, so if you enjoyed this, you can support me/the newsletter through Patreon or buy me a coffee. See you in a couple of weeks!