What's in a name?

Plus: Car parking, local elections, and the royal family

Hi! I did not expect to take such a long break from writing, but I ended up getting a hip replacement in April and everything happened really quickly and was pretty stressful. You might be thinking “huh, a hip replacement? I didn’t know she was in her 70s” and—dear reader—I am not even 35. Arthritis really doesn’t discriminate. I’m now 4 weeks out from surgery and doing really well, but it’s been A Journey.

These are nothing to do with data, just things I enjoyed this week:

• The Fugitive Princesses Of Dubai (The Atlantic): I saw this story several times and dismissed it but as soon as I saw Heidi Blake was the author, I immediately clicked and read because I knew it’d be good. It is.

• Jorge Luis Borges on why English is “far finer” than Spanish (YouTube): “English is the most physical of all languages.”

• Here’s why you need to be cultivating awe in your life (The Guardian): I don’t really do podcasts but I love Dacher Keltner’s The Science of Happiness and this piece is more science-backed work/promo for his new book. “Awe surfaces a social truth, that our identities are always in relation to larger systems of life, be it a history of a people, a culture, a social movement, a community, an ecosystem, a political idea, a genre of music or a spiritual lineage.”

On the home front

These maps provide graphic evidence of how parking lots “eat” U.S. cities (Big Think)

This is a great look at the problem of parking spaces in US cities. It’s harmful because cities with tons of parking space become naturally less accessible for people, and takes up a ton of land that could be used for, ooh, I don’t know... housing?

The Next EV Push Is an Overhaul of the Iconic American School Bus (Bloomberg)

Really interesting story about how and why school buses are going electric. I like the visual example they used of a school bus in Maryland.

Why the West Got Buried in Snow, While the East Got Little (NYT)

One for you weather nerds out there!

Over the pond

Votes in Five UK Battlegrounds Point to Sunak Defeat in 2024 (Bloomberg)

It was apparently a bad local election for the Tories. “Results could mean that Conservative heavy-hitters including Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, former leader Iain Duncan Smith and even Boris Johnson could be at risk in a general election, [Rob Ford] added.”

Do Britons even like the royal family? (The Economist)

I think this gets to the heart of it which is like, there is a small group of people who are fanatically, enthusiastically in thrall to the monarchy conceptually and as a spectacle. Some people feel very strongly that it’s bad and protest at any given opportunity. And the rest of us are too busy with our lives to have strong enough feelings about starting a revolution.

How the women of the British monarchy use their clothing to send a message (Axios)

I cackled at the line “Camilla, queen consort of the United Kingdom, isn’t known for her fashion sense.” I like the methodology at the end which shows how much work went into this even if it seems like the findings are very surface-level.

Elsewhere

Retracing the steps of the first Mardi Gras in Sydney (ABC)

I really knew nothing about this event but I really like the way they have told the story—video interviews from witnesses, videos from the event itself, a nice map-based reconstruction of what happened. It’s so crazy to think that not long ago people could lose their jobs over their sexuality.

Odds and ends

A Destination Vacation (Axios)

I love that the Axios data vis team are clearly having fun lately. This is a nicely designed look at places in the US named after places in foreign countries.

Is It a Lake, or a Battery? A New Kind of Hydropower Is Spreading Fast. (NYT)

I thought this was interesting, about a way of generating renewable energy that I’ve not read about before.

A Map of Places in the US with the Same Name (The Pudding)

The reusing of names in the US is something that drives me absolutely bonkers. On a trip into Manhattan, I go through two Fulton St stations and I think they are on the same line as well. JUST GIVE IT A DIFFERENT NAME!! Anyway, this is fun cos I often find people mention a place offhand and I never know where it is.

Watch an A.I. Learn to Write (NYT)

I’ve been baffled by how a lot of people don’t seem to understand how AI like ChatGPT *actually work*. This is a really good explanation.

That’s everything I have for this week. As always, thanks for reading!