Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Finally

As old as the hills

I was raised to believe Neolithic man regularly hefted boulders the size of buses halfway across the UK, because the five tonne "blue stones" of Stonehenge were mined from a quarry some 250km away. So I'm a little disappointed to find out that this week, scientists have pinpointed where the large...

2 weeks ago

Still beating the Drum

South Africa's Drum magazine has changed a lot since it was launched 70 years ago, and now it's undergoing its next transformation from celeb gossip mag to online-only publication. Journalism.co.za has a celebration of the early history of the magazine, when it was a ground-breaking, deep thinkin...

3 weeks ago

The return of the interrobang, and other pearls of wisdom from the Temporary AP Stylebook‽

The Twitter hack that threw the internets into disarray this week provided the opportunity for the Temporary AP Stylebook (@TempAPStyle) to emerge, and blast out a new era of style while the real AP Stylebook's verified account status was disabled. And there were some pearlers,,, https://twitter....

Jason Norwood-Young

4 weeks ago

A brief history of data science

Richard Farnworth takes us through a short, definitely incomplete, but very entertaining history of data viz. His description of William Playfair is particularly good: [Playfair] ... ran a currency counterfeiting operation to collapse the French currency and took part in the storming of the Basti...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Watch three white sharks swim thousands of miles around Australia

Want to see a quick visualisation of GPS data from three tagged white sharks as they journey thousands of miles around the coasts of Australia and Tasmania? Of course you do. You're welcome. https://twitter.com/422South/status/1281235634217246720

a month ago

Why not try a 3D stacked scatter pie column?

Why not indeed? Fortunately, a quick image search suggests that this monstrosity, thrown up in a Twitter thread by @hugobrowne, originates in an April Fools joke from before even Naked Data was born. Stare at it too long and you'll either have a psychotic episode or - worse - it'll start to make ...

a month ago

RS Archer, the beleaguered British Brexiteers and their idiot son

A Twitter stream about a British family who bought a house in France, planned to retire there, and then voted for Brexit, went absolutely viral. Whether it's true or not is up for debate, but allegedly the account of RS Archer was shut down due to attacks from angry Brexiteers. Since the original...

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Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

The world’s breathing lung

Here's a quick hit of happiness for you: Alex Orenstein (or @oren_sa as he's known on the Twitters) knocked up this gorgeous timelapse of a year of vegetation growth in Africa. https://twitter.com/oren_sa/status/1274500538944675847

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Miniaturised quantum entanglement on a cubesat in space

It's either the title of a next James Bond film or a remarkable piece of physics designed by a group of scientists from Singapore, the UK and Australia. Good news - it's the latter. This paper in Optica describes the process of throwing a tiny 2.5kg cubesat out of the International Space Station,...

a month ago

Finally, My Corona

Pike County on how to improve your Corona numbers

Turn your county's bad news into good news with this simple little trick: invert the Y-axis, and your Corona-cases magically drop instead of increase. https://twitter.com/sydneyboles/status/1270411871674384384 Pike County as since turned its graph the right way around, but not before some excelle...

Jason Norwood-Young

a month ago

Psychocharts

Lies, damned lies and dataviz - Alberto Cairo has another round-up of charts that lie covering some prime examples of data manipulation State-side. From the technically correct but logarithmically-challenged jobs recovery featured on CNBC, to a guest appearance by cherry-picker-in-chief DJ Trump....

2 months ago

One in ten of the world’s volcanoes are in Japan

There are more than 100 active volcanoes scattered across the islands that make up Japan. Some are very tall, some live entirely beneath the sea. Gotta catch 'em all? David Pire's interactive map charts their every location (although the unwary hunter should bear in mind it doesn't distinguish th...

2 months ago

Mapping magnetism on Mars

Current space hype might be all focussed on a certain trip to the international space station made on a rocket developed in the private sector, but there's some stuff NASA will always do better than everyone else. Things like this distracting video based on data from the Maven spacecraft currentl...

2 months ago

Do Not Draw a Penis

There's really not much to say about this drawing AI without giving away the joy of exploring it yourself, except that, as per the title, you were warned... Don't draw a penis now...

Jason Norwood-Young

2 months ago

Parks and recreashRon

This deep fake is the bastard child of Being John Malkovich and Parks and Recreation. And now that the opening credits have been created, it's also the spin-off show you never realised you needed to see. Swanson, Swanson, Swanson, Swanson. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4xtgfQR9Ozc

3 months ago

Finally, My Corona

130m litres of beer to get rid of? Challenge accepted

There's no let up to the anguish on South African Facebook and WhatsApp as middle-class pantries and wine racks run bare of booze, yet will the government listen to their plight? They will not. Prohibition remains in place, and as a result the brewery formerly known as SAB (now AB Inbev) says it ...

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3 months ago

Don't Miss, Finally

When map fiction becomes on-the-ground fact

When cartographers aren't sneaking hidden pics into maps, they're making up fake place names in order to trap other cartographers who may plagiarise their work -- known as "paper towns". But in the case of one US paper town, Agloe, the little bit of cartographic crypto turned into a real place wh...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 months ago

Spicy beans, chill before use

Cold brew coffee used to be a thing, but hot grinding and icing your beans before putting them in the filter is a new one on us. For an extraordinarily deep look at these techniques, and some highly subjective data analysis about what their flavour enhancing values, check out Robert McKeon Aloe's...

3 months ago

So black your eyes just slide off it

In all the crazy goings on last month, we completely forgot the 42nd birthday of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was first broadcast on 8 March 1978. An incredible oversight, partly redeemed by this story from the University of Birmingham, where researchers have discovered ways of extract...

4 months ago

Rebuilding the world anew (and in Minecraft)

What happens after the Apocalypse? Why, we make a new world, one full of hope, dreams and built upon the learnings that made the last one go so horribly wrong. And we do it in Minecraft, of course. Leastways, that seems to be the aim behind this astonishing project to replicate the Earth in 1:1 s...

4 months ago