Absolutely devastating article on one little, beautiful, remarkable piece of what we lost to DOGE

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Delighted to share our revised paper (w/ @juliaturner.bsky.social & @jacobbastian.bsky.social ) showing that Universal Pre-K has broad effects on local labor markets — effects well beyond only mothers. Larger effects for full-day programs. nber.org/papers/w33767

#EconSky #EarlyChildhood #ECE

A reminder that if you’re looking for dataviz content on Bluesky, there’s a lot here 👇📊

I made a tiny tool for quickly sharing small datasets (< ~1000 rows) without uploading any data to a server.

🔗 ziptbl.com

It compresses the data into the link itself, so there’s no account, hosting, or storage layer involved.

Here's Florence Nightingale's famous 📊 data:
ziptbl.com#d=eNpdlE-LGz...

Mussolini saying stupid s*** “The entire white race, the Western race, could be submerged...” overlaid on a collage showing threatening population change charts.

Population change is scary! The fear that "our people" are disappearing fuels "great replacement" myths and shows up in charts. Demagogues divide "us vs. them" for power and clicks. We all risk contributing “data demagoguery” when we use social division in charts to win the attention game.

A billionaire with money to burn... and outraged capuchin monkeys, with the question “How is [inequality] okay?”

A slide with king solomon, martin luther, john calvin, and ben franklin. It shows a quote from Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac “God helps those who help themselves.”

A slide with outraged monkeys overlaid over a parallel coordinate “ladder” plot showing the “low mobility” stimulus from Heiserman et al 2020’s “Judgments of Economic Fairness Are Based More on Perceived Economic Mobility Than Perceived Inequality”

12,000 years of "legitimizing myths" say hard work makes you rich (and :. poverty means lazy). These beliefs shape how we read charts. Highlighting systemic influences, e.g. Heiserman et al's 2020 parallel coordinate "ladders," can help bust these myths, calibrating fairness judgments.

Eugenicist Carl Brigham in front of a chart splattered in inkblot ink with text that says “Charts work like inkblots, and citations for Xiong Bearfield et al 2022 “Seeing What You Believe or Believing What You See? Belief Biases Correlation Estimation” and Luo & Zhao 2019
”Motivated Attention in Climate Change Perception and Action”

Charts are like inkblots, letting people “see what they want” in the data. So charts reinforce the status quo when we see them as evidence supporting our existing cultural beliefs.

title slide asks “Why can’t we have nice things?” It shows a grumpy George Washington standing in front of Library building and a bunch of population / social outcome charts

Talk outline. We can’t have nice things because of misbeliefs, complacency, stereotypes, and threat, each of which seem to interact with how we make sense of charts and graphs visualizing populations and social outcomes.

“Why can’t we have nice things?” A few highlights from my talk for Dartmouth’s “Data in Action” symposium, exploring civic dataviz and democracy.

What makes collective action so difficult in the United States? How could that possibly depend on charts 📊?! What can we do?

Shocked, I tell you

Our government keeps telling us America can't afford universal health care or expanding Medicare for ALL. There's a reason for that.🗽

A graphic in pink, blue, and green that illustrates how recent many Black History events are to the current day -- ranging from 1619 to 2024.

I'm sure we've all seen the graphic that lays out the United States ' relationship with slavery. It's good, but I never thought it was quite impactful enough. So I made my own.

I've used a few key events, including my birth, to highlight how recent these events are in history.

1 square = 1 year.

I hate every row and every column and every cell in every spreadsheet in the whole world.

"'Anti-woke' is a convenient label because it obscures what the movement is actually against: accountability."

Update on the government taking down the temperature

Imagine being a kid, making this, going with your parents to a family event, and then getting fucking tear gassed for it.

You do not hate the modern Gestapo enough because they sure as fuck hate every decent person in this country.

Happy Black History Month, North Carolina!

Let’s celebrate the past and continuing contributions Black men and women make across our state and our country.

Screenshot of the OVA website, showing all courses

The Open Visualization Academy (OVA) IS LIVE!
openvisualizationacademy.org

Thread follows #dataViz #infographics #dataJournalism #dataVisualization

The arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are part of the autocratic war to control the narrative. The more lawless governments become, the more they seek to silence inconvenient facts and people and invent the reality they need.

it's equal parts great and bizarre to see someone in office who seems genuinely proud to be a public servant

Do their attempts need to be "complex and sophisticated" to be effective? Redeemers seemed like ham-fisted thugs but still flipped SC, MS, AL, etc?

Please excuse our unhinged temperature scale.

Weather map of US with arrows point between Minnesota and Florida. It says "144° in feels like temp"

From reddit, 144° difference in perceived temperature. 🥵🥶

Alex Pretti from his early days working at the VA

Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now

To delete your TikTok account without agreeing to the new TOS:

1) put your phone in airplane mode
2) open TikTok and go to your profile
3) go to settings and scroll down to delete account
4) turn airplane mode off
5) delete your account

Credit to @ kimsaira on instagram for this

How North Carolina erased medical debt for 2.5 million people The state partnered with a nonprofit to wipe out the debts. It also has a plan in place to prevent medical debt for people in specific income brackets.

Some nice news especially in light of changes in federal policy regarding:medical debt and credit reports: In North Carolina, the state worked out a deal forgiving medical debt for 2.5m people, with more to come.

r/Minneapolis If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, that's it for me. I've spent the last week checking on my neighbors, engaging with my city, my local police, everyone. I've supported my friends and family, made sure they knew they weren't alone in their feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness. I've called and emailed my representatives, demanding answers, demanding action. I've just been overcome with this overwhelming, almost primal need to care for and support my community. If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, and soldiers take to our streets, then that tears it for me. My son just turned 1yr. I've done my best to be a helper, so that I can still be around to support him and spend time with him. But if I have to STAND OUTSIDE in the FREEZING COLD and get the SHIT KICKED OUT OF ME by the people who are supposed to be protecting me, if I have to do that to fight for goodness, and righteousness, and justice, then that's what I'm gonna fucking do. I'm going to do it because this is not the future I want for my son. If you've been out on the streets, and you're tired, and you're hurting, don't worry. Rest when you need to. Because I know my home and I know my neighbors. When you need to rest, two more will replace you. I will be one of them. This is my home. Minneapolis is not going to quit. Minnesota is not going to quit. And FUCK EVERYONE who tries to come in here and take from us the PRIDE, LOVE, and COMMUNITY we've built. As long as I can stand, I'm going to plant my two feet between the oppressors and the home I love. I love you all. L'etoile du Nord.

Posts from Minneapolis residents read like they'll be read in voiceover in a Ken Burns-like doc one day

Bread Infographic London bakery The Dusty Knuckle cleverly used a loaf of bread as a graph to illustrate the costs of running their business: From their post: This comes off the back of a big decision to increase our bakers’ pay ahead

London bakery The Dusty Knuckle cleverly used a loaf of bread as a graph to illustrate the costs of running their business. [kottke.org]

Figure 18 vague intellectual pleasure! From Thought-Forms Yellow and orange blob with cloudy edges against a dark background

Anyway, I hope this post brings you some