The Weekly Roundup: Archives

Our weekly deep and intensive search of the Interwebs yields the most interesting links. Here are our past issues. You’re welcome.

Week of May 22, 2017

It kind of feels like we’ve had a (little) bit of a breather with the Trump on world tour, hasn’t it? So, we get time to play with a searchable Statcast dB, wonder at Wonder Woman, and Hamster Super Mario! Oh, yeah, and the CBO said that the GOP wants to take healthcare away from 23 million Americans.

Baseball Savant – “Statcast search”
We could lose ourselves in searching for random events like, for example, a chart of every pitch Madison Bumgarner has homered off on. For instance.

Matthew Monagle on Film School Rejects – “Your response to the Drafthouse’s ‘Wonder Woman’ screenings is gross, bros.”
Ayup.

Imgur – “In a world, where hamsters are plumbers”
….and the music is now stuck in your head.

The Congressional Budget Office – “H.R. 1628, American Health Care Act of 2017”
No worries, just a slap in the face to Trump and pretty much most of his voters.

Week of May 15, 2017

Other than the Internet melting from the heat of the raging dumpster fire at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., nothing much happened other than the Greenland ice sheet continuing to melt. We’ve got Cthulhu-themed couplets to help adjust to our new reality.

Tedesco et. al. on the NOAA – “Greenland Ice Sheet report card”
No worries. That’s just 3,500,000,000,000,000 kg of ice melted since 2002, adding to the volume of the ocean. If you’re not worried, we have some beachfront property in Florida that you might be interested in.

Lewis & Quark on Tumblr – “Cthulhu in the Kitchen”
Yes, yes, yes!

TV Tropes – “Evil Overlord List”
We’ll just leave this here as advice for the Aspiring Autocrat.

Spike Friedman on the Stranger – “Colin Kaepernick should be the Seahawks next backup quarterback”
Kaepernick has been clearly blackballed by the über-conservative NFL. He’s also not really a very good QB anymore, but as a low-risk / high-reward proposition should definitely get a backup job somewhere.

Week of May 8, 2017

This week, the French Polls were waaaay off (but most people won’t notice), Trump wants his Aircraft Carriers to go back to “goddamn steam,” the US Census for 2020 is thrown into chaos, and we visualize the many lives of David Bowie. Something else may have happened in Washington, but the Internet melted Tuesday night, so can’t really say.

Harry Enten on the FiveThirtyEight – “Macron won, but the French polls were way off”
10.2% is a major miss, more than double the polling errors for both Brexit and the Trump election. Of course, since it was in the direction that meant Macron won bigger than expected, most people aren’t going to remember this goof.

Robbie Gramer on Foreign Policy – “Trump wants new aircraft carriers to turn back to ‘goddamned steam’ power catapults”
He wants this, even though the new EMACS system is already installed on the USS Gerald R. Ford. Maybe they’ll also go back to piston-engines or wooden hulls.

Jeffery Mervis on Science – “Departure of U.S. Census director threatens 2020 count”
Thompson resigned in protest at underfunding, and this imperils a pretty critical source of public data for all kinds of research. It’s hard to think of anything less partisan and more technocrat than the census.

The Economist Data Team – “Bye bye Spaceboy”
Can you hear me, Major Tom? We miss you.

Week of May 1, 2017

Mayday! Mayday! Between the #Trumpcare revival, climate change projections, and anti-vaccers, our only solace comes in big, gigantic old copies of the Baseball Encyclopedia.

Rob Neyer on the FiveThirtyEight – “Before Baseball-Reference, Statheads relied on the ‘Big Mac’”
Man, some of us used to love leafing through this monster to look up things like Moonlight Graham’s statline for reasons that had nothing to do with Burt Lancaster, we swear.

NOAA – “Climate explorer”
This is terrifying. Looking at even the best-case scenarios, our children will think of San Francisco as a place with regular 95-degree days. And air-conditioning.

David Wasserman on the Cook Political Report – “House 2018: Rating changes in 20 districts”
This is why the Democrats (rather optimistically, for sure) were singing “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey. Goodbye!” at House GOP lawmakers who put their names next to an astoundingly unpopular Trumpcare bill.

Lena Sun on the Washington Post – “Anti-vaccine activists spark a state’s worst measles outbreak in decades”
Vaccinate your kids, period. Your choice to let your kids get sick does not outweigh the public health risk of crowd control diseases not under control.

Week of April 24, 2017

This week, we give a shoutout to one of our favorite artists,
Hannah Rothstein, and her terrifying vision of our National Parks in a burnt climate. We also look at the (latest) attempt to ditch the save stat, bored sketch artists in Japan, and and trump keeps using the word “executive privilege,” but I’m not sure it means what he thinks it means.

Hannah Rothstein – “National Parks 2050”
A horrifying series of National Park posters depicting the effects of unchecked climate change by 2050. Give them to your kids as a preview.

Nate Silver on the fivethirtyeight – “The save ruined relief pitching. The Goose Egg can save it.”
Saves are ridiculous. Worse, it’s not just a stat for people to talk about but actively influences how managers use pitchers in late-inning situations (stupidly).

Edward Steed on the New Yorker – “Japan baseball sketchbook”
A man with a lot of free time and a curious sketchpad watched a lot of baseball in Japan. It’s beautiful.

Avi Selk on the Washington Post – “Trump says he can’t be sued for violence at his rallies because he won the election”
Uh huh. Sure. Let’s see how far executive privilege stretches. It sure worked out for Nixon.

Week of April 17, 2017

We were on vacation, so, obviously, nothing happened this week. Duh.

Week of April 10, 2017

This week, we highlight the pretty desperate need for maintenance of the US water infrastructure, wonder if Putin’s hackers are now recruiting frat boys, hope that Trump doesn’t tweet us into yet another war, and really want to see if we can somehow use Planet Money’s @BOTUS to model how much Trump calling out specific companies on Twitter actually affects the market.

Dustin Cabral on Tableau Public – “Dam.Nation”
That’s a lot of dams upstream of a lot of people that are in need of some serious infrastructure work. Oroville might have just been the first.

Avi Selk on the Washington Post – “Someone hacked every tornado siren in Dallas. It was loud.”
Just what we needed; hackers with the sense of humor of a high school football team bent on pulling all the fire alarms.

Planet Money on NPR – “#763: BOTUS”
The Planet Money guys went and built a bot that tried to use Trump’s Twitter account as a hint on how to day-trade stocks. That’s kind of brilliant.

Eric Talmadge on the Associated Press – “N. Korean official: Ready for war if Trump wants it”
Trump’s “aggressive tweets” are “causing trouble.” Yeah, that’s why we only half-joke about our Doomsday Counter.

Week of April 3, 2017

The Bloom County / Calvin & Hobbes mashup April fools deserves first place in any list of any kind ever. Also, yogurt controls your mind, CNN has fun trolling Trump with his own tweets, and will the Democrats actually turn out for the midterm elections (for once)?

Berkeley Breathed – “Calvin County”
Breathed trolls the world, including with a fake NY Times press release page. The man is a mad genius, and Bloom County’s unretirement is the only good thing to have come out of Trump’s campaign.

David Kohn on the Atlantic – “When gut bacteria change brain function”
We knew it! Yogurt is all part of Evil Obama’s mind-control scheme.

Gregory Krieg on CNN – “Donald Trump is trolling Donald Trump on Twitter”
The Donald’s previous musings, that he will now pretend never happened, on Syria, the universe, and everything.

Nate Cohn on the Upshot – “Democrats are bad at midterm turnout. That seems ready to change.”
Can the Democratic party harness the anti-Trump activism of the last 6 months long enough to actually show up for non-presidential elections?

Week of March 27, 2017

This week, we wrap our heads around 3.5 degrees of separation, think about a total eclipse (but not of the heart), and wonder just how expensive Trump’s weekly jaunts to Mar-a-Lago are.

Bhagat, Burke, et. al on Facebook – “Three and a half degrees of separation”
6 degrees is so Friendster.

Imgur – “Drive time to the centerline of the of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse”
Want to go see the eclipse? This is how far you’ll have to travel within the United States of Canada.

Tony Wagner on Marketplace.org – “Trump’s trips are expensive. Can Congress step in?”
He really does like spending other peoples’ money.

RussianGasoline44 on Reddit r/MapPorn – “Current directions continents are moving”
The US is moving to the left. Literally.

Week of March 20, 2017

This week, The Donald shows us how real ultimate negotiators get healthcare bills passed. I’m sure we’ll get sick of Trump winning eventually. In other news, a fantastic piece from the NY Times on the systemic tension inherent in socially-conscious-but-also-capitalist ventures, mapping gun violence in the US, and splicing together the end of Rogue One and the beginning of Star Wars.

Donald J. Trump – The Art of the Deal
Donnie shows us how it’s done this week with a super-successful winner’s negotiation on the Trumpcare bill. It’s #113 on the Amazon best-sellers list right now. Bets on whether it goes up or down over the next couple weeks?

Mika Tokumitsu on the New York Times – “What a start-up’s scandal says about your workplace”
An interesting take on the inherent tensions between capitalism and social justice in organizations that purport to value both equally. This one didn’t end well.

Amy Ratcliffe on The Nerdist – “This edit puts the end of Rogue One and the beginning of A New Hope together”
Rarely have movies released 39 years apart in real-time had a narrative gap of hours (minutes, potentially) between the stories. The direct juxtaposition makes the little set design cues even more obvious, and you get to watch Vader mow down Rebel redshirts.

The Guardian – “Mapping US gun murders”
Downloadable .csv and google sheets files at multiple geographic levels for anyone interested in the data. Because the Guardian continues to be one of the best news organizations in the world.

Week of March 13, 2017

This week, the US Women’s Hockey Team goes on strike because all professional athletes deserve a living wage, Malia Obama keeps an eye on the microwave, maps of uninhabited census tracts, and vizualizing how people see climate change (or don’t).

Juliet Macur on the New York Times – “U.S. Women’s Hockey Team boycott echoes a fight that isn’t over”
USA Hockey might have to listen now, if they players actually sit out the whole World Championship.

BuzzFeed Adam Ellis
Helicopter parenting + spying microwaves. Be afraid, Malia. Be very afraid.

Mapsbynik – “Nobody lives here”
Ever wonder where the middle of nowhere actually was? Here’s a map of every census tract that has zero residents.

Yale Program on Climate Communication – “US 2016”
Green = concerned about the future. Purple = idiots.

Week of March 6, 2017

The Eagles Nest is still tweeting, but Ed and Edith only have eyes for their newest Nintendo-y toy. And Trumpcare memes.

Mustapha Price on MMOExaminer – “Nintendo Switch infographic shows upcoming games”
So many games, so little free time.

Ori Matlow on Some News – “Paul Ryan gives presentation on #Trumpcare, becomes instant meme” The Internet, where you go for (pretty accurate) 4-word analysis of healthcare policy.

Slow Journalism – “Oscars infographic”
This is actually 4 years old, but we have yet to see an Oscars infographic nearly as visually or interesting or that contains as much information. Please update it. Pretty please.

Garrison Keillor on the Washington Post – “The vast left-wing conspiracy against me”
He wants you to know the truth: Joe Biden, henchman for a vast conspiracy, is following him and putting chemicals in his food to make him behave erratically. Because they don’t want you to know the anti-Copernickian: that the Earth is the center of the universe.

Week of February 27, 2017

This week, we’re worried about the volcanoes in our backyard, thinking of the US’s slice of the Global GDP pie (in delicious pie-graph form), wondering if there’s a floor for Trump’s approval ratings, and watching Jon Stewart skewer “the media” now that he no longer is as much totally really actually a part of it. Sort of.

Adrienne Lafrance on the Atlantic – “The scary state of volcano monitoring in the United States”
So, St. Helens is relatively well monitored (since 2004)….but what happens to our Amazon drone delivery when Rainier blows?

Robbie Gramer on Foreign Policy – “Infographic: Here’s how the global GDP is divvied up”
Pie-graphs for perspective on how tough we have it in the US.

Karen Yourish and Paul Murray on the failing @nytimes – “The highs and lows of President Trump’s job approval”
Relatively popular within his own party (88%), but off-the-scale unpopular among independents (38%) and other party voters (10%) compared to past presidents.

Megan Garber on the Atlantic – “What is ‘the media’? (Jon Stewart Edition)”
Jon, Megan would like you to pick on someone else.

Week of February 20, 2017

This week, we found a great visualization of why vaccines are a major reason most people these days live to reach adulthood. Also, real political courage from Iceland’s president, all the birds @rsharp could ever want, and we salute the Washington Post‘s Trump Truth Tracker dashboard.

Imgur – “Herd immunity” Watch the comparison of disease spread across different vaccination levels. Now go make fun of an anti-vaxxer.

Robbie Gramer on Foreign Policy – “Profile in Courage: Iceland’s President Denounces Pineapple As a Pizza Topping”
The real issue that divides our world. And President Jóhannesson is on the right side of it.

Pop Chart Lab – “Birds of North America”
The birds of North America. All of them.

The Washington Post – “100 days of Trump claims”
Who is that man, and why are his pants on fire?

Week of February 13, 2017

The Maintainers
ask if it’s ethically defensible to be spending vast sums on a Mission to Mars with so many people here on Earth in desperate need of things like safe drinking water. Also, the science of climate change (no, it’s really not that hard to explain), XKCD’s map highlights the political nature of time zone choices, and fivethirtyeight’s look at the evolution of language on Reddit during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Andrew Russel and Lee Vinsel on Aeon – “Whitey on Mars: Elon Musk and the rise of Silicon Valley’s strange trickle-down science”
Taking a look at the racial and class inequality inherent in the idea of escaping from Earth.

Yale Environment 360 – “Scientists Find Equation to Demonstrate Impact of Human Activity on Climate Change”
Can we measure exactly how much humans have effected their environment? Yup.

XKCD – “Bad Map Projection”
This really highlights how political a lot of time zone choices are. Look at Western Europe (Spain will NOT be behind France or Germany, Longitude be damned). Or China.

Richie King on The FiveThirtyEight – “How Reddit Talked About The 2016 Presidential Campaign, From ‘Basket Of Deplorables’ To ‘Yuge’”
It would be particularly interesting to compare Reddit’s responsiveness to the insults of the moment to that of the internet in general (Google trends, for example).

Week of February 6, 2017

This week, we look at Max Galka’s gorgeous visualization of the flow of refugees around the world. Also, THAT ACCENT, the changing American diet, and the best Onion article in awhile.

Max Galka on Metrocosm – “Visualizing the flow of asylum seekers around the world”
2013-16. Germany, wow.

Flowingdata – “The changing American diet”
Apparently, we are now Eating Moar Chikin.

Seth Stevenson on Slate – “Actors are wicked awful at the Boston accent – here’s why”
Non-rhotic linguistic fun.

The Onion – “Secret Service adds Emotional Protection Division to safeguard Trump’s psyche”
America’s Finest News Source.

Week of January 30, 2017

The US government is now too hard to satirize
. As the surreality sets in, we offer a shining message of hope: Pitchers and Catchers report next week. Also in this week’s roundup: We can’t stop binge-watching Thug Notes. @SparkySweetsPhD is a model for us all.

The Trump Executive Order Generator
Endless hours of creative fun are now yours.

Thug Notes – “1984” Sparky Sweets, PhD gonna drop some dope knowledge on yo’ ass ’bout what happen when the Man sticks it to you.

The Bowling Green Massacre Victims Fund
All those poor people. So much (alternative) suffering.

Jeff Sullivan on FanGraphs – The best and worst team defenses.
Our long dark winter is almost over. Just one more week till Spring Training!

Week of January 23, 2017

As the Internet (and the US government) explodes into chaos around us, you’ll find Principally Uncertain a bastion of serious, controlled, calm analysis. Or, a site descending into giggling pile of Captain Picard .gifs. You decide which is more likely.

Kim Soffen on the Washington Post – Yes, Donald Trump’s hands are actually pretty small
We’ll wait while every single one of you goes and grabs a ruler.

Pogo – “Data & Picard” Time for some romantic crooning. And your day is now better.

“What is the Scientists March on Washington?”
Take back the Swamp, FOR SCIENCE!!!

David A. Graham on The Atlantic – ‘Alternative facts’: The needless lies of the Trump Administration.
It’s still mind-boggling that the administration feels that it’s worth burning their already-tenuous trust with the media on something as meaningless as inauguration attendance numbers. Most governments at least lie to cover up something significant.

Week of January 16, 2017

Brace yourselves. The Age of Trump is upon us.

Greta Weber on the Washingtonian
Heading out to march? You’ll need your phone, of course.

Michael Kruse on Politico – ‘He has this deep fear that he is not a legitimate president’
He is indeed terrified. Because his legitimacy is and should be constantly questioned.

The Upshot – Some colleges have more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60.
Well, this is disheartening.

Metrocosm – Election results in the third dimension.
More pretty maps!

Week of January 9, 2017

With inauguration day only a week away, now, we’re restraining ourselves by not having all of these be about Big Orange. Because pitchers and catchers report in a month!

Josh Katz on the Upshot
This is an awesome series of by-county maps, charting fandom for 50 TV shows across the US. Can the Culture Wars be distilled into a series of TV preferences? Kinda!

Emily Donn on Screenrant – Mark Hamill reads Donald Trump quotes as the Joker
Hmmm. Maybe Trump is actually a supervillain. It would explain a lot.

Craig Edwards on the Fangraphs – How much control do pitchers exert over exit velocity?
Unlike strikeouts, walks, and dingers (a lot of control), or BABIP (zero, probably), it’s kind of unclear. Which means it’s interesting.

Charles Foran on the The Guardian – The Canada experiment: is this the world’s first ‘postnational’ country?
Oh, Canada. You’re so smug that you’re beyond nationalism, now. We’re not jealous at all. Really.

Week of January 2, 2017

Unfortunately, we woke up Sunday morning and it wasn’t just a champagne-induced dream. Still had the hangover, though.

This week, we turn to the inimitable Jeff Masters supporting a plan to save money by converting the world to renewable energy sources, the failing Mosul Dam is an infrastructure disaster waiting to happen, and Megyn Kelly finally gets tired of the Fox Glass Ceiling. Also real news about fake news.

Jeff Masters of Weather Underground – How to save $23 trillion per year: 100% renewable energy for the world
The up-front cost will almost certainly mean this doesn’t happen until people get desperate enough to give up short-term comfort for long-term security. But it’s a very good plan using only existing tech.

Dexter Filkins on the New Yorker – A bigger problem than ISIS?
The Mosul Dam is failing due to lack of Maintenance
. Several million people live close downstream. What happens when the constant concrete reinforcements needed to keep the dam from sinking lapse during the middle of a civil war?

Jim Rutenberg on the New York Times – Megyn Kelly’s jump to NBC from Fox News will test her, and the networks
With Fox solidly on board the Trump Train, this was a pretty obvious outcome. Not too much room for an outspoken woman when trying to Make America Great Again.

Harry Enten on the FiveThirtyEight – Fact-checking won’t save us from fake news
Enten has a point. The assumption that fake news proliferates simply because people are ignorant makes the same mistake that seeking to combat Trumpism by showing his voters how tactless, crass, and misogynist he was: they already knew. The spread and popularity of (often) intentionally fake news as a way to sway opinion and stir up controversy has more complex causes.

Week of December 26, 2016

After a week off spent furiously researching (or, passed out in a roast beast-induced food coma), Ed and Edith are back to scout the web for you, personally. They’re nice like that.

This week, they tout their own IQs, rally behind the Facial Hair Revolution, and laugh at Uber (always) and Amazon (for collecting way too much information).

Olivia Judson on The Atlantic – How smart is an octopus?
Answer: Extremely. Next question.

Jonathan M. Gitlin on the ArsTechnica – Uber is losing money hand-over-fist
We choose to interpret the subtitle, “disrupting the notion of profit,” as snarky use of a particularly aggressive type of tech capitalism’s favorite term. And thus, it’s awesome. Seriously, maybe Uber should a) stop being such jackasses about how their disruption is for the public good and cities should be thankful and b) maybe make some money one of these days.

Alex Hern and Sam Thielman on the Guardian – Amazon refuses to let police access US murder suspect’s Echo recordings Amazon is trying to call this a privacy issue, but this is a very specific request and the po po does indeed have a search warrant. If they don’t want things to be subpoenaed, don’t collect (or store) the information in the first place. Apple didn’t actually have access to the San Bernadino shooter’s information. Amazon does indeed have the requested records. Can’t see them winning this one.

Matthew Rozsa on Salon – American Mustache Institute takes a stand against Donald Trump’s anti-facial hair bias
Yup. That’s it. He’s crossed the line.

Week of December 12, 2016

This week, it’s raining (or snowing, depending). Ergo: hockey season. Also, The Trump who Stole Christmas (according to the Stranger), psychology+politics+morality, and the FiveThirtyEight uses a different method to come up with similar conclusions about the long-term reddening of the Midwest.

Natural Stat Trick
Want to check between periods to see if your team is really getting hammered as badly as you think (spoiler: they are)? Live updating possession metrics, ice time, and matchup stats!

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Harry Enten on the FiveThirtyEight- It’s not all about Clinton — The Midwest was getting redder before 2016
Enten takes a slightly different angle (using Obama’s approval rating to measure the red or blue lean of a given area relative to the country as a whole), but comes up with a very similar conclusion to Patrick Zimmerman’s partisianship study
: The center of the country has been getting redder for awhile.

Julie Beck on the Atlantic – Understanding America’s moral divides
Beck digs into the post-election ramifications of Tappan & McKay’s “The Illusion of Moral Superiority”
, recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Rich Smith on The Stranger – Christmas is bigger than Trump. Don’t let the Grinch steal your capacity for awe
The image alone is worth opening up that article.

Week of December 5, 2016

This week, we stumbled across the Upshot taking a look at The Donald’s Tweets, Pizzagate was one of the more terrifying extrapolations of the fake news industry, and we found out that Chimpanzees apparently recognize each other’s butts, because Science.

Kevin Quealy on The Upshot – How to know what Donald Trump really cares about: Look at what he’s insulting
One of the most encouraging signs that our soon-to-launch Trump-o-meter is something that people would be interested in is that people are clearly interested in this stuff. We love tautologies, and @rsharp loves that he can finally say his source was the New York Times
.

Clair McNear on The Ringer- Pizzagate is preposterous and terrifying — and a sign of what’s to come
People with easy access to heavy weaponry believing fake news is indeed terrifying. We sincerely hope Ms. McNear’s prediction about signs to come is wrong.

Laura Nichols on the Morning Consult – Poll: Majority find major media outlets credible
More hilarious is that people found Breitbart, run by new Trump Chief of Staff Steve Brannan, less credible than “America’s Finest News Source,” The Onion

Mariska E. Kret & Masaki Tomonaga on PlOS ONE – Getting to the bottom of face processing. Species-specific inversion effects for faces and behinds in Humans and Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Hah, and you thought we were joking when we said “SCIENCE!” To sum up: Chimpanzees recognize each other by looking at their butts in much the same way as people look at each other’s faces. Most of us, anyways.

Week of November 28, 2016

Baseball, because it’s getting to serious Hot Stove Season. Also, we serve up some Final Fantasy XV (finally!), more election autopsies, and a look at food security.

Here’s your weekly recap of the best cyberspace has to offer to kick off the last month of 2106.

Tony Blengino on Fangraphs – 2016 Hitter Contact-Quality Report: NL First Basemen
Only 3 more shopping days until the MLB winter meetings! Here’s Fangraphs’ latest look at NL 1B, digging into launch angles, exit velocities, line drive rates, and all your hitf/x rosterbation needs. Also, Brandon Belt is good, but in a really weird way.

Eddie Makuch on Gamespot – Final Fantasy 15 ships 5 million copies, achieves fastest start ever for the franchise
After years (literally) of delays, Edith is still skeptical that this isn’t just fake news clickbait. Ed is already 10 hours into the game.

Tim Wallace on the NYT – The two Americas of 2016
Answering the hopes and dreams of many Americans, who wouldn’t really mind bodies of water separating them from the other party’s voters.

Christoph Viau – Correlation between GDP and forest area
Interesting look at the connection between economic output and deforestation. In many of the richer countries, forests are positively correlated with economic output, in many of the poorer countries, stripping the forests is. There are some wacko outliers, though, like China and India (forests positively correlated). Also Côte d’Ivoire.

Week of November 21, 2016

Recount? Recount? Playoffs? Also, D3.js is our new visualization obsession. To an unhealthy level. Here’s your weekly recap of the best cyberspace has to offer, only a day late because of the Great Pie Massacre of 2016 and associated food coma.

J Alex Halderman on Medium – Want to know if the elections were hacked? Look at the ballots
The UM computer science professor posted this Tuesday. By Thursday night, Jill Stein’s recount fundraiser had cleared $4.5 million (and counting), enough to pay for recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, with Michigan the next push.

Verdant Labs – Democratic vs. Republican occupations
We were recently introduced to Mark Edmond, who, in addition to being a really awesome guy who has been a fountain of advice for poor small websites taking their first baby steps (us), is a total badass infographic wizard. Seriously.

The New Yorker – Scientists: Earth endangered by new strain of fact-resistant humans.
The only thing at all to question about the methodology of this extremely rigorous scientific study is the assertion that this strain of humans is, in fact, new.

D3.js – Data-driven documents
This chart and visualization programming language is gorgeous. Or, the things it produces are. It’s going to take us a bit of digging, but we will conquer it, because awesome.

Week of November 14, 2016

We’re still recovering from the election night aftermath in the US, but at least we have games, Dr. Strange, and the soccer season to lose ourselves in.

CNN – Nintendo’s future may hinge on Switch
What’s next for a company that has been low on truly new ideas since the Wii?

The Guardian’s Michael Cox – Jürgen Klopp teaches Liverpool the art of filling space dynamically
Soccer is about control of space as much as it is control of the ball. Jürgen Klopp, master of gegenpressing, now has Liverpool controlling space with… floating attackers?

HBO – President-Elect Trump: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Because John Oliver synthesizes activism, news, commentary, and comedy in a way Edward and Edith could only hope to emulate.

Forbes – ‘Dr. Strange’ Is The Third Best Movie In The Marvel Cinematic Universe (So Far)
The MCU seems like it’s dragging on and on…then a bright spark shows up. Like Benedict Cumberbatch using magic.