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#Don't Miss
Sunlight Foundation goes supernova
The Sunlight Foundation's very weird statement from its Board of Directors left me with more questions than answers (the most pressing of which, of course, is whether or not they are closing). So I’m extremely grateful to The Atlantic for shedding some light on what will no doubt be a major turning point for the open data movement worldwide.
The President needs your help!
Clearly, Americans are confused as to where their borders end. But, whether the rest of the world likes it or not (we don’t), the US has the financial, military and cultural might to impose its imperialism on us all. Given the rather presumptuous mantle it's taken on as world peacekeeper, it now gets lumped with the responsibility of its actions. This brilliant, informative poll on the global issues by CNN and its correspondents should get the Yanks thinking about the issues of running the world, and often has a little surprise at the end as to which presidential candidate's policies you’re more in line with.
Open washing
Open Data has definitely arrived on the African continent, with Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa making clear headway in terms of laws and actions. But our movement still faces a threat, dubbed “open washing”, where all the freedom of information laws don’t result in real access to information for the citizens.
How to take 15 days leave in 2017 to be away from work for 37 days
Allan Kent, bosses everywhere hate you right now. Kent takes us through his process to find which 15 days South Africans should take off next year to give them 37 consecutive days out of the office, thanks to chaining weekends and public holidays. Although he admits his algorithm is a bit naive, it’s incredibly useful to see his work using Python and Pandas, thanks to Jupyter Notebook, which lets you describe your process as you code. And if you’re not interested in the coding because you’re a lazy shirker wanting to optimise your leave, just skip to the end for the dates. Also, this code should work for other countries with minimal changes since it uses the international Office Holidays site.
Your body is code, and we can hack it
Hackathons aren’t all about open data and pizza: IBM gathered medical researchers and biological hackers to work on hacking malaria, TB and cancer at the new Tshimologong innovation hub in Johannesburg. (As an aside, the innovation hub is a converted club once called GASS where I spent many crazy nights in the early Aughties, so walking in there and seeing people working is a bit of a brain melt.)
Trump Twitter Archive
Want to explore all of Trump’s 3,200 tweets in one easy place? This is meant to be a searchable archive of all of them, updated regularly. I couldn’t find the actual search (or the name of the person who made it, perhaps intentionally), but the curation is very amusing.
US Elections: An unpopularity contest
HowMuch.net visualises some Pew research which finds that the race between Trump and Clinton is more about who sucks least.
US police keep up shooting quota
Well done to the US police. You’d think with all the pressure on them to stop shooting people, they’d have slipped in the shootings between last year and this, but so far they’re on track to shoot and kill about as many civilians this year as in 2016, with 706 so far. I’m sure we’ll see a continued effort for the rest of the year.
#Nerds
Tilegrams
Pitch Interactive was so taken with the hexagon map, but realised there was no similar product for the US of A. A bit of work later, and they’ve produced Tilegrams, which gives you “a resemblance to the geographic shape it started with—while maintaining statistical accuracy”. Basically what the world would look like if it was built by bees.
Datawrapper’s new Line Chart
I shouldn’t get excited by a new line graph in Datawrapper.de, but I like new, shiny things, especially when I can annotate them.
#Finally
Zach Galifianakis interviews Hillary Clinton
And it’s more uncomfortable and terrible and funny than you could imagine.
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