Shifts in time on the Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a metaphorical clock that symbolizes a catastrophic end to the planet due to human self-destruction. Midnight represents an event and the time represents the “minutes” away from the event. The numbers are fuzzy, as you might imagine. In any case, Amanda Shendruk for Quartz used a connected scatterplot on a clock view to show how the “estimate” has changed since 1947.

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Possible lead exposure around small airports

Thousands of smaller airplanes are still allowed to use leaded fuel, which can lead to unwanted emissions around airports. For Quartz, David Yanofsky and Michael J. Coren mapped flight activity for such planes against schools, parks, and playgrounds:

These maps illustrate where initial emissions are likely to be highest. Because lead pollution disburses with the wind, anyone within a 1.5 km radius of the runways may be exposed over the long term. But essentially three factors dictate the amount of lead exposure: the volume of air traffic (and thus lead emissions), one’s proximity to the airport, and the prevailing winds. The worst-case scenario for residents? Living alongside a busy airport, downwind of the runway. Often it’s lower-income families living in these areas. To determine individual lead risks, more detailed studies, such as the one at Reid-Hillview, would be needed.

Use the search to look activity for airports in your area.

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Stores that closed on famous shopping streets

Pre-pandemic, we walked around shopping areas casually browsing, but a lot of retail didn’t make it through. For Quartz, Amanda Shendruk looks at the closures on famous shopping streets, complete with a location-appropriate vehicle to drive in and a police car that appears if you scroll too fast.

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Analysis of skin tones in beauty ads on Instagram

For Quartz, Amanda Shendruk and Marc Bain analyzed skin tones that appeared in beauty and fashion ads on Instagram. The graphics use Blackout Tuesday on June 2, 2020, when many brands vowed to improve diversity to better reflect the world, as a point of comparison. Using median skin color as the main metric, some companies shifted more than others.

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Machine learning to find movie ideas

Speaking of A.I. and fiction, Adam Epstein for Quartz reported on how Wattpad, the platform for people to share stories, uses machine learning to find potential movies:

Wattpad uses a machine-learning program called StoryDNA to scan all the stories on its platform and surface the ones that seem like candidates for TV or film development. It works on both macro and micro levels, analyzing big-picture audience engagement trends to identify the genres picking up steam, while also looking at the specific stories that got popular quickly and calculating what made them so appealing.

The tool can break stories down to their vocabularies and sentence structures (a story’s “DNA,” if you will) and then compare those to other stories to deduce what really makes a work of fiction popular. It also looks at how often users comment on stories and, when they do, what exactly they’re saying. Its goal is to examine all these clues to uncover the precise combination of story elements—genre, emotion, grammar, the list goes on—that hooks audiences to the point they’ll follow its journey onto a visual medium.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but this sounds terrible.

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Map shows where to go to get away from fireworks

Using a voronoi map, David Yanofsky for Quartz mapped the places in the US that are the farthest away from legal fireworks sellers in case you need to get away from the early celebrations. Or, people could just stop setting off fireworks at 1am. That would be okay too.

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Map shows where to go to get away from fireworks

Using a voronoi map, David Yanofsky for Quartz mapped the places in the US that are the farthest away from legal fireworks sellers in case you need to get away from the early celebrations. Or, people could just stop setting off fireworks at 1am. That would be okay too.

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Coronavirus testing accuracy

Medical tests do not always provide certain results. Quartz illustrated this with the accuracy of a simulated antibody test that identifies 90% of those infected and 95% of those not infected:

That means that if you took the test and got a positive result, there’s a 45.1% chance it’s correct. If you got a negative result, there’s a 99.6% chance your result is accurate.

Of course, this doesn’t mean don’t take the test. Detecting 90% of infections with false positives is a good thing. However, it does help to understand what the numbers mean before you do anything with them.

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How parents spend time with their kids

For Quartz, Dan Kopf and Jenny Anderson on how time spent with kids changes with age:

In the very beginning, it’s all about physical care, otherwise known as the stuff that makes your arms tired. A fifth of time parents spend with kids before their first birthday is on what could be described as keep-them-alive tasks. At age 1, this falls dramatically and it becomes playtime: peek-a-boo, stack the box, dinging and singing, making art, dancing, hide and seek, jumping in puddles. The share of time spent playing with children peaks around age 1, and then is then slowly replaced by a variety of other activities, including socializing and watching TV. Overall, time spent with children declines as kids get older.

Sounds about right. Although it makes me a bit nervous for the future.

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The rise and plummet of the name Heather

Hey, no one told me that baby name analysis was back in fashion. Dan Kopf for Quartz, using data from the Social Security Administration, describes the downfall of the name Heather. It exhibited the sharpest decline of all names since 1880.

Talking to Laura Wattenberg:

Wattenberg says the rise and fall of Heather is exemplary of the faddish nature of American names. “When fashion is ready for a name, even a tiny spark can make it take off,” she says. “Heather climbed gradually into popularity through the 1950s and ’60s, then took its biggest leap in 1969, a year that featured a popular Disney TV movie called Guns in the Heather. A whole generation of Heathers followed, at which point Heather became a ‘mom name’ and young parents pulled away.”

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