Fair Warning: The Anniversary Edition 🎉
Hello!
I missed last week’s newsletter as I have been super busy doing things like looking for a house to buy, entertaining friends, and erm, being really tired. You may have noticed this is also late, and I am going to blame that on the snow completely throwing me out. BUT! 🎉This is the anniversary edition because FW has been going for an entire year, which is crazy. 🎉 So thanks for reading and I hope those who started last year are still enjoying it!
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On the home front
Weird thing I found out this week — we are getting new 10p coins. They are “Quintessentially British” so of course they are terrible. Why would you want to tell future historians that we thought queuing was a stand-out element of British culture!? Anyway, FUN FACT — it turns out there are 1,713,000,000 10p coins currently in circulation (thanks Duncan). Here are the new coin designs in all their, um, glory:
That’s all I have for the UK this week — bad coins. Hey, I don’t make the rules.
Over the pond
TRADE WARS: AMERICA STRIKES BACK. Sorry, terrible joke, but apparently this is a thing now. WaPo looked at the areas which will be most affected by a trade war. Key takeaways: While more liberal places like SFO and LA are most exposed in terms of direct ties to trade — like jobs and goods and services, it actually makes up a below-average share of their economies. Meanwhile “exports make up 13 percent of local GDP in counties won by Trump, compared to 10 percent in counties won by Clinton”.
The NYT has gone the other way, saying that the tariffs are more symbolic than likely to cause serious harm to the US economy, and the drop in shares is more about what the change means about Trump as a president as opposed to the actual changes. Hmm.
The gun control debate continues, unsurprisingly. What I find most interesting is that by all accounts a majority of Americans are actually supportive of some gun control measures like stricter background checks etc. The Economist has looked at some of the figures. So my next question is why not just do them?
Elsewhere
The big issues of Italy’s election campaign, according to the FT — Europe, immigration, and tax. Meanwhile Pew Research Center says Italians are pessimistic about the election. And WaPo reckons that due to a lot of political instability, Berlusconi looks like stability to Italians — not sure my Italian friends would agree with that! By the time you read this, you probably know who has won. Here’s how it looks as I write:
A story I was entirely unaware of — Venezuelans are fleeing the country in their thousands, “causing growing alarm in the region”. Why? It has the world’s highest inflation rate, and spiralling poverty and malnutrition. Lots are fleeing to nearby countries like Chile and Colombia, causing around 1000% increase in the Venezuelan population (since 2015) in some places. Wow.
Who gave what to which political parties in Australia? I won’t pretend that I understand who these people are or what the parties stand for — sorry — but I wanted to include this because I have very much noticed that the only people publishing on the Guardian’s data page are the Australian desk/team, which is… Interesting. And also, I haven’t seen a network graph like this on a newspaper’s site for *so long* and so consider this link as more “Look at this! It’s a bit weird huh?”
Bits and bobs
The BBC says female-led Oscar films are “more profitable”. Yeeeessssss. The analysis shows “every dollar invested in a female-led film earns back $2.12”. Awesome. Now please make more films with female leads. They make *money*, ok. Data proves it.
Everyone has been talking about this — National Geographic has these lovely bird migration maps that are interactive and just really satisfying to watch. It also includes bird noises, but I can’t vouch for how great they are because I can’t hear them :(
Also on the Beeb — Measles cases in Europe jumped four-fold in 2017. Great. Thank you, anti-vaxxers. The research which has freaked so many people out has been discredited multiple times, and yet people will still not vaccinate their children. I’m not even a parent and I’m angry.
This last link is absolutely nothing to do with data but I love it so much. Real places that look like they are straight out of a Wes Anderson film. Oh.My.God. Enjoy!
Fair warning (really): There likely won’t be another newsletter for a couple of weeks, as I’m in Chicago for NICAR — if you are going and want to grab a coffee please let me know!
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter, please forward it to people, encourage friends to subscribe to it, or buy me a coffee to show your appreciation. I’m on Twitter @SophieWarnes.
