Live from Level 3

03.05.2020/02.30

Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3. Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999–2000, […]

COVID-19 stats’ update, April 16

16.04.2020/02.07

Don’t worry, I won’t make this too regular, but as I had done some more number-crunching of the available stats during the daytime, I thought I’d share them. I’ve noticed that some countries update their test numbers on a less regular basis, e.g. France, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, though Worldometers now has updated ones since […]

COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done: April 13 update

13.04.2020/11.11

I can cite these COVID-19 calculations (infections as a proportion of tests done) with a bit more confidence than the last lot, where many countries’ testing figures had not updated. I see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has released its total test numbers now, and they show a pretty good result, too. Compared to […]

Another COVID-19 table: total infections as a proportion of tests done

07.04.2020/22.19

Peter Lambrechtsen rightly pointed out that COVID-19 per capita infection statistics aren’t as good as knowing the infection rate based on tests done, so at 2 a.m. I decided to crunch some numbers based on the stats I had on hand. These are many hours old now but hopefully still indicative of where things stand. […]

One more COVID-19 post: graphing and animating the data

06.04.2020/08.52

Russell Brown linked this COVID-19 trend page by Aatish Bhatia on his Twitter recently, and it’s another way to visualize the data. There are two axes: new confirmed cases (over the past week) on the y and total confirmed cases on the x. It’s very useful to see how countries are performing over time as […]

Don’t rely on an algorithm to choose your brand ambassadors

14.03.2020/23.23

Here’s a cautionary tale found by Lucire travel editor Stanley Moss. His words: ‘Photographer Dmitry Kostyukov recently experienced a rich dialogue with an algorithm belonging to a Scandinavian swimwear company. He’d been auto-mistaken for a Y chromosome, and digitally invited to become a brand ambassador. Dmitry accepted, and received the sample suit of his choice, […]

In the 1980s, I thought society would evolve to become more efficient and smarter

15.02.2020/07.24

Growing up in a relatively wealthy country in the 1980s, after getting through most of the 1970s, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world would just keep getting better and things would make more sense as humans evolved. From a teenager’s perspective: home computers, with a modulator–demodulator (modem), could bring you information instantaneously […]

Seasonal Canadian humour

22.11.2019/08.16

My thanks to Sydney-based photographer Robert Catto for linking me to this one, especially near the festive season. It is funnier than the one I took in Sweden many years ago, which in pun-land could be racist: The sad thing is, at some point, the majority will not get […]

The playbook used against Wikileaks

11.06.2019/08.54

Now for something actually important beyond my first world problems. Journalist Suzie Dawson has a fantastic piece outlining how the smear of ‘serial rapist’ is part of the playbook used against senior members of Wikileaks. Her article is well worth reading, especially in light of how the mainstream media have spun the narrative against […]

Social media mean less and less

16.09.2018/11.13

Above: I must report and block dozens of Instagram accounts a day, not unlike getting over the 200-a-day mark on Facebook in 2014. For the last few days, I made my Twitter private. It was the only time in 11 years of being on the service where I felt I needed that level of […]