Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 22m

Some #dataviz about the Portuguese local elections. Far-right Chega fails to capitalise on its parliamentary success but in around a quarter of councils no one party had majority control.

Rui Barros @ruibarros.me · 1h

É só combinações, combinações.
Cá dentro combinações, combinações.

Um quarto dos municípios sem maioria para governar | PÚBLICO

Fragmentação política atinge recorde nas autárquicas. Chega e PS são os que mais podem ser chamados a negociar.

www.publico.pt

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 5h

Shit, Damn, Motherfucker, we lost a legend.

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Reposted by Tan G.

Julia Silge @juliasilge.com · 22h

There is a new monthly release of #Positron available, and it delivers fresh new features for the Data Explorer! In this screencast, I walk through how to interactively explore a recent #TidyTuesday dataset on literary prizes 📚📖🏆 using some of the Data Explorer newness.

youtu.be/KOgQuWF0US4

Explore literary prizes with Positron’s Data Explorer

YouTube video by Julia Silge

youtu.be

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 1d

I still remember my home phone number from decades ago without hesitation but ask me what I did at the weekend and I’ll get back to you in 3-5 business days…

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 1d

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 1d

The most surprising sight at Sharm El-Sheikh, Viktor Orban aside, must be FIFA’s Gianni Infantino. What’s he doing there?

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 2d

London is lovely at this time of year, you even get to see the city’s wildlife frolicking in the Thames.

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 3d

Pleased to see @pbump.com’s How To Read This Chart is back.

#dataviz

How To Read This Chart @howtoreadthisch.art · 3d

The first edition of the new newsletter is out! Check it out IF YOU DARE (halloween)
www.howtoreadthisch.art/the-glorious...

The glorious return of How To Read This Chart

Chapter 1 So, uh, what have you been up to? The last time anyone received an issue of "How To Read This Chart," President Trump hadn't yet deployed the military to D.C., the Mets were only a game-and...

www.howtoreadthisch.art

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Reposted by Tan G.

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 3d

🧵
A nice circumhorizontal arc (informally known as a fire rainbow, which is a misnomer) over West Virginia captured by Christa Harbig!

It is an optical phenomenon belonging to the family of ice halos, so it is neither fire nor a rainbow.

➡️ apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap21083...

🔭 🧪 #science

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$The image shows a circumhorizon arc (or circumhorizontal arc), an optical phenomenon resembling a fiery rainbow. It forms in a clear sky with cirrus clouds made of flat, hexagonal ice crystals aligned horizontally. These crystals refract sunlight, creating a colorful arc parallel to the horizon. Vibrant colors shine brightly against the blue sky, captured near North Fork Mountain, West Virginia.$

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 3d

Email from Strava informing me of the Garmin Data Attribution requirement added to their API terms of use. Does this mean they’ve conceded or just a temporary measure so Garmin doesn’t switch off uploads?

Reposted by Tan G.

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 4d

oooh new version of Positron just released and it has (1) github copilot chat and (2) automatic {dplyr} code generation based on filtering/sorting/etc that you do in the data viewer #rstats

Me saying "hey it's github copilot chat in my positron"

Automatically generated dplyr code that matches the filtering and arranging that I did by clicking on columns in the data viewer

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Reposted by Tan G.

Guillaume Noblet @gnoblet.bsky.social · 4d

One of my graph has just entered the "best" section of the r-graph-gallery.com with a tutorial.

Featuring a waffle chart for time series, where the subtitle serves as a colorful legend.

Thanks a lot to @yan-holtz.bsky.social and @soeundataviz.bsky.social for adding it! #rstats #dataviz #ggplot2

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 4d

This is pretty cool work

#dataviz

Ana Lucía González @anlugonz.bsky.social · 4d

This dataviz love letter by Giorgia Lupi and @pentagramdesign.bsky.social using open data from NY transport and "assigning behaviors, movements, and idiosyncrasies to each MTA train" has just brightened my day
www.pentagram.com/work/a-data-...
Animation
www.instagram.com/reel/DPkAziW...

‘A Data Love Letter to the Subway’

A data-driven animation for Fulton Center commissioned by MTA Arts & Design for its 40th anniversary.

www.pentagram.com

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 5d

“No one’s had more annual physicals than me. People often ask me ‘is it because of your cankles or the bruising on your hand, sir?’ Well, it’s both…”

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Reposted by Tan G.

Martin Stabe @martinstabe.ft.com · 5d

Great piece of data journalism on the widespread anomalies in council tax banding, by @jonathanvincent.bsky.social and Sam Fleming and involving our great engineering teams on both the front- and back-end of the project. #ddj Plus a nod to some classic #dataviz design by @theboysmithy.ft.com:

A grid of small charts compares trends in house prices and council tax bills across UK local authorities since 1995. Each chart shows two indexed lines: one for average house prices (blue) and one for average council tax bills (grey), both normalised to 1 in 1995.

The top section displays towns and cities in northern England — such as Barnsley, Bradford, Burnley, County Durham, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Preston, Redcar and Cleveland, and Sunderland — where the two lines rise together over time, indicating that house prices and council tax bills have increased broadly in line.

The lower section forms a cartogram map of London boroughs, where house prices have risen much faster than council tax bills. In boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Camden, Hackney, Islington, and Waltham Forest, the blue line representing house prices climbs steeply compared to the flatter grey council tax line. The layout mirrors the approximate geography of London, with boroughs like Enfield and Barnet at the top and Croydon, Bromley, and Sutton at the bottom.

Source: Financial Times analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). London cartogram design based on a concept by Max Gadney and Mike Gallagher.

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 5d

Good to know, I’ll check it out. I’m using Reeder and it sounds similar but you have to find the feeds or add in a URL and I’m not totally sold on its interface.

Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 6d

Is it just for managing RSS feeds or does it offer feed discovery?

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Reposted by Tan G.

Marie Segger @mariesegger.bsky.social · 6d

We have quietly launched Off the Charts, our @economist.com data newsletter, on Substack.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for FREE (paid subscribers also receive access to our newsletter archive & two of our data-driven pieces each week)

theeconomistoffthecharts.substack.com

The Economist: Off the Charts | Substack

The Economist’s data and visual journalists share the tools, techniques and ideas behind their award-winning stories. Click to read The Economist: Off the Charts, a Substack publication.

theeconomistoffthecharts.substack.com

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 6d

Very good!

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 6d

You and @jerthorp.bsky.social can be bird friends 🤝

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 6d

And a funny guy too which is something that comes across in his photography. Have you seen ‘I Am Martin Parr’? I’m going to try and finally watch it at some point this week

I Am Martin Parr - Official UK Trailer

YouTube video by Dogwoof

youtu.be

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 7d

If you’re anywhere near Bristol this weekend the annual BOP Festival takes place at his foundation.

bopbristol.org

BOP Bristol

bopbristol.org

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 7d

Met the one and only Martin Parr and he signed his autobiography for me. A nice way to spend a couple of hours after work.

UTTERLY. LAZY AND INATTENTIVE
Martin Parr in Words and Pictures

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Reposted by Tan G.

Bellingcat @bellingcat.com · 7d

Satellite analysis by Bellingcat found that wildfires destroyed over a third of Namibia’s most visited wildlife reserve last month, impacting crucial grazing lands for endangered species, including black rhinos and elephants. www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/10...

Wildfires Ravage One of Africa’s Largest Nature Reserves - bellingcat

Satellite analysis of the Etosha wildfires in Namibia has found that more than a third of the nature reserve was burned.

www.bellingcat.com

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 7d

How to get addicted to TikTok - a cautionary tale told in #dataviz

Caitlin Gilbert @caitlingilbert.bsky.social · 7d

🤳EXCLUSIVE: We analyzed real data from over 800 U.S. TikTok users to reveal how the app transforms casual users into power users.

Extremely proud of this one, over a year in the making w/ @richardsima.bsky.social Leslie Shapiro @asteckelberg.bsky.social @ence.bsky.social

wapo.st/4obueib

Here’s how TikTok ‘power users’ end up scrolling 4 hours a day or more

Washington Post reporters analyzed data from over 800 TikTok users to learn how the app turns people into power users, some of whom spend hours per day scrolling.

wapo.st

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Tan G. @tangandhara.bsky.social · 8d

You get what you pay for, I suppose 🤷

Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 8d

I got the new GPT-5 pro API model to "Generate me an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle". This pelican took 6m8s to generate and cost me $1.10! simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/6/g...

GPT-5 pro

Here's OpenAI's model documentation for their GPT-5 pro model, released to their API today at their DevDay event. It has similar base characteristics to GPT-5: both share a September 30, …

simonwillison.net