Daniel Donner

Update: Now at 300+ purchased

FROGS TOGETHER STRONG

A bit of linguistic cartography to brighten your day. This map shows how the words for camel 🐫 spread across the Old World.

Last night it said 100+ bought in the past month. Tonight, 200+. The legion grows.

Cartoon: You made me become a Nazi! Follow me on Twitter at @MattBors   and check this Kickstarter I launched to create a comics magazine.

The @mattbors.bsky.social cartoon showing its relevance yet again. www.dailykos.com/stories/2018...

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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.

🤳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

Lateralized Sleep Positions in Domestic Cats bar graph. 192 cats curve left. 109 curve right.

Aw yeah that’s what charts were designed for

Here's every state that could draw a new congressional map by 2026 Most states can't pass new maps quickly—but those that can favor Republicans

There's been a lot of confusion about which states could redraw their House maps before the midterms, so we've put together a definitive guide to every state that could actually do so—16 in all.

We explain the likelihood of new maps, probable targeted districts, and any obstacles to passage.

The last time I posted the income relationship to presidential vote among White respondents to the @electionstudies.bsky.social ANES, people asked for additional estimates among all voters.

Updated estimates here:

British Politics' Midlife Crisis Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

Electricity now costs 267% more (!!) for 1 month vs. what it cost 5 years ago near data center hotspots. Awesome reporting from Josh Saul @dinabass.bsky.social Leonardo Nicoletti @naurtorious.bsky.social Demetrios Pogkas (gift link) www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

40% of state leg races went uncontested in 2024.

@runforsomething.net is aggressively recruiting for 2026 - we can't leave a single place up for grabs.

Chart showing the decline in the number of people charged with federal drug offenses.

EXCLUSIVE: The number of people charged with breaking federal drug laws dropped to the lowest level in decades this year after the Trump administration ordered enforcement agencies to focus on deporting immigrants, a @reuters.com review of court dockets found.

www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Graph with count of signed executive orders per presidential term as function of days in office, for presidents since Eisenhower. Lowest line is GW Bush 2 ending at 118. Highest so far is Carter with 320. But the current term for Trump (only 249 days so far) jumps out because of the steep upward curve to now already 207.

Executive orders signed, days since start Presidential term, USA, post-WWII.

When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900 The world is in a “wave of autocratization.” Yet, recent events in Brazil, the Maldives, and Zambia demonstrate that autocratization can be halted and reversed. This article introduces “U-Turn” as ...

“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy”

V-Dem data

A World of Tides The most recent issue of ArcUser, a magazine for Esri GIS software users spotlights cartographer Dave Taylor’s striking Oceanic Oscillations map.

A lovely ocean tides map using the Spilhaus projection for some Wednesday mappy goodness #MapoftheWeek mapoftheweek.substack.com/p/a-world-of...

You're right not to dismiss partisan polling but... McLaughlin has a record.

finance.yahoo.com/news/eric-ca...

wut? how is this even possible?

Breaking news consumer's handbook

यसरी जलिरहेको छ बालुवाटार (ड्रोन भिडियो/फोटो) २४ भदौ, काठमाडौं । जेनजी पुस्ताका युवाहरूको समूहले मंगलबार प्रधानमन्त्रीको सरकारी निवास बालुवाटारमा आगजनी गरेका छन् । अहिले पनि बालुवाटारमा दनदनी आगो दन्किरहेको छ । भिषण आगलागीका कारण भवनभित्र रहेका ए...

Link to longer video: www.onlinekhabar.com/2025/09/1761...

Sentiment analysis on four decades worth of FT newspaper articles. 🥳 Rreally cool stuff from @joelsuss.ft.com. on.ft.com/4n2TVBq

The U.S. economy probably added half as many jobs in the 12 months ending in March as previously reported, according to the preliminary benchmark revision data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday. #NumbersDay
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/b...

⛰️ In a new study in @science.org, we project that 39% of the global glacier mass is committed to be lost irrespective of future warming.

However, a lot can still be saved - see title:
“Glacier preservation doubled by limiting warming to 1.5°C versus 2.7°C”

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Cooperative National Geologic Map | NGMDB Explore the Cooperative National Geologic Map, a unified view of our Nation's geology, with interactive layers and geologic data.

You want to see this new geologic map of the contiguous US that the USGS just released.

Iowa Democrats win massive upset to break GOP supermajority Catelin Drey's victory may portend more good news for Democrats next year

HUGE FLIP: Democrat Catelin Drey wins deep-red state Senate seat in Iowa, breaking the GOP's supermajority.

Drey won by 11 points in a district Donald Trump carried by 11 points last year. It's another massive overperformance. The Iowa GOP should be very worried for the midterms.

Our full writeup:

This image of a young planet clearing its orbit in the protoplanetary disk around a distant star (the star itself is obscured) is stunning. Of course it’s beautiful, but it’s also a remarkable technical achievement for the study authors, the observatory, and the instrument scientists. Well done!

Apropos of nothing, a reminder that German stock markets kept climbing in an almost uninterrupted fashion in the run-up to WW2. Investors are really, really bad at pricing serious institutional and political risks.

League of Women Voters of Utah - 2025-08-25 Ruling and Order Granting Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment

BREAKING: A state judge has ruled that Utah's congressional district map must be redrawn ahead of the 2026 midterm election and given state lawmakers a Sept. 24 deadline to come up with a new map that complies with a citizen-initiated Proposition 4 ban on partisan gerrymandering