Good Data on the Coronavirus

As things have escalated quickly, I’ve found several resources that provide extremely valuable data and perspectives. The first is this article on Medium by Tomas Pueyo. Everyone should read this, and he’s helpfully had it translated into 26 languages. It’s the single best synthesis I’ve seen of everything going on. He starts with this summary: When you’re done reading the article, this is what you’ll take away:The coronavirus is coming to you.It’s coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.It’s a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.They will have to decide which patient

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Nantucket

Spent the weekend in Nantucket to celebrate my good friend Casey’s last month as a bachelor. It was my first time there, and I was hoping to get some good photos on my D7200. It turned out to be a bit foggy, so I left my camera at the house for most of the weekend. But it cleared up in patches and I got a few shots on my phone. I’d never used Lightroom Mobile, and Casey recommended I try it out. I was blown away at how easy it is to use, and how well it integrated with my Zenfolio workflow. Here are a few shots from my phone. The harbor: Tom Never Beach: Waterfront houses from the ferry

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Boston: Built on Water

I’ve always enjoyed looking at old maps of Boston that show how the coastline has changed over the past 400 years, as more and more “man made land” was created. I was just talking about this over the weekend with a few friends, and then today National Geographic put out a piece, “How Boston Made Itself Bigger,” with some great maps illustrating the changes. Here’s the simplest view, comparing 1630 to today: A few things: As a South Boston resident for 10 years, I’m getting tired of my mom telling me that when sea levels rise, I’m dangerously close to the water. Look mom, I don’t live in the filled in area! (and yes, I’ve checked the topographic maps as

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The Best Combination of a Map and a Chart

I love maps and I love charts. So I was particularly excited to find this great chart of the world’s population by latitude, which obviously resembles a map (because most people live on land): This is a much more eloquent way of combining latitude and longitude population charts, as I’ve previously posted about here. At the bottom of the post, the creator links to whackdata.com, where Ryan Brideau posted some R scripts that take publicly available data and create similar population map charts. Ryan does a great job describing why the chart is so interesting: “What I love about it is that, in the absence of any traditional map features, the outlines of countries and continents are immediately apparent. And as long as you are familiar

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The Rolling Sloans

This fall I’ve been playing the guitar with the Rolling Sloans, the MIT Sloan cover band. We had a show a few weeks back at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square. It was a great time, and here are a few clips filmed by Natacha Hardy: All My Loving: Don’t Look Back in Anger Part 1: Don’t Look Back in Anger Part 2 (Sean Lee Kills it): Just a Girl: Say It Ain’t So: The Band is: Robin Bose – Vocals Charlotte Rocker – Vocals Vanessa Kafka – Guitar/Vocals Sean Lee – Guitar/Vocals Eugene Feldman – Keys Robbie Hobbs – Drums Anand Desai – Bass Jamie Fordyce – Bass Antonio Yanez – Guitar Myself – Guitar I’ve heard there are a

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The Sweet & Low Down

This past weekend I went to the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge to see Girls, Guns, and Glory. But the highlight of the night turned out to be the opening band, The Sweet & Lowdown. Miss Tess, one of the band members who mostly sings and plays the guitar (but also plays the upright bass on occasion), used to have the Sunday night residency at Toad, one of my favorite venues in Cambridge. I’d seen her play there countless times before she moved out to Brooklyn a few years back. If you have the opportunity to see either Miss Tess or The Sweet & Lowdown in Boston or NYC, I highly recommend going. Here’s a clip I recorded from the show

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