601: quantum of sollazzo
#601: quantum of sollazzo – 18 March 2025
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
Hello, regular readers and welcome new ones :) This is Quantum of Sollazzo, the newsletter about all things data. I am Giuseppe Sollazzo, or @puntofisso. I've been sending this newsletter since 2012 to be a summary of all the articles with or about data that captured my attention over the previous week. The newsletter is and will always (well, for as long as I can keep going!) be free, but you're welcome to become a friend via the links below.
Apologies, I forgot to send this last Tuesday. So here it is, a bit late!
The brilliant TBD Conference is happening April 3 this year and the theme is 'Eigengrau'. It's time to prepare for what's coming that we can't see but need to get comfortable with. +20 speakers are all set to help you. Only streaming live once...so make sure you grab your ticket now. I've been offered a Quantum-special free code so don't let it go to waste :)
The most clicked link last week was GPT Anonymiser Nich.
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'till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso.bsky.social
✨ Topical
From Businesses and Banks to Colleges and Churches: Americans’ Views of U.S. Institutions
More interesting demographics data on the US by the Pew Research Centre: "Continued partisan divides on schools, unions, churches."
What percentage of the US population is transgender?
USA Facts: "Nearly 1% of the nation’s adult population, about 2.3 million Americans, identify as transgender"
Strava Bans User for Running in North Korea
"I’ve just spent the last hour going down the rabbit hole that is the Pyongyang Marathon (in North Korea). ... The event has been happening for decades, but that’s actually not what got this person their account banned. Rather, they were there for a trip because they are working on their doctorate about North Korea, while there, went on a run, then came home (to a different country). After which, they upload run to Garmin Connect, which then synced it to Strava. Finally, Strava then sent them a note that their account was being terminated.
But wait, it gets better!"
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🛠️📖 Tools & Tutorials
Cutting-edge web scraping techniques
Simon Willison has given an excellent workshop on web scraping at data journalism conference NICAR. Here's a GitHub repository with all the code.
Free Online Elevation Contour Generator
This is an "online tool for creating accurate topographic maps, contour plans, and elevation visualizations".
(via Maurizio Napolitano)
Relative Colors
"An interactive guide to learn CSS Relative Colors."
TIL: the relative colors syntax allows color manipulation (darken/lighten/saturate/etc) within CSS.
GeoAI: Artificial Intelligence for Geospatial Data
"A powerful Python package for integrating Artificial Intelligence with geospatial data analysis and visualization."
I'm still, overall, a skeptic, but I see increasingly "controlled" ways of developing tools, which can speed up workflows of those who understand the subject matter.
(via Maurizio Napolitano)
Tutorial: Exploring Amsterdam
"Welcome to the tutorial page of the rcityviews package! The aim of this page is to show you how you can use this package to create stylized images of the world’s cities. For this tutorial, I will focus on rendering one of my favorite cities in the world: Amsterdam."
Super Crispy SVG Icons
"My obsessive, over the top method for designing super crisp icons."
The data validation landscape in 2025
Bank of England's Arthur Turrell looks at the landscape of recent data validation tools and methods.
🤯 Data thinking
Handbook on measuring data in the System of National Accounts
This document (PDF only) is the result of a UN working group on national accounts that included Eurostat and IMG.
"While data impact on the economy is indisputable, it has only recently been explicitly recognized as an output of production and asset within the System of National Accounts (SNA), the internationally agreed standard set of recommendations on how to compile measures of economic activity."
Not-ignoring daylight savings time for analysis
Randy Au: "While we usually want to avoid touching daylight savings time changes in our datasets, when you're working with people, local time actually does matter."
📈Dataviz, Data Analysis, & Interactive
The baby boom in seven charts
"The baby boom reshaped family life and drove population growth in many countries. In this article, we explore the key patterns in seven charts."
TIL – I commonly associated the expression "baby boom" with children born after WWII, when in fact it's linked also to the end of the Great Depression.
Mind the gap, scale the map (markers)
Datawrapper's Michel Do Thoi: "I wanted to show station markers sized in proportion to their annual foot traffic — similar to how markers work in a Datawrapper symbol map, but with all the styling flexibility of a locator map underneath. Since this isn't a built-in option in locator maps, I had to calculate the right marker sizes myself."
Honking Complaints Plunge 69% Inside Congestion Pricing Zone
New York outlet The City: "In the first two months of the Manhattan vehicle tolls that Trump wants to nix, gripes over blasting horns sunk when compared to 2024."
🤖 AI
How much energy will AI really consume? The good, the bad and the unknown
Nature: "Researchers want firms to be more transparent about the electricity demands of artificial intelligence."
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