We get 24 hours in a day. How do we spend this time? How does our time use change as we get older and priorities shift? Here is the percentage breakdown in our teens, 20s, and 30s, through to our 80s. Read More ..read more

Maybe one day AI tools will be advanced enough to process a random dataset and produce valuable insights that incorporate the context of the real world. But that day is not today. Today, we can play with the tools available to us and see what happens. I’m Nathan Yau. I am a real person for now. This is The Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members that looks closer at how we visualize data. Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides ..read more

Stephen Wolfram gets into modeling biological evolution: Why does biological evolution work? And, for that matter, why does machine learning work? Both are examples of adaptive processes that surprise us with what they manage to achieve. So what’s the essence of what’s going on? I’m going to concentrate here on biological evolution, though much of what I’ll discuss is also relevant to machine learning—but I’ll plan to explore that in more detail elsewhere. I mostly put this here as a bookmark for myself, but I have a feeling you’ll read through this before me. Tags: evolution, machine learn ..read more

You might’ve heard a little something about AI these past few months. If the ideas seem kind of fuzzy, Nicky Case and Hack Club are collaborating on a guide for how these things work and the issues that we should address as AI-based things grow more common. It has comics. While the current tools are fun to play with, there are and will be real safety challenges as the systems slurp up more data and process faster. It grows more likely that the systems will directly affect your day-to-day life. So it seems worthwhile to know a bit how they work instead of blindly trusting companies than run wi ..read more

It’s been over 200 years since the cicadas of Brood XIII and Brood XIX came up at the same time. For the New York Times, Jonathan Corum revisits old cicada maps by Charles L. Marlatt from 1922. The spatial distributions look similar to current patterns and show how predictable these things are, even though they’re in the ground for so long. Tags: Cicada, New York Times ..read more

The cicadas are coming. This year is unique, because there are two broods that are arriving at the same time in the midwestern and southeastern United States. Usually it’s just one at a time. CNN has a visual guide for where the cicadas will be and why they’re here now. Basically, one brood emerges every 13 years and the other every 17, and there’s overlap. Tags: Cicada, CNN ..read more

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, set out to plant and conserve 1 trillion trees by 2030. Bloomberg uses small dots to show how much more is left to achieve the target amount. The gray dots are what still needs to be planted. It’s kind of a lot, but fingers crossed. Tags: Bloomberg, Marc Benioff, scale, trees ..read more

The TikTok account Globetrots combines Google Earth and text-to-speech to show top-ten lists with various statistics. For example, what cities in the United Kingdom have the most people on benefits? A Google Earth shot pans to the different cities as text-to-speech narrates. A good number of their videos have gained popularity (or the TikTok algorithms are pushing novelty). And the account recently subbed text-to-speech for a song format, which I think uses TikTok’s AI song feature? Just watch: It’s really corny, but we might also be seeing the beginning of something. Tags: AI, generative ..read more

In our younger years, we have school and more important things to do, but then we get older and there are bills to pay. These charts show the shift and the sweet release of retirement. Read More ..read more

Knowing the path can help you delegate. Knowing the steps makes it easier to help the rest of your team. Knowing what’s next can help you work through a tedious step, because you know it’ll be worth it. Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides ..read more