2025-11-21 20:05:33
The New York Times used a mix of media and data sources to reconstruct the flooding at Camp Mystic.
What follows is the most detailed description to date of the events that took the lives of more than two dozen campers and counselors, and the elder Mr. Eastland, at the 99-year-old summer retreat.
The descriptions and rendering of those events were taken from the first interviews that Camp Mystic’s owners have granted, along with never-before-seen videos and photos taken during flooding at the camp, data from devices such as Apple watches, cell phones and vehicle crash data, and court documents from a lawsuit filed by some of the parents of children who died.
The animated water flow and photos help you understand the scale and speed of the flooding, in relation to the 28 lives lost. Tragic from every angle.
Tags: Camp Mystic, flood, New York Times, reconstruction
2025-11-20 22:39:08
If Elon Musk achieves certain benchmarks for Tesla over the next decade, he gets a $1 trillion bonus. While unlikely Tesla gets there, a trillion is kind of a lot, especially for one person. But our human brains aren’t great at imagining numbers at that scale. So, for the Washington Post, Alyssa Fowers and Leslie Shapiro scaled a trillion by total U.S. workers in a given job.
I like to think in units of number of Jack in the Box tacos I can buy, but I guess that’s more useful for smaller values. Although less so recently. Thanks, inflation.
It’s crazy that just a few years ago we were looking at how comical Jeff Bezos’ net worth of $172 billion was at the time. Pocket change now.
Tags: Elon Musk, jobs, money, scale, Washington Post
2025-11-20 20:06:03
Hi everyone. This is the Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members on data and visualization beyond defaults. Last year, I documented my experience with Claude, the AI chatbot, for working with and visualizing data. It seemed like a good time to revisit.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
2025-11-19 19:30:30
Monarch butterflies somehow fly from Ontario, Canada to Mexico City, but the migration patterns were unknown. A small sensor to tag individual butterflies might provide the answers. Dan Fagin, with graphics by Jonathan Corum, reports for the New York Times on the rice-sized, solar-powered radio tag.
Tags: butterflies, location, migration, New York Times, tracking
2025-11-19 02:57:32
Congress released a cache of Jeffrey Epstein’s email threads. For the Wall Street Journal, Brian Whitton, John West, and Kara Dapena show name drops through a series of beeswarm charts, with one dot per email thread.
Not surprisingly, President Trump and former President Bill Clinton are both referenced hundreds of times in what was released this week, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Former President Barack Obama’s name appears as well. The Journal’s analysis didn’t identify messages that any of the U.S. presidents wrote directly to Epstein or received emails from him, just references to them by Epstein or his conversation partners.
There is something to be gleaned, no matter how incomplete the release may be.
Tags: email, Jeffrey Epstein, Wall Street Journal
2025-11-18 18:44:05
From the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a safety report on AI-powered toys:
In our testing, it was obvious that some toy companies are putting in guardrails to make their toys behave in a more kid-appropriate way than the chatbots available for adults. But we found those guardrails vary in effectiveness – and at times, can break down entirely. One toy in our testing would discuss very adult sexual topics with us at length while introducing new ideas we had not brought up – most of which are not fit to print.
These AI conversational toys also have personalities and new tactics that can keep kids engaged for longer. Two of the toys we tested at times discouraged us from leaving when we told them we needed to go.
PIRG has released a Trouble in Toyland report each year for the past 30 years. They usually focus on topics like kids swallowing parts or manufacturing that cuts corners. Last year’s report focused on international toys getting through the supply chain even though they didn’t reach U.S. toy standards. So things are moving quick.
I’m going to let my kids make up conversations with their imagination, thanks. One of the best treats as a parent is to watch a young child throw a party with their stuffed toys. The thought of OpenAI-powered chatbots injecting themselves into the occasion is creepy.
