2026-04-08 18:10:20
It’s that time of year again when we hear about how the plants are growing across the country. For the Washington Post, Ben Noll, John Muyskens, and Naema Ahmed have the maps for leaves and flowers.
Meteorological spring started March 1. The astronomical season started March 20. But there’s a third option: The season as decreed by the plants. They don’t follow any calendar and instead leaf out when it’s warm enough.
The first emergence of leaves can be estimated by temperatures since the start of the year. A certain amount of warmth needs to accumulate before leaves appear. This warmth is typically measured through a metric called growing degree days.
Tags: growth, spring, Washington Post
2026-04-08 15:23:13
Alex Preston used AI in a book review for the New York Times and ended up lifting bits of a review from the Guardian. Emma Loffhagen reports for the Guardian:
Language that appears to be lifted from the Guardian review includes descriptions of characters – “lazy Machiavellian Stefano” appears as “lazy, Machiavellian Stefano” in the New York Times version – and the concluding assessment of the novel: the Guardian review states that the book is “most significantly a song of love to a country of contradictions, battered, war-torn, divided, misguided and miraculous: an Italy where life is costume and the performance of art, and where circuses spring up on wasteland”; while the New York Times version says the characters “populate what is ultimately a love song to a country of contradictions: battered, divided, misguided and miraculous. This is an Italy where life is performance, where circuses rise on wasteland.”
I’m pretty sure Preston is going to need a pseudonym soon.
Tags: Guardian, New York Times, plagiarism
2026-04-07 19:32:17
NASA makes a lot of live data available about the Artemis II mission. Chad Ohman brought all the feeds into one place for a mission control-type dashboard, including if the toilet on board is a go. I guess there are other things too, such as location, measurements, and crew schedule.
Tags: Artemis II, Chad Ohman, NASA, space, tracker
2026-04-07 15:14:53
It appears there is an upcoming film, Pressure, whose meteorologist main character deals with forecasting uncertainty for the weather on D-Day. It’s coming May 2026, and it’s based on a play from 2014.
Despite a prolonged heat wave, Stagg is convinced that the weather conditions will suddenly deteriorate sharply on June 5, the current date of the proposed D-Day, and that the planned invasion should therefore be postponed. Meanwhile, Krick believes forecasts of a calm sunny day on June 5 and believes that the plans should proceed as usual. While attempting to convince Eisenhower that his forecast of the weather conditions is correct, Stagg struggles with his own fear of potentially getting the forecast wrong.
I’m not much into war movies, but the preview shows maps, data collection, and real-world decisions with uncertainty attached and lives at stake. I’m pretty much required to watch this.
Tags: forecasting, movie, uncertainty
2026-04-06 20:05:40
Gas prices are high across the U.S., more so in some places than in others. (Hello from California.) The New York Times has an interactive map of the average price by county. It loads initially by state and then you can zoom in for more details.
I think this is a riff on an older NYT map of the same data and structure, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it was of temperature?
Either way, I’m a fan of maps that show the data directly through text. See also: most popular resident of every city, midterm challengers, the United States of surnames, London surnames, and how online daters describe themselves.
Tags: gas, New York Times, prices
2026-04-06 15:18:50
GlobalPetrolPrices tracks prices around the world for 150 countries, in case you’re wondering how your country compares. If you want to make it feel like you’re getting a bargain, try comparing against Hong Kong prices.
