Bookmarked On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces by Ben Fry (benfry.com)
We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin's On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.
What a spectacular visualization of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
Read Blog graph by Dima GerasimovDima Gerasimov (beepb00p.xyz)

This is an experiment, an alternative way to represent blog posts, as a graph. Click this if you want to get back to the plain list.

The idea is that if you encounter a blog, it's often unclear how to start reading it: typically it's an overwhelming linear list of posts, ordered by date. (thanks Jonathan for bringing my attention to it!)

Representing as a graph allows to relax this linear structure by introducing a partial order (shown by edges). You can start reading from a title that seems most interesting to you, and keep exploring the related posts.

  • clicking on a post title brings you to the post
  • clicking on a tag will bring you to the description of the tag
  • clicking on a date will highlight all connections to the corresponding post, to make the navigation easier
  • clusters correspond to 'themes' (although it's pretty fuzzy)

If you have any ideas on improving this page, or notice any problems, please let me know! You can find the source here.

An interesting visualization for the content in a blog. Somewhat reminiscent of the modus operandi of TiddlyMap. 

This is the sort of thing that Maggie Appleton and the digital gardens gang would appreciate.

Read Who is this Sankey guy? (sankey-diagrams.com)
Sankey diagrams are named after Captain Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey.
Here is some biographical information on Mr. Sankey:
Matthew H. Sankey was an engineer from Ireland. He was born on November 9, 1853 in Nenagh, co. Tipperary (other sources have him being born in Modeshill, co. Tipperary or ...
Bookmarked Genomic epidemiology of novel coronavirus (nextstrain.org)

Maintained by the Nextstrain team. Enabled by data from GISAID
Showing 838 of 838 genomes sampled between Dec 2019 and Mar 2020.

Latest Nextstrain COVID-19 situation report in English and in other languages. Follow @nextstrain for continual updates to data and analysis.

This phylogeny shows evolutionary relationships of hCoV-19 (or SARS-CoV-2) viruses from the ongoing novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. This phylogeny shows an initial emergence in Wuhan, China, in Nov-Dec 2019 followed by sustained human-to-human transmission leading to sampled infections. Although the genetic relationships among sampled viruses are quite clear, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding estimates of transmission dates and in reconstruction of geographic spread. Please be aware that specific inferred transmission patterns are only a hypothesis.

Site numbering and genome structure uses Wuhan-Hu-1/2019 as reference. The phylogeny is rooted relative to early samples from Wuhan. Temporal resolution assumes a nucleotide substitution rate of 8 × 10^-4 subs per site per year. Full details on bioinformatic processing can be found here.

Phylogenetic context of nCoV in SARS-related betacoronaviruses can be seen here.

We gratefully acknowledge the authors, originating and submitting laboratories of the genetic sequence and metadata made available through GISAID on which this research is based. A full listing of all originating and submitting laboratories is available below. An attribution table is available by clicking on "Download Data" at the bottom of the page and then clicking on "Strain Metadata" in the resulting dialog box.

Read A Song of Scottish Publishing, 1671-1893 by Shawn (electricarchaeology.ca)
The Scottish National Library has made available a collection of chapbooks printed in Scotland, from 1671 – 1893, on their website here. That’s nearly 11 million words’ worth of material. The booklets cover an enormous variety of subjects. So, what do you do with it? Today, I decided to turn ...
This is more cool than truly useful, but I could see audioizations of data like this being used to surface and recognize patterns that might not otherwise be seen.

📺 These 3D animations could help you finally understand molecular science | PBS NewsHour

Watched These 3D animations could help you finally understand molecular science from PBS NewsHour
Art and science have in some ways always overlapped, with early scientists using illustrations to depict what they saw under the microscope. Janet Iwasa of the University of Utah is trying to re-establish this link to make thorny scientific data and models approachable to the common eye. Iwasa offers her brief but spectacular take on how 3D animation can make molecular science more accessible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9NDXk7Gs8Y

Visualizations can be tremendously valuable. This story reminds me of an Intersession course that Mary Spiro did at Johns Hopkins to help researchers communicate what their research is about as well as some of the work she did with the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology.

👓 See Just How Much Of A City’s Land Is Used For Parking Spaces

Read See Just How Much Of A City’s Land Is Used For Parking Spaces by Adele Peters (Fast Company)
In Los Angeles, for example, car parking takes up 17,020,594 square meters of land.
A great piece on urban and city planning which focuses on parking. I can only imagine how drastically different Los Angeles could look in just 20 years.

The website featured has some great visualizations and interactive features.

I guessed almost perfectly how much space Los Angeles delegates to cars, trains, and bicycles

🔖 Mapping Uncertainty on the Oregon Trail

Bookmarked Mapping Uncertainty on the Oregon Trail by Anelise H. Shrout
In the early 1840s the American West, though claimed by the United States, was considered by many white Americans to be untamed, wild, and possibly rife with unknown wealth. This was a West that existed largely in the American imagination. In fact, the area west of the Missouri was home to complex Native societies, was divided into political structures, and was intimately known, if not formally mapped. These two competing Wests - that imagined by many Americans and that inhabited by Souix, Pawnee, Snake and Nez Pierce tribes - were mapped both geographically and textually by John C. Frémont between 1842 and 1843. Frémont set out from St. Louis in the summer of 1842, and began to chronicle his journey west, in the wake of "emigrants" who were moving to the Oregon Territory - a route known as the "Oregon Trail." Frémont's first expedition covered the land between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains during the summer and fall of 1842. In the summer of 1843 he set out to write an account of the second half of the Oregon Trail, from the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River in Oregon. The maps contained here are drawn from the Library of Congress's collection "Topographical map of the road from Missouri to Oregon, commencing at the mouth of the Kansas in the Missouri River and ending at the mouth of the Walla-Wallah in the Columbia." They were created using Frémont's journal, and cover his first and second expeditions. I have annotated the maps with accounts of the resting places, flora, fauna, and people Frémont's and his party encountered on their journey west.
You’ve played the game Oregon Trail via DOS (as a child), online, or via app but have you traced the actual trail taken by John C. Frémont between 1842 and 1843? Now you can with this daily interactive map with journal.

Thanks Anelise Shrout!

Topological Map of the Road from Missouri to Oregon