I've just made a few changes to my daily Coronavirus Visualization post.

The daily version is now based on seven day moving averages. This helps with the rate at which different regions report statistics and makes the animation a but easier to follow. The shading is based on the difference between the average yesterday and the average for the previous day (i.e. today it's the increase from April 17 - 23 to April 18 - 24).

Population scaling is now different between the daily and cumulative versions. Daily frames are scaled to the worst recorded case and death increase for that region. Cumulative frames are scaled to the cumulative highest case and death levels, but each region is scaled by population so the highest level is on a per capita basis not an absolute total. For the US animation this uses 2019 estimates from the US Census Bureau. The global animation the figures are 2018 World Bank estimates.

Finally the frame rate for videos has increased to 24fps from 5fps.

The post Visualizing Coronavirus Cases and Deaths by Country and US County updates around 8:30am PST every day with images summarizing yesterday and videos that show the course of the pandemic so far.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Coronavirus Visualization Update #etc #coronavirus ITHCWY coronavirus visualization now includes seven day moving average daily updates and population scaled (per-capita) cumulative videos showing the course of the pandemic. )

A Sun Halo photographed from the Marine Cemetery Vista at The Presidio of San Francisco.

In this mesmerizing photograph titled "Sun Halo," the viewer's gaze is immediately drawn to the ethereal halo encircling the radiant sun. The halo, a perfect circle of light, dominates the composition, its edges softly blending into the deep blue sky. Hints of white, wispy clouds float gently at the bottom, adding texture and a sense of scale to the image. The sun itself, positioned centrally, glows with an intense brilliance, casting a subtle gradient of light that diminishes outward. This celestial spectacle creates a sense of otherworldly beauty, capturing a fleeting natural phenomenon with poetic grace.

The composition employs a strong central focus, with the sun and its halo positioned exactly at the midpoint of the frame, emphasizing symmetry and balance. The vastness of the sky envelops the sun, enhancing the simplicity and purity of the composition. The clean lines and minimalistic approach give the photograph an abstract quality, inviting contemplation. One aspect to appreciate is the clarity and precision in capturing the halo's nuances, creating an almost mystical effect. However, the high contrast and central positioning might feel static to some viewers, as these choices limit dynamic tension. Nonetheless, the image's serene and captivating beauty stems from its simplicity and the perfect harmony of natural elements captured within.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Sun Halo #photo #sun #halo Sun Halo shot from the Marine Cemetery Vista at The Presidio of San Francisco, California. )

Once in a while I'm stupid enough to read my email. This month I'm getting a climate credit! Must have done something right? No:

"The California Climate Credit is part of California’s efforts to fight climate change. This credit is from a state program that requires power plants, natural gas providers, and other large industries that emit greenhouse gases to buy carbon pollution permits. The credit on your bill is your share of the payments from the State’s program."

So... apparently part of fighting climate change is making my energy bill randomly cheaper?

It's hard to think of anything less likely to help. Just as I'm starting to feel the pain of winter bills I'm paying slightly less and so I'm slightly less inclined to turn down the heating or finally do something about my beautiful but effectively absent front windows.

A problem with carbon taxation is that it's regressive. So why not use this money to make the first $xx cheaper, and maybe even charge more at the high end of usage?

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(Published to the Fediverse as: California Climate Credit #etc #gas #electricity #climatechange #california Why do I get a California Climate Credit? This is the worst possible way to fight climate change. Do something smarter California! )

Everyone is always trying to kill email, and it's always because it's a supposed productivity villain and life will be so much easier when we can all live happily in some chat based universe. I've spent enough time in Slack and Teams and their predecessors to know that we should go back before it's too late.

Chat brings you infinite inboxes and no great way to tell which of them is important. Having looked away for a few minutes there are dozens of unread conversations. Some of them are people sharing a photo of their cat. One of them is an emergency requiring immediate attention but good luck finding it without wading through everything.

This brings me to a lack of useful state. I handle email in two quick passes - read everything (and discard anything that doesn't need further attention), deal with anything critical and then at some point go back and mop up the rest. In chat though you just blew past something that needs a response eventually and it fades from your mind as you fight the fire elsewhere. I never miss an email, I often miss a chat.

And good luck finding anything. Maybe a market leader or two will establish dominance for long enough but my experience so far has been lurching from one platform to the next, both professionally and personally, and having a hard time finding that one thing I know should be in there from the end of last year. My Gmail has emails going back to 1996, and yes that's almost a decade before Gmail existed. I can find anything.

On the subject of dominance, the real reason for all of the attempted email homicide is that it's one of the last open systems that everyone still uses. If only email would just die you'll be trapped forever in Messenger and Hangouts.

[email protected]

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Inc has an article based on this blog suggesting that the solution to 'zoom fatigue' is reverse meetings.

I imagined that this was going to be a S03E01 of Red Dwarf type scenario where you get handed some notes and a few action items and then apologize for leaving early. But no, it's office hours.

""In a reverse meeting scenario, by contrast, I might take only 10 minutes from each colleague, taking up 50 minutes total of my time, and 50 minutes total of their time, for an overall demand of 100 minutes of attention, which is 3.6 times less cost," Newport writes. And voilà, he's just given your team back more than four hours of productive time a week."

Assuming that people manage to show up in perfect slots with no conflict and do so in a way that has perfect utilization for the victim and that there is no value in having someone point out that one of those 10 minute slots was full of incorrect information sending you down a two week rabbit hole that could have easily been avoided by having the right people spend some time together.

In a perfect world my ideal meeting situation is the meeting defragmenter. This involves software and cooperation unfortunately so the next best solution is out of office hours. I need focused time to get stuff done and blocking large chunks of meeting repelling time is really the only thing that works.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Out of Office Hours #etc #meetings #productivity A critique of Reverse Meetings and a proposal for actually increasing efficiency with the concept of a meeting defragmenter. )