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LGBTQ+ Rights, Battles and Sieges, and Trees
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated Sept. 7, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. LGBTQ+ rights. Equaldex tracks LGBTQ+ rights around the world, categorizing the liberties and restrictions that relate to more than a dozen issues, such as same-sex marriage, blood donation, military service, employment discrimination, and the right to change one’s legal gender. The collaboratively edited database provides an API to retrieve those categorizations and contextual notes by country and/or U.S. state. The project also keeps tabs on developments that alter those rights and public opinion polling. [h/t Giuseppe Sollazzo]
Recessions, Militias, and Atomic Gardening
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated Aug. 17, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. Recessions and expansions. The U.S. has no official definition of a recession, but many observers look to the nongovernmental National Bureau of Economic Research, whose Business Cycle Dating Committee tries to determine “the dates of peaks and troughs that frame economic recessions and expansions.” The committee publishes a table and data files listing those dates for dozens of cycles since the mid-1800s. But be prepared to wait: “Our determination of the trough date in April 2020 occurred 15 months after that date, in July 2021. Earlier determinations took between 4 and 21 months.” [h/t USAFacts]
Young Adult Migration and Talking to the Starship Enterprise
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated Aug. 10, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. Young adult migration. Researchers at Harvard University and the Census Bureau have linked federal tax filings, Census records, and other government data to track the migration patterns of young U.S. residents. Specifically, for each person born in the U.S. between 1984 and 1992, the researchers compared where they lived at age 16 to where they lived at age 26. The project’s public dataset counts the approximate number who moved to/from each pair of commuting zones—overall and disaggregated by race/ethnicity and parental income level. Read more: A reporting recipe from Brent Jones and Eric Schmid, who analyzed the data for St. Louis Public Radio.
Employee Benefits, Cropland, Christianity In China, Data Governance, and Diplomatic Gifts
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated Aug. 3, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. Employee benefit plans. U.S. companies that offer their employees a retirement plan, such as a pension or 401(k), must report the particulars of those plans through Form 5500—a creation of the IRS, Department of Labor, and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Employers offering health plans, vacation, or other welfare benefits to 100-plus workers must typically report those, too. The Department of Labor publishes datasets with details from all Form 5500 submissions going back to 1999, as well as a search tool that goes back to 2010. Related: Through a FOIA request, Dan Bauman has obtained decades of metadata on 80,000-plus “top hat” statements, which concern plans “providing deferred compensation for a select group of management or highly compensated employees.” [h/t Vincent Cocula]
More Than 350 Gig Workers Carjacked, 28 Killed, Over the Last Five Years
Meanwhile, Uber confirms 24,000 alleged physical assaults and threatened assaults against its drivers from 2017 to 2020 By Dara Kerr. By the time the ambulance arrived, Brandy Littrell said she didn’t know how many times she’d been shot. As the paramedics carefully cut off her clothes, they counted—seven. She said she was hit in her leg, stomach, arm, breast, neck, and back. The impact of the bullets broke her shoulder and bruised a lung.
Wildfires, Hospital Prices, Startups, and Sharks
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated July 27, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. Wildfires around the world. The Global Wildfire Information System, expanding on the work of European Forest Fire Information System, uses satellite data to provide weekly and annual estimates of the number of fires and area burned in 200-plus countries. Its bulk data indicates monthly burned hectares by country, sub-country unit, and land type from 2002 to 2019, as well as the boundaries of individual fires from 2001 to 2020. It also publishes gridded spatial data relating to fire danger forecasts, active fires, emissions, and more. As seen in: El Diario’s analysis of forest fires in Spain. [h/t Olaya Argüeso Pérez]
Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?
A firehose of sensitive data from your vehicle is flowing to a group of companies you’ve probably never heard of By Jon Keegan and Alfred Ng. Today’s cars are akin to smartphones, with apps connected to the internet that collect huge amounts of data, some of which is highly personal.
Data Regulations in China, Europe’s Big Tech Battles, and Decentralized IDs
China’s cross-border data policy is taking shape, but are its motives political?. Big Tech’s use of data and pipes under the microscope. Might personal data eventually be owned by the person?. Multinational companies are likely to face further challenges when moving data across China’s borders. The Cyberspace Administration...
Voting Laws, U.S. Budget Appropriations, and the World Cup
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated July 20, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. New voting laws. The Voting Rights Lab has been tracking 2,000-plus laws proposed in U.S. state legislatures since 2021. The tracker focuses on “12 major issue areas relating to voter access and representation,” such as early voting, same-day registration, and ID requirements. It lists each bill’s state, number, author, date introduced, current status, and issue areas, plus a summary and the lab’s “assessment of whether the legislation is likely to improve or interfere with voter access or the administration of elections.” As seen in: “Has Your State Made It Harder To Vote?” (FiveThirtyEight) Related: States Newsroom’s Kira Lerner has compiled a spreadsheet of 120 new election-related criminal penalties, based partly on the tracker’s data.
As Demand for Medication Abortion Increases, Facebook Allows Ads for Potentially Dangerous “Abortion Reversal” Procedure
The Markup has found that Facebook is serving up ads and posts for the so-called “abortion pill reversal” procedure, a medically unapproved and potentially dangerous process that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says is “not based on science.”. Facebook has been circulating this content for...
Uber’s Power, Twitter Disarray, and Growing Military Interest in AI
Ukraine’s war is reviving military interest in AI and other technologies. Leaks show Uber wielded political power and influence to further its goals. China’s big tech giants face more antitrust scrutiny at home. The Ukraine war is pushing militaries to explore technologies out of Silicon Valley, especially artificial...
From U.S. Heat Metrics to Early Oregon Moviegoing
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated July 13, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. Heat metrics. When you talk about outdoor heat, you’re likely referring to “dry-bulb” temperatures, measured by a thermometer shielded from the sun and moisture. But other factors also contribute to the physiological experience of hot weather. To that end, Keith R. Spangler et al. have created a dataset containing daily estimates of the wet-bulb globe temperature, Universal Thermal Climate Index, heat index, humidex, and other heat metrics for every county in the contiguous United States from 2000 through 2020. That first metric, for instance, was “originally developed in the 1950s to establish epidemiologically relevant thermal thresholds to prevent heat-related illnesses at US military training camps” and takes humidity, solar radiation, and wind speed into account.
Banned Books, Mass Expulsions, and Saturday Night Live
Data Is Plural is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. This edition, dated July 6, 2022, has been republished with permission of the author. Banned and challenged books. A recent report from PEN America identified 1,500-plus decisions, made between July 2021 and March 2022, to ban books from U.S. classrooms and school libraries. A spreadsheet accompanying the report lists each decision’s date, type, state, and school district, as well as each banned book’s title, authors, illustrators, and translators. Related: Independent researcher Tasslyn Magnusson, in partnership with EveryLibrary, maintains a spreadsheet of both book bans and book challenges, with 3,000-plus entries since the 2021–22 school year. [h/t Gary Price]
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