Jo Wood
@jwolondon.bsky.social
3.1K followers 360 following 610 posts
Professor of Visual Analytics who does datavis, visualization storytelling and natural travel. Did I mention visualization?
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Interested in accessibility and data vis? Just 2 days left to apply for this one year researcher role on the Dara project www.dara.org.uk
jwolondon.bsky.social
Yes, very much. A 'check your privilege' reminder to Mr Fry wouldn't go amiss.
jwolondon.bsky.social
Growing up In Bristol in the 80s, 'ideal' was still very common, even if not 'elling' other words. And being the 80s, we were all into Madonnal.

And of course, Bristol itself is an elled version of Bridgestow.
jwolondon.bsky.social
Balm for the soul.
folklorewales.com
Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵
Tawny owl
jwolondon.bsky.social
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking 'party = leader' as this is the almost the definition of Farage/Reform, and the way Labour has headed since Blair.

The Greens' policy making process is much more democratic (via conference as the Labour Party once was).
jwolondon.bsky.social
I can still see some red.
jwolondon.bsky.social
I agree. LED lights, joules and zettajoules are too abstract to create an intuitive emotional connection to climate breakdown. The change in scale from the individual to global is just too great. Better to put emphasis on effects (5 extra days when too hot to go to work; this woodland will die etc.)
jwolondon.bsky.social
A great post from @djnavarro.net, providing an accessible explanation of why statistics that can appear to reveal our ignorance may actually do the opposite. Makes excellent use of #datavis to provide visual support for the argument.

blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2025-0...
Some notes on probability judgement – Notes from a data witch
For the love of fuck, literally nobody thinks that 20% of the population is transgender. Please stop sharing that ridiculous YouGov statistic
blog.djnavarro.net
jwolondon.bsky.social
Truchet tiling is a special case of Wave Function Collapse (Model Synthesis) where any tile can be placed adjacently to any other. This offers some interesting possibilities for structuring which tiles are selected.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_s...
Model synthesis - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
jwolondon.bsky.social
Hard, yes, but so valuable. Not just for potential readers, but as form of literate programming / Socratic dialogue / rubber ducking. Teaching is learning.
jwolondon.bsky.social
Ah, that makes more sense. I had always thought it was because on old manual typewriters, the shift key moved the mechanism up (although that would engage the lower of the two letters on each key).
jwolondon.bsky.social
And perhaps this explains the rise in 'reaction videos', albeit with an individualized perspective.
jwolondon.bsky.social
I wonder if that shapes the structure as favs and shares reflect the thing as a whole, but laughter occurs along the way.
jwolondon.bsky.social
This is great. Is there a link to the data? I'd love to explore those other dots on the scatterplot.

And genuine question: Why is it that we are good a ordering likelihood but so poor at attaching absolute numbers?
jwolondon.bsky.social
🚨#datavis Job alert 🚨

Fancy working with us in London as a researcher using @observablehq.com Plot for accessible #datavis?

To support people with language disability in the use of data visualization for everyday decision making.

www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/about/jobs/a...
Details | City St George's, University of London
Details of job vacancy at City St George's,, University of London
www.citystgeorges.ac.uk
jwolondon.bsky.social
Are they going to arrest the Guardian team for the same communication?

What an illiberal mess from government and police.
jwolondon.bsky.social
Sentence of Theseus.
jwolondon.bsky.social
In the more creative domain, D3 might also offer a good platform (Bremer and Wu have supported this with much of their work). But its tech barrier to entry is higher than P5, so may depend on prior tech skills/enthusiasm.
jwolondon.bsky.social
Depends on why people might want to use 'code-based vis'. If the goal is to accelerate vis production, I would say, no - a GoG-based library probably better. If the goal is more creative design, the lower-level more procedural approach of P5 better. Prob explains why vis libs less common in P5 now.
jwolondon.bsky.social
That's reassuring (and the folding of Framework into Notebooks 2 makes sense).

I did initially read your 'yes' as a response to the 'or has it been abandoned' clause, so was a relief to see I was wrong.

Looking forward to an abstracted brushing pattern in Plot which fills an important gap.
jwolondon.bsky.social
Seems likely (my institution has just completed a large merger).

While mergers aren't intrinsically bad, the current motivations seem to be a search for mythical 'efficiencies'. That risks either asset stripping of the smaller partner or degradation in staff and student experience.