Weekly Web Harvest for 2019-09-29

  • Documenting the Now
    Documenting the Now responds to the public’s use of social media for chronicling historically significant events as well as demand from scholars, students, and archivists, among others, seeking a user-friendly means of collecting and preserving this type of digital content. Documenting the Now has a strong commitment to prioritizing ethical practices when working with social media content, especially in terms of collection and long-term preservation.
  • Josh Hader’s Fastball Is Baseball’s Most Mysterious Pitch | FiveThirtyEight
    Hader also owns a below-average total spin rate, as calculated by Statcast’s TrackMan Doppler radar component. The average spin rate for a four-seam fastball this year is 2,284 revolutions per minute, while Hader’s is a rate of 2,154 rpms. Moreover, fastballs — even mid-90 mph iterations — are generally pitches that produce some of the lowest swing-and-miss rates in baseball.

    *****I think about this level of analysis and numbers every time someone says something about AI or big data. A simple game. Intensely scrutinized. Simple rules. Observed from all angles. Recorded. Tons of money. Yet . . .

  • The Day I Thought I Misled the President of the United States: A Visualization Tragicomedy
    “If anything on this graphic causes confusion, ignore the entire product.” That’s perfect. So perfect, in fact, that one of my followers on Twitter, Chen Mingi, suggested I should use it as a title, maybe for an article or even for the next book I’ll write after How Charts Lie.