There’s a great talk by Marc Farr (“I wish I was macho instead of just deep”) that you can view on the Midlands Analyst Network website. It's very thought-provoking. Here are some of my thoughts… 1/18

American fascist: your going to the camps, American Liberal, chuckling: ‘you’re’. "You don’t fight the politics of violence by quibbling with the details! You stamp it into a million pieces!" Fantastic piece by @jonnelledge.bsky.social substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Is there a difference between upper case emphasis and bold-and-underlined emphasis?

This graffiti on Restalrig Road made me remember that fantastic article by Nicholas Carr ("The Tyranny of Now") in which he wrote about Harold Innis's distinction between 'time-biased' media and 'space-biased' media! www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

You don't have to be old to be right wing, but it helps. Great graph by @owenwntr.bsky.social in @samfr.bsky.social's latest newsletter.

I've just had a quick glance at this book - it looks ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!!

“Why not paintings or sculpture or other persuasive visual images, or persuasion by the written word alone? … A map is different from other forms of communication because it is uniquely presumed to be a source of honest, objective information.” persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/about/

I've written a lot about disordered discourse and counterpublics, but given recent events I want to cover a key part of disordered discourse, which I call the four pillars of disordered doubt.

"I regret the thing that someone else did to me"

The top of Arthur's Seat (Edinburgh) seen from Crow Hill this morning.

1/ Scotland hospital (EDs) weekly A&E performance, week ending August 24 - Rise in %age Within 4 Hours, remaining at 2022/23/24 levels - public.tableau.com/views/Scotla...

You can access long - and interesting - emergency care data timelines from the @publichealthscot.bsky.social website. www.publichealthscotland.scot/healthcare-s...

German diplomat at Versailles: 'I wonder what future historians will say about all this.' Clemenceau: 'Well they won't say Belgium invaded Germany.'

It shows such a basic lack of political understanding that Labour didn't go straight on the attack over this. Just because most people are worried about immigration being too high it doesn't mean they're psychopaths.

This is how the NHS sees its patient flow problem.

Well it’s bizarre that in 2025 the political dividing line is pro rounding people up and putting them in camps and anti rounding people up and putting them in camps. Even more bizarre that the nuanced position of the Government appears to be rounding people up and putting them in better run camps

@chrisbrogan.bsky.social This is what happens when you try to be brutally honest with yourself in relation to the Impact Attributes...

I bought this book by @chrisbrogan.bsky.social and Julien Smith ages ago. Well, I'm finally getting round to reading it. Up to page 70 already. It's very, very good.

Looking over north Edinburgh towards the Firth of Forth from the top of Crow Hill (the hill next to Arthur's Seat).

I was inspired by @nrennie.bsky.social's datafile of the Scottish Munros, and managed to create a rough 'progress-so-far' scatterplot. But - alas! - I am new to #rstats maps and have absolutely no idea how to superimpose an outline of Scotland on this...

I took Scotland's four-hour compliance data going back to 2008 and drew a 17-year trendline. I'm trying to come up with names for The Five Stages of Four-hour Compliance. So far I've got: 1. Achievement 2. Hankering 3. Brief - very brief - remission 4. Collapse 5. Late rally #rstats #ggplot2

The top of Mount Keen, the easternmost Munro.

we need this on uk tv asap

I liked this #dataviz by BBC Sport. There's a lot of information to pore over here. The only thing I'd change would be to *not* shade the period after 2017-18 so that the shading is congruent with the message in the title.

I tried juxtaposition - using {patchwork} - to emphasise the difference between these two years. In 2019-20 (when the system was less dysfunctional) there was a clear relationship between AMU bed occupancy and four-hour compliance. By 2023-24 that relationship had broken down. #rstats #ggplot2

I’m watching a live stream

@samfriedman.bsky.social This chart is a bit 'lazy'. There isn't a *direct* cause-and-effect relationship between beds occupied by patients in delay and long waits in A&E; there are a few steps in the intervening chain reaction. But it's interesting to see the two indicators on the same graph.

The latest delayed discharge figures for NHS Scotland were published by @publichealthscot.bsky.social on Tuesday this week. I've paired them with the latest >12-hour ED stays figures that were released on the same day. And I added a bit of grey shading to invite comments... #rstats #ggplot2

the scenario we all feared

I'm trying to create a chart that helps us understand - indirectly - what causes Emergency Department (ED) crowding. Here's a barcode graph of Acute Medical Unit (AMU) 'heaviness' (see the alt text for definition), showing how it relates to ED length of stay. #rstats #ggplot2

I've decided my ED fullness barcodes look better against a coloured background. #rstats #ggplot2

Here's a chart showing the relationship between compliance with the four-hour target (vertical axis) and compliance with the twelve-hour 'target' (horizontal axis). The achievement of both has been a rare event in Scotland in the last decade: in just seven out of the 522 weeks. #rstats #ggplot2

Can you imagine if Obama had received a 747 for free from Zambia, and the govt was spending $1bn on bringing it up to the highest standards; and then he was just taking it as a personal gift after his Presidency. Seriously. Think about that for one second.

Happy 15th anniversary of the peak achievement of literary criticism, to all who celebrate

Some thoughts on maps and patient flow: neilpettinger.substack.com/p/we-need-a-...

A close examination of avocadoism by the always-excellent @mjrobbins.com. open.substack.com/pub/martinro...

I drew this plot to answer a question on LinkedIn. I'm trying to show that the 'queue dynamics' of an ED's admitted patient cohort and its non-admitted patient cohort are both similar and different at the same time. But mainly I just got excited about guide = guide_axis(cap = TRUE) #rstats #ggplot2

This week #TidyTuesday explores the New York MTA Permanent Art Catalogue. My bee swarm plot is designed to resemble the layout of a metro station billboard banner. #pydytuesday #dataviz

A simple rule for better public speaking: If you’re using slides that contain text, you must read it out, word-for-word. clauswilke.substack.com/p/read-out-a...

tomb = toom womb = woom bomb = boom (eventually)

@antoinevernet.bsky.social Occasionally the trajectory looks healthier!

Patient flow: it's not always bad news. Look at the blue shaded area on the right hand side of this chart, that's a big deal. #rstats #ggplot2

On the one hand there was one land line for all of us and it was attached to the wall; on the other hand we kids were not attached at all and could roam absolutely freely and on our own without even having to advise of destination or time of return. Now phones are free-roaming but kids are not.

This latest article by @policyskeptic.bsky.social is music to the ears of those of us who obsess over "the unglamorous shop floor operational detail". www.hsj.co.uk/daily-insigh...

An attempt to visualize the difference that ED crowding makes to four-hour compliance. I've 'smoothed out' the distributions (so that both curves are 'perfect' Normal curves) to try to make the point clearer. The means and standard deviations are real, though. #rstats #ggplot2

That's it? That's all you have to type? #rstats

I'm sure I'm not the first person to steal this visual idea. #rstats #ggplot2 #PowerPoint (!)

Address autofill is like a small child doing a magic trick. “Give me your house number and postcode and I’ll tell you your address” “I mean, I could just fill it in mys—“ “NO! I HAVE TO DO THE MAGIC TRICK!” *produces list of 134 addresses* “IS IT ONE OF THESE?”

I spent too long today trying to re-arrange the Bauhaus shapes. I wanted to see if I could get the vertical side of the yellow equilateral triangle to drop through the midpoint of the red square (which it doesn't here) and still have the two left-hand edges of the square touching the triangle. 1/2

It was good to see @samfr.bsky.social say today that "the main reason for lengthy A&E waiting times is the lack of hospital beds for people who need admitting, which gums up the whole system as they have to keep being treated by emergency staff." samf.substack.com/p/optimism-o... #rstats #ggplot2