May 1, 2026
Briefly
- Canada is starting its census on Monday
- Another ultraprocessed food headline: CNN says Even a single daily serving of ultraprocessed food may raise dementia risk. As before, the research didn’t even try to compare people with no ultraprocessed food intake to those with only a single daily serving. They used a model that approximates the relationship by a curve with no safe level, and so couldn’t address this question — nor did they claim to. The “even a single daily serving” is CNN. What the research claimed is that each extra daily serving translated to 10% more dementia risk. I’m a bit dubious, for the simple reason that ultraprocessed food consumption has gone up but dementia risk (at a given age) hasn’t. But I don’t think anyone’s claiming ultraprocessed food is good.
- Strava makes an app that tracks cycling and running and confidential military locations. Over the last year, Seattle was the top US city for logging bicycle commutes, with Chicago and Minneapolis in the next positions. The Seattle Times says Seattle front of the pack for bike commuting in U.S. cities, but given Seattle’s status as a West Coast tech and nerd haven, it seems quite possible that we’re seeing selection bias. It could easily be that Chicago or the Twin Cities are ahead in commuting but people there are just less likely to report it to Strava.
- Nice blog post by Kieran Healy on maps of data and using hexagons to make all the regions visible
- A graph from The Economist.
I first noticed the unusual definition of Asia in the footnote, especially the exclusion of countries no-one would think to include. The time axis could also be clearer. I presume the slightly longer tick mark is either Dec 2025 or Jan 2026, but a stronger visual cue to past vs future would perhaps be more helpful. The other aspect, which is very common in graphs of the fuel crisis, is the smoothness of the projected decline in the face of uncertainty as to both supply and attempts to manage demand.