One of the problems I have with journalism is that too often style takes precedence over precision. This is obviously fine for fiction books, less so with non-fiction although who can tell the difference these days, and should be less and less acceptable as you go from monthly magazines, to the weeklies, to the dailies, until you get to real-time 24/7 news that should be all facts, all the time.

Har har.

As an example, here is a Washington Post article about the Dutch food industry described the Netherlands as “a bit bigger than Maryland”. The article’s whole point is how much food can be produced in a tight space, so having the readers understand how big or small the country of Nethelrands actually was is important. I have ties to both of these places and some sense of their relative sizes, and I always thought the Netherlands to be more than a bit bigger than Maryland. My adopted home state may take a while to drive across, but since it’s being eaten by the Commonwealth of Virginia from one corner and the Chesapeake Bay from the other, there isn’t much land there.

To confirm my suspicion I went to Wikipedia, which said that the land area of Maryland was 25,314 km² while the Netherlands had 41,865 km² total area, 18.41% of which was water, yielding 31,457 km² of land — a full 25% more than Maryland. ⊕ If if you wanted to be more conservative you could say that Maryland was 20% smaller than the Netherlands, but that is not the comparison WaPo made. See also how percentages change with different framing — caveat lector. If I thought a meal cost $35 with tax but then the bill showed $43.75 I’d be asking for an explanation, and so would WaPo writers.

Or is 25% margin of error good enough, if you are to preserve the tired journalistic trope of comparing one thing to another? Because this is a clear case of precision being sacrificed to the gods of style: at 25,314 km² Maryland truly is the closest to the Netherlands of all the states of the Union and also has the benefit of being in WaPo’s local domain. The next closest, West Virgina, is at 62,259 km² twice the size of the Netherlands. Or rather — let’s not make the same sacrifice here — almost twice the size.

On the other hand, this is a 2-year-old article and who cares anyway? While I did stop paying attention to the newspaper noise a while ago, I still leave space for it to change my perception — which this article would have done were the relative sizes within a single-digit percentage of each other. But then I check, and nope, another disappointment.

(↬Marginal Revolution)

The latest walkalogue from Chris Arnade confirms what I have already suspected to be the case: that Belgium is the promised country, and that the area around Antwerp in particular is where I would want to be if I were still in Europe.

On a sadder note, it seems that Brussels is the capital not only of the European Union but also of McEurope, and is to be avoided.

Today was carved out for converting my ye old Blogroll to the new format by exporting all the RSS feeds I follow to OPML and then doing a little bit of cleanup, but of course a little bit turned into a lot and I couldn’t stop fiddling and where oh where has the day gone?

Until next week!

Yesterday I came upon an article about the increasing disconnect between US wealth and GDP growth and this morning I read this personal account of the egg freezing process, and all I can think about now is that both could be the same thing: taking from the future. For better or worse.

A good day for birdwatching.

☕️ Over the last two decades we have gone from Turkish, to AeroPress, to moka pots, and even to a full-fledged espresso machine. But for the last few years our default way to make coffee has been the humble pour-over.

A friend asked about the specifics so I made a quick video.

Hah: U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly.

I can only hope this is a case of an unfortunate headline, not the actual substance of the lawsuit. What would be next, suing BMW for maintaining a BMW monopoly?

I’ve delayed it for as long as possible, but for reasons beyond my control I have to start using time tracking software. The question is: Bluebird, RescueTime or something else entirely?