Doug MacDowell writes about drawing data visualisations completely by hand.

“What are you working on these days?”
“Data visualizations.” I told him.
“Ah, you using algorithms, machine learning, cloud computing, things like that?”
“No.” I said. “I’m just trying to draw a line graph.”

My neighbor thought I was getting into some complex sh**. But what’s been more interesting to me lately than using […] is learning to draw data by hand. 50 Hours to Draw Some Lines is about spending more than a week on something that software can accomplish in 20 minutes - and a catalog of resources and methods acquired along the way.

Amanda Shendruk writes about the work that’s done after Burning Man, where 150 people line up, side by side and arms apart, and slow walk the entire playa looking for Moop (Matter Out of Place).

This forensic-style sweep takes weeks; everything they find is removed and logged. At the end, they’re left with a remarkable accounting of what 70,000 people left behind: The MOOP Map. And I’m obsessed.

The Moop Map is a pretty remarkable view of what is left behind: