Visualizing Data, or Making it Muddier?

Back in August, the New York Times published a graphic that visualizes the experiences that Harris, Trump, Vance, and Walz would bring to the White House. 

It bothered me, and I’ve been looking at it again and again, changing the font size, the screen orientation and brightness, and trying to see how the candidates’ education, service, and work experience compare. But it seems impossible: even when I zoom down to tiny, swaths of it run off the edges of the screen.

I started wondering if the goal was not to compare the candidates, but to obfuscate the stark differences among them. So finally I took the data and made a new chart. You can see all of it at the same time, and instead of the Times’ beige, grayish pink, and light blue, I used some bolder colors, and linked public service, military service, and elected office with different shades of blue.

Data New York Times | Visualization 1greenblogger

Harris and Walz’s columns are dominated by state and national elected offices; Trump’s forty years as a businessman stand out in sharp contrast. But the real outlier is Vance, who served as a senator for only eighteen months before getting tapped as VP canditate.

Vance’s four-year stint as a Marine combat correspondent is by far his longest work commitment. From 2013 to 2023, he hopscotched across the country for jobs with seven different employers: clerkships, a job in corporate litigation, and posts at a biotech start-up, Mithril Capital, Revolution, and Narya, which he co-founded with funding from Peter Thiel. He also started two non-profit organizations, both of which fizzled, and published a mean-spirited memoir.

Vance’s lack of fitness for the presidency is proven by his inability or unwillingness to hold a job for any length of time, his inexperience in leadership, his caustic insults on those with whom he disagrees, and his proven failure in leading non-profit organizations. 

Is it possible that Trump has chosen a VP candidate even more dangerous than himself? Or is Vance proof of how dangerous Trump is?

***

The Times simplifies Walz’s timeline by placing him at Chadron State College from 1982 to 1989. But he left Nebraska in 1984, studied at the University of Houston, worked a factory job building tanning beds in Jonesboro, and went back to Chadron State in 1987, graduating two years later. I include these details for Walz rather than following the Times’ breakdown. 

Walz’s data is a little tricky: his years in the National Guard overlap with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education, doctoral coursework, and his full-time job as a teacher ( and Gay-Straight Alliance advisor and football coach). I slightly compressed his years teaching and studying to incorporate his military service without lengthening his overall career. 

Some Metacognition

I started keeping a log of activity and fatigue levels several days ago, and it got me thinking.

The idea was to see if any patterns emerge so maybe I can organize my life a little bettter. Turns out the answer is always the same: stuff happens. Before Long Covid, I’d roll with that Stuff and just keep moving, but now, Stuff Happens means something else doesn’t happen, and probably I still end up so exhausted I’m shaking. Pacing, ha ha.

Well, anyway, I ended up with some insights into how my brain works, and how it … doesn’t.

from “On Fire,” K. C. Greene

For my whole ADHD life, my brain has been like a ping pong ball catapult capable (look! alliteration!) of firing hundreds of rounds a minute. I was pretty good at catching some of the good ideas and making notes about things to think about later while swatting away or dodging everything else.

Turns out cognitive processing speed is much slower in people with Long Covid than in those who never got infected, or did, but recovered. The idea that slowed processing underlies everything wrong with my brain seems completely plausible.

Because I can’t multi-task any more.

Coming up with words — and spelling them! — while operationalizing syntactic rules of a language to form coherent sentences, working simultaneously bottom-up, top-down, front-to-back and back-to front, requires heavy-duty multi-tasking. 

Writing, same deal. It’s just a little less stressful because no one is watching while I struggle. Instead, I spend, well, sometimes hours, googling words and phrases to try to find the word I want. (“Plausible,” for instance.) Sequencing ideas and making sentences coherent, with brevity and maybe even wit, feels like hauling boulders.

Putting leftovers in a bowl and then in the microwave, food I’m not eating back in the fridge, and empty containers in the dishwasher? Multi-tasking. Before Covid Me wouldn’t even have remembered thinking about it; Long Covid Me gets wires crossed. (BCM? LCM? Hmmm.)

“On fire,” continued

The ballista keeps on launching. (“The Money Keeps Rolling In” from Evita ping-pongs to mind; nah, it doesn’t scan.) A news headline pisses me off (that’s its job now?), there’s a fawn in the neighbors’ yard, my mom sends a text (or five), a social media post gets me thinking, one of the dogs wants attention. Occasionally, the actual phone actually rings. So many decisions, so many ping-pongs to forget.

I try to write everything down. Seriously, everything. Yesterday Catherine noticed on her way out the door that the garbage truck hadn’t come yet and asked me to bring the can to the curb. I didn’t write it down, or do it immediately, and I didn’t think about it again until I heard the truck pulling away. Damn.

Last night, I made a note: “calendar the things.” This morning: What things? Uh-oh.

Alternatively, my mind latches onto some idea and won’t let go and … well, it’s interesting, and it’s important, but I need to spend my energy on other things, but I start looking things up and writing things down and looking up words and suddenly it’s two hours later and I have a headache and look, that almost-full cup of coffee is stone cold and I forgot to eat breakfast again. 

Sometimes forgetting seems like the less disruptive dysfunction.

Cooking is harder than laundry, also because thinking, slow thinking. I keep wondering why the physical demands of doing the laundry don’t take more out of me and why cooking hits me so hard, harder than it seems standing with peripheral neuropathy should be.

Slowed cognitive processing. I might follow a recipe or make it up as I go along; either way, I’m chopping and stirring, measuring carefully or eyeballing, trying not to forget anything, and still batting away ping-pong balls.

My big accomplishment the other day: I soaked a cup and a half of brown rice, drained it, measured water, started the stove, brought the pot to a boil, turned it down, cooked the rice until the water was gone, left it for a few more minutes, and then stirred it. Ye gods. If I ever *thought* about cooking rice before, it was 45 years ago. Now: so many steps. So many timers (an unexpected bonus of Apple watch). 

If I forget I’m doing laundry, maybe stuff gets a little wrinkled. I did laundry last weekend and there are still sheets and pillowcases in the living room. I’ll get to them, eventually.

If I forget I’m cooking? Things burn.

“On fire” concludes