The Daily Chao

A few years ago, award-winning animal photographer Seth Casteel became an overnight sensation when his photos of dogs underwater went viral. What followed was a book deal that resulted in the New York Times best-seller Underwater Dogs.

Casteel’s new book, out Sept. 16, is possibly the only thing cuter thanUnderwater Dogs: Underwater Puppies.

Casteel on the logistics of photographing puppies underwater

I’m wearing a dog costume so that the dogs can feel like I’m one of the pack. … Just kidding. … I usually just wear a wet suit just in case. You know, if you spend 12 hours in a pool with a bunch of dogs, inevitably you’re going to get scratched up a little bit. So I do wear a wet suit. But I just hold my breath — that’s about it. I’m underwater sometimes just a few seconds, sometimes 30 seconds, 60 seconds. But I have my wet suit on. I bring the toys. I bring the fun. And we just have a blast.

Ridiculously Cute Underwater Puppies (You’re Welcome)

I have previously defended Portland’s weather. The point I made was that, while it absolutely rains more often (more days per year) in Portland than most other large cities, we get less rain overall (in terms of depth of water). These maps visualize the latter point using average precipitation from 30-yr normals (1981-2010). Note that almost half of Portland’s precipitation occurs in November-January, but the combined precipitation in July and August is less than 4% of the annual total. To emphasize this seasonality, I’ve also mapped normals for July and December, when Portland is drier and wetter, respectively, than most of the country.

Last week I received news that Dan got engaged to a girl that I had been friends with as a child and never saw afterwards. They met in China at a bar, and he would repeat this story to her (because alcohol) until she figured out that I was her childhood friend. What a strange and wondrous world!

Big news: CBS just announced Stephen Colbert will replace David Letterman on The Late Show next year. Thoughts?

Holding a 10,000 year old piece of ice from the melting glaciers!

Congratulations, Ohio! You Are the Sweariest State in the Union

There’s a relatively long tradition, in the field of data visualization, of tracking the way we swear. This makes sense. Not only is it fun to track, but cursing is also conveniently specific as a data set; you’ve got your f-bombs and your double hockey sticks and your bodily functions, and, factoring in their permutations, you’re good to go. Plus, you don’t need much sophisticated sentiment analysis to ensure that your data are accurate: An f-bomb is pretty much an f-bomb, regardless of the contextual subtleties. As a result of all this, we, the public, get treated to sweary heat maps. And more sweary heat maps. And sweary interactive maps. There’s just something about big data and sailor-cursing that complement each other—like peanut butter and mothereffing jelly. 

Traditionally, those maps are based on text—on swears that are typed into Facebook or, even more publicly, Twitter. Making a map of the sweariest states requires simply gathering geocoded posts, isolating the swears, and going from there.