Lauren Leek

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

Usually I use podcasts-as-data. This time I’m in one. I talked to Jeremy Cherfas on Eat This Podcast about London’s latte line, how Google Maps decides what you like and why private equity decides whether your local pub survives. eatthispodcast.com/maps/

Got to admit I'm a bit in awe of @laurenleek.eu. Another wonderful piece of work.

Fabulous new Substack by @laurenleek.eu, explaining, among other things, why water prices, train tickets, and special educational needs are so expensive in the UK: laurenleek.substack.com/p/theres-no-...

I analysed 40 years of British laws and found that society was the footnote. Dirty rivers, absurd train fares, families fighting for support: all share the same flaw: governments optimise the wrong things. Could software engineering offer a fix? laurenleek.substack.com/p/theres-no-...

Ever wondered what’s actually going on under the hood of ChatGPT, Claude and others and how to apply it to political science questions? Check my promo video and keep an eye on registration 👀 Ps: I promise the actual classes contain fewer of my holiday shots than this video. Probably.

fixed my uni laptop before teaching starts

Back in London this weekend waiting for the tube, I watched a woman turn a bench into an office: meal deal, suitcase, laptop open, call about a startup accelerator. When things don’t work, you improvise. That’s creativity. That’s when I realised living somewhere everything works also has downsides.

🎙️ Can 16,000 hours of podcasts reveal how independent central banks really are? Join us for a discussion at the intersection of economy, data science, and political economy! 🗣️Speaker Lauren Leek 📅3 November |12:00–13:00 CET 📍Maker Space | Hertie School 🔗 www.hertie-school.org/en/datascien...

New post 👀 laurenleek.substack.com/p/why-i-outs...

Check out the interview I did with the amazing Petr Bittner in the run up to the ji.hlava international film festival - where I’ll be speaking in October:) www.inspirationforum.com/texts/pubs-a...

guys, the political scientists are all busy, time to make sweeping and unsupported claims about voter behavior

Nine months ago, I wrote a Substack post about Google Maps and London's restaurants algorithm and offered an alternative map. The Guardian made a video about it. Google wouldn't comment. Today they've finally written to me about section 3.2.3, "No Scraping." Communication at last lol.

Check out my new article written for @arguablymag.bsky.social 👇

Social media algorithms do no always reflect our values A new analysis of X finds that posts from accounts that people follow reflect users’ values—but that there is a misalignment between users’ values and the content the algorithm amplifies (in the "For You" feed). www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Lagarde: "A post by ECB economists on the giant AI bubble in the US? Only if you say it in the most ECB economist way." ECB economists: "We argue that economic research on past technological revolutions points to a worrisome conclusion: a correction of current stock market valuations is likely."

"A world that keeps removing the unlikely also removes the things that could have become the next likely." Another great data post from @laurenleek.eu via @alphaville.ft.com Further Reading. laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur...

Blimey this is a good blog from @laurenleek.eu on how algorithms tend us towards monocultures and that markets won’t save us without some help. Read, and follow her laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur...

In a *stellar* essay entitled "Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same" by the data scientist Lauren Leek, we get a top-notch example of "putting things together": laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur... 11/

Ah, the window seal in the train from The Hague to Amsterdam: perfect place for a performance review of the Dutch public transport chief. (Gotta respect him for taking up a hell of a job though!)

We have more data about ourselves than ever. So why is everything converging on the same? In my new post I use data on high streets, Billboard hits, a million films and my own AI personas to expose the algorithms behind the sameness and how to regulate them. laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur...

Ever wondered what your favourite LLM does when you change your effort level to ultra or max in the hope to get better answers? Just got recommended this very accessible article🙏 (Spoiler there might be some diminishing returns) magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/controllin...

NEW! Combining my two obsessions of cycling and political economy data into a new Substack: Tour de Data. Daily posts for every stage of the Tour de France, digging into what the race tells us about money, place, and power. Not just who's in yellow;) 🚴📊 tourdedata.substack.com

Just added the excellent @laurenleek.eu and @jamesdgriffiths.bsky.social to this pack which already includes @dylandifford.bsky.social and @alexselbyb.bsky.social amongst other great data journalists. Please get in touch with suggestions to add. I'm particularly looking for anyone covering Ireland.

Want to hear me challenge a publican on @bbcnews-world-rss.bsky.social "Radical with Amol Rajan" based on my research on pub closures? oh wait, we actually (mostly) agreed. Do check it out from 18min onwards here: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I have been practicing for when AI takes over our jobs by taking extended holidays. I’ve gotten ahead of the curve.

Bought booza in Punchbowl today. By total coincidence, same family that ran the shop below my grandmother's window in Lebanon. This post became a piece on why London is losing its Brick Lanes because it's well-designed, and Sydney's strips survive because it isn't. open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

Found in Surry Hills (Sydney) street library: Quantitative Analysis for Management, fairy tales and faith books. Gentrification is complete.

It's kind of @laurenleek.eu to like this because I drew very heavily on her laurenleek.substack.com/p/the-quiet-... in piloting this section last year. I gave due credit, of course, but frankly money should probably have changed hands too.

Data engineers: I’m busy building a large-scale cloud data pipeline and want to get the foundations right from the start. What’s the one thing you wish you’d set up early? 🙏

Still trying to figure out the Gold Coast. Skyscrapers as beachfront, strip malls 200m inland, barely footpaths, no city centre and somehow Australia’s favourite holiday destination and 6th biggest city. Please explain (in European).

Not saying we’re in trouble but five black swans on my morning run? I’d short.

Eh yes, Canberra may be the most boring capital in the world, but buses with front bike racks and superb road cycling through national parks? That’s elite boring done well, if you ask me.

Great to see my latest substack post and interactive map of the pokies and third places featured in the most recent Guardian Crunch #datavis newsletter:)

great read, and now I'm wondering how much of the unexplained % of pokies takings from your model is due to money laundering! www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...