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British tourists are being urged to watch a new safety video on how to survive a terrorist attack ahead of their summer breaks. The four-minute clip issued by counterterrorism police depicts a firearms attack unfolding at a hotel.

And the message is simple – Run, Hide, Tell!

Just over two years ago, 30 Britons were killed in a terrorist shooting rampage at a resort in Sousse, Tunisia. Seifeddine Rezgui walked off the beach and through the Imperial Marhaba hotel, systematically shooting dead holidaymakers. RT reports that police have emphasized there is no specific intelligence that UK holidaymakers will be targeted this summer, but said the film is part of a general campaign to raise public awareness…

Detective Chief Superintendent Scott Wilson, national coordinator for the Protect and Prepare strategy, told the Press Association that the chances of being caught up in a terrorist incident are “still low” but “sadly we have seen atrocities that take place in the UK and abroad.”

“It is important that everyone stays alert and knows what to do if the worst was to happen.

 

“As we saw in Tunisia in 2015, any westerner is likely to be a target anywhere in the world,” he added.

 

“We want people to think of this in the same way they do the safety films airlines show before take-off.

 

“They don’t expect anything bad to happen but it is a sensible safety precaution to show people what to do.”

The video encourages people to first run to a place of safety if possible, leaving belongings behind and bringing others with them.

If there is no place of safety, they should hide by barricading themselves in and turn their phones to silent.

As soon as it is safe, they should alert authorities by using the local emergency number, which is 112 in EU countries.

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Authored by Milton Ezrati via NationalInterest.org,

Donald Trump, for all his rhetorical clumsiness and intellectual limitations, still sometimes makes a valid point. He does when he says that Germany is “very bad on trade.” However much Berlin claims innocence and good intentions, the fact remains that the euro heavily stacks the deck in favor of German exporters and against others, in Europe and further afield. It is surely no coincidence that the country’s trade has gone from about balance when the euro was created to a huge surplus amounting at last measure to over 8 percent of the economy—while at the same time every other major EU economy has fallen into deficit. Nor could an honest observer deny that the bias distorts economic structures in Europe and beyond, perhaps most especially in Germany, a point Berlin also seems to have missed.

The euro was supposed to help all who joined it. When it was introduced at the very end of the last century, the EU provided the world with white papers and policy briefings itemizing the common currency’s universal benefits. Politically, Europe, as a single entity with a single currency, could, they argued, at last stand as a peer to other powerful economies, such as the United States, Japan and China. The euro would also share the benefits of seigniorage more equally throughout the union. Because business holds currency, issuing nations get the benefit of acquiring real goods and services in return for the paper that the sellers hold. But since business prefers to hold the currencies of larger, stronger economies, it is these countries that tend to get the greatest benefit. The euro, its creators argued, would give seigniorage advantages to the union as a whole and not just its strongest members.

All, the EU argued further, would benefit from the increase in trade that would develop as people worried less over currency fluctuations. With little risk of a currency loss, interest rates would fall, giving especially smaller, weaker members the advantage of cheaper credit and encouraging more investment and economic development than would otherwise occur. Greater trade would also deepen economic integration, allow residents of the union to choose from a greater diversity of goods and services, and offer the more unified European economy greater resilience in the face of economic cycles, whether they had their origins internally or from abroad.

It was a pretty picture, but it did not quite work as planned. Instead of giving all greater general advantages, the common currency, it is now clear, locked in distorting and inequitable currency mispricings. These began with the enthusiasm in the run up to the currency union. High hopes for countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, and to a lesser extent Italy, had bid up the prices of their individual national currencies. In time, reality would have adjusted such overpricing back to levels better suited to each economy’s fundamental strengths and weaknesses. But the euro froze them in place, making permanent what otherwise would have been a temporary pressure. At the same time, Germany, which at the time was still suffering from the economic difficulties of its reunification, joined the common currency with a weak deutsche mark, locking in a rate, International Monetary Fund (IMF) data suggests, some 6 percent below levels consistent with German economic fundamentals.

Right from the start, then, the currency union divided the Eurozone into two classes of economies. Greece, Spain Portugal, Italy, and others became the consumers. Because the euro had locked in their overpriced currencies, populations in these countries had the sense that they had more global purchasing power than their economic fundamentals could support and consumed accordingly. At the same time, the currency overpricing put producers in these countries at a competitive disadvantage. Germany, having locked in a cheap currency position, faced the opposite mix. It became the producer for all Europe even as its own consumers, feeling a little poorer than they otherwise might have, remained cautious. Because Germans in this situation had every incentive to sustain production, while others did not, they made more productive investments, improving their economic fundamentals and so widening the gap between economic reality and the euro’s expression of it. Updated IMF data suggests that by 2016 Germany’s relative pricing edge had doubled to 12 percent.

These pricing biases have gone on to foster still more harm. The German economy has become increasingly export oriented, less responsive to its own consumers, more vulnerable to what happens abroad, and consequently more fragile. The distortions have also spilled outside Europe. By exacerbating the fiscal-financial problems of so many Eurozone members, they contributed to a general decline of the euro against the dollar, the yen, the yuan and other currencies. Accordingly, German industry’s pricing advantage has extended to the global marketplace, certainly compared to where matters would have stood if Germany had an independent currency that avoided the taint of Europe’s troubled economies. Japanese producers complain incessantly about how the strong yen has priced their products off global markets. American producers, which have seen the euro fall some 30 percent against the dollar during the past ten years, are hardly any better off. German industry makes no such complaints.

Berlin and the German media have pushed away any blame. They hotly deny that the country engineered matters in this way. This may be so. No one at the euro’s birth anticipated such a result, not even the Germans. But whether the advantage was planned or not, Berlin, it is clear, has certainly taken advantage of it and has taken steps to perpetuate it. Germany has, for instance, put some 671 billion euros ($752 billion) at risk, one quarter of its gross domestic product (GDP), to support Greece and other troubled nations on Europe’s periphery. It has also helped lasso the IMF into such lending. Berlin claims that all this money at risk reflects its commitment to the European experiment in union. That may indeed be so, but it is an awful lot of altruism. A more cynically inclined observer might suggest such extreme actions have an alternative motivation, that the Germans are desperate to prevent the unraveling of a structure that serves German industry well.

Whatever the truth of German motivations, Trump, it should be clear now, has a point. Germany is leveraging an unfair and distorting competitive advantage. More important everyone, except of course German industrialists, has an interest in unwinding this currency pricing bias. It is not apparent how Europe could do this. A harmonization of tax and spending policies might reduce some of the hardship imposed by these pricing biases but not remove the basic problem. A good first step might at least admit that such distortions exist and that an adjustment would provide relief. For non-German consumers, it might encourage restraint by demonstrating that the global purchasing power of their incomes is less than they had supposed. For German households, it would have the opposite effect. Finding a way to correct the imbalance would provide a lift to non-German production and in so doing lift the pressure of the fiscal-financial crisis under which Europe has labored now for almost ten years. In the process, it would save the German taxpayer from having to put so much money at risk to prop up a distorting system. If an adjustment would hurt German industry, it would also slow or perhaps reverse the underlying ill effects it is having on the structure of that important economy.

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According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, Russians still have a high level of confidence in President Putin’s ability to do the right thing regarding world affairs.

Despite his high overall approval rating, however, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, Putin is actually losing public support on many key issues…

You will find more statistics at Statista

Support for his handling of relations with Ukraine and the EU have dropped 20 and 15 percentage points respectively since 2015.

Russians are also increasingly dissatisfied with the way their president is handing relations with the United States. In 2015, 85 percent of people were satisfied with Putin’s handling of relations between Moscow and Washington and in 2017, that has fallen to 73 percent.

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Authored by John Mills via The Mises Institute,

In December 2016, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) nationalized Ukraine’s largest private bank for what we now know was an incorrect understanding of the facts. It remains unclear who benefitted from this expropriation…

But it wasn’t just a misunderstanding. The nationalization of PrivatBank very likely was the result of a still-unexplained refusal by the NBU to accept the financial reality of the situation.

This extraordinary government takeover has made the banking and economic situation in Ukraine much worse rather than better, and is an almost classic case of government overreach.

The NBU’s inappropriate and unnecessary nationalization has hurt the Ukrainian economy, stolen millions from PrivatBank’s owners and is forcing Ukraine’s taxpayers to bear a substantial additional burden.

The NBU took its action in large part because of what it said was an unacceptable level of related-party loans: 90 percent or more was the number it frequently used.

But Ernst & Young, the global “Big Four” accounting firm the NBU hired to undertake an audit of PrivatBank at the end of 2016, said the actual level of related-party loans at PrivatBank was merely 4.7 percent.

And that very low level (an astounding almost 95 percent less than what the NBU used to justify its nationalization) is itself lower than the level of related-party loans reported a year earlier in a separate audit conducted by yet another Big Four firm: PWC.

Perhaps to protect itself from what will undoubtedly be withering criticism, the NBU is now considering suspending PWC from auditing Ukrainian banks, has accused one of the most renowned and highly esteemed auditors in the world of being “unprofessional,” and is at least hinting that its audits contributed to the situation.

The NBU has claimed that PrivatBank siphoned a majority of its equity to related party loans to enrich the bank’s shareholders. Operating activities show that the cash flow for 2016 was 21 billion Ukrainian hryvnia to client funds, but not to the issuance of loans to related parties.

Similarly, the NBU made an arbitrary, erroneous and harmful decision to regard PrivatBank’s collateral as unacceptable even though a significant amount of the loans that were classified as “impaired” should have been acceptable under IFRS standards.

But it’s not just the NBU’s decision to nationalize PrivatBank that’s questionable; serious issues have now been raised about the way the NBU carried out the nationalization once it decided to move forward.

The NBU’s capitalization of PrivatBank after the nationalization was a transfer of government bonds, rather than cash, that effectively was worthless.

Up to then, the NBU always required the valuation of collateral from independent appraisers so that its value would be recorded appropriately on the balance sheet. But, as E&Y stated in its 2016 audit report, ten days after the nationalization, there was a sudden increase of investments in government bonds that were never valued. Who will buy those bonds now?

But the biggest issue is why the NBU ever thought that government control through nationalization of Ukraine’s largest privately owned bank was appropriate in the first place. PrivatBank had a strong vote of confidence from its customers with 40 percent of the country’s private deposits and serving 44% of corporate clients. It had a strong positive track record of supporting Ukraine’s economy and creating jobs. And, as a report by E&Y (the auditors chosen by the NBU) subsequently confirmed, according to IFRS standards its financials were far stronger than the NBU was charging.

All of this makes the NBU’s nationalization of PrivatBank more of an unnecessary expropriation – a taking by the government – than a good banking practice. That is the textbook definition of a scandal.

 

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We have written frequently on the topic of migrant crime in Sweden over the past several months.  From attacks on journalists and cops, to the development of so-called “no-go zones” where basic police and postal services have been suspended due to soaring crime levels, parts of the otherwise quite Nordic country have been literally transformed by an influx of migrants over the past several years. 

So, what’s attracting the droves of migrants to the frozen tundra of northern Europe.  Well, luckily U.S. News & World Report has an official ranking to help answer that question and turns out it’s not just the allure of Swedish soccer, or their fans…

As US News points out today, 80 countries around the globe were ranked based on their appeal to migrants and Sweden ‘won’ the coveted top spot.  Criteria for the ranking ranged from economic stability and income equality to the availability of language training and the amount of remittances that migrants sent back to their home countries.

To determine the Best Countries to Be an Immigrant, U.S. News assessed international perceptions of a country, as well as immigration policy and economic data.

 

More than 21,000 people from all regions of the world participated in the Best Countries survey, in which they assessed how closely they associated 80 countries with specific characteristics. Four of these – “economically stable,” “good job market,” “income equality” and “is a place I would live” – were included in the Best Countries to Be an Immigrant ranking.

 

Countries also were scored in relation to others on the share of migrants in their population; the amount of remittances the migrants they host sent home; and graded on a United Nations assessment of integration measures provided for immigrants, such as language training and transfers of job certifications, and the rationale behind current integration policies.

 

Scores for these eight factors on a 100-point scale were averaged together for an overall score.

Of course, we suspect that not everyone in Sweden is excited about this new honor, including that Swedish police officer who recently offered up a little more truth than people are used to when he posted an epic rant on Facebook about immigrant crimes plaguing his police department and his country.  Here is a small taste of the rant (full post here):

“Here we go; this is what I’ve handled from Monday-Friday this week: rape, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape, extortion, blackmail, assault, violence against police, threats to police, drug crime, drugs, crime, felony, attempted murder, rape again, extortion again and ill-treatment.”

 

“Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, again, again, again. Christopher… what, is it true? Yes, a Swedish name snuck in on the edges of a drug crime. Mohammed, Mahmod Ali, again and again.”

 

“Countries representing all the crimes this week: Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown, unknown country, Sweden. Half of the suspects, we can’t be sure because they don’t have any valid papers. Which in itself usually means that they’re lying about their nationality and identity.”

As the Washington Post points out, Sweden wasn’t the only Nordic country to fare well in the ranking, with Norway, Finland and Denmark all winning a spot in the top 10 largely due to favorable perceptions found in the survey about their economies and commitment to income equality. Other countries, such as Canada and Switzerland, were given positive marks not only for their economy but also integration measures for immigrants, such as language training.

Meanwhile, the U.S. scored well because of the large numbers of remittances. Britain ranked even lower — 17th — despite its strong economy, because its immigration policy specifically favored its own nationals. U.S. News noted that it was one of only six countries that had similar policies, including Saudi Arabia and Myanmar.

 

To summarize, the countries with the best economies and highest entitlement spending per capita allow their migrants the greatest opportunity to export domestic wealth and are therefore the ‘winners.’

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Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

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The violent riots that engulfed the city of Hamburg during the G20 summit have prompted some deep soul-searching among ordinary Germans while provoking a wave of indignation among German politicians, who demanded a radical change of approach toward violent protests, as well as to left-wing extremism. Speaking to Bild, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said “Germany’s image in the international community has been severely damaged due to the incidents in Hamburg” following three nights of violent clashes between the left-wing radicals and police in the German northern port city that hosted the G20 summit.

“All alleged political motives for this orgy of violence are full of deceit and should just serve as a disguise for the real motive of the offenders that [came] from all parts of Europe: violence in itself,” Gabriel blasted, perhaps not knowing that NYC Mayor de Blasio flew to Hamburg with the explicit “noble” intention of encouraging said group of protesters.

The minister also demanded the creation of an EU-wide special investigative committee that would launch an inquiry against all those involved in the violent riots in Hamburg. “A state governed by the rule of law must now demonstrate an ability to defend itself.”

Echoing Gabriel, Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas also spoke about the necessity of an EU-wide response to outbreaks of left-wing extremism. He particularly demanded the establishment of the European information databank on extremists as well as more intensive exchange of data on extremists committing violent crimes. “We have faced a new form of violence, to which we should respond with enhanced cooperation in fighting extremists,” Maas told the German media on Monday in Berlin. He also vowed to employ a tougher approach toward violent extremists’ supporters. “Those, who support rampant violence will also have to stand trial,” he said, as cited by the Der Tagesspiegel daily.

Maas told German broadcaster NDR he backed creation of a “database of left-wing extremists”, but said it could take a long time to set up. In the meantime, countries should at least exchange data about those convicted of violent acts, he said.

Also on Monday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere compared the left-wing rioters in Hamburg to neo-nazis and islamic terrorists. “The brutality with which extremely violent anarchists have proceeded in Hamburg since Thursday is unfathomable and scandalous,” de Maiziere told reporters. “Those were not demonstrators. Those were violent and felonious radicals,” the minister said during a press conference on Monday, adding that those who staged violent riots in Hamburg were “despicable, violent extremists just like neo-Nazis and Islamist terrorists.” He added that people who had thrown paving slabs from rooftops had essentially been “preparing attempted murder”.

He also echoed Gabriel’s words, saying that they have no right to use any political motives to justify their actions and expressed his hope that the German courts would pass “tough sentences” upon them. He went on to say that summits similar to the G20 would continue to be hosted in major German cities, despite any threats of violence from various extremists. “Any other approach would be a capitulation of the law-bound state,” the minister added.

Martin Schulz, the Social Democrat (SPD) challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s national election in September, said the militants had acted like terrorists. He said the “marauding gangs” could not claim to have any political legitimacy for their actions, adding: “It had the characteristics of terrorism.”

“Such small-minded skirmishes are the business of people who took a whole city hostage for their dim-wittedness in an almost terrorist manner,” said Schulz, whose party is trailing Merkel’s conservatives in the opinion polls.

* * *

There were also mutual accusations among Germany’s political parties, as many politicians focused specifically on the flaws of the existing approach towards left-wing extremism and violence in Germany by saying that this problem has long been neglected by the authorities.

The head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Lindner, did not go quite as far as Maas’ suggestion of a database of left-wing extremists, but demanded that extremists’ activities be “much more closely monitored” by the German domestic security service, the BfV, which is usually tasked with dealing with terrorist activities or far-right extremists.  A member of the presidium of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, Jens Spahn, told Bild on Sunday that “the extent of left-wing extremism in Germany has been downplayed for years.”

If those were neo-Nazis who reduced Hamburg to “wreckage and ashes,” the public indignation would be rightfully big, he said, adding that “the left-wing fascists with their hatred and violence need just the same clear response.”

The politician also went further, accusing the Social Democrats, Greens and Left parties of deliberately downplaying the left-wing violence and “closing their eyes” to it. His words were echoed by CDU Secretary General Peter Tauber, who told Bild that “nobody would come to the idea of just tolerating far-right extremist centers” while, “in case of the left-wing extremist centers such as Rigaer Strasse in Berlin or the Rote Flora in Hamburg, people are often too reserved.”

“That must change,” Tauber added.

His words were echoed by Stephan Mayer, an MP from the CDU’s ally, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party, who said that the city authorities in Berlin and Hamburg “should no longer tolerate squatting by left-wing extremists and lawless zones in Rigaer Strasse and the Rote Flora.” Both places were squatted by left-wing groups after being abandoned years ago. Similar ideas were expressed by the head of the Federal Chancellor’s Office, Peter Altmaier, who said that the closure of the left-wing extremists’ centers would be a “test” for Germany.

“We should not tolerate any lawless zones,” he said, adding that the left-wing extremists consistently spread the idea that “damage to property is not that bad.” He went on to say that tolerating such ideas is a “grave mistake.”

In his Twitter post, Altmaier also compared what he called “repulsive extreme terror” in Hamburg to terror from right-wing extremists and Islamists. He also thanked Hamburg police for its efforts aimed at containing the rioters.

Linksextremer Terror in Hamburg war widerwärtig und so schlimm wie Terror von Rechtsextremen und Islamisten. Danke Polizei. Danke Hamburg.

— Peter Altmaier (@peteraltmaier) July 8, 2017

* * *

Police said almost 500 officers were injured during the protests, with 186 people arrested and 225 taken into custody.

As Reuters reports, some commentators have criticized Merkel’s choice of Hamburg, a seaport with a strong radical leftist tradition, to host the meeting, saying her desire to demonstrate her commitment to freedom of speech had backfired.

To be sure, the chancellor also condemned the violence in her speech at the summit.

“I sharply condemn the rampant violence and unrestrained brutality the police was facing over and over again during the G20 summit,” she said at that time, adding that “there is not the slightest justification for looting, arson and brutal attacks.”

Merkel promised compensation to those who had property damaged. De Maiziere said he expected judicial authorities to pass tough sentences on the militants and added that breaching the peace could result in prison sentences lasting several years.

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Authored by Michael Hart and StockBoardAsset via StockBoardAsset.com,

Despite Big Agriculture claiming for years that their pesticides only kill pests, a report published in late June in the Journal Science proved what many people have suspected for years: the type of pesticides that Bayer pioneered, known as neonicotinoids, are responsible for diminishing numbers of honeybees.

“Two studies, conducted on different crops and on two continents … find that bees near corn crops are exposed to neonicotinoids for 3 to 4 months via nontarget pollen, resulting in decreased survival and immune responses, especially when co-exposed to a commonly used agrochemical fungicide.” the report said.

The studies even found neonicotinoid residue inside of hives where no chemicals had been used nearby. The study also noted that the presence of these insecticide residues was correlated with fewer queen bees in the hives and fewer egg cells in solitary bees nests.

This comes on the heels of the United States placing the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered species list earlier this year.

This is especially troubling, because bees are responsible for pollinating nearly 75 percent of all crops grown for human and animal consumption worldwide.

And US honeybee colonies have been on a steady decline for the last four decades, as this chart illustrates:

However, perhaps the major contributing factor to not only the threats facing the honeybee but also many other species of plants and animals is the threat of globalization. A 2012 report in the journal Nature noted the following:

“Here we show that a significant number of species are threatened as a result of international trade along complex routes, and that, in particular, consumers in developed countries cause threats to species through their demand of commodities that are ultimately produced in developing countries. We linked 25,000 Animalia species threat records from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List to more than 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries and evaluated more than 5 billion supply chains in terms of their biodiversity impacts. Excluding invasive species, we found that 30% of global species threats are due to international trade.”

This map shows the species threat hotspots caused by US consumption. The darker the color, the greater the threat caused by the consumption. The magenta color represents terrestrial species, while the blue represents marine species.
Credit: Daniel Moran and Keiichiro Kanemoto

While the Donald Trump presidency has placed the spotlight on the ways in which globalist policies have harmed the economies of the US as well as many other countries in the developed world, we tend to overlook the ways in which the demand for cheaper and more goods from the developing world harm our environment.  Indeed, the Trump era has ushered in a demand not only for political decentralization, but also for the decentralization of our media, our currencies, and now our food supply as the damage of agricultural centralization becomes apparent. Our demand for 99 cent hamburgers has taken us to the edge of total ecological collapse, and at this point it is unclear if the damage is irreversable.

An interesting development over the last few years has seen large cities in the US most acutely ravaged by globalist policies, such as Detroit and Baltimore, turning derilect buildings within the city into multiacre urban farms as a solution to growing food insecurity within these deindustrialized urban centers. Urban flight from these cities over the years has facilitated the use of large swaths of the city to satiate demand for locally produced fresh produce, and has led to the growth of many year-round farmers markets that have helped to increase food security in these areas while decreasing dependence on these global agribusiness cartels. It seems that some of the Districts in our Hunger Games society are attempting to gain independence from the Capital.

Urban farms, such as this one in Baltimore, have increased food security in cities that have been hit hard by globalism and free trade.

Certainly, as we have noted before in previous columns, we are living in an era where massive change is taking place in almost every sphere of human activity. Right now is the critical juncture in which we will decide whether power will be returned to the people, or will be further consolidated into the hands of those who wish to micromanage every aspect of the human and natural world for their own private gain. The fight for control over the food supply is just one of many battlegrounds in this war for the future of the planet and our lives. Growing public awareness about the dangers of these pesticides as well as GMOs, and an increased demand for locally produced organic agriculture are signs that the public is waking up and understanding the great peril that agricultural centralization poses to not only our health, but the health and wellbeing of our entire planet.

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Today’s visualization comes from data scientist Henrik Lindberg, and it shows America’s favorite past-times based on the participation of people in different income brackets.

It uses data from the American Time Use Survey that is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to break down these activities.

 

COMMON INTERESTS

As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, while activities are all over the map, it appears that some past-times are more common across all income groups.

Team sports and solo pursuits both are represented well in the center. In fact, reading for personal interest, dancing, computer use, hunting, hiking, walking, playing basketball, or playing baseball can all be found in the middle of the spectrum, appealing to Americans in every income group.

Closer to the top and bottom of the visualization, however, we see where income groups diverge in how they spend their time. It’s probably not surprising to see that people with higher incomes spend more time golfing, playing racket sports, attending performing arts, and doing yoga than average. On the flipside, lower income Americans spend more time watching television, listening to the radio, and listening to/playing music.

CURIOUS ANOMALIES

Every data set has its own peculiarities. Sometimes these things can be explained, and sometimes they are just aberrations created as a result of how data was collected (i.e. how a survey was worded, bias, or some other error).

Here are some of the stranger anomalies that appear in this data set. We won’t attempt to explain them here, but feel free to speculate in the comments section:

• Higher income Americans disproportionately enjoy softball – while baseball has more universal appeal across income groups.
• While activities like boating are typically associated with higher income levels, the activity of running is generally not. Yet, running is disproportionately enjoyed by higher income Americans, according to this survey.
• Despite playing baseball being fairly universal across the spectrum, watching baseball skews higher income.
• Writing for personal interest has an interesting distribution: it is enjoyed disproportionately by poorer and richer Americans, but is underrepresented in the middle class.

Can you find anything else that stands out as being an anomaly?

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