Conor McLaughlin

What is it about human nature which always pulls us towards what we can’t have?

In 1997, the National Defense Authorization Act legalized the transfer of military hardware from the Department of Defense (DoD) to all law enforcement agencies for “bona fide law enforcement purposes” as part of the 1033 Program, operated through the Law…

Over Memorial Day weekend, I read a great article by The Athletic musing upon what might happen if Major League baseball decides to play a half season of 82 games.

Two days ago, I published a new blog post where I broke down mobility data that Apple had generously made public to aid cities, researchers, and the public at large.

Earlier this week, Apple released a trove of mobility data, published to help cities and the public understand the real-world impacts of the COVID-19 disease on human movement across the world.

As the COVID-19 coronavirus sweeps across the globe, it presents a public health crisis that is daunting to even the best-prepared communities.

When Kevin Garnett joined Paul Pierce and Ray Allen in Boston in 2007, the “Big Three” style of roster construction method came back to the forefront of modern team building.

Last year, James Harden was an offensive dynamo, averaging a hair over 36 points per game and powering the Rockets to the playoff despite losing Chris Paul and Clint Capela for extended periods of time.

With the 2019-2020 fantasy football season coming to a close, I thought it might be fun to put together a brief retrospective, highlighting some particularly interesting trends and performances by players like Lamar Jackson and Christian McCaffrey.

One of the most exciting elements of this NBA season is that both LA-based teams are championship contenders, with either LeBron James and Anthony Davis or Kawhi Leonard and Paul George rolling into the Staples Center nearly every night.

It’s been too long since I last wrote here!

While baseball’s overarching trends may be leaning the way of the batter, there’s still space for difference-making pitchers to put their own stamp on the game.

Earlier today I was poking through FiveThirtyEight and read a super interesting article chronicling Elizabeth Warren’s rise in popularity since the first Democratic Presidential Debate.

Two weekends ago, my Nationals lost a tough series to the New York Mets, largely due to clutch late-game hitting from the Mets and some poor relief pitching by the Nationals.

I’ve spent the weekend, and past day in particular, reflecting on the tragic shootings that have happened over the past week and a half in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton.

While trawling through HackerNews on a recent afternoon, I stumbled upon an interesting dataset.

With the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 trip to the Moon in the books last week, I thought it might be fun to turn a bit of attention to NASA’s current affairs.

The Cryptocurrency Market has Grown Significantly in 2019 The market capitalization of the top-15 cryptocurrencies has grown significantly over the start of 2019, peaking at over $325 Billion and dipping to roughly $260 Billion in late July - still more t…

Background A few days ago at work, I had a fun conversation with a coworker discussing the price of cocktails in LA and how the “standard price” of a cocktail varies from city to city.

More than any other post I’ve written in recent memory, this post was inspired directly by a moment in today’s Nationals - Braves game (crushing, by the way).

One of my favorite aspects of baseball has always been its grounding in statistical reality - while every player has their own style, everybody is shooting for the same things: Hits, Runs, and RBIs.

Despite losing Bryce Harper to the Phillies in Free Agency, expectations were high for the Washington Nationals opening the 2019 season.

Earlier this month, the City of Chicago became the first major American city to make rideshare data public.

The Special Counsel’s Investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States election, better known as the Mueller Report, has been one of the more fascinating stories of our time.

Following their rival Lyft’s recent public offering, Uber’s much awaited IPO seems to be finally coming to pass.

With the NBA regular season concluded and the playoffs now on deck, I thought it would be fun to peek back at the players and teams that defined this season.

I was recently reading Hacker News and noticed a post linking to the USCIS H1-B data repository, which contains information on the H1-B Visa applications process and statistics about visa submission, approval, and rejection by Citizen and Immigration Serv…

Given Major League Baseball’s status as the only major American sports league without a salary cap, I’m always interested in seeing how teams choose to allocate their resources every year.

With March Madness right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to visualize a bit of data about each region and team, with the end goal of being a bit better informed for filling out my bracket!

After writing my recent article about Bryce Harper’s signing with the Phillies, I started getting really excited about the return of baseball!

Charting LeBron LeBron James passed Michael Jordan tonight on the NBA’s all time points scored leaderboard, surpassing MJ’s 32,292 career points to vault him into 4th place.

One of the interesting facts that I’ve learned as I continue to settle down in Santa Monica is that since May of 2015, the City of Santa Monica has effectively banned short-term home/vacation rentals.

Now that Bryce Harper has officially signed with the Philadelphia Phillies on a 13 year, $330M megadeal, it’s interesting to conduct a retrospective look at the different offers he had on the table when making his decision.

One of my favorite posts from last year was about NBA Rim Protection.

If you haven’t heard of it before, the Big Mac Index is a heuristic invented by The Economist to estimate purchasing power parity across economies.

No real story here - just wanted to make some fun airline maps!

One of the most enjoyable plotlines of the 2018-2019 NBA season has been James Harden’s transformation into a one man wrecking crew, capable of guiding a surging Rockets team up the standings in the West despite losing virtually every other “name brand” c…

Vision This fall I moved into a new house, which I quickly learned has an extremely unreliable thermostat.

Background One of my favorite things in the world (except for one particular night this March) is watching my Virginia Cavaliers play basketball.

Background One of the most frustrating aspects of the Trump administration is the lack of honesty around simple things, from President Trump’s White House visitor log to his golf outings.

Now that we’re a few weeks into the NBA season, it’s fun to see who is having note-worthy starts to the year.

Background If you’re a fan of the National Football League, so far this season you’ve heard an uninterrupted string of commentary surrounding penalties, rule changes, and the role of violence in the game.

A little over two weeks ago, my dad and I set out on a week-long adventure across the United States.

Recently, I discovered that I had set up my IFTTT account to log all of my Uber rides to a Google Sheets workbook.

Background Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the scooters flying around - taking businessmen to work, tourists to monuments, and local kids around the neighborhood.

Earlier this week I put together a series of graphics tracing Donald Trump’s approval rating by voter group and party affiliation, even throwing in the generic congressional ballot for good measure.

See the green line in the middle that starts up, wins a championship, and then drops off the map?

How popular is Donald Trump?

While I was working on my last post about NFL salary cap allocation, I struggled with how best to present the information.

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