I've been at this a while, gang, this business of looking at the world around me and wondering what patterns hold it together. It's the seventh-grade-biology-class version of The Matrix; I see a thing and suddenly find myself trying to dissect the strings of numbers that
This week's newsletter covers a range of topics: The president's complex network of companies, how weather has gotten worse, a new tool to visualize the whole world at once. But I did reserve some time to call out a terrible chart from Fox News, so stick
It's the most relatable thing in the world: You've just put your weekly data-visualization newsletter to bed when the president of the United States unilaterally decides that the country is going to launch a war against a foreign country. Not much to do but throw some
Some of you may have noticed that last week's newsletter ended with a bit of housekeeping: I wasn't planning on doing a newsletter this week, since I'm on a trip with my family. I was still rummaging around on the internet of course, bookmarking
Today, Feb. 14, commemorates the day St. Valentine drove the incels from Italy or something. It is to love what Oct. 31 is to fear, which makes it a bit nicer in theory but – in practice? Turns out earning candy by dressing up as something dead is more fun than
It has been quite a week in quite a month in quite a year in quite a decade, has it not? A lot of things have gone sideways, often driven into ditches by distracted drivers. Happily for us, some interesting data visualizations have emerged as a result. Chapter 1 The
"You can't go home again," Thomas Wolfe wrote, but he didn't have geopositioning tools on his cell phone. Chapter 1 Sorry about your luck, kids. So the president of these United States, one Donald J. Trump, participated in a Cabinet meeting this week, at
Introduction So today we are going to talk about A.I. The chances are very good that you experienced a medium-to-strong emotion at reading that sentence and the chances are also good that the emotion was not terribly positive. The arrival of A.I. has guzzled electricity and water as
In this week's newsletter, we take a journey across various challenges facing the United States, some of them self-inflicted and some of them extra-self-inflicted. And then, at the very end, there's a funny chart about sports. So sort of an emotional wash! Chapter 1 Where the
Congratulations; Hell Week is over. In preparation for Hell Week Redux, whenever it may arrive (next week), this week's newsletter flips data visualization on its head, focusing on a fascinating project that extracts data from presentations that wouldn't seem to include any. Also, President Trump shared
An inherent problem arises at the end of the year, for my purposes at least: there's a glut of data detailing the 12 months that have just transpired — often accompanied by visualizations of what unfolded. So what choice did I have, humble reader? What choice did I have
I am pleased to report that we have reached, as of writing, the 361st day of 2025, a year that includes only 365 days despite feeling as though it has included 36,500. This has been the longest year since 2020, in a figurative and non-complimentary sense. So I'