I am a graphic designer who focuses on information design. My day job? Well, they asked me not to say. But to be clear, this blog is my something I do on my own time and does not represent the views of…my employers. I think what I can say is that given my interest in information design—be it in the shape of clear charts, maps, diagrams, or wayfinding systems—I am fortunate that my day job focuses on data visualisation. Outside of work, I try to stay busy with personal design work. Away from the world of design, I have become an amateur genealogist and family historian. You will sometimes see that area of work bleed into my posts.
Last night we had breaking news on two very big fronts. The first is that somebody inside the Supreme Court leaked an entire draft of the majority opinion, written by Justice Alito, to Politico. Leaks from inside the Supreme Court, whilst they do happen, are extremely rare. This alone is big news.
But let’s not bury the lede, the majority opinion is to throw out Roe v. Wade in its entirety. For those not familiar, perhaps especially those of you who read me from abroad, Roe v Wade is the name of a court case that went before the United States Supreme Court in 1971 and was decided in 1973. It established the woman’s right to an abortion as constitutionally protected, allowing states to enact some regulations to balance out the state’s role in concern for women’s public health and the health of the fetus as it nears birth. Regardless of how you feel about the issue—and people have very strong feelings about it—that’s largely been the law of the United States for half a century.
Until now.
To be fair, the draft opinion is just that, a draft. And the supposed 5-3 vote—Chief Justice Roberts is reportedly undecided, but against the wholesale overthrow of Roe—could well change. But let’s be real, it won’t. And even if Roberts votes against the majority he would only make the outcome 5-4. In other words, it looks like at some point this summer, probably June or July, tens of millions of American women will lose access to reproductive healthcare.
And to the point of this post, what will that mean for women?
This article by Grid runs down some of the numbers, starting with laying out the numbers on who chooses to have abortions. And then ultimately getting to this map that I screenshot.
That’s pretty long distances in the south…
The map shows how far women in a state would need to travel for an abortion with Roe active as law and without. I’ve used the toggle to show without. Women in the south in particular will need to travel quite far. The article further breaks out distances today with more granularity to paint the picture of “abortion deserts” where women have to travel sometimes well over 200 miles to have a safe, legal abortion.
I am certain that we will be returning to this topic frequently in coming months, unfortunately.
I took last week off for the Orthodox Easter holiday. But I am back now. For some of the time I was away, I stayed at an old stone farmhouse that the owners renovated into a short-term rental. That made me think about what I would want or need in my own space. Of course the pandemic has changed much of both where we work and live. For many of us the two overlap significantly.
This article from Axios detailed some of the findings from a survey that investigated how the pandemic changed the wants and needs of homeowners and homebuyers. Using the survey’s findings, an architectural firm designed a concept home embodying those changes and that’s what this screenshot captures.
That’s a big home.
It’s pretty straightforward as far as graphics go. We have a flat two-dimensional floor plan of what the architects called the Barnaby. The graphic does a nice job of keeping the furniture and fixings in white and then using colour to indicate the flooring options, hardwood of course.
If you want to read more about the house itself, in addition to the article the company behind the design has a site about the house itself.
I spent the past weekend in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on a brief holiday to go watch some minor league baseball. That explains the lack of posting the last few days. (Housekeeping note, this coming weekend is Orthodox Easter, so I’ll be on holiday for that as well.)
Whilst in Harrisburg I did other things besides watch baseball because minor league games are so much faster now. (Maybe more on that in another post.) So after a Sunday afternoon match, I grabbed my camera and went for a walk about town. Mostly I photographed buildings and things, but at one point I came upon a gentleman sitting reading a paper on a bench.
Except it wasn’t a person; it was a statue.
Entitled “Waiting”, the statue portrays a bespectacled man reading a newspaper with a briefcase and an upturned brimmed hat sitting neatly atop said briefcase. (I’d show you the photo, but it’s still on my camera waiting to be downloaded.)
I was curious what the man was reading. Was it relevant? Did it say something important? Or was it lorem ipsum or placeholder text?
As it turned out, the paper told the story of a founding family of Harrisburg via article headlines. But on the front page, we had a nice little family tree diagram. And that’s what makes this anecdote germane to this blog.
But what does it say?!
I cannot read the specific details, nor did I want to. The paper was angled downwards, light was fading as the sun was setting, and this was backlit enough already.
The sculpture dates from 1992, making that headline the most recent article. From that, I will probably be able to do some of my own research and create my own version of that family tree, because I could not read it and now I’m curious. But what appears to be happening is primarily the ancestors of one line of one person’s—this gentleman’s?—parents. But critiquing it further is complicated by the illegibility of the chart.
Of course I should point out that the point was probably not a legible genealogical descent chart, but rather to in a quick visual show the person in particular comes from a long line of people, presumably public servants all or most.
Credit for the piece goes to the sculptor, Seward J. Johnson Jr.
It’s been another week. And that’s why I thought of this post from Indexed last week. It seems to adequately describe where are at in this crazy world.
Another week, more combat and refugees in Ukraine. I’m going to try and hold the war update until tomorrow pending some news that hasn’t been confirmed yet: the fall of Mariupol. Instead, we’re going to again look briefly at the refugee situation in Ukraine—technically outside. I haven’t seen a recent number on the internally displaced, though we have begun to see some people return to Ukraine especially in the north and around Kyiv. It’s unclear to me if the data includes those people returning.
Regardless, we are at over 4.6 million Ukrainians who have fled Ukraine.
Slowing down of late.
The question now is as Russia refocuses its effort now on the Donbas—though fierce fighting has been waged in the area for eight years now—will these numbers begin to see a notable change.
Not the band, but the long-range strategic bomber employed by the United States Air Force. This isn’t strictly related to Ukraine, but it’s military adjacent if you will.
I thought about creating a graphic a few years ago to celebrate the longevity of the B-52 Stratofortress, more commonly called the BUFF, Big Ugly Fat Fucker. Obviously I did not, but over at Air Force Magazine, they created a graphic timeline showing the history of the aircraft, specifically as it relates to its engines, which will now be replaced in an effort to extend the life of the bombers.
100 years of bombings
I don’t love the image of the bomber behind the graphic, but I understand why it’s there given the B-52 is the focus of the timeline. I wonder if a different layout could have highlighted the placement of the engines and separated the timeline from the image of the bomber.
Overall I like the graphic, but it could just be that right now I’m spotlighting and working on a lot of graphics dealing with military issues and Ukraine in particular.
Credit for the piece goes to Dash Parham and Mike Tsukamoto.
As Russia redeploys its forces in and around Ukraine, you can expect to hear more about how they are attempting to reconstitute their battalion tactical groups. But what exactly is a battalion tactical group?
Recently in Russia, the army has been reorganised increasingly away from regiments and divisions and towards smaller, more integrated units that theoretically can operate more independently: battalion tactical groups. They typically comprise less than a thousand soldiers, about 200 of which are infantry. But they also include a number of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), armoured personnel carriers (APCs), artillery, and other support units.
In an article from two weeks ago, the Washington Post explained why the Russian army had stalled out in Ukraine. And as part of that, they explained what a battalion tactical group is with a nice illustration.
Just some of the vehicles in a BTG
Russia’s problem is that in the first month of the war, Ukrainian anti-armour weapons like US-made Javelins and UK-made NLAWs have ripped apart Russian tanks, IFVs, and APCs. Atop that, Ukrainian drones and artillery took out more armour. The units that Russia withdrew from Ukraine now have to be rebuilt and resupplied. Once fresh, Russia can deploy these into the Donbas and southern Ukraine.
This graphic isn’t terribly complicated, but the nice illustrations go a long way to showing what comprises a battalion tactical group. And when you see photos of five or six tanks destroyed along the side of a Ukrainian road, you now understand that constitutes half of a typical unit’s available armour. In other words, a big deal.
I expect to hear more out of Russia and Ukraine in coming days about how Russia is providing new vehicles and fresh soldiers to resupply exhausted units.
Credit for the piece goes to Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha.
It’s been a week since my last update and that’s in part because a lot has changed. When we last spoke, the Russians had announced they had successfully completed the first phase of the “special military operation”.
They didn’t.
Instead, Russian forces have completed a full-on retreat from northern Ukraine, sending troops and equipment back to Belarus and western Russia for refit, repair, and resupply. These are then likely to head south towards the Donbas and eastern Ukraine, the new focus of the war.
That area, in particular the south, has been Russia’s lone area of success in this war and it makes sense for Russia to reinforce its success and take the loss in the north where it was in fact losing. In fact, during the Russian retreat we saw continued, limited gains in the Donbas and the south. There, Russia appears desirous to envelop Ukrainian forces and cut them off from resupply, especially in the area of Kramatorsk.
For those that recall my coverage back in 2014, get ready to start hearing the same cities and towns mentioned all over again.
Generally good news for Ukraine in this
Russia wanted to capture Kyiv and cities in the north to topple the Ukrainian government. But militarily, offensive operations in the north prevented Ukraine from reinforcing their units in the south. Since 2014, Ukraine has been conducting the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) in the Donbas. These are the best-equipped and most-experienced Ukrainian troops int he war as they’ve been fighting the Russians and Russian-backed separatists for eight years. I suspect that Ukraine’s success thus far is in no small part due to the knowledge Ukraine has gained about how to fight Russian units and counter Russian tactics in this very theatre. In other words, Russia needed to prevent these forces from being resupplied. With Russia’s retreat, this is an option.
That isn’t to say Ukraine can send its whole army south, because I imagine some Russian troops will remain on the Russian side of the border north of Kyiv just in case a moment of opportunity arises.
So if Russia cannot stop Ukrainian reinforcements by pinning or fixing Ukrainian units to the north, Russia needs to cut off routes of resupply. Not surprisingly then, we’ve been seeing increased numbers of operations to take cities and towns that serve as vital rail and road hubs. And further away from the battlefield, Russian artillery and cruise missiles have been relentlessly striking similar towns in attempts to destroy transport infrastructure.
For now, it seems as if Russian forces continue to probe Ukrainian defences in an attempt to find a weak point in their lines that they can then exploit through an artillery barrage and likely an armour and mechanised infantry blitz. What works for Ukraine is that despite being surrounded on three sides, that makes it easier to shuffle units and supplies between forces facing the most pressure. Russia, on the other hand, has to move its reinforcements along the entire circumference of that bubble.
Ukraine obviously wants to retake all the territory lost to Russia thus far. In the southwest, we have seen some successful operations in repulsing the Russians around Mykolaiv and pushing Russian forces back to the outskirts of Kherson. Kherson and Nova Kakhovka control the only two southern bridges across the Dnieper. Russia needs to defend these in order to keep Ukraine from attacking its units in the south from the rear so to speak. Russian units are holding in the cities thus far despite enormous pressure.
Russia still controls the vital rail lines leading up from Crimea that allows them to keep Russian forces in that theatre resupplied. The lack of resupply was one of the issues in the north, but Russian infrastructure is better in the south and east and that could present an obstacle to Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.
Finally we have the city of Mariupol, which remains under siege. Russian units continue to make bloody but slow and steady progress into the city. What’s fascinating are reports of Ukrainian units being resupplied despite the siege. And that may explain Russian attacks on civilian convoys, because with no air, rail, or sea transport links into the city, the only way Ukraine must be able to resupply its units is under the guise of civilian lorries or cars. And if Ukrainians are using civilian vehicles to resupply their military forces, that could open civilian vehicles to being sometimes legitimate targets.
So long as Russia continues to control broad swathes of territory surrounding the city, I think it’s a matter of time until Mariupol falls. But the longer the city holds out, the fewer combat effective troops Russia will later have to reorganise for a push north into Zaporizhzhia oblast and the Donbas, which is ideal for Ukraine.
I don’t think I’m going to touch on the atrocities we’re seeing coming out of northern Ukraine in this post. But I will say that the visuals we’re seeing confirm some of the worst reports and rumours that had been circulating on the internets over the last few weeks.
Just a quick update as I try to update my battle map. Today we’re taking another look at the refugee crisis Putin created in eastern and central Europe. Over four million Ukrainians have left Ukraine and millions more have been displaced internally within Ukraine.
Whilst we may hope they will eventually return home, the photos and videos we are seeing of Ukrainian areas that had been captured by Russian forces show that many Ukrainians no longer have homes or even villages to which they can return.
This problem will persist for years as Ukraine tries to rebuild. And that doesn’t include the fact that much of southern and parts of eastern Ukraine remain under Russian control. And some of those areas continue to see fierce fighting.
