So Ukraine is even more of a mess and in less than a week’s time, the Crimean people will vote in a referendum on whether they want to remain a part of Ukraine or rejoin Russia. This graphic of mine is an attempt to answer some questions—though hardly all I wanted—about Ukraine, Crimea, and about what the Russians have been doing. (To be fair, the Russians still don’t admit that the troops and soldiers are theirs. But really, I mean come on, we all know they are.)
Did you go to the cinema in February? Well, according to some research done by Slate, what you watched probably sucked. I’m just glad I never went last month. Maybe March will be a little bit better.
Credit for the piece goes to Chris Kirk and Kim Thompson.
Last month, police in Hong Kong defused a 2000 pound (900 kilogram) bomb found undetonated since World War II. The South China Morning Post created a small graphic to diagram just what the bomb was and how it was delivered (by US aircraft) to Hong Kong.
Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.
Business Insider posted a neat graphic that compared the walkability of a suburban neighbourhood outside Seattle to a dense urban neighbourhood in Seattle. Turns out you can walk a lot more and further in a gridded mile than in a faux-organic sprawl.
Credit for the piece goes to Sightline Institute.
The West hesitates to use military force to push Russian troops out of Crimea. Likely with good reason as any such campaign would be neither cheap nor bloodless in addition to running the risk of spreading beyond the borders of Ukraine. So that leaves diplomatic and economic isolation. Diplomatic isolation is already underway—the G8 conference to be hosted in Sochi this summer is all but dead. But economic isolation is still being discussed.
The United States is generally in favour, but Europe—namely Germany—has been more cautious. But as my graphic shows, without Europe a sanctions regime would be largely toothless since half of Russia’s exports go to Europe. Except that Russia is also responsible for a significant proportion of Europe’s imported natural gas and sanctions on Russia could cause an interruption in that fuel to Western Europe. Naturally, most of that natural gas is, of course, transported through pipelines running across Ukraine.
A lot of things happened in Ukraine this past weekend. Unfortunately, I was not able to quite capture all of the events and the background I wanted. So, until I do, this quick graphic will have to suffice. In short, Ukraine is a big European country, one of the largest prizes remaining in the struggle between the West/EU and the East/Russia. I took a look at the forecast for Ukraine in 2050 for both number of people and the size of the economy and put that in the context of Europe. And while forecasting that far out clearly has risks, one can see with a grain of salt that Ukraine is set to be an important middle-sized European nation.
But, like I said, there is more to do. I just was not able to do it.
I do not know a thing about horses. I leave that knowledge to others in my family. However, this piece from the South China Morning Post explains quite a bit of why the thoroughbred is such a famous type of horse for racing.
Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Lucas López.
Today’s piece is from the Washington Post. However, it is less data visualisation and more of a neat little motion graphic explaining the formation of pot holes. Since it seems to be about that time of year when roads are destroyed by the things.
Credit for the piece goes to Sohail Al-Jamea and Bonnie Berkowitz.
The Washington Post published this dot plot graphic to explore inequality in household income across numerous American cities.
The chart, as most dot plots do, does a good job of showing where several distinct points within a set fall within the entire range of data. Or to put it into other words, where do the poorest, the richest, and the most middlest households in Philadelphia fall within all Philadelphia households? The data is interesting because you will begin to uncover some significant outliers. For example, by quick glance, the 50th percentile in both Detroit and Cleveland earn less than the 20th percentile in San Jose.
Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.
Spring training has begun for baseball fans. The glow from the Red Sox victory last October is fading as we now wonder if we can repeat. Fans of other teams now wonder if this is their year. Over at SB Nation, an article plotted 29 baseball teams—ignoring the Dodgers— and looked at their chances in the upcoming years. The article continues using the chart to explain which teams fall where.
And for the designers, note the type choice for “Nope”.
Credit for the piece goes to Grant Brisbee.
