2026-06-18 20:05:45
This is issue No. 393 of the Process, where we aim for surprise and interest in visualization. Just say no to defaults. I’m Nathan Yau. This week, we set expectations in analysis to better prepare for the unexpected.
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2026-06-18 15:05:27
When you have that feeling that today is abnormally hot or cold for the time of year, historical context is useful to see if intuition matches reality. Reuters has you covered with a climate monitor that shows global temperature against a normal year.
The dashboard view has an interactive globe, the now familiar multi-line chart that aligns past years by day, and a time series by continent.
Tags: climate, Reuters, temperature
2026-06-17 17:51:29
Going with the old school pile o’ money, NBC News illustrated the scale of the SpaceX IPO valuation against the Statue of Liberty, something that we know is quite large.
In the above, each block represents one million dollars, so a smaller denomination would make a bigger pile. And as of this writing, the market value for SpaceX is substantially higher. I’m no expert in company valuation, but this feels not ideal long-term.
2026-06-16 17:56:29
The pandemic tested the strength of many relationships. Alvin Chang, for the Pudding, examined who stayed together and who did not over that time period. Divorce and separation were more common than usual.
At the end, you can explore the data and view the responses from each person. Plus claymation.
The project is based on the How Couples Meet and Stay Together dataset from researchers at Stanford University. Every few years they’ve run the survey, following up with the original respondents, which provides a longitudinal view of individual relationships. It’s one of my favorite datasets.
Tags: Alvin Chang, pandemic, relationships
2026-06-15 17:01:02
The current proposal for the arch sets the height at 288 feet above sea level. The New York Times mapped air traffic in the Washington, D.C. area to show why that’s an issue.
Among maps that show flight paths from above, a view from ground level shows how close flights from April 2026 would have gotten if the arch existed. The view rotates 360 degrees and makes the distance from arch to air traffic more obvious.
Tags: arch, flights, New York Times
2026-06-13 00:08:54
Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire with the SpaceX initial public offering today. For Bloomberg, Ben Steverman, with illustrations by Tim Enthoven, provides a quick ridiculous overview of what $1 trillion gets you.
See also the Chalabi classic on Jeff Bezos wealth.
Tags: Bloomberg, Elon Musk, illustration, net worth, scale
