2026-01-30 18:11:07
In 2000, measles in the United States was declared eliminated by the World Health Organization, because vaccination coverage was high enough. This year, vaccination rates are down and cases are up. There was outbreak in Texas last year, and now there’s another in South Carolina. CNN shows the difference compared to 2023 and 2024, when more children were vaccinated.
As a reminder, vaccines help to stop the spread of infectious diseases. Vaccine good. Measles bad.
Tags: CNN, measles, South Carolina, vaccination
2026-01-30 03:43:15
To show shifts in net support for the president, the New York Times used a U-turn metaphor. The x-axis represents net support. The arrows start in 2020, move higher in 2024, and then turn back in 2026.
The alternative, more standard chart choices, such as a dot plot or bar chart, would have worked fine, but this approach gets to the point better.
Tags: New York Times, voting
2026-01-29 22:07:45
Most states gained population, but a few saw more people move out than move in, based on the newest estimates from the Census Bureau.
2026-01-29 22:06:32
Every month, I collect visualization and data tools and resources to work with and learn from. Here is what happened in January.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
2026-01-29 02:45:01
If you’re a fan of SimCity, then you’ll appreciate IsoCity, an open source simulation game. The premise is the same. Start with land, build infrastructure, and try to maintain a thriving city. From the GitHub:
IsoCity is a open-source isometric city-building simulation game built with Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. It leverages the HTML5 Canvas API for high-performance rendering of isometric graphics, featuring complex systems for economic simulation, trains, planes, seaplanes, helicopters, cars, pedestrians, and more.
I’ve never been big into video games, but I spent many hours in high school playing SimCity 2000, building up my city of the future. I installed the game from a single floppy disk on the family 486. My city was eventually sustainable with those robot-looking Energy Domes, and I thought our own future looked bright. If I could do it in the game, then surely we could do it in real life.
IsoCity, which runs in the browser, is not as expansive, but it’s a fun throwback.
Tags: city, game, simulation
2026-01-28 16:48:52
Roblox is a game mostly for kids. In an effort to make the game safer, the Roblox company integrated an AI-based age verification system. For Wired, David Gilbert, describes a mess of a system.
But players are already in revolt because they can no longer chat to their friends, developers are demanding Roblox roll back the update, and crucially, experts say that not only is the AI mis-aging young players as adults and vice versa, the system does little to help address the problem it was designed to tackle: the flood of predators using the platform to groom young children.
In fact, WIRED has found multiple examples of people advertising age-verified accounts for minors as young as 9 years old on eBay for as little as $4.
I don’t think my kids will be playing Roblox much any time soon.
