2026-06-22 17:34:01
The renovations to the Washington reflecting pool were supposed to make the water appear “American flag blue.” However, millions of dollars later, paint is peeling and the pool is filled with algae. For the Guardian, Anna Betts flips the color coding to show the American flag reflecting the color of the water over the past couple weeks.
Tags: color, Guardian, reflecting pool
2026-06-19 17:59:42
Jerry Gretzinger started a map of a fictional city in 1963 with eight by ten-inch panels. Then he just kept going, took a break for a couple decades, and then resumed the work.
Years later, the Map is now a two-dimensional “virtual world” art project which is now comprised of over 4000 individual eight by ten inch panels. When assembled, these panels form an approximate circle. The panel locations are defined by N, S, E, and W coordinates that originate at the center of the circle. The locations in the matrix do not change, but the panels themselves are continually revised based on instructions drawn from the artist’s custom deck of cards.
Its execution, in acrylic, marker, colored pencil, ink, collage, and inkjet print on heavy paper, is dictated by the interplay between an elaborate set of rules and randomly generated instructions.
I love these kind of long-term, hand-crafted projects. I’m wondering what a visualization equivalent would be using real data.
[via Waxy]
Tags: fiction, Jerry Gretzinger
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
