Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter we have visuals on deportation flights, ever more pickleball courts, and modified Ukrainian tanks …
But first … what happened to support for Keir Starmer?
Just 22% of British people had a favourable opinion of their prime minister in a recent poll. Shockingly, this wasn’t even the worst net favourability for a European leader – that honour goes to France’s President Macron.
But the UK election wasn’t even that long ago – where did all the support go? Our UK colleagues have the answer:
We really recommend you click through for the charts comparing Starmer’s support to other world leaders over time.
Four charts from the fortnight
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1. Flatten the curve
The spectacular rise of pickleball has been hard to miss. Especially if you live within earshot of a court. It’s a racket game similar to tennis, where two to four players hit a hollow, plastic ball over a net. A pickleball court looks similar to a tennis court, but about a third the size.
Using aerial photography, the New York Times ($) has identified more than 26,000 outdoor pickleball courts created since 2018 – often replacing tennis and basketball courts.
As a bonus, here’s a similar Pudding project from last year that tried to find every outdoor basketball court in the US.
The Times has published a bunch of excellent visualisations over the past fortnight (including a new entry in their Finding Beauty series). Choosing what to feature was a struggle – we’ve put a few more links in bookmarks towards the end of the newsletter.
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2. 100 days of deportation flights
Our colleagues in the US analysed a leaked dataset of 100 days of flight records from GlobalX, a company that runs flights for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The numbers in here are quite extraordinary – 1,700 flights in 100 days. More than 1,000 children were transported, including 500 under the age of 10, and 22 infants. More than 3,600 people were moved multiple times, forced to board five or more GlobalX flights. Read more here.
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3. Why the recent Afghanistan earthquake was so deadly
In human terms, the earthquake that struck Afghanistan in late August was one of the worst in years, flattening villages and killing and injuring thousands.
Reuters have an illustrated explainer on why this quake was so deadly, despite being a lot smaller magnitude than other recent quakes.
A regular reminder that earthquake magnitude measures are logarithmic. So:
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7 is ten times larger than a magnitude 6 earthquake. The actual energy released increases even more rapidly with magnitude. A magnitude 7 quake is nearly 32 times stronger than a magnitude 6 quake in terms of energy released.
Read and see more here.
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4. How religion is declining in One Tall Chart
Religiosity generally declines in three steps, according to a recent paper. First, people participate in fewer services; then religion becomes less important in their personal lives; and the final thing to go is the sense of belonging or identity associated with a religion.
This graphic uses Pew Research surveys in more than 100 countries to illustrate the gaps between generations on these three measures. In Australia, for instance, there is an almost 30% religiosity gap between those under and over 40, with younger Australians far less likely to find a sense of belonging or identity in religion.
“In the late stage of secular transition, generations differ primarily in religious belonging. The authors contend that this is because the first two steps have been completed. The shares of older adults who attend services and who consider religion important in their lives have already dropped to low levels, similar to those of younger adults.”
You can read more here.
Bookmarks
A reading list on GenAI for data visualisation
All the tools Simon Willison has created using AI-assisted programming
The Playbook Used to ‘Prove’ Vaccines Cause Autism – NYTimes ($)
How Elon Musk Is Remaking Grok in His Image – NYTimes ($)
Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out of Date – NYTimes ($)
Climate change is forcing the BOM to change how it assesses El Niño and La Niña – ABC
Off the Charts
If you were to picture a tank in your head, it might look a lot different than the real ones lumbering around the frontlines in Ukraine right now.
As this New York Times story ($) illustrates, three years of innovation in drone warfare have necessitated a lot of creative modifications, including the use of nets, spikes, cages and wood logs:
Lastly, in a follow-up to our Off The Charts in the previous newsletter: Reuters has a great interactive on how big Africa is, and the differences between map projections.
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