From the New York Times editorial board, an animated big pile of money:

A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.

Money rains down, each stack representing the median household income in the United States. You scroll, and more money falls on to the pile. The pile gets too big for the screen, so the view zooms out. The pile grows.

We focus on the bad, because that’s where it can and will get better. It’s good to remind ourselves sometimes.

There is a dashboard for pizza places around the Pentagon.

The Pentagon Pizza Index (PizzINT) is a real-time dashboard that monitors pizza shop popularity around the Pentagon area in Arlington, Virginia. Based on the famous “Pentagon Pizza Theory,” this project tracks potential correlations between late-night pizza orders and military activity.

Originally a Cold War-era observation that pizza deliveries to government buildings might indicate crisis activity, the theory gained internet fame during recent geopolitical events. Our dashboard brings this concept into the digital age using publicly available data.

I’m torn because this is centered around crypto and memecoins, but a good dashboard built for the right audience and purpose is a good dashboard.

For the New York Times, Chris Buckley, Agnes Chang, and Amy Chang Chien analyzed and mapped the location of 1,400 ships that suddenly left their fishing locations and home ports to fill an area 200 miles long. Then they just stayed in place for 30 hours. In all likelihood it was a state-directed military exercise at a large scale.

The lead animation on the article reminds of the study on ants building a bridge across an empty space.

If you know who you’re talking to, you can design based on what they know, what they’re looking for, and what you want to show.

The Washington Post used word usage in earnings calls to gauge how companies view the state of the economy. Comparing the third quarter to the second, there was more emphasis on growth and less on tariffs and uncertainty. Although that seems like that might switch next quarter, given current proclamations of the administration.

I like these word-based views that add flavor to the article:

The slope of the highlighted words represent the change in usage between quarters.

He hear global warming and it seems like a monolithic thing that is far away from where we live. However, you can see and feel the changes locally. For the New York Times, Harry Stevens and Eric Niiler show the change based on your selected region.

As is usually case with temperature data, there is noise between individual points, but an overall trend points upwards.

You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but recent data suggests that the planet is still getting hotter. The Economist shows the shifts with a heatmap:

The past 11 years are the warmest since records began, with the past three top of the leader-board. Hottest of the lot was 2024, which coincided with a strong Niño—a pattern of winds and ocean currents that nudges the thermometer upwards—combined with a peak of the 11-year solar cycle when the sun shines brightest. But in 2025 El Niño tailed off, to be replaced by its opposite pattern, La Niña, and the sun—only a minor part of the story in any case—began to dim. That 2025 was cooler than its predecessor was thus no surprise. But as La Niña years go, it was sweltering: the hottest yet.

With a surprise to nobody, Kyle Cheney for Politico:

Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.

For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Fairless reports on research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy:

By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

The tariffs had a significant effect on trade volumes: Facing higher U.S. tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices but reduced the volume of shipments to the U.S. by 18%-24% relative to the European Union, Canada and Australia, the report found.

Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.

Not ideal.

Find the full Kiel report here.

In some counties, vaccination rates increased after the pandemic, which got them past the recommended level of protection. Many more counties decreased their rates though. The Washington Post made an interactive map to see where your county stands.

I’m into the lede map that makes the decreasing counties fall into the depths below the rest of the country.

From Bandcamp:

Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. We believe that the human connection found through music is a vital part of our society and culture, and that music is much more than a product to be consumed. It’s the result of a human cultural dialog stretching back before the written word.

Similarly, musicians are more than mere producers of sound. They are vital members of our communities, our culture, and our social fabric. Bandcamp was built to directly connect artists and their fans, and to make it easy for fans to support artists equitably so that they can keep making music.

Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.

I hope this works. Of course, the hard part is that it’s going to get more difficult for fans to know if a song was made by a human.

For the Minnesota Star Tribune, Jeff Hargarten and Jake Steinberg report on the growing count of federal personnel:

A potential 3,000 federal agents from ICE and CBP is equivalent to five times the manpower of the Minneapolis Police Department.

It’s close to the total headcount of sworn officers among the region’s largest 10 law enforcement agencies and equals nearly one agent for every 1,000 of the Twin Cities’ 3.2 million residents.

Good use of unit-based pie charts to show the counts and breakdowns.

What is the most middle name in the United States? Erin Davis grew curious enough to find the answers in data. For females, the most middle names are Rae, Marie, and Mae. For males, the most middle names are Lee, Kumar, and Ray.

The answers are straightforward, but finding the answers was more roundabout, because you can’t just dig into the annual baby names dataset from the Social Security Administration. Instead, Davis used voter registration data, which comes with its own challenges.

Today, we rework a chart to focus on the useful bits.

A SpaceX rocket explosion elicits images of spectacle and maybe thoughts of a lot of funds up in flames. But if you’re a pilot flying in an area suddenly defined by the FAA as a debris zone, you probably have other things on your mind. ProPublica analyzed flight data where a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded on January 16, 2025.

We compared the plane’s locations and maneuvers to the FAA’s debris zone, which was based on coordinates it released to air traffic personnel. We identified planes inside the zone during or just after the explosion in January, as well as others that appeared to take significant action to avoid the area. Planes that had just crossed the zone or flew in parallel to it were not included. This analysis may not be comprehensive of all evasive maneuvers or disruptions caused by the explosions.

For Bloomberg, Molly Smith reports on the state of government data:

But Trump has made it clear that some data collection simply didn’t align with White House “priorities” that no longer include “woke” topics such as climate change (a “hoax”) or diversity, equity and inclusion. Many of the cuts have also been aimed at data that would reflect poorly on the administration’s policies.

The administration will no longer conduct an engagement and satisfaction survey of the federal workforce after gutting its ranks, and it tried unsuccessfully to disable a website on government spending. The Social Security Administration quietly stopped publicly reporting its live call-center wait times as it was experiencing significant customer service changes and staffing reassignments. The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward ending a majority of reporting requirements under a “burdensome” greenhouse gas program as the administration rolls back emissions controls. The US Department of Agriculture canceled its food security survey just days before the government shutdown disrupted food aid for tens of millions of people. The USDA also released a delayed trade report that was stripped of its usual analysis, reportedly because the comments ran counter to the president’s messaging.

A lot of people who think these takedowns are a good thing are going to experience the effects of not having enough data to see properly.

Probability expressed as a percentage is a value between 0% and 100%. If there is a 0% probability that something happens, then the thing is impossible. If there is 100% probability that something happens, then the thing is definite. This uses words to describe a number.

Now turn it around. What probability do you use to describe the words? If something is unlikely, what are the chances that something occurs? Adam Kucharski made a quiz that lets you assign probability to common words used to express probability. Then compare against what others answered.

See also: the distributions of likelihood and the CIA rendition from the 1990s.

You know the standard word search setup. There’s a grid of letters, and within that grid are hidden words to search for. Now imagine that grid of letters can grow infinitely and many people can search the grid at the same time. Luke Schaef made that game, where people can find and submit words.

Make sure to zoom out and pan. The middle of the grid is a blob, but people started to use word-finding as a drawing mechanism towards the edges, because of course they have.