Here is what happened in March.

For the New York Times, Lazaro Gamio, Blacki Migliozzi, and River Akira Davis use a Sankey diagram to show the breakdown of oil and gas that flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

The layout for the story works well. It starts with the origin countries, sized by the percentage of energy through the strait. A pause in the middle at the strait shows the full amount, which then splits into where the oil exports to. Red text notes disruptions.

Getting pregnant and having a child is typically described as an effortless process where you try and then you succeed. However, the process is often not so direct. For the Pudding, Lam Thuy Vo, with help from Jan Diehm and Michelle Pera-McGhee, and illustrations by Rose Wong, describes the journey of infertility and IVF.

You are able to move through from the point of view of parent or child. Switch back and forth or go all the way with each separately.

Lazaro Gamio and Josh Holder for the New York Times break down energy imports by country and the percentage that comes from the Middle East.

It seems likely that these percentages will swing one way or another in the near future, but variable width bar charts are my statistical chart weakness. Total energy, in dollars, is on the y-axis, and the share of that from the Middle East, by percentage, is on the x-axis. There are a set of four charts for Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with consistent scales across the set.

Unmanned and relatively cheap drones that can be manufactured in high volume have changed airspace typically dominated by expensive jets and trained pilots. Reuters illustrates the shift that allowed less equipped countries to fight against larger ones.

In just the first week of the conflict, Iran launched more than 1,000 drones and it is estimated to have the capacity to produce around 10,000 per month.

The technology of war has evolved rapidly in recent years, a shift starkly illustrated by Ukraine’s fight against Russia. What began as a conflict dominated by tanks and artillery has increasingly become a drone war. Outgunned in conventional armor and aircraft, Ukraine turned to inexpensive unmanned systems for reconnaissance and attack. Drones are estimated to account for about 70% of Russian casualties, enabling strikes to be carried out remotely and reducing the risk to pilots and aircrews.

The build-up to show scale in this piece is quite something. Expensive and specialized aircraft fly across at first. Then a switch to hundreds of drones filling the sky shows the task of defending against high volume.

Along with more arrests, the current administration has deported mothers at twice the rate as the previous administration. ProPublica reports, using data obtained through a public records lawsuit by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights.

A Sankey diagram is used to show arrests by administration, the percentage detained, and of those, the percentage released, in custody, or removed or deported. This led to 11,000 children separated from their mothers by the current administration — and this is only as of August 2025, as UW continues the court process to get more data.

For the New York Times, Albert Sun, Allison McCann, and Hamed Aleaziz obtained data through an internal ICE document to see arrests over time.

Some places that did not have high-profile ICE operations this year, such as Florida and San Antonio, have still seen high and steadily increasing numbers of arrests. In other areas like Los Angeles and Chicago that were targeted by ICE with aggressive enforcement operations last year, the number of arrests has fallen steeply in recent months. And in some areas — notably many places with so-called sanctuary policies in place — the arrest rate is flat, or up only slightly.

For NYT’s the Upshot, Francesca Paris gives context to the recent spike in gas prices in the United States:

It’s the second-largest four-week increase in at least 30 years — bigger than the one at the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, or the ones associated with the post-recession surge of 2009 and the OPEC production cuts in 1999.

The only bigger jump came after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when gas supply fell significantly.

Rising everyday expenses probably don’t help the situation. For those keeping track, 50 Cent is currently adjusted to 111 Cent as of this writing.

From xkcd, a map sketch of why the landscape is what it is in the United States.

In most places, property lines stop at the street, but in North Oaks, Minnesota, property lines extend to the middle of the street. This makes the entire city private property, which prohibits Google and other mapping companies from driving through to take street-level photos. Chris Parr figured out how residents achieved this block (mostly money) and then found a way to map the area himself.

[via 404 Media]

Emanuel Fabian, a military correspondent for the Times of Israel, received death threats from Polymarket gamblers after he reported a missile strike in Israel.

“You have no idea how much you’ve put yourself at risk. Today is the most significant day of your career. You have two choices: either believe that we have the capabilities, and after you make us lose $900,000 we will invest no less than that to finish you. Or end this with money in your pocket, and also earn back the life you had until now.”

After I didn’t respond, as I was asleep, Haim sent me another series of messages: “You are choosing to go to war knowing that you will lose your life as you’ve grown accustomed to it — for nothing.”

On Sunday morning, he messaged me again: “You have exactly a few hours left to fix your attempt at influencing [the market]. It would be stupid of you to ignore this.”

It seems the wisdom of crowds also goes the other direction.

This week we have conflicting views and a search for honesty in charts.

John Rush has been scanning his receipts for 25 years. He did something with the collection this year.

Everyone needs a rewarding hobby. I’ve been scanning all of my receipts since 2001. I never typed in a single price – just kept the images. I figured someday the technology to read them would catch up, and the data would be interesting.

This year I tested it. Two AI coding agents, 11,345 receipts. I started with eggs. If you can track one item across 25 years of garbled thermal prints, OCR failures, and folder typos, you can track anything.

This made me think about those science fiction stories with people who freeze themselves hoping to wake in an era when cures to their terminal disease become available. It’s the sales receipt data version. Twenty-five years is a long time to collect data.

[Thanks, Charlotte]

Researchers at GovAI and Brookings estimated vulnerability to job displacement due to AI. For the Washington Post, Kevin Schaul and Shira Ovide charted the estimates on two dimensions: exposure and adaptability.

Estimating vulnerability is difficult, because a single factor like exposure isn’t enough. A job might have high exposure to AI tools, but that doesn’t always mean the job is at risk. You might just have new responsibilities and use the tools more.

I don’t think firefighting is in the cards for me. Maybe I’ll get into manicures. Although “other mathematical science occupations” has lowest vulnerability and high adaptability so maybe I have a few years left.

Julia Angwin is suing Grammarly. For NYT Opinion, Angwin explains the reasons and why we need better laws to protect ourselves from AI companies.

In this global crisis of consent, we must make use of the few anchors we have for enforcement. The right of publicity is one of them, but it needs to be strengthened into a federal law — not just a patchwork of state laws. In some states, it applies only to advertising; in others, to all types of commercial uses. In some, it covers only celebrities; in others, it applies to everyone.

Thus far, the proposed updates to the law have been too narrow. The No Fakes Act, introduced last year by a group of senators, including Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, would prohibit “A.I.-generated digital replicas” of people without their consent, but would not cover the use of people’s names in text-based services like Grammarly. The Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act, proposed by several senators, including Washington’s Maria Cantwell, would prohibit the use of people’s names without their consent — but only for student athletes.

And a new term coined by Ingrid Burrington came to light: sloppelgänger.

For the New York Times, Ben Casselman reports on a previously undisclosed change in data source by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which led to an inflation estimate that was lower than expected.

Data on legal services usually comes from the consumer index. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has struggled with budget cuts and staff attrition, hasn’t been able to collect enough data in recent years to publish the legal services index consistently. It has continued to provide the data to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but the monthly readings have been volatile.

In January, the C.P.I. for legal services jumped more than 11 percent, according to analyses of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted by private-sector forecasters.

As a result, the Bureau of Economic Analysis decided to base its estimate of legal prices in January on the producer price data, which has been less volatile. Mr. Davis said that the jump in legal services prices in the C.P.I. data — and the absence of a clear reason for such a big increase — made that the right decision.

The challenge with comparing data over time is that methodology needs to stay the same or at least get a footnote so that analysts can adjust. The BEA responded that this was not a methodology change and just a substitute for volatile data, which seems convenient given the current state of government data.

xkcd continues to answer the important questions.

Iran is starting to deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz. For the New York Times, Samuel Granados, John Ismay, and Agnes Chang illustrate how four types of naval mines work to damage tankers.

The geography of the strait and the surrounding waters works to Iran’s advantage. A long southern coastline affords ample opportunity for small boats to dart out with mines.

Tight shipping lanes leave little room to navigate. And the water at the strait’s narrowest point is only about 200 feet deep — shallow enough to lay minefields.

As one might expect, clearing mines with potential attacks from above is not as straightforward as clicking on a Minesweeper game grid.

You’re probably familiar with the song “Africa” by Toto. This version, by There I Ruined It, uses all the country names in Africa instead of the actual lyrics. There’s a useful geography lesson somewhere in here.

There was a total lunar eclipse on March 3, 2026. From Michala Garrison mapping for NASA Earth Observatory, shows the shades before, after, and during.

When the satellite passed over western Alaska and the Bering Strait, at 13:00 Universal Time (4:00 a.m. Alaska Standard Time), the eclipse was in the partial phase. The scene is noticeably brighter than the earlier one, and light from the partially shaded Moon illuminates snow-covered topography and offshore clouds. The brightest swaths on the far right and left sides were acquired before and after the eclipse, respectively, with light from the full Moon.