A Data Visualization Newsletter

Analyzing the income security offered to teachers, hospital workers, and government employees is hard. Depending on the tenure of the employee and their age at entry, public retirement plans can work in very different ways. So Equable Institute collected data on 300+ retirement plans across the U.S. and scored them across multiple dimensions for workers at different stages of their career. Then we helped design and develop an interface to explore all the data.

The COVID-19 vaccine has proven effective at drastically reducing death rates across the world. But its distribution has been far from equal. Wealthy countries have been able to institute speedy vaccination campaigns to cull COVID-19 transmission, while developing countries have struggled to get their hands on vaccines and are falling far behind.

Across the U.S., the wealthier and whiter your neighborhood is, the greener the view from your window is likely to be. This piece from The New York Times shows the drastic difference in greenery between high and low income neighborhoods in major American cities, and explains the impact that difference has on its residents.

Lil Nas X’s “Montero” has remained on the Billboard charts for 15 weeks straight. According to analysis by The Pudding, the song is a shoe-in for the 2021 year-end Billboard Hot 100 charts, which would make it the first song to do so where a man explicitly sings about being with another man. They explore the other 8 songs with same-gender lyrics that have made the chart since Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” did in 2008.

As the Tokyo Olympics draw closer, concerns abound about whether the event could spread the coronavirus within Japan. But that’s not the only source of worry. The heat and humidity in Tokyo tends to spike during July and August, creating conditions that may be difficult to compete in. The International Olympic Committee has already moved the marathon and race walk events to the cooler northern city of Sapporo.