Welcome to the second edition of The Crunch!
In this week’s newsletter, we’ve got data on penguin naps, how the US is an outlier on inequality, the effect of record immigration on Australia, a round-up of visual journalism on the Israel-Palestine war, a look at how the use of text on Vogue magazine covers has changed and which countries in the G20 are doing their fair share in limiting global heating to 1.5C.
But first, the latest video episode of The Crunch …
Why a large number of Australians can no longer afford to buy a home and what can be done about it, featuring special guest Guardian Australia’s economics columnist Greg Jericho, AKA Grogs Gamut, AKA Grogonomics.
Five charts from the past fortnight
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1. As Cop28 draws to a close, these charts show how far the major economies are from their targets
Not a single G20 country has policies in place that are consistent with the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C and meeting their “fair share” of emissions reduction. Read more here.
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2. Australia’s immigration spike and what it means for jobs and housing
The Australian government will change the rules on some visas to curb temporary migration numbers and overhaul what it calls a “broken” migration program. But experts say immigration was already predicted to return to the long-term trend and the effect of migration on jobs and housing is unclear. Read more here.
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3. Do Vogue covers have less text on them than they used to?
Last newsletter we had an analysis of romance novel covers, this week, via the Pudding Cup, comes a delightful and well-designed analysis of the declining use of text on the cover of Vogue magazine by Jess Carr.
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4. Does the American dream foster inequality?
My former Guardian colleague John Burn-Murdoch’s columns in the Financial Times are always worth reading. In his most recent column, John charts results from a study looking at attitudes towards income redistribution in different countries, with the US an outlier from others. It also features the chart above, which compares median household income with food insecurity in each country, again showing the US to be an outlier. Notably Australia is quite high on both charts as well.
5. The hidden cost of using the Internet
The modern internet (and internet-connected services!) relies on the transfer of an ever-increasing amount of data. This visual feature from the Straits Times takes a look at the hidden cost of increasing data use. I particularly like the way they’ve used design features, such as loading HTML without CSS at the start, to emphasise the largely hidden data transfers that happen on every webpage, and I also love the retro RGB graphics palette.
Spotlight on … the Israel-Gaza war
This visual investigation from our UK colleagues shows the extent of damage to hospitals in Gaza over the course of the Israeli offensive. Of the 10 hospitals in Gaza, only two are now functioning.
Al Jazeera has analysed hundreds of speeches by world leaders at the UN to show differences in language about the conflict, such as calling for a “pause” v a “ceasefire”.
Another visual investigation based on satellite photos and video, this feature from the New York Times shows the extent of destruction in Gaza from Israeli airstrikes and bulldozers.
Off the Charts
Designer and developer Brett Tweedie has done some amazing work recently, including this piece about the dividing line between football codes in Australia (the Barassi line), which was shortlisted in the Information is Beautiful awards. In the chart above, Brett takes inspiration from a recent Guardian article which revealed chinstrap penguins can nap more than 10,000 times a day, and compares the napping time of a human.
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