Fair Warning - Marriage, MEPs, and mountains
Happy Bank Holiday weekend! So, in the entertainment world, winter came and went and no one is happy, not even the cast (video; worth three minutes of your time I reckon). Maybe we don't like it cos there was less dialogue as the show went on..?
I feel like there must be some data on this, but numbers are not directly quoted so it doesn't quite fit with the rest of FW - women without children or a spouse are happier. I now feel vindicated in expending minimal energy on the notion of partnering up with a man for life. This quote made my day: "Married people are happier than other population subgroups, but only when their spouse is in the room when they’re asked how happy they are. When the spouse is not present: f**king miserable."
It's not explicitly clear that it's heterosexuals but that was my reading, and now I just want to know how women married to women feel.
On the home front
Only 5% of Brits can name a single one of their MEPs — yougov.co.uk
*carefully walks across the stage holding a massive MAYBE THE PERCEIVED DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT AND LACK OF EDUCATION HAVE BEEN PROBLEMS ALL ALONG banner*
Private jails more violent than public ones, data analysis shows
Private prisons are 47% more violent (in terms of assaults) than public prisons. Wow. That's interesting and... slightly concerning.
Charting Theresa May's premiership
The ministerial resignations chart is... Quite something. The Institute for Government have been doing these for years but this round-up is pretty good, I think.
The power switch: tracking Britain's record coal-free run
We've set a new record for the longest time without using coal-powered energy. There are a couple of really nice visualisations in this. And it's quite cool that we can say we are off-coal, for the time being.
Special extra mention for this bar chart race of British politicians by their followers on Twitter. H/T Giuseppe for that!
Over the pond
Republicans are struggling to fix America’s dysfunctional health-care system — www.economist.com
The US healthcare system sucks. You know this, I know this, Bob down the road knows this. Why is no one taking positive steps to change it? Maddening.
The Trump administration struggles to confront the deadliest drug crisis in U.S. history
The story and data behind the deadliest drug crisis - fentanyl.
There's an interesting extra thing to think about here when you move digital products to print products. The print version of this ended up in Data Is Ugly because it makes NO SENSE AT ALL on paper.
Abortion restrictions by U.S. states — graphics.reuters.com
This looks at each state's laws on abortion, comparing how strict they are and at what point abortion is not ok. I keep wondering to myself how different it would be if more women had political power, but *looks pointedly at Georgia* I guess not.
Did Congress read the Mueller report? More than a quarter of these key lawmakers won’t say
WaPo asked members of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees in the House and Senate whether they had read the Mueller report in its entirety. A whole bunch of Republicans... had not.
Elsewhere
Elections in the EU: Europe from Left to Right — www.zeit.de
This is some truly awesome analysis (and visualisation) of elections across Europe by region. We've analyzed recent election results in over 80,000 regions of Europe. And we found many patterns – from the radical left to the extremist right. Find your community.
Scaling Mt. Everest: A scroll up the icy path
I guess this was prompted by that photo of people queuing to get to the peak of Everest. It's mad to me that people are *standing around* *waiting for other people to move*, in the Death Zone. You know, where loads of people die because humans can't cope with those conditions. Anyway, this is an awesome guide to how frickin' high Everest is.
How India mobilised a million polling stations — graphics.reuters.com
This is an immensely cool piece from Reuters about how India managed the world's largest election, ensuring that voters from remote corners of the Himalayas to crocodile-infested mangrove swamps in the Andaman Islands could vote. So awesome.
Quality of Life and Cost of Living Around the World
Looks like you get most bang for your buck in Vienna, Vancouver, and Munich. I've only been to Vancouver but I could probably quite easily live there. HMM. *rethinks holiday AND life plans*
Odds and ends
Everything you could ever want to know about names in songs. Including the name Baby. Which by all rights should not really be a name, because that's like calling an actual baby Toddler or Sweetie.
(Bonus Points for putting a clip of Halsey's Without Me in there because it's an absolute banger)
This summer, expect sequel after sequel after sequel. We appear to have not quite yet *fully* scraped every single barrel.
An illustrated guide to all 6,887 deaths in ‘Game of Thrones’ — www.washingtonpost.com
Six. Thousand. And. Eight. Hundred. And. Eighty. Seven. Deaths. But I absolutely adore the effort that has gone into this. Amazing.
Bonus: Little Twitter thread explaining how the idea came about and how deaths were counted.
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring plot diagram
The plot of the first Lord of the Rings film in a kind of NYC subway map style. Aesthetically, HELL YES, but I just don't care enough about LOTR to be massively enthused by this. However, some of you might be!
Bad chart of the week?
I HAVE THE MOST INCREDIBLE IMAGE IN MY HEAD RIGHT NOW:
Well, that's all for this week. If you enjoyed reading this, please forward to friends and encourage them to subscribe, buy me a coffee, or support Fair Warning on Patreon. I'm on Twitter @SophieWarnes.
I'm still open to sponsorship of the newsletter (please get in touch if this sounds interesting!) but in the meantime, I'm seeking out great non-English language data journalism, and am slowly working on *a little something else* for future 😏
See you next week!