Linked List: March 29, 2020

Sunday, 29 March 2020

‘Lego Thunderball’ 

Jon Opstad:

Been isolating at home with my wife & kids for a week now. For my contribution to home schooling my kids (aged 6 & 4). I chose the most obvious thing — creating a shot-by-shot recreation of the jet pack sequence from “Thunderball” out of LEGO.

Astonishingly well-done. Pure joy.

Friday’s New York Times Front Page Visualization of U.S. Unemployment Claims (PDF) 

Brilliant data visualization of a sobering disaster. Like most of you, I’m sure, I seldom read a paper edition of a newspaper anymore. But this design is a good reminder of how expansive the space is on a broadsheet front page. This graphic both makes great use of that space and plays against the reader’s decades-old assumptions about how the front page of The Times is laid out. It’s an unprecedented, shocking design to present unprecedented, shocking data.

(I tweeted this yesterday and a few people asked how they could obtain hard copies — e.g. for teaching data visualization. The Times sells reprints of each day’s front page.)

Update: The Wall Street Journal had a similar front page design on March 27, too.