Botanischer Volkspark Pankow Blankenfelde. A park that’s nicely relaxed, nicely uninteresting, very beautiful. It feels odd that so many people seem to like it, too (they were all there), but I guess it would also be odd if we were the only people who would.
Today I went shopping close to Hackescher Markt, which, despite not being the weekend, was full with people. It was sunny and hot and there were people and bikes and cars and trams (and yes, boats) everywhere.
I started reading „Rheinsberg“ from Kurt Tucholsky, and one of the first pages, he makes the claim that the hustle and noise of the city drains one’s energy, even if you don’t notice it anymore at some point.
Is that true? I’m not sure it’s true. I’m not sure it’s true because when I’m in the calm countryside, do I really feel like I have more energy? Also: Energy for what? For taking care of my kids? For doing the dishes? For social interactions? Am I able to concentrate for longer in complex conversations after a day spent in a cabin in the woods? Actually: Maybe. Maybe that’s true.
The city gives you cultural, visual input that the countryside can’t, though, and I do feel motivated and energetic when inspiration hits.
Maybe the perfect life would be spent in a calm, boring village; with (bi)weekly visits to the inspirational city.
My first (short, German) talk in years (!) is happening tomorrow at Information Commons in Berlin. I’ll speak about what got me excited about data vis and what we do at Datawrapper.
If you have to prepare a talk in the future, I can highly recommend to read through Jonathan Corum’s “How to give a talk.” Like everything he does, it’s really good → style.org/talk/
And if you want to see more slides/talks I prepared, you can find them here → lisacharlottemuth.com/talks
Biked to work today, for the first time since the Datawrapper office moved to Friedrichshain. The wind was blowing in my face, every other cyclist was passing by me, the traffic lights seemed to all have a personal grudge against me, and I took ten minutes longer than Google Maps told me I would. I’m utterly out of shape, and I felt it.
But hey, I got there. I even got back home.
Will repeat. I biked everywhere until four years ago and I loved it. The Karl-Marx-Allee and I will become big friends.
I love the combination of sunlight and dark, rainy clouds.
Today I was in the woods and I really felt like …staying there. I was near the end of my walk, a walk with a perfectly reasonable length, and I thought „I don’t feel like I’m done yet. I don’t want to go home. I feel like doing the rounds again.“
So I kept walking.
I like these situations where your feelings and needs in the moment overpower your plans. Especially when you notice that it has no unfortunate consequences whatsoever when you just do what you feel like doing instead of following those plans. „Ice cream? Right now? Really, now, at 10pm? We actually wanted to go to x, but well…I mean, why no? Ice cream it is.“
These situations remind me that life is more flexible than it often seems. And the bring back control over one’s own happiness.
In 2015, Derek Watkins built a chart for The New York Times that I liked so much that two years later, I wrote a whole article about it.
Today, I rebuilt it in Datawrapper with updated data.
That was fun. I should rebuild more charts.
I just discovered Ferdio’s “Notebook on Infographics”: Very useful, filterable lessons, and so (so!) beautifully animated.
And because you can also hire Ferdio for animation and presentations, they also offer → The notebook on animation → The notebook on presentations
Until now, I only knew Ferdio because of their excellent Data Viz Project. It’s great to see that they’re investing so much time and love into projects that help the community.
Cloudy day. Free Friday. Grocery shopping and laundry and instant ramen and sugar and caffeine and trying to get rid of a persistent cold. Walking through a park and trying to really look, really enjoy its loveliness. It’s hard.
Is time going up or down in a chart?
Two weeks ago, Tuna Acisu, researcher at Our World in Data, was looking for a scientist who, after the death of the researcher who has done so before, would continue to track the peak blossom of a specific cherry tree species — Yamazakura (Prunus jamasakura) — in a specific place: Arashiyama, Kyoto.
All so that Our World in Data could keep updating their chart that shows the day of the year with the peak cherry tree blossom. (I love Our World in Data.)
They found somebody (yay!). Than The Guardian and The New York Times both reported on it. And they both showed the chart, after redesigning it slightly.
The Guardian changed the text a bit, but kept it mostly as is.
The New York Times showed the dates instead of the number of days since January – which is smart, because we think in dates, not “days since the start of the year.” And: they flipped it. April 1st is on the top, May 1st is on the bottom. The year is “going down”, and cherry blossom peaks are “going up”, similar to the temperature in climate charts.
Which made me wonder: Do we have a shared understanding of where “earlier” and “later” is on a y-axis? Or is this something we can decide depending on the impression we want to leave and the statement we want to make?
One of the best things about Berlin are the many, many lakes it’s surrounded by. Today we visited one of them; one of my favourite ones. It was a beautiful spring day with bright green leaves, lots of sun, and 11.5 degree cold water that my husband dared to swim in.
Why we don’t visit those lakes more often is a mystery.
We totally should. We hopefully will.
Also did some stamp action with my son. Fun.
The Atlas of Global Development 2026 dropped last week, and like always, it’s a visual feast.
Astonishing data (showing that global development is moving more slowly than it has in 75 years), turned into smart visualizations by Alice Thudt, Jan Willem Tulp, Christian Laesser, Ændra Rininsland, Maarten Lambrechts, Dominikus Baur.
Come for the charts (above are some of my favorites in random order), stay for the great scrollytelling explanations that always go a bit deeper than you’d expect.
I spent two sunny hours exploring Marburg. Good city. Good river. Good book stores.
Data vis is great, moon missions are great, both together are 😍
Here’s how different organizations show the Artemis II mission to the moon and back:
🌕 El País by José A. Álvarez & Francisco Domenech. My favorite, because it shows how the moon moves, too:
🌖 New York Times, 2022 by Eleanor Lutz. Back then, Artemis II was planned to launch in 2024:
🌗 New York Times, 2026 by Marco Hernandez & Kenneth Chang:
🌘 RTVE:
🌒 BBC:
🌔 ZEIT:
In case you’re also looking for a “Where is Orion right now?” map: I found one by NASA itself.
I miss chocolate. I haven’t eaten any since mid February, which feels like a really long time ago, and the reasons why I decided to not eat any sweets during Lent are kind of blurry, too. I thought once you stop eating as much chocolate as I do (did!), you get used to „not eating chocolate“ and you don’t care so much anymore. Well, it felt the opposite for me. In the beginning I was motivated; now I feel like I miss it more every week (day?) and, again, I don’t know why I’m doing it (anymore). I could just, you know, start eating chocolate again. But that would feel like betrayal.
Six more days until Easter Sunday.
