Datawrapper

🥵 It was *hot* this summer in Germany – hot enough for our backend developer Hendrik to consider air conditioning. But did it work in his apartment directly under a dark, flat rooftop? Here's what he says: "My options to add AC were quite limited, because I don’t have a balcony and can’t install a proper air conditioning unit outside the windows or on the rooftop. Earlier this year, I happened to see cheap monoblock air conditioners — those standalone units that use a hose placed in an open window to move hot air out — and decided to try one out. Unlike full ACs, where the heat energy from the refrigerant can be dispersed through an outside condenser, a monoblock separates air taken from the room into two flows: one of them is cooled down, passing the heat to the second flow, which needs to be transported out of the room as efficiently as possible. This is also the main weakness of these systems. On hot days, when we want to use the AC most desperately, the air coming in can be so hot that it cancels out a monoblock’s capability to cool the primary airflow, no matter how well one prevents the hot air going out from coming directly back in. Still, there is one use case where a monoblock makes sense. After a series of long sunny days, my attic apartment stays hot long after the outside temperature has fallen to an acceptable level. The walls and furniture are heated up and continue to keep the inside temperature high. In this situation, using a monoblock air conditioner can help cool the room down. Both the cold air coming in from the outside and the chilling effect of the machine add up and can cool a room notably at night. 📈 One of the chart below shows what happened on one of the hottest days of the year, when temperatures climbed as high as 38°C. My walls was so heated up that the outside temperatures dropping in the evening hardly had an effect on the inside. 👀 What really catches the eye is what happened when I finally switched the noisy machine off at about 3 a.m.: The temperature bounced back a couple of degrees and continued to stay high, although it was much cooler outside at that time. 💡 My key take-away from this analysis is that getting a monoblock air conditioner made sense for me. Even though it can’t do much more than provide a chilled stream during the day (at the expense that it slurps more warm air in), it effectively helps me cool the room down for sleep and also lowers the starting point for the next day's heat-up, so there is less build-up during a prolonged series of hot days."

📈 Today! The "Getting started with Datawrapper" webinar starts at 6pm CET / 12pm EDT. There's still time to register and join the live Q&A: https://lnkd.in/d-f5E86V

Check out our latest Dispatch! The best of last week's data visualizations cover a data lobby 🏢, experts' and the public's opinions on AI ✏️, automated warfare, the gender pay gap 💵, and low birth rates 📉. Take a look at: 🪖⚠️ a chart on America's strained military power by Gerry Doyle, Becca Wasser, Jen Judson, Courtney McBride, and Hayley Warren for Bloomberg 🤖 an interconnected AI ecosystem by Toby Nangle for Financial Times 🎙️ a data viz of laughs with accents by Nathan Roll 🏢 the data lobby of the NORC at the University of Chicago 👥 Jewish residents of Lubartów by WEDODATA 🎨 a color detector by David Aerne ...and many more visualizations by National Geographic, Reuters, Die Zeit, Berliner Morgenpost, Tagesspiegel, ABC, The European Correspondent, Tages-Anzeiger, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Guardian, Mabu News, YouGov, Núcleo Jornalismo, Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities, and more. Link in the comments 🔽

📊 This week: "Getting started with Datawrapper" on Thursday, Sept 24 at 6pm CET / 12pm EDT. New to Datawrapper? Come see what it's all about! Live Q&A included. Register here: https://lnkd.in/d-f5E86V

Are you team cash or no cash? Our developer Linus charts the differences in how people make payments in Sweden and Germany, as examples of two ends of the spectrum, both moving in the same direction but at very different speeds. 💰️ ⚖️ 💳️ https://lnkd.in/d25ammSG

📈 Today! "Dual-axis & waterfall charts" starts at 6pm CET / 12pm EDT. Still time to register and join the live Q&A 👉️ https://lnkd.in/dYVW7hpr

📱🇺🇸🤖 Our latest Dispatch dropped today! Check out the best of last week's data visualizations – from Apple’s iPhone launches and the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to growing AI warnings. Here's what you'll find: 💧 a chart on American reservoirs by Travis Hartman for Reuters and Kyle Stock and Kyle Kim for Bloomberg 🗺️ charts on various map projections by The Economist, Luis Sevillano and Laura Navarro Soler for EL PAÍS, and Amanda Shendruk for Not-Ship ⚠️ a map of disrupted traditional jade trade routes by International Crisis Group ❄️ a chart on “coolcations” and the European Waste Awards by The European Correspondent 🎶 America’s recorded music revenue by Valerio Pellegrini for Rolling Stone 🇬🇧 a map of the Great Geological Tour of Britain by Perrin Remonté ...and many more visualizations by Pew Research Center, SEMAFOR, The Financial Times, Our World in Data, Berliner Morgenpost, ProPublica, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tages-Anzeiger, The Guardian, The Times, and more. Link in the comments 🔽

📊 This week: "Dual-axis & waterfall charts" on Wednesday, Sept 16 at 6pm CET / 12pm EDT. Get to know our newest chart types! Live Q&A included. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/dYVW7hpr

In the early 20th century, the United States banned alcohol. When in 1919, the 18th Amendment prohibiting the sale and manufacturing of alcohol was ratified, an illicit industry was born. People still brewed and drank, but it was illegal now. Enter: the thriving underground alcohol industry. In 1931, while Prohibition was still in effect, Fortune Magazine published an overview of the U.S. liquor industry as a map (see below), sourced from a broad survey tallying up counts from government raids, estimates from both pro- and anti-prohibitionists, and independent observations. For this week's Weekly Chart, Shaylee from our support team recreated that map as a Datawrapper locator map. This map and the accompanying article detail a thriving industry, including small-quantity homebrewers, commercial-scale local manufacturing, and covert international imports. Quality suffered; there was a lot of demand, so distillers would often cut corners on fermentation time when using local ingredients like fruit, corn, mash, and beet sugar. Most production and distribution was highly local. Bigger distillers who didn’t brew locally would pose as varnish or perfume makers in order to divert industrial alcohol from sources that were never intended for human consumption, processing the non-potable and often poisoned product with mineral oil and other unregulated substances. Throughout Prohibition, an estimated 10,000 people died from drinking such diverted alcohol. After Prohibition was fully enacted, there was backlash. People saw firsthand how the law was enforced unevenly, how the underground industry thrived, and how social ills weren’t resolved. Banning alcohol was not the magic social cure-all it was pitched as. The 18th Amendment was repealed just two years after the Fortune map came out, in 1933. Shaylee writes: "In the end, I found that reading up on a historical culture war that ultimately failed was surprisingly reassuring. Some of the same tactics that we see used today did prove ineffective against a populace that was arguably less equipped to fight back. That knowledge is by no means a fix, but maybe a bit of inspiration as we collectively face more modern political struggles." ⬇️ Find the link to the full article in the comments.

This week's Data Vis Dispatch is out! It covers the Equal Earth map projection 🌍, AI companion users 🤖, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party 🇩🇪, and the 2026 summer box office 💰🎬. What you'll find: 🥵 charts about heat by The New York Times, Liuhuaying Yang for Complexity Science Hub, and Alexander Bogachev 🗺️ comparisons of Mercator and equal-area projections by Alyson Hurt for NPR, Christophe Châtelot for Le Monde, and Mohammed Haddad for Al Jazeera 📈 a rising red line on data centers by Our World in Data 📉 a downward blue line on computer science students by John Burn-Murdoch for the Financial Times 🤔 the susceptibility to fake news by Amanda Shendruk 🚗 colors of Swiss cars by Marc Brupbacher and Dariush Mehdiaraghi for Tages-Anzeiger 👶 a day of smiles and cries by Cristal F. and many more visualizations by The Economist, The European Correspondent, Kontinentalist, The Washington Post, SRF, Carbon Brief, BBC, etc. Link in the comments 🔽