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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Nick Evershed

The Crunch: why it’s so hard to buy a home, penguin naps, and inequality in the US

Composite image showing a penguin, an old computer and a plane overlaid on a stylised chart
In today’s issue of the Crunch: penguin naps and old data, among some weightier topics. Composite: Getty Images/Won Young Lee/Science

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.

You can watch it here.

Five charts from the past fortnight

***

1. As Cop28 draws to a close, these charts show how far the major economies are from their targets

A chart titled ‘Highly insufficient G20 countries’ displaying annual emissions in billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent for China, Brazil, Australia, the EU, and the UK
Annual emissions in billion metric tonnes of CO2. Illustration: Guardian Design

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.

***

2. Australia’s immigration spike and what it means for jobs and housing

A collection of line graphs titled ‘Arrivals outstripping departures’
Arrivals and departures by visa category for the year to October in each year. Illustration: Guardian Design

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.

***

3. Do Vogue covers have less text on them than they used to?

A composite image comparing two covers of the magazine Vogue, with the text areas highlighted

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.

***

4. Does the American dream foster inequality?

A chart titled ‘A country of extremes: the wealthiest Americans are the richest people in the developed world, but America’s poorest are also the most likely to go hungry.’ It consists of two graphs. The left graph shows the median disposable household income for people in the top 10%, with the US at the top, followed by Switzerland and Australia, among others, in descending order. The income is measured in purchasing power parity-adjusted dollars, with the US bar extending past $150,000. The right graph shows the percentage of households where someone skips a meal at least once a month because there is not enough money for food. The US has the highest bar, close to 12%, indicating a higher prevalence of food insecurity compared to countries like Slovenia and Austria, which are among the lowest.  The data source cites the Luxembourg Income Study and FT analysis of data from the International Social Survey Programme

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 image displays two sets of comparative square charts illustrating growth in internet traffic and datacentre energy use between 2015 and 2022. The top chart shows a dramatic increase in internet traffic, with a small green bar labelled ‘0.6 zettabytes (ZB)‘ for 2015 and a much larger red bar labelled ‘4.4 ZB’ for 2022, indicating a 600% growth. Below, the second chart shows a more modest increase in energy use by datacentres. The 2015 energy use is represented by a small green bar labelled ‘200 TWh’, and the 2022 energy use is a larger blue bar, partly striped, with ‘240 TWh’ on the solid part and ‘340 TWh’ on the striped part, suggesting a 20% to 70% increase. The striped pattern indicates uncertainty or a range of values. The image communicates that while internet traffic has grown substantially, the energy use increase has been relatively moderate.

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

Off the Charts

A chart comparing the ten thousand naps a day that chinstrap penguins have to a single nap from a human

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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