Data Vis Dispatch, February 10: Winter Olympics, Bad Bunny, and women's health

Visualizations in the past week shed light on women, including the rise of women in leadership roles on Broadway and discrimination against women in medical treatment.

Following last week's sobering Financial Times chart on democratic backsliding, The New York Times published an autocracy index that emphasizes how Trump is pushing the U.S. further towards autocracy.

That's not all from the U.S. A Wall Street Journal analysis revealed that elites had offered advice to Epstein. In Virginia, Democrats submitted a gerrymandering proposal. Health care is the main concern among U.S. citizens. Additionally, the U.S. is competing with China for influence in South America.

Coincidentally, dimensionality reduction was used to analyze two social media communities: Bluesky and Maltbook, an AI agent community.

On February 6th, the Winter Olympics started. With it came a number of medal trackers (always an occasion to be fascinated by the different visual approaches of stacking medals for charts):

In addition to trackers, there were also plenty of insights into individual disciplines, their medal winners, and their previous major accomplishments.

A major problem for the Winter Olympics is climate change. Alpine areas are heating up fast, bringing less snow and more rain.

Another major sporting event took place this past week: the Super Bowl. As usual, everyone is discussing the most important play of the night: Bad Bunny’s halftime performance.

The final section of this Dispatch focuses on the economy and its far-reaching impact. As GDP continues to rise, so do carbon emissions. However, Russia’s economy is stagnating. Venezuela's oil indicates the need for heavy investment, while Japan’s snap election signals potential shifts in government spending and economic priorities.