The Crunch: Hollywood dramas, Trump’s arch, and all-pervasive petrochemicals

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!

In this week’s newsletter we have charts on why Hollywood is increasingly abandoning dramas, the all-pervasive presence of oil in everyday life, a great visualisation of how big Donald Trump’s new arch might be, and where in the world is heating up the most from climate change.

With no end in sight to the US-Israel war on Iran, governments have responded with policies to ease the cost of living, such as making public transport free.

But these policies can serve to exacerbate existing inequalities in our built environment. The inner, more affluent parts of our cities tend to have the best access to public transport:

Click through to see the Vampire index that shows the parts of Australian cities that are most exposed to increases in interest rates, the cost of fuel and other goods, and where there may be little option but to keep driving.

Elsewhere, polls have closed for local council elections in England, Scotland and Wales and we’re tracking all the results here. There’s more interest than usual in the local elections due to the rise of Reform UK and the Green party, with both expected to make major inroads at the expense of the major parties.

1. 400 million!

That’s the number of barrels of oil Australia uses every year, according to this nicely designed interactive in the Sydney Morning Herald:

This story is very extra, with animations and 3D models of planes and farming equipment and a lot else. But our favourite thing may be the header – the slow rolling waves and the occasional drops of oil are just a really good bit of visual storytelling.

2. A sense of scale

We’re generally sceptical of 3D datavis at Crunch HQ but here’s another example of it done well. This story by the New York Times uses a 3D model to give you a feeling of how big Trump’s monumental DC arch will be and the sight-lines it would block:

We could describe how it would loom over the traffic and block the Lincoln Memorial. Or we could show you.

3. Drama over the lack of drama

Audiences tend to like dramas, and they’re relatively cheap to produce, so why is Hollywood making so few of them nowadays? Daniel Parris had a couple of theories in his newsletter last week:

Honestly, the lack of sequel potential is a feature not a bug.

4. Stacks on stacks on stacks

Iran’s Uranium stockpile is almost exclusively talked about in terms of enrichment thresholds, and whether it should or does exist at all. The New York Times has an interesting animated chart looking at the stockpile and enrichment levels over time.

That enriching uranium isn’t a linear process – getting from 0% to 20% is much harder than to get from 20% to 60% – isn’t something that had occurred to me (Josh) before.

5. Where in the world is heating up the most?

The Nordic heatwave that pushed temperatures above 30C (86F) in the Arctic Circle in July was part of a record-breaking year that saw abnormal heat sear more than 95% of Europe, a report has found. Accompanying the reporting by our colleagues was this nicely illustrated (if horrifying) map showing where in Europe has warmed the most:

There’s a bunch more charts in the news story, which you can read here.

The wonderful illustrators at Reuters have created this interactive looking at how many everyday items contain oil derivatives:

In Australia, reporter Caitlin Cassidy tried to spend 24 hours without using oil-based products and found it predictably impossible – almost no moment in our daily lives is left untouched by petrochemical products!

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