1 / Beefmaps, 3D warships and inequality

The very first issue of the Buried Signals newsletter.

Feb 08, 2022

Dear reader,

Thank you for being here for the very first issue of the Buried Signals newsletter! Once every few weeks I’ll share a selection of exceptional work from independents or newsroom teams.

Let’s dive in.

Investigative Spotlight

Bloomberg’s investigative team released a landmark report on the activities of the Brazilian beef giant JBS, confirming beyond doubt the company’s destructive exploitation of the Amazon despite its assurances of the opposite. The delivery by the Bloomberg Graphics team is stellar, using heatmaps, dotmaps and flowmaps with satellite imagery to track the overall supply chain from production to destination.

Bloomberg Graphics @BBGVisualData

To illustrate how legal ranching occurs deep inside deforestation hotspots, we zoomed in on 10,700 mi² near São Félix do Xingu where JBS directly purchased from >600 ranchers since Aug. 2009. There are many examples like this throughout the region. 🔗: bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-…

Visual Spotlight

This month’s independent spotlight goes to Bartosz Ciechanowski for his thorough explanation of the GPS system, using interactive graphics to help readers assimilate cause and effect.

ProPublica’s graphics team published this gripping visual story on the USS Fitzgerald’s demise, recounting the events with every medium available : 3D mapping, data visualisation, illustration, still or moving images and 3D animation.

Under-reported News

I recently posted visual summaries of Oxfam’s Inequality Report and the Pandora Papers, both investigations press for urgent action on the world’s dramatic inequality crisis.

Billionaires are noticing the fallout effects of the increasing disparity and requesting governments increase taxes, this should be front-page news as an affirmation of how extreme the situation is.

Handpicked Obsessions

Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question is a masterpiece and made available publicly by Princeton’s Physics department.

This is by far my favourite story of all those I have written. After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded.

Migrants, an animated short film about the journey of two polar bears.
River Runner by Sam Learner, tracing where a drop of water anywhere on the planet would meet the ocean.
3D Data Visualisation is an exploration of data interaction in a 3D / virtual space by Peter Beshai.
This illustrated VR short film by the Guardian.