I& #39;m so tired y& #39;all. I want to tell people to be smart and skeptical, but people only hear the second part of that and forget the first part.

I& #39;m exhausted w/ bad data & bad visuals and I barely have the energy to do this. But here we go.

Common, NYT. You can do better than this

I don& #39;t know who put this together or what their motivation was. Maybe this is all a simple innocent mistake. But Snohomish County WA is simply not in the same ballpark as any county in or around NYC.

Yet they are colored the same. /2

A typical county around NYC has 2-4 times as many cases as Snohomish. Some have more than 10X.

And it& #39;s not like you can& #39;t identify the hotspots by simply upping the highest color level by 2X or 3X or even 5X.

Places deeply hit (like Terrell County, GA) will still show

Me from a decade ago would accuse the NYT of intentionally setting the color scheme so it looks like this is a big deal all over (which diminishes how big a fucking deal it is in NYC).

I don& #39;t believe that anymore. Now I just think it& #39;s sloppy. /4

It& #39;s annoying how sloppy it. It& #39;s suspicious how it& #39;s always so sloppy in one direction over another. But I& #39;m tired of assuming ill intent, I can& #39;t do that any more. I just want people to stop being so bad at this when I know they have the capacity to be so good. /5