Each plot on this site is a small interactive data visualization, built directly from primary sources - Treasury, FRED, Epoch AI, city records - and it updates itself automatically as the story unfolds.
Plots
How the national debt has grown over three decades and six presidential terms, and how that growth lines up with GDP, unemployment and inflation.
Moore's Law has doubled chips every two years for sixty years. AI's own growth, set against it, doubles every six months. How much of that exponent do the chips explain?
Every major AI benchmark on one calendar, from the day each was published to the day it was solved. Tests that once lasted years now fall in months.
Every country's births, deaths and migration on a world map you can scrub from 1950 to the UN's 2100 projection. The "too many" and "too few" arguments are both reading true rows of the same ledger.
American school results since 1990 against what the country spends per pupil, and against the rest of the world. A third more money in real terms, and the nation's own math score back where it started.
Are NFL injuries really rising, or does it only feel that way? Every team's weekly injury report and reserve list since 2009, the rule changes that moved the numbers, and how your team compares.
Campaign promises against the record: what was pledged, what has moved, and what the city's own numbers say.
Plotline is a personal project conceived and maintained by Luyen Chou. Any errors of omission or commission are entirely his fault.
New plots will be added regularly. If there is one you would like to see, or you spot a data or factual error, say so by way of the repository on GitHub, where the source for every plot, including its data and build script, is public.