This is a terrific example of where a choropleth (Ideally by county) would have been much more effective than a heat map.
It’s worth noting that the Times released this tool a decade ago. IIRC, around 2015 there was also a push for better colorblind friendly color palettes, especially on the heat map space (I remember watching a matplotlib demo, maybe, with viridis support). While there’s many visualization practices we do better at now, and while this could be due for a redux, I still think it"s one of the best interactives to date. It’s an OG for sure.
That’s fun, and it’s a much better use of heatmap since it’s just a binary scale (least-most similar). When we’re showing discrete options rather than a continuous “similarity” we don’t want to use heatmaps because they cause undesirable blurring.
Really what the OP is trying to do is show which areas use which phrases. A heatmap could have been used where we have multiple visualizations - one for each phrase - using “Popularity” to show smooth distribution. I assume that the source data is not by county level and instead aggregated so the choropleth never would have worked great.
Fuck yeah let’s convert some sunlight to … oh you said… nevermind
I’m going with “rainshine” but maybe thats just me
We always said it was the devil’s daughter was getting married.
I felt like I was taking crazy pills until I came across this comment. I’ve always heard this one instead of the “beating his wife” one.
I’ve also heard some variations of this one like “a witch is marrying the devil” or “a witch is getting married”.
I personally call them sunshowers.
Fox marries Wolf’s wife
I hadn’t heard the Wolf’s wife part, but I’d always heard said that it was a “Fox’s wedding”. Which is pretty similar. I’ve heard sunshower and that “The Devil’s beating his wife” but the fox one was more fun so it stuck with me.
I’ve always called it liquid sunshine
That sounds like a euphemism for pee.
Grew up in Georgia. My mom would refer to it as the devil beating his wife. She got it from her mom who presumably got it from her parents. I have no idea why that expression, never got an answer for that.
Here is the answer https://www.theidioms.com/the-devil-is-beating-his-wife/
I believe it’s a Golden Shower
no, that’s just a golf resort in South Florida and one hotel room in Moscow.
I’ve mostly heard some variation on sunshower in Texas because while they’re not common, they’re not super rare either. We also rarely get “sun-derstorms” (dunno what else to call it) in Texas.
I’ve decided I hate the domestic violence one. One I heard a while back is “a monkey’s wedding” and that has a much better mental image.
I’m Florida we call it 4pm.
Monkey’s wedding.
I thought this was the only one. TIL…
From Northeastern PA, and yeah I immediately thought “oh, a sunshower?”
But yeah, the devil doesn’t have a wife wtf
Well then who the hell is he beating?
In russian we have a phrase “грибной дождь” (mushroom rain) for light warm rain in the sunshine.
It’s the best weather for mushroom growth and is therefore a sign to go harvest them in the woods soon.
I like this a lot. It’s cute-sounding and has a history.
Verizon coverage map links up with this data. Coincidence??
Devil beating his wife sounds deep south as fuck…
