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Charts I Liked In June

June was a big month in basketball, as the New York Knicks wrapped up the NBA season with a championship and the WNBA ramped up its season with scoring records, wild finishes, and, yes, controversy in Indiana.

Of course, you can chart things other than hoops, and I did come across lots of cool charts in June; these are six of my favorites.

Popular Dog Breeds

Now that I’m back in the US, I’m getting closer and closer to finally getting a dog,¹ so this line chart grabbed my attention. It shows the popularity of over one hundred different dog breeds in the US over the last three-and-a-half decades. There’s lots of interesting trends to explore in the interactive version, but a few things stood out to me:

• The Labrador Retriever was dethroned after 30+ years as the most popular breed, as the French Bulldog capped off its rapid ascent to the top. (Note: This doesn’t include mixes, or else I’m sure [insert breed]doodle would be up there, based on my friends’ dogs at least).

• The live action version of One Hundred and One Dalmatians came out in 1996. Five years later Dalmatians had fallen 60 places in the rankings.

• Vizslas (what I want to adopt!) are growing in popularity, but still low enough to make me feel unique.

Dads

Father’s Day happened in June, so Derek Thompson reposted his article “How American Dads Became the Parents Their Fathers Never Were” which was originally published in April. The overall finding is that “Millennial fathers have roughly tripled the amount of time they spend with kids”, and this waterfall chart shows where that time has come from: mostly less time commuting to and working in an office.

Interesting that the net of the WFH revolution is 44 fewer minutes actually working (don’t tell the remote job I’m currently interviewing for).

Dads today are also somehow fitting in an extra half hour of sleep vs what their dads got, maybe driven by the increased focus on the importance of sleep from fitness trackers like the Apple Watch and Oura Ring …

Oura Tree Rings of Life

One dad, who also happens to be a data scientist at Oura, visualized his sleep over six years, 2,396 nights, in this very pleasing “clock chart”.

As he explains it, “each day is one full circle: midnight at the top, noon at the bottom. Days move from oldest in the centre to most recent at the edge. Awake segments are orange; sleep segments are blue.” He also noted the seasonal rhythms he goes through living in Finland: “Every winter, my sleep gets longer, peaking around the Christmas holidays. Every summer, it contracts again.”

NBA Superstar Share of Payroll

New York Knicks fans sleep got a lot shorter in June as well, as the team won its first title in 53 years and the city that never sleeps celebrated all week long.² OG Anunoby’s Game 4 tip in was the defining moment of the series, and the season, but he likely wouldn’t have even been in New York if it wasn’t for Jalen Brunson’s selflessness. When he resigned with the Knicks in 2024, Brunson took a smaller contract than he could have, leaving over one hundred million dollars on the table, money that the Knicks used to sign OG.

That anecdote inspired Nike Culver to make this interactive bar chart showing the share of salary cap dedicated to each star player for any team of the last 25 years; you can see Brunson’s (relatively) small contract here for the championship Knicks (compared to KAT, or mid-10s Carmelo Anthony).

The Championship Celtics (2023-24) and Warriors (2014-15) teams are also interesting.

Knockoff KFC

One of the fun side effects of the World Cup is international tourists discovering US food; as an example, Kraft is now making TSA-compliant Ranch dressing for the Europeans to take home.

But Europeans already knew about KFC and their famous fried chicken from … Colorado. Ste Jormour on Bluesky compiled some “extremely important lunchtime data”, visualizing the number of knockoff Kentucky Fried Chicken’s by wrong state.

There’s a whole bunch more on the Bluesky thread, including a sleuth user finding a TripAdvisor review of Alaska Fried Chicken complaining that the “chicken was cold.”

WNBA Gay Pride

June was also, of course, Pride Month and the WNBA knows how to celebrate. From A’ja Wilson’s cake and Instagram comments to Gabby Williams doing it “for the GAYS!” the WNBA shows its pride as well as anyone.

There’s even an Instagram account dedicated to highlighting the gay players in the WNBA, and while it has caused some accidental hard launches before, this year’s list is simply a celebration of everyone in the WNBA (especially on the Wings and Aces).

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1. Just need an apartment for said dog, and said me to live in first.

2. Including Mikal Bridges’ yellow lab, Sonny.