Scarcinality

Tools & explorations

Curiosities

Things that don't fit the dispatch format but are worth building and seeing. Interactive tools, maps, and other instruments for looking at the world through the framework's lens, and occasionally far outside it.

A heatmap of the United States with states colored from blue (low) to red (high) by disease case count.

Interactive map · CDC data

Disease Hotspot Map

Select any nationally notifiable disease and year from the CDC's NNDSS data set. The map recolors by state case count, light for fewer, oxblood for more, with a ranked sidebar and state-by-state tooltip. Scarcity shows up in health systems too; this is where it lands geographically.

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A choropleth map of the United States with states shaded from light to dark green by crop production volume, with the corn belt clearly visible.

Interactive map · USDA NASS data

Crop Production Map

Select any commodity, corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, hay, and more, and a year from 2000 to 2023. The map shades each state by total output, with a ranked sidebar and per-state tooltip showing volume and share of national production. Data from USDA NASS Quick Stats; requires a free API key.

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A choropleth map of the United States with states shaded from light to dark blue by active mine count, Nevada and Alaska clearly dominant for gold.

Interactive map · MSHA data

Mine Count Map

Select a commodity, gold, copper, coal, limestone, sand & gravel, and more, to see how active mines are distributed across US states. Data from the MSHA mine registry; counts reflect active and licensed operations. Gold clusters in Nevada and Alaska. Coal fills Appalachia. Sand and gravel is everywhere.

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A choropleth map of the United States shaded from light tan to dark brown by crude oil production, Texas sharply dominant.

Interactive map · EIA data

Oil Production Map

Select any year from 1981 to 2025 to see how US crude oil production is distributed across states. Data from the EIA. Texas produces nearly half the national total. New Mexico and North Dakota have surged since the shale boom. Alaska's share has fallen every decade since its 1988 peak.

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A US map color-coded by political lean and fiscal status, dark blue for blue donor states, dark red for red consumer states, purple shades for swing states.

Interactive map · USASpending · BEA · MIT Election Lab

Federal Donor & Consumer States

Which states pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending, and does it follow party lines? Select any fiscal year from 2008 to 2023 to see grants, direct payments, and contracts by state, colored by political lean.

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A dual-axis line chart showing US rig count (navy dashed) and Brent crude price (oxblood) from 2015 to 2025.

Dual-axis chart · EIA · Baker Hughes · 2015–2025

Rig Count & Brent Crude

Ten years of US rotary rig count and Brent crude spot price on one chart. The lag between price and drilling tells the story of shale economics and OPEC+ strategy, visible at every inflection from the 2015 price war through the COVID crash and the Ukraine shock.

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A line chart of ground beef retail price per pound from 2008 to 2026, annotated with drought, COVID packing shutdowns, and tariff events.

Annotated chart · BLS APU0000703112 · 2008–2026

Ground Beef Price, 2008–2026

Eighteen years of retail ground beef prices annotated by scarcity type: the real drought-driven herd shortage of 2011–2015, the COVID meatpacking bottleneck of 2020, and the compound tariff-and-screwworm stack driving prices above $6.80 in 2026. A companion to the dispatch on which shortage is actually behind the beef price.

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Curiosities are built when something is worth seeing and the framework gives it a useful frame, or when the data is simply too good not to map. More will appear here as they're finished.