U.S. Births by Parental Age, 1969–2024
An animated heatmap of every U.S. birth by mother and father age, 1969–2024 — watch the joint distribution of parental ages slide older across 56 years.
demographicsdata visualizationbirths +1
Aaron Becker
Generally curious.
I've been wearing many hats since long before AI made being a generalist cool again.
Above: Earth’s surface winds & temperature · ERA5 reanalysis · live simulation — move the cursor to stir
Data films
TopDown Econ
My data-visualization studio — short data films on demography, economics, and climate, built from primary sources. The site runs the same live wind engine as the banner above.
In 2000, coal, gas, and oil made 65% of the world's electricity. In 2025, it's 57%, and falling
5.9K likes
Per person, the biggest carbon emitter in history was never China
684 likes
The single hottest day the planet has recorded in 86 years was July 22, 2024
629 likes
The Arctic is heating almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Antarctica is now warming right alongsid…
133 likes
Writing
Analysis
Most of these posts focus on creating interesting and aesthetically pleasing visualizations; the analytical depth often isn't where I want it to be. Then again, pretty charts go down easier than long-form analysis. Code included for those interested.
diasporas and transplants: migrations between US states
1/3 of US-born Americans live in a different state from where they were born. Let's look at the states people leave, stay, and move to.
pythondata visualizationmaps +1
syncing life stages: trends in parental age by educational attainment
In the US, more educated mothers are not only older, on average, but also closer in age to their male partners. Between 2010 and 2024, age gaps have narrowed at every level of parental education.
pythondata visualizationparenthood +1
thirties are the new twenties: US births by maternal age group
Working in from the extremes, every maternal age cohort has swapped places sometime in the last decade.
pythondata visualizationdemographics
twin ridges: visualizing housing expensiveness trends across US states
Nearly every US state follows a similar "twin-peaked" pattern of housing expensiveness, with peaks occurring around the pre-2008 housing bubble and the post-COVID housing market surge.
pythondata visualizationhousing +1
real median household income growth by state since 1984
By definition, households live together, making median household income a relevant metric for housing affordability.
pythondata visualizationmaps
twin peaks: housing expensiveness by state, 2000-2025
Visualizing trends in median home value vs. median household income at the state level from 2000 to 2025.
pythondata visualizationhousing
getting older: children vs. total population in the US
Fewer Americans are children, yet there are more American children than ever.
pythondata visualizationmaps
good news about young adult parenthood rates in the US
Fewer young adults are having children; the pandemic accelerated this trend, but it's not a new phenomenon. Hooray!
pythondata visualizationmaps
creating attractive color-coded state maps in python
Creating a map in the matplotlib ecosystem isn't easy, but the degree of control you get does allow for some powerful customizations.
pythondata visualizationmaps
Writing
Technical
My first posts here were mostly technical tutorials and tool comparisons, which worked to ease me back into writing. Lately I've been leaning on AI to consolidate and expand my project notes into shareable blog posts (AKA creating future LLM training fodder).
Painless PhotoSwipe Lightboxes for Astro MDX Blog Posts
How to integrate PhotoSwipe with Astro's MDX content and image optimization pipelines for a performant, painless image gallery experience in Astro blog posts.
astrophotoswipemdx +1
astro & away we go!
Astro is a relatively new frontend framework that's particularly well-suited to building a developer blog.
astrosveltekitmarkdown
Slashing URLs with Astro and Nginx
Default Astro and Nginx behaviors redirect to URLs with trailing slashes, which is great for SEO and user experience.
astronginx
Jupyter Notebooks Are Like Spreadsheets
Data scientists use Jupyter notebooks the same way that financial analysts use Excel spreadsheets, with many of the same pros and cons.
jupyterspreadsheets
Add Brotli Compression to Your Nginx Docker Container
In this post we'll build a slim, up-to-date Nginx container with Brotli to host this blog.
dockernginxbrotli +1
Add diagrams to your Astro site with D2
A guide to adding flowcharts and diagrams to your Astro site using D2, a text-to-diagram tool. Tips on docker build and clutter control.
astrod2diagrams
Mermaid vs D2: Comparing Open-Source Text-to-Diagram Tools
A comparison of the open-source text-to-diagram tools Mermaid.Js and D2, with a focus on developer experience, unique capabilities, and rendering workflows.
d2mermaiddiagrams
Self-Hosted Site Analytics with Umami, Docker, and Traefik
Integrating Umami, a privacy-focused, open source analytics service, into a self-hosted stack built with Docker Compose and fronted by a Traefik reverse proxy.
analyticsumamidocker +2
Umami vs Plausible vs Matomo for Self-Hosted Analytics
Comparing Umami, Plausible, and Matomo, three popular self-hosted Google Analytics alternatives, as well as brief glances at GoatCounter, Fathom, and PostHog.
analyticsumamiself-hosting
Client-Side vs Server-Side Analytics
The way we build and deploy websites nowadays makes tracking user behavior in the browser more straightforward than server-side tracking.
analyticsdiagrams
Building
Projects
Standalone sites and tools — mostly data visualization that outgrew a blog post.
Birth Heatmaps
Interactive visualizations of birth seasonality patterns across 60+ countries using historical demographic data from the Human Mortality Database.
NamePlay.org
Visualize baby name trends, read analytical blog entries, and view rankings and pages that combine spelling variations of names by pronunciation.
Elsewhere
Say hello.
If something here resonates — a dataset, a tool, a half-formed idea — I’m easy to find.