What happens if we start measuring everything in “YouTube upload-time”?
Urban bicycling is generally becoming more popular in American cities, but there are a few smaller trends that complicate the larger narrative. A new infographic designed by Bike League for the website Visual.ly breaks down the demographics of bicycle use across the country—and there are a few surprises.
Sensing the urgency of racial segregation in America, software developer Jim Vallandingham programmed a data visualization that shows many of the top 10 most segregated cities breaking apart along racial lines. Take, for example, St. Louis, Missouri (pictured top). In Vallandingham’s animation, the mostly black core of St. Louis is abandoned by the first-ring suburbs, leaving a vast cultural moat between neighborhoods. Exurbia, for all of its sprawl, remains a tightly knit (or at least similarly skin-colored) community.
(via Co.Design)
It doesn’t happen too often, but once in a blue moon a hideous chart contains such a novel conceit that we have to post it. For example: This phenomenal little animated gif of music industry sales over the last 30 years.
The series of pie charts shows the sales of various music formats: Thus, you can see cassettes begin devouring the LP, and then CDs devouring cassettes, and then, of course, downloadable MP3s decimating CD sales.
Tonight the GOP candidates prepare for a Debate in Iowa. As debates begin, the facial coding experts at Sensory Logic examine the looks of Republican hopefuls. Find out what emotional reactions—and votes—their faces are likely to garner. See the whole graph here!
(via fastcompany)
good:
Blow Globe: How the “American drug” is becoming popular in Europe and beyond.
(via theblueoftombs)
Want to know how to make zero-waste beer? A lot of beer makers are incorporating green practices into their brewing operations, but New Chicago Brewery is taking it to a wholly different level. Read more …
Did you know that noise complaints are the no. 1 quality-of-life issue for city residents? The folks over at Movity.com, before being acquired by Trulia, decided to tackle this issue as a first step in providing detailed information about life quality of different city districts with the TenderNoise project.
There are some pockets of (relative) silence around Minneapolis. Does your city have much noise pollution? And does it effect your quality of life?
The Crockpot: A Weekly Link-Digest from Utne
“Officials Say The Darnedest Things” blogs quotes from politicians with just enough context to make you roll your eyes. - The Atlantic Wire counts four reasons why Obama is probably hand-wringing over his reelection chances.
- Horacio Castellanos Moya on what it’s like to be a writer in exile.
- “The discussion page for the article on ‘Toilet Paper Orientation’ is 2x longer than that for the Iraq War.” That nugget comes from a wastefully informative infographic that presents everything you never needed to know about the different ways to hang your toilet paper. Let us ask, Over or under?
- Bookforum ponders what the Bestseller List would look like if authors could only make the list once in their careers.
- GOOD magazine examines The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle. Was yours worse than “Fink Ployd” or “principalrichardbelding”?
- Jorge may have earned a PhD in the United States, but he’s still an illegal immigrant with a bleak job outlook.
- It’s Poop Week at the birding and conservation blog 10,000 Birds. Boy, is it ever.
- What are you doing this summer? Please come to Washington and help stop a massive oil pipeline, say Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry and other green leaders.
- Fukushima who? Nuclear power supporters get back to business as usual.
