Using last.fm Data to Map Geographic Flow of Music
By tapping into the last.fm API, these Irish researchers modeled the geographic flow of musical influence. They were able to identify where certain tastes frequently originated, and draw a hierarchy of influential cities (like the chart shown above for North America).
Surprisingly, the size of a city doesn’t associate very strongly with how influential it is. That means that despite its enormous size, NYC isn’t that much more influential than Portland or Austin. There are prevailing theories that large cities are the drivers of cultural invention, but this seems to show (for music, at least) that a connected online world is leveling that playing field.
Also, they have a graph displaying “Normalized Radiohead vs. Normalized Coldplay”, which has to go down as one of the best figures in a research paper, ever.
(via arXiv)
Very cool paper.
(via theatlantic)
An amazing collection of trippy, dreamy drawings from 70s-era NASA, reminding us that, “Though they’re often silly in retrospect, concept designs are a powerful tool. They’re lucid dreaming that the public gets to share in.”
(via)
(via theatlantic)
(Source: pretendy, via ilovecharts)
"Conservative interest groups have dumped well over $20 million into congressional races so far this year, outspending their liberal opponents 4 to 1 and setting off a growing panic among Democrats struggling to regain the House and hold on to their slim majority in the Senate."
— Washington Post. (via campaignmoney)
Because the WSJ is brilliant: This widget allows you to track Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth in real time. Get to tracking, nerds. (Second, non-widgetized try; the WSJ’s widget no likely Tumblr)
(via theatlantic)
"The headline for me here is that Facebook’s success has the unintended consequence of leading to the demise of Silicon Valley as a place where investors take big risks on advanced science and tech that helps the world. The golden age of Silicon Valley is over and we’re dancing on its grave."
— Steve Blank, a professor at Berkeley and Stanford (and serial entrepreneur), on social media’s effect on Silicon Valley. (via theatlantic)
(via theatlantic)
