So, how does America’s middle class compare to those around the world? Not as good as it used to.

It takes a second to absorb these charts, but they show how other countries’ middle class incomes have closed the gap on the USA from 1980 to 2010. Except for our top income brackets – they are still the richest of all.

The original article tries to explain parts of this trend.

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I usually hate these kinds of infographics, but this one does summarize some basic guidelines. Of course, the main reason to learn the rules is so you can break them at the appropriate times. By the way, are these long tall infographics taught in high school or “social media 101” now or something? I get emailed 5-10 of these a day. Bizarre. Anyways, if you have some need for them, there’s a large collection over at Pinfographics.

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And annotated interactive narrative of about 20 charts on trends in death. This was done by Bloomberg, which has a number of these well done data mining narratives.

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Amazingly detailed map of highways. Done in Illustrator, apparently. Part of me is not sure why you would do it, however.

Highways of the United States of America

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Somewhat obvious, but fun to look at the details. The original NYT article points out some of the more contentious borders.

 

A real example of how the death of net neutrality will impact your internet experience.

Since Netflix gave into Comcast’s demands for payment in exchange for a promise to deliver movies smoothly over the Internet to Netflix’s customers, speeds on Comcast for Netflix users have rocketed upward. Speeds on the larger service providers have been decreasing steadilysince last fall, but following the deal, Comcast restored all the speed that Netflix had lost and much more in the space of a couple of months.

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Judgmental Maps

In: Culture Maps

29 Apr 2014

What’s not to love about these? (more)

Baltimore, MDby The Notorious DGD
The Notorious DGD Copr. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

San Francisco, CAby Dan Steiner
Dan Steiner Copr. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Northern Virginia (Arlington, VA)by Robert Thompson
Robert Thompson. Copr. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Not sure I agree with the written analysis in this article from the Urban Institute, but it contains some interesting medium term charts on the housing market.

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Bummer.

According to a new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the industries responsible for the most job creation over the last four years are also the industries that pay the least.

National Employment Law Project

Interesting analysis. I work with a lot of non Americans, and it’s helpful to view their actions through a different lens when you’re trying to figure out what the hell they’re talking about.

From Richard D Lewis’ book When Cultures Collide.

communication styles around the world

Elements

In: Science

16 Mar 2014

Periodic table distorted by how abundant each element is on earth.

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The above is from 1970, so we’ve gotten a little more precise since then. Here are a few other versions:

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ew:

image showing Abundance in Earth's crust: cylinders logs periodic periodicity in a 3d cylinder style for the chemical elements

One theory is the it’s because it takes a while to absorb the knowledge of your predecessors.

Scientists spend ages 5 through 18 in school, and then ages 18 through 30ish getting their academic degrees. Then a few years of learning on the job, and presto! . Meanwhile, scientific breakthroughs tend to be less common in old age because we invest less in learning as we get older, and our skills gradually become less relevant.

Personally, I’m not sure I buy the explanation of the drop-off.

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And the age continued to get older over the 20th century.

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Another unique chart by xkcd.

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Josh Worth created a horizontal map of the solar system using a scale of 1 pixel = diameter of moon.  There’s a lot of nothing out there (but Josh does add some amusing commentary to help pass the time scrolling between planets).

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Pizza Value

In: Food

10 Mar 2014

How much more pizza do you get for your money depending on the size? (based on 74,476 prices from 3,678 pizza places around the country).

 

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