It’s Friday, so we should try to take things a bit lighter. For me that usually means knocking back a drink or two and a swear-y exultation about it being the end of the work week. But, it turns out, I’m just trying to emulate our captains of industry. Bloomberg has gone through company conference calls and tabulated the number of swear words used and charted the results. And for fun, you can read some of the excerpts.
Credit for the piece goes to David Ingold, Keith Collins, and Jeff Green.
A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers, sent me a link to a Newcastle Ale campaign video asking what would America be like if Britain had won the Revolutionary War. Anybody who knows me really well knows I am an Anglophile. I say mobile instead of cell phone, from time to time I switch from apartment to flat or truck to lorry or elevator to lift. So naturally I checked out the campaign site and what did I find? A map of place names if the Americans had not won the war. You can search for your residence or hometown and see what the Brits would have named it.
Though this ignores the fact that most of where I am from was actually named by the Brits. West Chester was originally called Turk’s Head, but after the a bunch of boundary changes that separated the British named Chester from my area, Turk’s Head was renamed West Chester because it is west of Chester, located on the Delaware River. Anyway, place names are cool. Happy Friday, everybody.
Credit for the piece goes to the design team behind the ad campaign.
Your (not-so) humble author is on holiday in Canada for a couple of days. Thankfully, he is staying away from dogs.
Credit for the piece goes to Stats Canada (in no way associated with Statistics Canada).
One of the most pressing questions of the times was answered last week. Is Florida the South? Cue the Tampa Bay Times.
Credit for the piece goes to Ben Montgomery.
This Friday’s post comes from Business Insider. And it looks at the distinctive artists by state.
And no, I have no idea who Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are.
Credit for the piece goes to Paul Lamere.
Seth Meyers debuted his new show last month. And in the debut he used Venn diagrams to tell jokes. And while I was going to poke fun at Arizona, the opportunity for the joke disappeared a few weeks ago. So instead, I will take the time to show another.
The setup:
The punchline:
Credit for the piece goes to Seth Meyers.
I have spent this past week in Lithuania for work. And it was cold. But it was colder still in Chicago. Thankfully on a Friday we have xkcd to put all this cold into a bit more perspective. Although his example uses St. Louis, I presume it holds for most cities.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
…before any of this occurs. Courtesy of BBC Future and the New Year, welcome to the end of the world as we know it. (Sing it, Michael.)
Credit for the piece goes to iibStudio.
Last week I was asked what was the population of Canada. I first said 30 million. I then figured that was too small so I said more like 50–60 million. Turns out I was closer to being correct the first time. A Google search that cites the World Bank among its sources listed the population as nearer to 35 million. But what does that mean?
Over at I Love Charts, the United States was broken down into units shaped by the size of the population of Canada. Roughly, the United States = 10 Canadas.
Credit for the piece goes to an unknown individual. If discovered, I would appreciate being informed.
For those of you unaware of the shenanigans going on in New Jersey, this won’t make any sense. But for those that are, it sucks to be a commuter in North Jersey as this comic map illustrates.
Credit for the piece goes to Ruben Bolling.
