Musician Regaip "Rego" Alp Sen created this cool and comprehensive alchemist's guide to alcoholic beverages. Colors and sidebars denote pairing combinations. Read the rest

With majority support in 44 states, and more in favor than opposed in 4 others, same-sex marriage is a done deal for most Americans. Besides, it's legal nationwide after a Supreme Court ruling in 2015. But Americans in two states are holding out when it comes to moral approval: Missisippi, where more are opposed to same-sex marriage than in favor of it, and in Alabama, the last state where an outright majority oppose it.

Support rose above 50% for the first time in 2011 and has not gone below that mark since then. Support rose to 60% for the first time in 2015 and has not gone below that mark since then. Support continues to rise while opposition continues to fall each year, driven in large part by a significant generational gap.

From 1988 to 2009, support for same-sex marriage increased between 1% to 1.5% per year, but thereafter support began to rise at an accelerated pace.

As of 2016, 83% of Americans aged 18 to 29 support same-sex marriage.

As of 2018, for the first time in Pew's research, more Americans over 65 favor same-sex marriage than oppose it. To find a broad national demographic opposed, you have to filter your way down to categories like "Republican Boomers" or "Weekly Church Attendees." Read the rest

On Reddit, binary_bender charted the stimulant consumption of mathematician Paul Erdős against his professional output. The prolific professor wrote more than 1500 papers in his long, incredibly wired life: "Clearly Meth Coffee." [via r/dataisbeautiful]

For Erdős death was merely a cessation of input, it taking years for his momentum to subside. Read the rest

Just in time for the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to disappear! The chart was created by Jaydub.

Data Source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/data/mortoutstand/current.htm Tools used: Microsoft Excel and Plotly

Chris "The Crispiest Bacon" Hill made this perfectly-designed chart showing how long different brands of alkaline battery lasted in the same flashlight. The surprise would seem to be the Rite Aid and CVS store brands. [Via Data Is Beautiful] Read the rest

Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Britain and Canada are the best places to live, reports U.S. News and World Report, with the USA lurking back in number 8.

This is the second straight year that the U.S. has dropped in the rankings. In 2017, the U.S. came in 7th place. Switzerland came in at the top spot for the second year in a row. U.S. News said the drop can be attributed to Trump's unpopularity, with other countries viewing the U.S. as less trustworthy and more politically unstable since he took office.

David McCandless meticulously charted dog breeds by six scores: intelligence, costs, longevity, grooming, ailments, and appetite. The big loser: bulldogs. Read the rest

Topi Tjukanov makes remarkable mapped data visualization, like this map of optimal routes by car from the geographic center of the contiguous United States to all counties. Read the rest

Wired UK created a beautiful chart to illustrate the miseries of Britain's current occupants. Debt, divorce, welfare cuts and housing prevail, but further down the threads become more tangled. Parking fines? Read the rest

Matt Shirley (better known via Instagram as mattsurelee) tries to make a whiteboard chart every day, with oft-delightful results. Read the rest

Dan Kopf's Who Americans spend their time with is a chart—six of them—that show the number of hours a day people spend with n over the course of their lives. Together they tell a story. The sixth is a gut-punch. But not, perhaps, if you're introverted.

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Just how overblown was the media panic over ebola? This interactive chart compares media coverage of a dozen health scares, from mad cow disease to zika. Read the rest

Skyler Johnson created an interactive infographic that charts the use of magic in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. The spells are organized by count or time, with instances color-coded by the book they appear in. Hover over each use and you even get the quote, for context! [via Tor and Metafilter]

Emily Asher-Perrin writes:

Perhaps not surprisingly, the spells that we see used most often are commonly used by Harry and his friends as means of non-violent resistance; Expecto Patronum; Expelliarmus; Stupefy. The Killing Curse appears sixth down on the list, which is fascinating–it is technically speaking the “most evil” of all the dark magic spells, and it is the most often used.

Polygraph studio created this great timeline of Billboard Top 10 songs from the last 60 years. Read the rest

Trolls, when cornered, often excuse themselves as Shakespearean fools of the modern age, as jesters. Given that the term "troll" spans a vast expanse from cute to abusive, this grasp at virtue seems legit. But there's a plain difference between jesters and trolls: sincerity. Jesters are unserious – a good thing! – but that doesn't mean their performance is insincere. Trolls, though, are both of these things.

How, then, do you see a troll for what they are? Unseriousness is visible, but insincerity is often not.

Mercifully, the excuse itself is a clue. Trolls don't really get the difference between themselves and the noble, world-improving court fools of their imagination.

So, when scrutinized in ways that require sincerity, they stop being unserious as well. Instead of proving themselves to be Jesters, they become Squares, serious and sincere, explaining themselves at sententious length until they can retreat back to the Troll corner and resume normal operations.

The people to really watch out for, though, the truly Machiavellian types, are people who are serious yet insincere. These Worms (lots in Silicon Valley!) slide across the opposite diagonal: whenever cornered for their shenanigans, they're disturbingly good at excusing themselves as Jesters – unserious in tone, yet ostentatiously moral.

The corollaries are also true, I find. When otherwise happy, decent, respectable Squares get defensive, they transform into amazingly unpleasant Trolls. And true Jesters, in their weak hours, tend to moonlight as Worms, manipulating others with affected seriousness.

This is just a dumb chart on the internet, of course, even dumber than the Mills Boon personality test or whatever it's called. Read the rest

Distorted by the jargon and cultures of various disciplines, the concept of probability—and the terms we use around it—tend to be somewhat misleading. Math with Bad Drawings probably has your profession nailed with its set of what are, in fact, very good drawings. [via Flowing Data] Read the rest