fiction is lying.

So this crazy shit about what day is the most depressing of the year. There’s this theory about “blue Monday” which is basically:

…calculated by Dr. Cliff Arnall…and has been quoted in the popular press, although there is little if any scientific basis to his methods…”the fact is that Cliff Arnall’s equations are stupid, and some fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms.” The date was calculated by using many factors…weather conditions, debt level, time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action…typically falls on the Monday of the last full week of January. This would make 21 January the Blue Monday of 2008.

So it sounds like it makes sense, awesome arbitrary formula, and it certainly aligns with a damned full moon week this year. That’s a one-two menstrual punch for some. Then TIME magazine has to get all pseudo-tech with the whole idea:

Aside from the fact that Arnall’s theory has been discounted by many in the academic community, I’ve got a better way of finding the true nadir of depression: Look to our search behavior. If we think we’re suffering from a real bout of the blues or a mental crisis, we’re likely to Google the symptoms. In fact, online searches for “depression” are among the most popular searches sending traffic to the 5,900 sites that we track, but the peak is not in January. According to our Internet behavior, our depression spikes reliably in mid-November every year, right in time for Thanksgiving, the launch of the holiday season.

That’s true too! Holy shit!

Or maybe we’re just all crazy. I know I am blessed with my own manstrual cycle that tortures me every four weeks. Serious.

The doctor guy says the best day of the year is in the 24ish part of June also.

fiction is lying is entirely about pornography,

according to Google.

Google Trends could possibly be lethal in my hands.

There are a growing number of websites that display information about what’s on other websites about other websites aggregating other websites’ links to other websites. Here’s a few nice ones that show websites’s updates being applied geographically to a map (these are usually based on google maps, if not always) in nigh-real-time:

• flickrvision - Shitty pictures people upload, as it happens. See many cats.
• twittervision - This is stupid mini-updates highlighting all the retarded minutia people think is interesting, but you never see in movies (because no one really wants to hear about or see what people do in the bathroom nineteen times a day). It’s called “micro-vomiting.” I like to watch when it focuses on tons of Japanese updates in succession because I can’t even pretend to read Japanese anymore. This is the pinnacle of the short attention span.
• wikipediavision - This one shows wiki updates by geography. See nerds flex.
• This site focuses just on map hack sites. You could say it updated you on updates from updated sites updating their update feeds or pinging the update pongshooter…calling them mashups the entire time.
• This crazy genius even made a (mac-only thus not valid) screensaver that shows what two of these sites display as updates when other sites make those updates, thus e-stalking the shit out of the entire world at once.
• flagr - This is insanity on a level I am having difficulty decoding. I think I might not understand why people want to use the internet to only ever talk about the real world. Maybe my thirst for meta-data is drastically and dangerously above average.

Is it ok for the internet to never shut up about the real world? Isn’t there more than reality, partially because of the internet?

I want to see a map update visualizer thing for last.fm (and possibly newbtube). That’s an official demand.

Ok, I’m going to admit that I am a bit of a fag for maps. Not necessarily these kinds of maps, but I’m saying I like maps. I kept a world map I had to track earthquakes worldwide for a class up for years. We have maps of Mars in our bedroom right now, framed. I used to draw maps and make out with maps and buy map porn. I was on map mailing lists and went to map tournaments and hung out at map bars. I was map-bashed and publicly ridiculed.

This meta-useless (though undeniably awesome) shit was brought to you by Web 2.0.

Update: I’d also like to see tag clouds for youtube, if anyone’s noticed any.