New York University graduate student Josh Begley grabbed 4,916 satellite images of prisons via the Google Maps API and put them all in one place. It’s called Prison Map.

The United States is the prison capital of the world. This is not news to most people. When discussing the idea of mass incarceration, we often trot out numbers and dates and charts to explain the growth of imprisonment as both a historical phenomenon and a present-day reality.

But what does the geography of incarceration in the US actually look like? Prison Map is my attempt to answer that question.

Most are isolated boxes surrounded by a lot of field, but oddly there are some in close proximity to residential. There’s one towards the bottom that actually does look like a residential area. Either it’s a blip or grandma is running a prison in the basement. Probably the former.

Wireless network SSIDs in residential areas are typically left on default router names like Belkin or LinkSys, but some people use them as a subtle way to broadcast a message. Sometimes it’s simple like “DontStealMyInternet” or “Big Bob’s playhouse.” Others use their SSIDs to make a political statement. With that in mind, James Robinson, a developer for OpenSignalMaps, wondered if political allegiance could be inferred from assigning sentiment to SSIDs.

According to this eccentric measure of sentiment Obama is much more popular outside of the US than within. Why is this? It may be that Obama is genuinely more popular in the rest of the world but maybe it is because outside of the US people are less likely to express negative sentiments towards politicians in this manner. We can’t answer this definitively but looking at Argentina, at least, does suggest this is the case.

I’m surprised it was so evenly split in the US between negative and positive since in a way it’s like putting a sign up on your lawn. Usually you see signs in support of a candidate rather than one that says an opposing candidate sucks.

Anonymity probably plays the main role in this case. You can’t put up a mean sign in front of your house and pretend it’s not yours, but you can make an insulting SSID, and no one would be the wiser.

By Dan Piraro of Bizarro Comics. This is what happens when you don’t label your axes. Also this. [via Laughing Squid]

From Take Part, a short video on how a virus spreads and its possible global effects. Apparently one million deaths could be prevented every year if people would just wash their hands regularly. Too bad there’s that temporary allergy to soap and water people get after doing their business in public restrooms.

[via Brain Pickings]

During a one-week visualization course at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Kat Zorina, Ruben van der Vleuten, and Kostantinos Frantzis put together a working prototype that makes smoothies based on mentions of fruit on Twitter.

Using the Twitter API, it collects tweets containing mentions of specific fruits such as blueberry, pineapple, apple and carrot and creates a smoothie that represents the blend. The smoothie is created based on the same proportions of fruits collected from the tweets. Because twitter trends change quickly, each smoothie has a unique palette of flavors.

Next steps: a blender that provides variable consistency like chunky versus completely blended, a scoop of sherbet, and free energy boost. Oh, the possibilities.

[via @golan]