A surprisingly helpful (a simple) guide explains how to tell Korean, Japanese, and Chinese writing apart. It’s also rather profane in each of those languages.

(via r/funny, where you can find out exactly how it’s profane)

That’s the collective noun for a group of starlings (a type of bird). This breathtaking video reminds me of something Reggie Watts was once quoted as saying (very last paragraph):

If you pay attention to the world, it’s an amazing place. If you don’t it’s whatever you think it is.

(via MeFi; I got that exceptional quotation from @colinmarshall)

I feel like I’ve seen this chart before, but I know I never linked it. And since depression seems to be a popular topic (on this blog) right now, I think you should give it a look.

(via Justin Wehr, who likes the many charts of this style that Cure Together has made)

Isaac Asimov explains the magical things they do.

(via Austin Kleon)

Wired has an awesome profile of some of the most interesting cloud formations you’ve probably never seen. Worth a look for the pictures, worth staying around for the science.

(I know this is over a year old; I’m finally trying to tackle my massive Instapaper backlog.)

I told you about Dallas Clayton’s awesome picture book last year. Well, he just released an even more awesome book (which you can, just like the last one, see in it’s entirety online for free).

(via LoneGunman Mini)

I really like this chart, which I completely decontextualized. I don’t think it needs context, but you can find some where I found it.

(via Yglesias)

Take a woman and her housekeeper, capture them removed from any recognizable context, and leave people wondering which is which. The linked PDF begins with an explanation (en Español) of the project, photos begin on page 23. Contexts.org provides some details for those of us better at English than Spanish.

(via Bobulate)

This isn’t done often enough. Foreign Policy got a batch photos taken by Kabul teens which shows the day-to-day life of the people. While this may be antithetical to the traditional notion of news photography, regularly undertaking this practice would be an invaluable compliment to that.

(via Reddit)

The map is interesting, but the way it’s made is what I really like. Ahti Heinla used data about number of users and photos at a given location from photo site Panoramio to tell where the most tourists are going. Surely this doesn’t yield a perfect data set, but it’s damn clever.

(via MoWIL)

I liked this animated map of the spread of paleolithic man, but it probably won’t change your life.

(via Reddit)

In Johannesburg, to get a local minibus taxi ride you point to the ground, to get to the Central Business District you point to the sky. The system isn’t exclusive to Jo’burg, Durban’s city government boasts about them, but South Africa seems to be the only place such a system exists. Artist Susan Woolf seems mostly responsible for documenting the system, the work of which she explained at a TEDx. The best article I could find about their origins (don’t miss its graphic):

“Ah well, we have meetings to discuss the new routes and then we choose the sign, simple,” he says. Once the code is coined it’s the responsibility of the “queue marshals to inform the commuters about the new sign”.

The obvious one, of course, he says, is the universal train station route code, the choo-choo train-wheel arm movement. Other signs are “decided by the customers”, he says. Like the one used for the S’God’phola — Randburg route.

Turns out there were a lot of shootings in S’God’phola, an informal settlement near Fourways, in 2006, so the gun hand sign became the code for taxis going there.

(via Bobulate)

None of these charts of American food availability really shock me but they would make a good addition to Mesofacts. The most interesting thing to me is how constant America’s appetite for pork has been — while chicken’s just climbed and beef rose into the ’70s and started to fall. And if you can wade through the bureaucratic writing, there are some interesting tidbits not represented in the chart:

The availability of fats and oils grew from 36 pounds per person in 1909 to 87 pounds in 2008. Much of this increase was in salad and cooking oils used to cook french fries, a mainstay of fast food and other restaurant menus. Cheese availability also skyrocketed—growing from 11.4 pounds per person in 1970 to 31.4 pounds in 2008. Cheese owes much of its growth to the spread of Italian and Mexican eateries in the United States and to innovative, convenient packaging, such as string cheese for lunch boxes.

(via kottke)

These photos are compelling and disturbing.

(via HN)

Hey, you remember how people were talking about a series of photos about a soldier? And you remember how you didn’t look at them? Here’s your chance to correct that mistake.

(via kottke)

Up’s Carl Fredricksen is probably America’s most famous nail house resident, but he’s certainly not the only one.

(idea via FYE)

Cameron Booth set out to make a map of America’s Interstate highway system in the style of H.C. Beck’s famous map of the London Underground. Unlike other versions — I linked one here — he strived for the ideal compromise of geographic accuracy and simplicity of presentation, and it’s fair to see he’s made the best one the internet’s seen. The big version; and some details on the forthcoming hardcopy.

(via kottke)

If you’re tired of all those satellite pictures of the Earth I keep posting, how about everyone’s second favorite planet?