🍸 U.S. Counties Where People Drink the Most Alcohol; Dog Ownership Rates in Europe; How Railroads Almost Made the Buffalo Go Extinct
PLUS, 7 charts that explain the history of the music industry.
🍺 U.S. Counties Where People Drink the Most Alcohol
🐶 % of Households That Have a Dog in Europe
💀 Railroads Did the Buffalo Dirty
🚂 Railroads played a huge role in the near-destruction of the American bison (buffalo) in the 19th century. Here’s how they hurt the herds:
1. Easy Access for Hunters
Before railroads, buffalo lived mostly on the Great Plains, far from cities. Once rail lines cut through the plains, hunters could travel in and out quickly. They also had a way to transport hides and meat back east, where there was a growing market. This turned hunting into an industrial-scale slaughter rather than local subsistence hunting.
2. “Hunting for Sport” from Trains
Passengers sometimes shot buffalo for fun right out the train windows. Trains would even stop so people could fire at herds. Most of these animals were left to rot.
3. Disruption of Habitat
The physical railroad lines themselves cut across migration routes. Buffalo often hesitated to cross the tracks, splitting herds and interfering with their natural movement patterns.
📉 Impact:
In 1800, tens of millions of buffalo roamed North America. By the late 1800s, after the railroads expanded and the slaughter peaked, fewer than 1,000 remained in the wild.
📅 Today:
Right now, there are about 30,000 buffalo living in the wild or conservations. And another 200k to 500k living in commercial herds.
🎼 Chris Dalla Riva’s Best Data Visualizations
Chris Dalla Riva makes the best data visualizations about the music industry. You might recognize him because I post his stuff pretty frequently.
He’s about to release his first book and it’s chock full of dope charts and data. I’ve got a little teaser for you here, but you gotta buy his book if you want to see the rest of the data.
Here’s from Chris’s book Uncharted Territory:
Detour from Wikipedia:
OK, back to data from Chris’s new book:
😲 Indonesia is Bigger Than You Think
(or bigger than I thought, at least)
🌎 The Rise and Fall of Religion (1993 vs. 2022)
📈 People Who Switch Jobs Make More Money
🚘 The World’s Most Powerful Cars
I’ll take the ford fiesta, thank you very much. 🚗
🎶 Banger of the Day
Here’s an underrated track from The Avalanches - the undisputed kings of plunderphonics.
The Avalanches - The Wozard of Iz
SIDE NOTE: On Instagram, we pair each post with a song that bangs. A lot of people don’t know that we have a comprehensive Spotify playlist with every song we ever played. Click here to check it out. 🎶
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*might need use incognito mode