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What the Critics Got Wrong About Star Wars

A friend recently emailed a group of us to say that his opinion is indeed backed up by data: Star Wars Episode 3, “Revenge of the Sith”, is better than Episode 6, “Return of the Jedi.” Like most right-headed people, I disagree. While I am cautiously optimistic about Episode 7, I have not truly loved a Star Wars movie since the originals. And as it turns out, many of the millions of people on Rotten Tomatoes agree:

The most-viewed non-music YouTube videos

Randal Olson just posted a terrific explanation of the storage significance of Psy’s massive view count along with a chart of the top YouTube videos, which prompted a popular comment from u/promyy: “I’d love to see a chart of most viewed, non-music videos on YouTube.”

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I didn’t have a special coding solution for this; Instead, I just went through a list linked from the Wikipedia article and copy-pasted videos that I felt qualified.

The Political and Public Opinion of Same-Sex Marriage, by State

According to polling data, this is a current map of popular support for same-sex marriage: It is important to note that this map shows where people say they support same-sex marriage, but each state also contains a significant proportion of voters who are either indifferent or unsure. Compare that map to this one of political support in congress and the governor’s office: As you would expect, political support is correlated to public opinion, but not perfectly.