Thankfully, No Names
December 6, 2012 11:03 AM   Subscribe

 
That is cool, weird and creepy, all at once. Nice find.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:11 AM on December 6, 2012 [3 favorites]


Each birth/death should be accompanied by a scream.
posted by Kabanos at 11:16 AM on December 6, 2012 [3 favorites]


Hey, it's showing a death right where I live! That's pretty co-
posted by dragstroke at 11:18 AM on December 6, 2012 [21 favorites]


That is so much slower than I imagined. I was expecting a constant stream of color changing, or info of some kind, not an announcement every so often.
posted by bongo_x at 11:18 AM on December 6, 2012 [5 favorites]


.
posted by hal9k at 11:26 AM on December 6, 2012


"If he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve "Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!," "
posted by randomkeystrike at 11:28 AM on December 6, 2012 [5 favorites]


I too thought it would be some kind of onslaught of birth and death. I'm really surprised. Clearly I am terrible at conceptualizing numbers!
posted by thehmsbeagle at 11:29 AM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


Is there a way to make it go back two months? I want to see "Birth in Seattle, WA."
posted by Ideal Impulse at 11:35 AM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


Also, I was watching and it just said "Previous Birth in blah blah blah, AL." What does that mean?
posted by Ideal Impulse at 11:43 AM on December 6, 2012


That is so much slower than I imagined. I was expecting a constant stream of color changing, or info of some kind, not an announcement every so often.

It started out slow for me, with a blip here and there every so often, but other times it would just go nuts with both. Not sure what that means.
posted by usagizero at 11:49 AM on December 6, 2012


It's like a box of chocolates!
posted by mannequito at 12:12 PM on December 6, 2012


So it goes.
posted by schmod at 12:13 PM on December 6, 2012 [2 favorites]


I wish I could play with a time slider and have it extrapolate on top of the existing extrapolations until we are living in a future where there are almost no deaths, as everyone lives to 8000 due to improvements in medicine.
posted by mccarty.tim at 12:17 PM on December 6, 2012


I'd also like it if it could chart out other data. Like plotting out who's hanging out. I predict there would be a huge map that slowly turns green everywhere except over my house.
posted by mccarty.tim at 12:18 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


I haven't played it myself, but the Idle Thumbs Podcast discussions of this game make it sound fascinating: play out a simulation of a random person's life in the world whose life events are randomly chosen based on actual statistics of how people throughout the world live and die. I think the free trial lets you play through three or five "lives" as a demo.

Real Lives 2010.
posted by straight at 12:56 PM on December 6, 2012


I've met in real life one other person who was born on the exact same day that I was, which seems even more of an unlikely occurrence after watching this. I mean, yeah there were thousands of other people born that day, but they're spread out all over the place.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 1:13 PM on December 6, 2012


It would appear that Tennyson and Babbage both underestimated; after letting this run for some time, I arrive at a figure of about one and five-sevenths.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:14 PM on December 6, 2012


If I could change it, I'd make it include a randomly generated name for each birth and death, and possibly pull a profile photo from Facebook for someone with that name, just to mess with people.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:26 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


A surprising amount of deaths come from the south.
posted by PipRuss at 1:33 PM on December 6, 2012


If I could change it, I'd make it include a randomly generated name for each birth and death, and possibly pull a profile photo from Facebook for someone with that name, just to mess with people.

One could get demographically plausible names and details from the Fake Name Generator. Unfortunately, it only has one data set for the entire United States, but if someone had one of these sliced by geographical area (perhaps amalgamating ethnic make-up) and generational cohort, that would be even more uncanny.
posted by acb at 2:39 PM on December 6, 2012


This reminds of an old joke my history teacher told us in the 8th grade:

Teacher: "In America, a woman has a baby every minute."
Student: "We gotta stop that woman!"
posted by chavenet at 2:43 PM on December 6, 2012


There's currently an outbreak of births in Otter Tail County, MN. You gotta wonder what happened there in this simulation nine months ago.
posted by MrVisible at 4:05 PM on December 6, 2012


I associate D3 with a particular video game, hence was somewhat disappointed that I didn't see the Antichrist born or a bunch of quill rats all buy it at the same time.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:02 PM on December 6, 2012


Man, this is depressing to me. Not the deaths, but the births. Being a pessimist with a grim view of the future, I keep seeing these little blips -- "birth in Overland Park, KS," "birth in Cloverleaf, TX" -- and I think: poor kid! Lord have mercy! What kind of a life is it that starts in 2012 out there?

. . . This is why I have trouble striking up conversations with people.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:40 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]


I haven't played it myself, but the Idle Thumbs Podcast discussions of this game make it sound fascinating: play out a simulation of a random person's life in the world whose life events are randomly chosen based on actual statistics of how people throughout the world live and die. I think the free trial lets you play through three or five "lives" as a demo.

Real Lives 2010.


Real Lives is really interesting and really boring all at once. I'd say it's worth a play.
posted by threeants at 7:45 AM on December 7, 2012


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