There’s a flower nicknamed “the harbinger of spring”.
Not all doom and gloom.
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So, we have found the people who actually believe television ads.
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Counties are a terrible way to divide up geography.
Highland County Virginia: Population 2214
Fairfax County Virginia: Population 1,142,234
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Beyond the optimism it is enthusiasm. These are people who are not going to settle for the sensible default, they’re putting the effort in to find that special deal. They are the iconoclasts. The people who bought Betamax. The ones who seek out those exceptional products, candidates, and even real estate.
Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and they’re working with limited information. Just because something is technically best doesn’t mean it is going to win in the market. An adequate but cheaper competitor usually does better. Or the other product may have crippling flaws that are not apparent from the outset, like an overly controlling parent company that stifles the product in the crib.
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What the study fails to mention is that harbinger households regularly consume a large intake of mediocre media that is peppered with commercials, and thus are prone to suggestive manipulation of their social and buying habits.
What I’m really trying to say is that, if you enjoy brainless sitcoms and reality shows in which someone gets kicked in the jewels, and survive on a diet of Taco Bell and Brawndo Supreme, you are the harbinger of our Idiocracy.
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That, and the racism.
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Well, the Census also divides people up by PUMA (public use microdata areas), which hold about 100,000 people each, but they don’t look like anything anyone is familiar with.
Congressional districts are also supposed to have approximately the same number of people (about 700,000 as of the 116th Congress, depending on the state), but both of these area types are too large for meaningful comparison in terms of demographics or other characteristics.
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Makes one wonder about the frequency of Fox News tune-ins in such households…
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And, pretty much any study using any geographic unit will normalize by population. That’s just basic
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Also, congressional districts are subject to political meddling, which makes them less suitable for scientific research.
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the feedback loop that this portrays reminds me of those circles of ant pheromonal doom: ant mills.
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Well, I mean I’m skeptical about why these correlations exist and what inferences can really be made by them. I would guess though that one way to check is to compare the change in value of houses in your neighborhood to other neighborhoods or local averages. But it would have been wiser to do that prior to buying it probably if appreciation was a priority. May not tell you whether or not you live in a “harbinger zip code” but might give you something you likely can’t change easily to worry about at night and lord knows we all need that. /s
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I meant crystal pepsi as a metaphor for stupid minority rule BS… maybe it’s not a great one cuz crystal pepsi is a pretty innocent lifestyle preference (and I personally was fascinated by it when it first happened. LOL) Whereas, yeah Trump was promising to bring back racism, sexism, religious discrimination etc.
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looks like the boingboing store may have finally found its audience
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A Betamax player might have been a better example image, but probably too many readers these days wouldn’t recognize it.
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We’re getting close to moving out of the realm of metaphor now, ha. These people literally want to bring back out of style unpopular things like coal and Christopher Columbus.
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Apparently, you are not a snowman.
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You got some beef with Columbia, MO MrShiv? 
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this was my first thought…they are poor (goes along with under-educated i would guess) so they use coupons and live in neighborhoods that were the realestate values are low (i.e. the not nice places), tend to move to other places that are similar (i.e. all they can afford), etc etc…so, this paper just identified poor neighborhoods??
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There’s poor, then there’s a paucity of thought.
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