An Interactive Chart of American Names

The latest interactive data visualization by researcher Randal Olson offers some intriguing facts about popular American names. After selecting a gender and entering a search item, Olson’s experiment combs through Social Security records to estimate and plot a name’s popularity over the past 115 years. But unlike other name graphs, Olson’s tool also delineates the number of people bearing the name who are both living …

HBO’s ‘Bessie’ is a Biopic Worth Watching

There have been many award-winning films covering black public figures over the past decade—”Selma,” “Get On Up,” “12 Years a Slave,” “The Butler”—and they’ve all been about men. HBO’s latest release “Bessie”—which follows the life of blues legend Bessie Smith—finally adds a leading lady to the list. Slate calls the movie “probably the boldest and most revealing biopic [about a black woman], offering a side …

You’re Using Emoji Wrong

According to Unicode—the people that set the standards for emoticons around the world—we’ve been using many of our favorite Emoji all wrong. In a new proposal, Unicode suggests a few changes that may help people better understand what exactly each Emoji is trying to represent. For example, if you’re an avid user of the face blowing steam from its nostrils to illustrate your anger, you’re …