2) Individuals across different states have the same level of diversity in music taste, but state-level diversity is quite different -- the measure doesn't correlate with the entropy of states' racial composition but does correlate strongly with the share of Hispanic population.
3) Jazz is a Pacific Northwest thing?
4) Moving to a different state doesn't change one's music taste. Things are set at age 13-14!
(The control group here is a matched sample of users who didn't move.)
So much interesting stuff here on recommendation systems, the diversity-engagement tradeoff, predictors of podcast popularity, the podcast-music listening tradeoff, female artist representation, etc.:
The Chinese magazine Renwu just published a long feature on “algorithms and food delivery drivers”.
Apparently the delivery platforms ask drivers to follow ***walking*** rather than driving directions, so drivers have no choice but to go against the traffic, run red lights, etc.
Drivers say it’s impossible to deliver “on time” if they follow traffic rules.
And as the algorithm gets trained on past delivery times, there’s a race to the bottom — the platform makes ever more unrealistic estimates, and drivers take on greater risk in order to stay in.
Rainy days are the worst because people place more orders.
Once, 30+ drivers in an area fulfilled 1000+ orders in less than three hours.
Drivers and regional hubs that fail to deliver on time or quit on rainy days get punished by the system.
I share a lot of academic research on Chinese social media and frequently find that in the comment section, offensive one-liners get ranked higher than sincere discussions even though the former has fewer likes (see screenshot).
Weibo’s comment section has a Reddit-like nested structure, and the ranking algorithm takes into account **all** likes garnered by the parent comment and its children.
You can imagine how this kind of algorithm amplifies resentment and distorts our perception of public opinion.
I share a lot of gender-related research online.
Usually the top-ranked comment would be something offensive and unhelpful: “All women are...!”
This comment would then attract lots of counter-punches, making it even more attractive from the ranking algorithm’s perspective.
Interesting discussions going around the Chinese Internet re the power WeChat wields as a super app that rolls your work, social, financial life into one.
Apparently when you get suspended, it becomes logistically difficult to pay back the loans you took out on the platform.
Toll payments in China are all made online these days.
One blogger said he missed several toll payments because his old WeChat account got suspended and the toll payment system wouldn’t accept a new WeChat account.
He worried that his financial creditworthiness may take a hit.
Per the discussions, once your account gets suspended, you can still log in, but you can’t send any messages.
In other words, you have to manually add your contacts when you create a new account.
There’s an appeals process, but I haven’t come across any success stories.
A while ago I was playing around with some Chinese names data and found that people preferred shorter (one-character) names before the 1990s but that the trend was quickly reversed in more recent years.
I didn't think much of the finding, because it seems easily explained by..
Greater openness of society/marketization leading to more expressions of individualism.
But a friend pointed me towards a Chinese economist's blog post looking at name lengths in Chinese dynasties. Turns out that Ming and Qing saw similar trends!
(Chart credit goes to Chen Qin)
The source of the historical data is jinshilu, i.e. lists of top scorers of the imperial exam.
The economist Chen Qin also checked that the geographic distribution of the top scorers remained largely the same over time.
Here's the historical and the contemporary side-by-side: