Watch a Cool and Creepy Visualization of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

As one Metafil­ter com­menter put it, this visu­al­iza­tion is cool and creepy at once. Assem­bled by Brad Fly­on, the visu­al­iza­tion gives you a feel for the qual­i­ta­tive rhythm of births and deaths in the U.S.. (For­tu­nate­ly the births exceed deaths by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin.) When you enter the visu­al­iza­tion, you’ll want to give things a few moments to get going. And you can mouse over parts of the map to get more data.

The visu­al­iza­tion itself was cre­at­ed with the fol­low­ing (and I’m quot­ing Fly­on ver­ba­tim here):

• The 2010 pop­u­la­tion data for “Places” from US Cen­sus, which con­tains cen­sus infor­ma­tion for about 30,000 “places” (cities, towns, cen­sus des­ig­nat­ed places, etc.) in the US
• The 2010 pop­u­la­tion data for US coun­ties
• An annu­al birth rate of 13.5 births per thou­sand from page 67 of the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau, Sta­tis­ti­cal Abstract of the Unit­ed States: 2012
• An annu­al death rate of 8.1 deaths per thou­sand from page 81 of the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau, Sta­tis­ti­cal Abstract of the Unit­ed States: 2012