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Spotify Has A World Map Of People Listening To The Same Song At The Same Time

Have you ever wondered if someone, somewhere in the world, once went through their playlist and selected the exact same song at the exact same moment you did? If you and a complete stranger, for a few minutes, shared a musical communion without knowing it?

Spotify’s first “Artist in Residence” Kyle McDonald has. To answer these existential questions, the Brooklyn-based digital expert created “Serendipity,” a visualization of people around the world hitting “play” for the same song on Spotify within a tenth of a second. It turns out it happens all the time and that we’re even more in sync than we’d think.

To build Serendipity, McDonald got access to Spotify’s huge database, which constantly gathers information about the 25 to 50 million people listening to the music streaming website at the same time. Between 10,000 and 20,000 songs are started every second.

The map isn’t live, but the tracks shown on it were “recorded over one hour of one day”, the artist explains. In addition to revealing that some Australians are still listening to James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” in 2014, it also shows that two people living thousands of miles or just a few streets away from each other can have the same musical tastes, and uncanny synchronicity.

See Serendipity here.

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Geopolitics

U.S., France, Israel: How Three Model Democracies Are Coming Unglued

France, Israel, United States: these three democracies all face their own distinct problems. But these problems are revealing disturbing cracks in society that pose a real danger to hard-earned progress that won't be easily regained.

Image of a crowd of protestors holding Israeli flags and a woman speaking into a megaphone

Israeli anti-government protesters take to the streets in Tel-Aviv, after Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defence Minister Yoav Galant.

Dominique Moïsi

"I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat," reads the t-shirt of a Republican Party supporter in the U.S.

"We need to bring the French economy to its knees," announces the leader of the French union Confédération Générale du Travail.

"Let's end the power of the Supreme Court filled with leftist and pro-Palestinian Ashkenazis," say Israeli government cabinet ministers pushing extreme judicial reforms

The United States, France, Israel: three countries, three continents, three situations that have nothing to do with each other. But each country appears to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown of what seemed like solid democracies.

How can we explain these political excesses, irrational proclamations, even suicidal tendencies?

The answer seems simple: in the United States, in France, in Israel — far from an exhaustive list — democracy is facing the challenge of society's ever-greater polarization. We can manage the competition of ideas and opposing interests. But how to respond to rage, even hatred, borne of a sense of injustice and humiliation?

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