Facebook is even more omniscient than you thought: it can now chart the world's collective hopes and dreams and highs and lows—sort of, at least.

The company's data team on Monday launched a trippy new application called the "Gross National Happiness Index." Taking a similar format to its "Lexicon" trend-tracking product, the "GNH" currently displays a graph of data tabulated over the course of the past few years to track the "happiness" of Facebook users based on words picked up in their status messages.

• Facebook's Gross National Happiness Index (Click to Enlarge)

Gross National Negativity:

• Gross Negativity Since Oct. 2007 (Click to Enlarge)

h/t: Cnet

2,000 College Students: Sick with swine flu at Washington State University.

Two Soldiers from Fort Lewis: Killed in Iraq.

Hutchison Pulls Ahead of Constantine in King County Race: By three points, according to SurveyUSA.

Cougar Still on the Loose: A man says he saw the cougar on his driveway and it ran off into Discovery Park. Next sentence: "Meanwhile, a raccoon whose carcass was found in the park Friday morning apparently was not killed by the cougar, but was possibly eaten by a homeless person, according to the Seattle Parks Department."

That Black Man on the TV: The ridiculous "debate" over whether schoolchildren should be watching their own president say things.

Yeah, He's a Good Writer, Just Have Him Write It: White House mulls writing its own health-care legislation.

Alleged Kidnapper and Alleged Rapist: Also alleged writer of creepy songs.

Teenage Unemployment Rate: At its "its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948."

ELF: Yep, we did it.

Obsessive Bumbershoot Coverage All Weekend: Right here.

To go?

Is that replacing "All the news that's fit to print" because of the no-printing of the Internet? Or is this some more pointed marketing strategy that just happens to be advertised on the print-edition bag?

Goodnight, drunky.

This photo is called "Sunday Night Sky" and it's by shawnmebo, who just now posted it The Stranger's flickr pool.

(Due to autoplay with audio, video is after the jump.)

(Via.)

Cuz, like, the thing Amazon does? It's a pretty amazing thing, when you think about it. You have two choices: (1) you can get in your car and go to the store to get something, or (2) you can sit down in your own home in front of a magic but intuitively designed portal that remembers who you are, shows you everything you could want to know about a product, including what other people who bought it thought of it, and then at the click of a button will send you whatever it is cheaper than you could get it if you went out and got it yourself.

At least Amazon isn't, like, say, the banking system—the banking system is totally insane. They invent money, and then they charge you all this money to borrow money, just penalize and penalize and penalize you with interest, and if you can't keep up they'll swallow your house, or your car, or whatever you have, and then they take huge risks with that money/house/car they've sucked out of you until the whole system collapses, and then they just invent more money out of thin air to charge you exorbitantly for, with pretty much no fundamental/final/appropriate repercussions for what they've done to you and everyone, or even much discussion of how fucking weird it is that they just get to make up money when they need it. As far as I understand from reading the paper lately—and I fully admit that sometimes I only half understand, or downright do not understand at all—the banking system is a bureaucracy built out of entities who move paper around and make stuff up.

At least Amazon does something tangible and good—making a video camera or a vacuum or every book Mary McCarthy ever wrote appear at my door—and makes that process cost me less time and money than it used to. If they were better to their customers, would that make them a better company? Yes. And would that make them more money? Yes, yes it would.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: I agree exactly with most of what Sam's saying. I'm just picking on one slight semantical issue because I saw an easy way to get from there to my current rage at the abstract, punish-everyone-else, make-up-new-wisdom-to-reward-the-people-who've-already-been-rewarded banking industry (and like I said, I'm drunk). But Sam writes in an email, "If not for the Twitter splosion, Amazon may have never considered this issue cost-effective to address." That's true, and a more important point than the sideways point I'm making.

Across The Aisle
By Marquetta M.

You, fucking dick
In your hand
Covered with scabs
On your scalp
Flaking skin
On the seat
Where your feet
Nudge some bitch,
Your dog.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Untitled Haiku
by Nicholas

cold winter bus ride

all the windows are fogged

is it your breath?

No Thanks
by Michael

It was a hot day
You had to air something out
I saw your pussy.

That Bus Ride in August

by Nellie

Easing my behind into a window seat, my thighs
like Jell-O pudding, shaking with the potholes.
I peeled them from plastic, pools of sweat,
and imagined that babies were screaming
in horror at my risen body, their mothers
judging my pink hot thighs, as if
they illumined my brain.

12 Bus Haiku

by Bob

i'm staring at you
we'll be together for hours
what am i thinking?

Sleek speedy transport
full of happy travelers.
so say the bus ads

lumber down the street
slowing, stopping, crawling on
get out of my way

bus riding is fun
for those who have time to waste
I'm too important

I'm so stuck on you
smelly slimy gummy goo
look before sitting

people love transit
they think mass others will ride
then their cars can zoom

oily packed sardines
travel worldwide in a can
your trip is shorter

it swallows me down
to give me a taste of hell
please spew me out soon

fear global warming?
those who care are on the bus
says private-jet Gore

faces smeared against glass
bus riders watch for their stop
will it ever come?

always ride the bus
it's a trip to paradise
crazed bombers agree

troubled youths, locos,
bums, drunks, druggies, feelers, fools,
the unwashed, and you.

WETRO

by Don

oh, puddle 'o pee, in the seat next to me,
on the workday morning Northbound.

I don't mind cause I'm late, switching seats while I wait,
to find treasures like the one I just found.

Bus Phone Haiku in Two Parts

by Brianna

No doubt, Seattle
Passive aggressive at best
Loud phone talker?

Do not confront her!
Pass a note instead, quiet!
Lady, you're a wimp.

This is It

by d rock

oh no
he's kind of cute
but he smells
but that ring is so
neat
he is not

facial hair
its like some kind of bolt
his face
rough blonde and blue
jeans so dirty
i think its chrome
he's so dirty
why can't we just be
its my stop
don't stop

i mean
he is kind of old
but, i am vulnerable
and i just got off work

No Thanks
by Michael

It was a hot day
You had to air something out
I saw your pussy.

Untitled
by Beccah

express bus riders
maintain a code
an etiquette to ignore,
to detach,
"we are not here."

mid-day riders
don't give a shit.

Commuting fun
by Mark Bir

Clear view from a bus
distant but not all that far
me or the mountain?

Untitled
by lime joy

O, #5, why so early?
You are usually so late
Like a dream, I run to catch you
Yet I never run fast enough
But awake I am
Stinging twist of ankle
Eating shit on pavement
O, what a nightmare
I have no insurance
Wow, my knee is really fucked up
O well, at least
The bus stopped for me

Here is his bus poem:

war
after Bukowski

the bus driver sighs stopped at the light
as rain falls on the windshield;
he doesn’t have a chance—
rides from Queen Anne
through Capitol Hill
and out to the CD, an improbable rain,
and an improbable timetable,
we pass so many without a chance.
and I realize that there isn’t much chance
for any of
us. peace won’t save us and war won’t save us,
a good war or a bad
war.
we take a lot and use it until it is
gone.
bombs drop, tax seasons begin, there are sick days and
days we just call in;
we try to cheat the machine.
war, you kill any man
and then another.
the bus driver has Denny Way
between Seattle Center and the 5.
I sit next to a veteran who puts his feet up
on a seat.
there is a small tear rolling from one of the bus driver’s
eyes. he is ashamed to wipe it
away.
the people click on cell phones or listen to iPods or look out their
windows.
the tear rolls
rolls over the cheekbone
then down the face,
then the
floor.
MLK, yells the bus driver,
turning on MLK
Way.
he speaks, at last. what a dubious thing.
I get off at MLK. I need to smoke and have something
to eat. I don’t care about the bus
anymore. it is a
death toll scrolling across the bottom
of a TV screen. I don’t see it
anymore.
there will be more buses.

I decide to smoke
and eat after.

I walk into the rain and out of the rain
and take off my wet shoes
and dry off.

Losing Season
by Elizabeth Kate Switaj

drunk Seahawks fan
stopping hitting on me
get up
let me out
of this window seat