[Note: All info is based on tips and is not verified by the AP. In some cases it's impossible to tell whether multiple tips refer to the same people, but we've synthesized as much as possible.]

New York City
Reported layoffs: One business editor, one business reporter, five multimedia staffers, one sports editor, several writers on the national desk.

Upstate New York
One correspondent and one editorial assistant reportedly gone.

Boston
Four staffers reportedly laid off.

Washington, DC
Reported layoffs: One business reporter, one research staffer, an "enterprise team" reporter (Rita Beamish), an assignment desk staffer, three broadcast staffers.

Pittsburgh
Reported layoffs: One business reporter.

Dallas
One reported layoff.

Jacksonville
Longtime AP reporter Ron Word reportedly laid off and bureau closing. [I remember Ron Word's byline from forever when I was growing up near there, very sad. Shout out to Ron Word!]

Kentucky
Reported layoffs: One news editor in Louisville, one editorial assistant, one state capitol reporter.

Central Wisconsin
One reporter laid off and bureau reportedly closed.

Oklahoma
News editing duties reportedly outsourced to Little Rock.

Michigan
Reported layoffs: One state government reporter, the only Grand Rapids correspondent (bureau reportedly closing), and one editorial assistant.

Dayton, OH
Reported layoffs: One correspondent and one editorial assistant, which means the entire bureau.

Berkeley, CA
One correspondent reportedly laid off and bureau closing.

Roanoke, VA
The only correspondent reportedly laid off.

Bismarck, ND
Only correspondent reportedly laid off.

Santa Fe, NM
One of two correspondents reportedly laid off.

National Staffers
Reported layoffs: A "high percentage" of all editorial assistants across the country, a national photo editor, as many as eight photographers, the AP liaison/executive director of the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME), a national writer, an investigative reporter/ computer-assisted reporting guru (Pulitzer winner Frank Bass),

San Juan/ Caribbean Bureau
Nine staffers reportedly laid off and bureau slated to close.

The Middle East
Reported layoffs: At least three newspeople. One reporter in Jerusalem.

Vietnam
One photographer reportedly laid off.

Beijing
Reported layoffs: One reporter and one other staffer.

View The AP Layoff Map in a larger map

There are four separate 3'x4' panels that represent Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. When they're combined, you've got one gorgeous piece of wall art.

I wouldn't try and take it on a road trip though. [Dude Craft via Neatorama]

Below is the updated map of the neighborhood. The areas shaded red are stores that are closed, vacant, or under construction. The yellow ones are those currently having sales. The white ones are either restaurants, private residences, or places where someone has managed to make a coin or two in these bleak times.

So, what did we (and by we, I mean intrepid intern Daniel Pardo) find in the intervening eight months? Six of the properties that were closed before are still closed, seven of the stores that were having sales are now closed, 20 properties are now vacant that weren't before, nine stores are still having sales, ten stores that weren't having sales are now trying to get rid of their merchandise, twelve stores that were having sales are no longer offering discounts, and three brave souls have opened new business in addresses that were formerly vacant.

What does all this mean? We're all screwed. Sales worked for some, but didn't work for others. Some places that were going strong are now on the ropes. Some places are just meant to be closed, and some people have the optimistic delusion to chase the American dream even in this economy.

Here is a selection of the places having sales:

White Saffron—232 Mott St.—40% off.

Tangdance—230 Mott St.—50 % off.

Mink—219 Mott St.—40 % off.

Second Time Around – 262 Mott St.—50 % off.

Mixane—272 Mott St.—30 % off.

TUTU—55 Spring St.—60 % off

Irregular Choice—288 Lafayette St.—30 % off.

Amarcord—252 Lafayette St.—25 % off

Label—273 Lafayette St.—70 % off.

NY Poll—269 Lafayette St.—70 % off.

Christian Audigier—275 Lafayette St.—70 % off.

B Tiff—244 Mulberry St.—70 % off.

Think Closet—242 Mulberry St.—70 % off

The Red Thread—190 Elizabeth St.—30-70 % off

Boing Boing came across this recent video of Franken drawing all 48 states (of the continental U.S., geography nerds) from memory at the Minnesota State Fair, and ever the paranoid types, wondered if Franken is faking it: "it would be easy to create indented trace-lines by using a pen with no cartridge in advance." Doubtful given how long and how often Franken's been doing this trick.

The first time I saw Franken draw his map was on Saturday Night Live when he was analyzing presidential election results (I think 1988?) but I can't find a video of it online. But there is a Youtube clip from 1987 of Franken on Letterman drawing his map in under 2 minutes (he starts at about the 7:30 mark). It doesn't look like his technique has changed much since, aside from now adding in Hawaii and Alaska.

Apparently, he did his map-drawing trick regularly at fundraisers during his Senate campaign. Last July, map blog The Map Room posted a video from 2007 and Daily Kos has some pictures from August of last year. Leave it to the U.S. Senate's greatest hope for (intentional) comedy to only give us his wonkiest, two-decade old joke.

Planning experts from USC and Columbia set out to quantify this elusive "buzz" that you hear so much about. And their effort is very cool, in its own way. But their methodology was this: they "mined thousands of photographs from Getty Images that chronicled flashy parties and smaller affairs on both coasts for a year, beginning in March 2006." They categorized the photos, put their locations onto a map of NYC, and there you have it—you can actually see where the buzz is.

It's in midtown! And Chelsea and Soho. These are the centers of buzzworthy culture in NYC, you see, because it's where the most events were held that attracted photographers from Getty Images. Brooklyn, the L.E.S., and other places you may have erroneously suspected of having buzz, by contrast, do not actually have any buzz.

If you believe that buzz is defined by celebrity-heavy event locations, then this is the final word on it. [NYT, Spatial Information Design Lab]

After the 2004 elections, a website called "Fuck the South" became popular among us liberal godless coastal elite types. It is a long rant about how the fat idiots who voted for Bush are stupid fat idiots, with some "facts" about how America is basically a giant welfare system whereby New York's money is redistributed to Mississippi for some reason. It was a nice bit of angry post-election catharsis, even if it is indefensibly classist, because, you know, these states we're ranting against are often full of terribly impoverished people and no one has done anything at all to help them since LBJ, basically, and look how well that worked out for him. But! Four years later, the Democrats won the presidency! The electoral map was totally different this time, too!

So the Times declares the end of Democrats having to be Southern, or having to hate Welfare. The end of The Southern Strategy too! The Southern Strategy was Richard Nixon's cunning plan to convince racists to support him, helped along by LBJ's cunning plan to be less racist, which lost the South for Democrats for a generation. Now it doesn't matter! The Republicans are finished, forever! Right?

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.

The GOP no longer has a single Congressman from New England, which is amazing. Their moderate New England Senators barely belong in the party too! So hooray, we vanquished the evil Republicans forever! Just like they did to us with their Permanent Republican Majority in 2004, remember?

It is not at all completely too soon to declare the end of The South, and the GOP, because this election is now the official new American Electoral Map, forever, and it's not simply the result of having a charismatic industrial Midwestern candidate running after eight disastrous years of the other guys, and The South will never again provide the electoral votes necessary for victory to a more appealing conservative candidate who need only peel away a couple of those industrial Midwestern states.

"Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years," the Times explains, and it doesn't at all behoove liberals to investigate why well-educated well-off suburbanites are more likely to support Democrats than poor people and the blue-collar. And hey they shouldn't bother either to try to come up with a reason that isn't "they hate fags" or "they hate blacks." No, let's just ignore the backwards morons and let them rot, because they're old poor racist losers and WE WON FUCK THEM FOREVER.

[The key: Purplish-pink for traditional strongholds of the rich that will remain unscathed. Red for core neighborhoods that are probably too gentrified now to roll back significantly. Pink for marginal hoods, where a recession could send gentrifiers fleeing. And grey for wilderness neighborhoods, where yuppies would fear to tread after The Poors and other non-glamorous types take them back for good.]

[Map by Steven Dressler]

[Maps of War via KnifeTricks]

Palo Alto is home to about 60 startups, including Facebook but more importantly, MC Hammer's DanceJam.

Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures funded at least two of these 76 startups, Zynga and Disqus.

World-changing startups such as FriendFeed and TechCrunch favorite Mint sprout in Google's Mountain View shadow.

Our favorite startup in midtown Manhattan is obviously Ladies Who Launch.

Joost, the online video site started by the Skype founders inhabits an office in downtown Manhattan. For now.

There isn't actually a zoning law against useful vowels and consonants in Seattle, yet still among the startups between Cherry Street and Jefferson Street: Askablogr.

Rafat Ali of PaidContent parent company ContentNext Media legitimizes Santa Monica's startup scene. Then there's Jason Calacanis's year-old "Google-killer" Mahalo — which will pay you $10 per hour to write Wikipedia entries from your dorm room or trailer.

As goes Yahoo, so go the startups in its Sunnyvale. Jiffle?

You've heard of Austin's Famecast, no? Oh. It's serving up the world's best new artists apparently.

Vancouver's startup scene is a pretty cool scene and doesn't afraid of anything.

As for the "open to experience" people—damn, will you look at California? Fucking hippies.

[Who's Your City?]

For your benefit, I took all of Doree's hard research and remapped it, including only the attractive writers. The addresses of these writers are estimates, but it so happens that Fort Greene is starting to have the literary cachet of Paris's Left Bank.

Neighborhood Key:

Unemployment

Immigrants

Disconnected Youth