Like a national mood ring

…and possibly just as accurate. But it’s a fun, short video.

Researchers at Northeastern University and Harvard University analyzed 300 million tweets for mood. Yes, mood.

How do they know the mood of a tweet? Well, these are deep and speculative waters. But logarithms were developed based on Affective norms of English words. Yes, Virginia, that does read like the name of an academic paper.

Cynicism aside (or momentarily suppressed), this video titled Pulse of the Nation, claims to map out happiness and number of tweets throughout the day across the U.S.

New York doesn’t appear to be a very happy place. The Empire State seems most pleased right around dawn. Maybe that’s when people tweet about shooting crows. Regardless, California is way happier than New York. Almost everywhere is happier than New York, except Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa where people appear to be perpetually P.O.ed.

The video cycles twice through a 24-hour period. It’s based on data collected over three years.