Posts tagged “time”
Everything Is Relative
Where does the time go?
- Chocolate is America’s favorite Halloween candy, with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups once again the top choice in an overwhelming majority of states. But don’t sleep on Nerds Gummy Clusters, which boosted sales at Ferrara Candy Company from $40 million in 2018 to $800 million last year.
- Wow. Texas leads the nation in wind energy generation with over 15,000 turbines producing between a bit more than 10% of the total electricity in the United States.
- An Expert’s Guide to Protein for Athletes – via @sweatscience
- New research found that if you want to feel younger later in life, don’t go easy on your training. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- I’ve always been a sucker for black holes, so these thought experiments that fray the fabric of space-time were fun. – via kottke, of course
- Take thirty seconds out of your day to read this brilliant poem, If Adam Picked the Apple, by Danielle Coffyn. – also via kottke
The annual Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are always fun.- I’m sure everyone has seen it already, but this story about a woman in Washington who called the police after nearly 100 raccoons surrounded her property really is something else.
- The Nord-Trøndelag Health Study, a 15-year study of sense of humor and causes of mortality found that laughter is associated with a 48 percent reduction in death from all causes, a 73 percent lower risk of death from heart disease, and an 83 percent lower risk of infection
- Evidence of ‘Negative Time’ Found in Quantum Physics Experiment: This will surely delight my youngest, who is obsessed with The Flash and his time traveling adventures. It also jibes with something I posted on Threads recently!
- Speaking of Threads, one of Meta’s frustrating problems is that they haven’t managed to brand the term “threading” in a way as organic as Twitter did “tweeting”. It doesn’t feel right to say, “I threaded,” or, “I’m threading,” which makes it not-insignificantly more difficult to casually mention their platform, which I think is a primary reason Threads hasn’t already crushed the decaying bird site.
- We’re biologically wired to prevent our children’s suffering, and it can be excruciating to watch them struggle. That’s certainly an understatement. I’ve been desperately trying to not be a helicopter parent but “excruciating” doesn’t come close to describing what it’s like seeing your child suffer. And I promise I’m well aware that a little elementary school teasing or even dealing with high school cliques are light years away from the difficulties other parents – close friends, even – are facing. (Gift link, like most good things online, via Jason’s infrequent newsletter)
- In a very odd cosmic coincidence, Hurricane Milton destroyed the roof of Tropicana Field – home of the Tampa Bay Rays MLB franchise – just a few hours after the implosion of the vintage Tropicana casino in Las Vegas (to make way for a new stadium for the Oakland Athletics).
The complete lack of urgency from players and coaches, in the NFL and college, when down by two or more scores in Q4, makes me question whether any of these guys have ever played Madden.
They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnicsand perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped inlipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubswith feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised meand now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chickenfried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with themin that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,collecting two hundred dollars.
Faith Shearin, “Telling the Bees”, 2015
We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Paul Bowles