Hello lovely email friends. Let’s do a theme. I’ve not stuck to a theme for ages, and so this week’s theme is… ages. If you’re lucky, ageing is inevitable. I expect you’re doing it right now. Well, good. And yet it’s still taboo, which these days seems conspicuous. There was a bit of that in 💥BLAST! #53, back in the good old days. I no longer have no idea how old I am, since every time it gets close to celebrating the passing of another year, we all have to stay in. Maybe I can claim these back later, or something. Anyway, here are your links for the ages:
🏃♀️ Why Time Seems to Fly By As You Get Older, and How to Slow It Down: I really like David Eagleman because can explain neurology in ways that could be understood by children, furniture, and me. So, because time is a psychological construct, it can vary between individual consciousnesses. “It can be different in your head and my head,” he says. In order to “figure out what’s going on outside,” it’s got to do “a lot of editing tricks” such as convincing us we’re living in the moment, when the moment happened half a second in the past. But we can notice that gap when we’re faced with novelty, because the brain has to work harder to process new information, and it creates thicker descriptions in the memory. All of this additional processing seems to take more time, so we perceive new experiences as happening in a kind of slow motion.
📢 Why do we hate newer music the older we get? Well, because all new music is horrible, obviously. Wait, no, hang on: having evaluated chart-topping songs released between 1960 and 2000, the age of its biggest fans and relevant data from Spotify, a data scientist found our preferences are locked into place by the time we’re in our early 20s. Further, the majority of us stop listening to new artists and their music by the time we turn 33. Studies have proved that the songs which go viral when we’re in our early teens are most likely to remain popular among our age group for the rest of our lives.
👧 It’s Time to Accept That Millennials and Gen Z Are the Same Generation: Though discourse through last year tried to deepen the distinctions, it’s clear that young people today are forged from the same digital monoculture. See also: Everybody Hates Millennials: Gen Z and the TikTok Generation Wars.
💡 The mystery of why some people become sudden geniuses: There’s mounting evidence that brain damage has the power to unlock extraordinary creative talents not present at birth. Tony Cicoria, an orthopaedic surgeon, was struck by lightning at a New York park when he was 42. It went straight through his head and left him with an irresistible desire to play the piano. Today he’s a pianist and composer, as well as a practicing surgeon. What can this teach us about how geniuses are made?
🦾 Can robots replace humans as caretakers? Numerous startups are developing robotic companions for senior citizens, offering emotional support, day-to-day assistance, or remote monitoring through artificial intelligence. Though these robots are often met with enthusiasm from consumers and medical experts alike, the companies selling them find themselves navigating a host of complicated issues: How do you best design robotic devices to take care of ageing populations and encourage people to actually use them? How do you create something that is genuinely helpful, without it feeling creepy? Can robots ever truly replace human caretakers?
👨👧 What my father’s infidelities taught me about intimacy: This author describes her father as unfaithful, a philanderer, a serial shagger. It’s no surprise that he lied about his liaisons in his 12-year marriage, though he once boasted – true or false – that there had been 500 affairs. He took pride in being humorously subversive, doing nothing to hide his inappropriate comments to passing women when children watched wide-eyed from the back seat of his fancy car. What legacy does this leave?
🥁 What Your Favourite Sad Dad Band Says About You: Excellent, and widely circulated, work from Depresh Mode honcho John Moe, included here —y’know—just in case.