LINKS - January 24th, 2024
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human. LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
‘Happy Days’ Got Us Unstuck in Time
By James Poniewozik, The New York Times
“If all this math is too much, all you need to know is that there are only ever two periods in pop-culture nostalgia. There is Then (simple, innocent, fun), and there is Now (scary, corrupt, confusing). Eventually, Now becomes another Now’s Then, and the cycle repeats. ‘Happy Days’ was nostalgic because the teenagers weren’t smoking weed. ‘That ’70s Show’ was nostalgic because the teenagers were smoking weed. We rock around the clock and around the calendar, returning ever again to the beginning.”
Why I See Static Everywhere
“In 2014, a set of diagnostic criteria were established for visual snow for the first time: The most central criteria is the snow itself: dynamic dots of light that flicker across the entire visual field for at least three months. But most sufferers also experience at least two of four other diagnostic criteria: persistence of after images (known as palinopsia), excessive floaters, impaired night vision, and sensitivity to or intolerance of bright light. In more severe cases, migraine and tinnitus are also common. Other cognitive disturbances can also arise, such as feelings of detachment from oneself, anxiety, depression, brain fog, insomnia, vertigo, and pins and needles in the extremities.”
This Nomadic Eccentric Was the Most Prolific Mathematician in History
By Jack Murtagh, Scientific American
“Erdős was a notoriously bad houseguest. In Hoffman’s book, mathematician Michael Jacobson recounted a story in which Erdős came to his home, and they worked on math until 1 A.M., when Jacobson finally succumbed to exhaustion. Erdős, who tended to put in 19-hour days, stayed up and, at 4:30 A.M., banged pots in the kitchen incessantly to wake up his host. Jacobson eventually teetered downstairs in his bathrobe and recalled the ensuing interaction with his colleague: ‘What were the first words out of his mouth? Not “Good morning” or “How’d you sleep?” but “Let n be an integer.”’”
A Brief History of the United States’ Accents and Dialects
By Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, Smithsonian Magazine
“The popularity of specific dialects is often tied to regional history. When English colonists first arrived in North America in the early 17th century, they landed on the East Coast, establishing English-speaking communities in the North and the South. The French, the Dutch, the Spanish and other European powers also introduced their own languages as they colonized different parts of the continent. Speaking styles in different colonies remained distinct because travel opportunities were limited at the time, says Jessi Grieser, a linguist at the University of Michigan. ‘Historically, it’s about migration and who went where,’ she adds.”
How Margaret Mead's research into utopias helped usher in the psychedelic era
By Terry Gross, NPR
“Pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead came of age in a time of enormous change and uncertainty. In the aftermath of World War I, as technologies like the radio and automobile began to take hold, Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson began to formulate a vision for utopia that relied upon plant-based psychedelics.”