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The Atlantic published an article that linked to a staggering 83 "(of) (t)he most extreme, most sobering, and zaniest facts that [our] science, technology, and health reporters learned [in 2018]." Read it here.
Since few people have time to read all 83, I'm counting down these stories, starting at the 19th most seismic, in my opinion, and proceeding to #1. What you'll miss are the merely informative, intriguing and even remarkable. And yes, I'll write a bit about each epiphany.
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19. The number of exclamation points now necessary to convey genuine enthusiasm online is, according to most internet users, three.
This is a good example of a dud "blown mind". Interesting, but hardly disruptive of expectations.
18. After one year in America, just 8 percent of immigrants are obese, but among those who've lived in the U.S. for 15 years, the obesity rate is 19 percent.
Is there something about American culture that encourages indulgence? A failure to set limits? To look for total, immediate gratification, now? If we're different, that does verge on the mind blowing.
17. You can reconstruct a pretty decent record of historical whaling intensity by measuring the stress hormones in the earwax of a few dozen whales.
Could future generations look back on our treatment of animals--especially highly intelligent creatures--as something akin to how we now see sexual assault?
16. Kids under the age of 8 spend 65 percent of their online time on YouTube.
Are we conducting one huge science experiment on the human species? Are kids losing a sense of themselves as actors, and instead becoming mere watchers?
15. When your eyes look right, your eardrums bulge to the left, and vice versa. And the eardrums move 10 milliseconds before the eyes do. What else don't we know about how our bodies function? Or, could we have reached a stage in human consciousness where we're truly masters of our own physicality?
14. The Cambridge Analytica scandal caused 42 percent of Facebook users to change their behavior on the platform, according to a survey conducted by The Atlantic....
Are we gradually shaping our digital reality? If so, the good times may only just be rolling.
13. [To begin] 2018, Amazon had 342 fulfillment centers, Prime hubs, and sortation centers in the United States, up from 18 in 2007. ...In the fourth quarter of last year, 25 percent of all new office space leased or built in the United States was taken by Amazon.
What if we're heading for a one-party state, retail-wise?
12. From 1984 to 2015, the area of forest in the American West that burned in wildfires was double what it would've been without climate change.
The fact that a few degrees difference could make much of the planet unlivable is slowly sinking in.
11. The fastest someone has ever hiked all 2,189 miles of the Appalachian Trail is 41 days, seven hours, and 39 minutes. That averages out to roughly two marathons a day.
This makes one realize how able our bodies are, if we simply put our minds to bettering them (and, yes, that's 55 miles a day, with about half of it uphill).
10. Conservatives tend to find life more meaningful than liberals do.
If you think of conservatives as trying to preserve a precious code, and liberals as celebrating the multiplicity of valid codes, this makes sense, since multiplicity isn't as easy to grab hold of. There's also the question of net worth: do conservatives tend to own more, and are thus happier with their lot in life?
9. Ivy League universities took nude photos of incoming freshman students for decades.
We face constant reminders of how far we've come in limiting 'traditional' outrages against individual dignity. Could noisy nighttime hospital rooms be next?
8. Doing a good deed—or even imagining doing a good deed—can boost an athlete’s endurance by reinforcing his or her sense of agency in the world.
The case for optimism regarding human nature gets much stronger, if, by doing good, we enhance our abilities.
7. There’s a parasitic fungus that doses cicadas with the hallucinogen found in shrooms before making their butts fall off.
Psychoactive substances have been used since the beginning of time. We may simply be a giant ant colony, our heads sending and receiving pheromone-like messages we're unaware of. Occasionally we glimpse these powerful forces that bind us together.
6. Women who've had six to 10 sexual partners in their lives have the lowest odds of marital happiness, according to one study.
Is it our lot as logical thinkers to abide by the dictum "do unto others", romantically? Or, is the study's result reflective of how many unfocused, unlikely partners there are that have to look for a long time before stumbling into a final, bad relationship?
5. The lifespan of a meme has shrunk from several months in 2012 to just a few days in 2018.
Are we speeding that fast? What'll happen when memes last a mere hour or two? Or have we simply caught up with the natural age of a news cycle?
4. Many butterflies in the nymphalid group can hear with their wings.
Surely the wonders of nature are a good place to start each day.
3. The shopping mall put a cap on consumerism as much as it promoted it.
Cynicism about corporate greed, and about our being suckers for the latest bamboozle? Or, maybe malls really are disjointed, almost alien worlds, plopped down in our community (example: the unavoidable, lingering penetration of "added chemicals" in one's nostrils, from a "pizza" outlet).
2. Some people think that quantum computing will bring about the end of free will.
The concept of a curious entanglement, that links an action with one in a distant location, shouldn't be scary to us; since this is love.
1. (Not on the list): You read this.
Much online culture is about puffing oneself up and strutting about. I don't do that. And yet you looked at my #1. That is something of a miracle in the age of three exclamation point redirection.
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