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History (Education)

The fascinating reason people looked much older in the past than they do today

Why did teenagers look like they were in their mid-30s?

via Vsauce/YouTube

Norm was only in his 30s?

Ever look at your parents' high school yearbooks and think people looked so much older back then? All of the teenagers look like they’re in their mid-30s and the teachers who are 50 look like they’re 80. When we watch older movies, even those from the 1980s, the teenagers appear to be a lot older as well. Why is it that they looked so much older? Was life harder? Did people act more mature? Did they spend more time outdoors and less time playing video games? Is it their sense of fashion? Were they all smokers?

Educator Michael Stevens, who runs the super-popular Vsauce YouTube channel, explains the phenomenon in a video called, “Did people used to look older?” In it, he explains that people in the past appear a lot older due to retrospective aging.

This is how it works: when we see people in the past, they are wearing outdated styles that we associate with older people; therefore, we think they have aged rapidly. For example, a teenager in the 1950s may have been in fashion while wearing thick Buddy Holly-style glasses.

anti-aging, youth, why do i look older, how to look younger, treatments for looking younger, anti-aging productsBuddy Holly was 20 years old in this photo. upload.wikimedia.org

But as people age, they tend to cling to the fashion of their youth. So many people of that generation continued to wear the Buddy Holly-style glasses into their 50s. So when younger people see those glasses they see them as old people's glasses and not a hip kid from the '50s.

So in the photo from the '50s, the teen appears to look a lot older because our perspective has been tainted by time.

anti-aging, youth, why do i look older, how to look younger, treatments for looking younger, anti-aging products30 going on 60…media3.giphy.com

But it isn’t all just an illusion. Stevens also points out that people did age faster back in the day due to differences in nutrition, lifestyle and medicine. In addition, he also does a deep dive on how a person's name can affect their appearance, referencing the Dorian Gray effect, which theorizes that cultural stereotypes linked to a name come to be written on the faces of their bearers, as well as the name matching effect, in which people whose faces "match" their names tend to be better perceived.

Basically, this 22-minute video is chalked full of fascinating tidbits. Give it a watch below.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

It might be worth noting that, in addition to healthier lifestyle options, younger generations have more access to anti-aging procedures than ever before. "Tweakments," like fillers and botox, are less expensive and more readily available than ever—not to mention every anti-aging cream, serum, and cleanser known to man. And many millennials and Gen Zers take advantage of that, whether prompted by selfie anxiety, a growing obsession with youth, or some other motivation.

Plus, millennial and Gen Z fashion often honors their inner child. Nostalgic cartoon tees, colorful prints, cutesy accessories, etc. Granted, under the retrospective aging theory, even those styles could one day look dated, but they are so youthful that it's hard to imagine that being the case. That said, can't wait to see bunch of geezers sporting those broccoli haircuts.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Science

The best way to board passengers on a plane—and why we'll likely never see it happen

CGP Grey/YouTube

The best way to board an airplane is one we'll probably never see happen.

Have you ever been boarding an airplane and said to yourself, "There's got to be a more efficient way to do this"?

People love to debate the quickest way to get people and their luggage aboard an aircraft. Every airline has its own method, which largely revolves around boarding people with some kind of status—first-class/premium seats or loyalty program status—first, followed by the nonstatus coach folk in various groupings. (I personally like to spend as little time as possible on the actual airplane, so I've never understood the "perk" of early boarding. I guess you get your pick of overhead bin space, but that alone isn't worth it to me.) Airlines are always tweaking their methods, both to be more efficient and to keep their customers happy.

But none of them do it in the truly most efficient way. And why not? Well, because people are involved.

If humans were robots we could program to do what we want them to do without getting their knickers in a twist over not getting to be first, we could theoretically board airplanes in a way that would minimize bottlenecks and get everyone seated quickly. But alas, we are not.

And what is the most efficient way? I would have assumed it would be back-to-front, but it's not. As a video from CGP Grey explains, boarding methods that intuitively seem like they might work best actually don't. There are several reasons for this, from the unpredictability of who is going to struggle to get their carry-on bag into the overhead bin to the fact that, as the video points out, "The human inability to follow instructions is breathtaking."

The video is really fascinating in addition to being entertaining. (There's poetry involved.) Check it out:

So it turns out the best way to board is every other row, back to front, window seats first, followed by the same pattern with middle and then aisle seats. Seems perfectly logical.

And the only barrier to this method is getting people to line up in a specific order? That doesn't seem like it should be that hard of a task. Southwest Airlines already does that with its boarding groups (everyone gets a number and lines up accordingly), though they don't have assigned seats. Has no airline ever even given it a try? Seems like it might be worth a shot at least.

And if nothing else, at least now we know that we're doing it all wrong. If we're going to be inefficient, we should at least be aware that we're doing it on purpose.

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Culture

This 'exhausted' kid shoveling show is frankly all of us right now

via CTV News

Carter Trozzolo is exhausted—aren't we all?

There was a massive snowstorm in Canada on Monday that blanketed southern Ontario. In a report on the storm’s aftermath, CTV News interviewed young Carter Trozzolo to see how it was affecting everyday Canadians. Trozzolo had the day off from school so he was put to work shoveling snow in his neighborhood.

When asked how his monumental task was going he said, "Tiring," with a large sigh. "I really wish I was in school right now," he continued. He added that he wasn’t just shoveling snow for himself but "neighbors, friends, probably people I even don't know," he said in an exasperated tone. “I am tired,” he reiterated.

The clip was of a young man shoveling snow, but his overwhelming sense of exasperation feels like it was about a lot more than just the task at hand. It’s how most of us feel after almost two years of dealing with the pandemic.

In fact, a recent poll by Monmouth University found that six in 10 Americans feel worn out by pandemic-related changes they've had to make. Thirty-six percent feel “worn out a lot” and 24% feel “worn out a little.”

To take things a step further, the next interview in the clip feels like a metaphor for the futility of trying to get through the day with no end to the pandemic on the horizon. Toronto resident Vishnu Jayanthan attempts to dig his car out of the snow with nothing more than garden hand tools.

Vishnu Jayanthan "needs a bigger shovel" the chyron reads.

We could all use a bigger shovel and to be less exhausted.

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Viral dash cam video shows exactly why you should never, ever tailgate someone

via Reddit

Common sense rules of the road suggest drivers maintain a three-second following distance between themselves and the car ahead of them on a highway. You can calculate this distance by using a fixed object on the road to see if there is enough distance between your car and the motorist in front of you.

As all drivers know, not every one leaves a safe distance between themselves and the car in front of them and this puts both in danger. The tailgater in an especially precarious position because they can't see what's happening ahead of them.

The following video posted to Reddit shows what happens when a tailgating driver has no idea what's happening on the road ahead. The footage is great because the driver of what appears to be a Jeep has a front and back dash cams that show the situation from two angles.

Don't tailgate maybe from r/JusticeServed

The front cam shows a ladder falling off a truck, the back camera shows a car riding the driver's tail.

The driver slows down and puts on their hazard lights to move out of the way of the ladder in time, while alerting other drivers of the hazard. The Jeep then swerves out of the way of the ladder in the middle of their lane.

Unfortunately, the tailgater behind him, who had no idea what was happening, drives over the ladder which gets lodged onto his wheel.

Let's hope that the tailgater was able to get out of the incident safely. And hopefully they learned a lesson about tailgating. Like, don't tailgate, maybe?

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