Understanding Novelty-Seeking (and -Speaking)
novelty seeking behaviour:
adhd,gambling and alcohol addiction,as well as personal and economic growth are tied to novelty seeking (or neophilia in greek,which means “loving the new”), which is a personality trait based on the desire to try new things and discover. it’s related to human migration,and so there’s a migration gene linked to novelty seeking behaviour (reduces dopamine production which forces you to do more to reach the same enjoyment) which is correlated with migratory populations (either being far from africa or those with a nomadic lifestyle).
diderot effect:
diderot’s daughter wanted to marry but he didn’t have enough money. he wrote a famous encyclopedia and so catherine the great paid for it out of her respect of him. so before going to the wedding he bought himse, lf a new scarlet robe. he than bought another thing that complimented the robe, and more and more until he ran out of cash. that’s the diderot effect
when you buy things because you bought something else prior to that
green tea:
it’s a japanese green tea on amazon that it was trendy to drink.
bandwagon effect:
a tendency when people do something because they think someone else is doing it too. the bandwagon effect is the result of desiring to be right, groupthink and a need to be included. it can lead people to do very rash decisions as well as very good ones.
erkan goren paper:
erkan goren researched the RDR4 gene, which is associated with novelty seeking behaviour,and more specifically, the dopamine sensors in the brain, if you got the gene your dopamine snesors would be more desensetized to dopamine, which means you’d need more of it to feel the same way, which leads to stuff like novelty seeking, openness and ADHD. the paper found out that the east african migrations and migrations in general caused the gene to increase (the further you are from east africa, the more novelty seeking you probably are),as well as pastoralism (the more nomadic you are, the more likely you are to have that gene) and rice farming (rice farming socieities, like south china and india had the lowest rates of that gene). the gene supposedly explain the lack of state formation and centralization in some areas like precolombian america, where the allele was at its highest rates,as well as the great value placed on conservatism in places where the allele was at its lowest rates (which is south china, north india and east africa). there are supposed ethical problems with the conclusion of this paper, since if we find out that people from certain ethnicities are more genetically prone to act in a certain way, this would pave the road for more radical racial theories to emerge in the modern era.
language changes with lifestyle:
robert west, christopher potts, dan jurafsky,jure leskovec and cristian danescu-niculescu-mizil research online communities and found out that lingustic changes happen in those communities, and as they change so do the usage of these words by the members, which is correlated with how long they’ll stay in said community. the adoption of new terms happens on a lifesycle, with the first stage being an innovative stage where new terms are adopted, a second stage that’s more conservative and stops innovating with new words, and a third stage where they grow different from the community and leave. this can thus be used to detect how long will new members stay in that community and influences our understanding of linguistic change.
epic 2010’s fad list:
1.ice bucket challenge, where influences throw buckets of ice to draw attention to ALS research and collect funds. the challenge actually brought a lot of money to ALS research and helped improve our understanding of the disease
2.cronuts-croasons shaped like a donut.
3.pokemon go- you collect pokemons in an AR game, that forces you to touch grass. some people got in accidents as a result
4,flossing-funny fortnite backpack kid dance with katy pary. also the kid tried to sue epic games for copyright infrigement and lost
5.words with friends- a multiplayer game involving playing crossword with friends
6.heelys- shoes with a wheel so you can roll instead of walk
7.harlem shake videos-funny youtube trend video
8.mannequin challenge- peoplev remaining still in a video, and was used by neural networks to understand 3d spaces
9.rainbow loom bracelets- cheong choon ng invented the epic rubber loom to impress his daughters and it has become viral,thus making him rich
10.side shaves- hairstyle where you shave the sides of your hair.
11.fidget spiiners- made to help concetrations and a funny zoomer moment
12.cinnamon challenge- mfs be eating cinnamon without water to get views
13.tebowing- funny NFL praying posture
14.slime- slime recipe videos got very popular and turned every zoomer into a walter white in the making
15.gangam style dance- origin of modern kpop as well as first youtube video to rech a billion views
16.avocado toast-funny millenial expensive food. got popularised by the queen of decadent wellness culture gwyneth paltrow
17.died grey hair- hair color of 2019,picked by loreal paris. also called granny hair.
18.the dress color of “The Dress”- funny dress color internet viral meme, sparked a debate,the original color is actually gold and white, not blue and blacks as some people think
19.twerking-originally a dance originating from black hiphop communities in chicago, it has now become popular .
20.hipster beards- “facial hair of the generation”, and while there were reports of bacteria within the beard, most males without them wanted to have beards
21.farmville-funny facebook farm game. the inspiration for hayday.
There’s Accounting for Taste | Trends in Fashion
fingernail styles:
fingernails are personal and you see them all day,so that’s why fingernail styles are important!
so that’s why there have been so many changes to fingernail styles in the past 125 years. fingernail maintenance was originally for hygenic and medical puproses. in the roaring 20’s manicures have become more and more popular, though the first manicure salon in the US was opened in 1878 by mary E. cobb, after studying nail care in france. the appreciation grew during the great depression and they were used as a cheap sign of luxury for women, though they didn’t color the crescant of the cuticle, which was colored later on, during WW2. elizabeth taylor brought the almond shaped manicure to popularity and female singers in the 60’s like dionne warwick influenced the trend. barbara streisand made pink nails popular while cher extended and dramatised the oval shape with shine. square shapes became popular with the french manicure, which allowed for better fingernail extention techniques. some prefered crisp angles while others prefered a more rounded out shape. nail reflect the personality of the woman and it allows for constant change
worst fashion trends:
there was a poll conducted by pew research in 2013 that tried to find out the worst fashion trends in the past 50 years. baggy pants are the most unpopular, parachute pants and lesiure suits come next, and everyone loves bikins, mini skirts, track suits, and “members only” style jackets, while shoulder pads, skinny jeans, bell buttoms and tie dye clothing are in the middle.
fashion trends repeating:
the writer found out that monica geller from friends was very similar to the fashion in our time. so she decided to find out why. the 20 year rule, which states that fashion is cyclical,repeating on 20 year cycles of trendiness. fashion historian james laver has another theory: that when something is in fashion it starts as smart,when a year prior it was daring,
20 years later it’s ridiculous, and creeps back into style after 50 years. this applies to every creative medium, not just fashion. another theory claims that since fashion is a luxury applied only in financialy good times, fashion trends (and specifically dress heights) follow economic upturns and down turns.
this graph explains it well.
first world problem:
it’s a term applied when people are mad about trivial stuff, like being judged by the delievrey guy when ordering pizza in 4 am. the first citation of the term was in 1979,it became iconic in the mid 90’sand started getting popular in the internet at around 2011. this article is mad about the term since it supposedly offends developing countries (as the term “first world” is supposedly offensive to them). it also gives a moral high ground to the user of the term, and it dismisses the suffering of white people from devloped countries.
blogger and influencers:
bloggers are people who got popular from personal blogs on their websites. thanks to the rise of instagram blogging is dying. influencers on the other hand have social media accounts and are paid to promote brands,through getting their products for free or for getting invited to fashion shows. their worth is decided on their age and their follower demographics and count. fashion editors on the other hand are simply people who edit fashion magazines,and they’re now competing on the same market share as influencers and bloggers
retro sneakers:
since words like “exclusive” and “limited” have been overused, they’re now meaningless. shows like the air jordan III that were produced in 1988 and than re-issued in 1994 and in 2001, so now the idea of the origina air jordan is meaningless. as a result, retros are seen as replicas.
champion:
their clothing was used by jocks and skaters alike in the 90’s, and than the market fragmented and they lost their popularity. now they got revived 2019 after basing their brand on doubling down on old design principles along with some modern tweaks.
fila:
another 90’s sportswear brand that fell out of favor and was sold to Fila koreac for 400 million $. their clothing appeared on the triennale design museum and now their sneakers are popular among women once again because of nostalgia. they base their profits off of heritage .
dad shoes resurgance in popularity:
dad shoes are back in fashion after being popular in the 90’s. it became popular because of “ugly fashion”, so now looking ugly makes you trendy
it’s also like fila and champion in the regard that it got popular from wearing sportswear while not doing sports.
ugly fashion article:
ugly fahsion is about fixating on practicality, and while the specifics of ugly fashion clothing items will eventually become not popular, placing importance on comofrt will linger on.
fashion burning clothes:
designer club burberry burned 40 million$ of their products because they were kept, though they stopped doing the practice. burning fashion items is done for tax credits, as well as coming from the mindset that these clothings wouldn’t sell after their time in the sun ended. though thanks to environmentaly aware young people the practice is stopping
overdressed prologue:
as the average price of clothing becomes smaller, fast fashion has become a thing, with the time when an item is fashionable decreasing more and more, in order to generate more revenue for the fashion companies. as a result our closets are filled with clothing that we won’t wear because they’re unfashionable,and so we waste a lot of money and resources on fashion and generate a lot of waste.
rental clothing men:
men generally don’t rent clothes, while women do. although men generally rent expensive pieces of clothing like tuxedos. that’s because men cared about ownership,individuality and longegivity. the metrosexual movement that allowed men to talk about their love for fashion which caused a booost in the sale of flashy items for men, such as sneakers as a result fashonable men care about their individual style more than the cost. men also take pride in owning expensive stuff,and they take pride in wearing the same clothing for a long time.
the devil wears prada clip:
the clip is about how even the most casual fashion choices were deeply influenced by fashion trends and designers,and how we’re all impacted by the fashion industry.
Keep it New by Force | Planned Obsolescence
centennial light bulb:
it’s a light bulb in livermore,california and was produced by shelby electric in ohio that managed to burn for an entire century. it’s the longest burning light bulb. the main reason our light bulbs don’t survive as long is because of the phoebus cartel
the phoebus cartel:
it’s an industry cartel in the lightbulb industry that included every lightbulb producer. the purpose of the cartel was to prevent lightbulbs from having longer usage times, and so increase their own revenues. though that cartel was eventually destroyed thanks to the creation of LED lightbulbs that promise incredibly long lives,while the original phoebus cartel lightbulbs were standardized to hold for 1000 hours. their philosphy of “stimulating the economy” boosted by keynsian economics eventually led to the stimulus packages we got from covid. and the bailing out of companies and banks by the federal reserve. labor tax decreases and an increase in energy and raw materials makes repairing old products more feasable.
planned obsolecense:
the phoebus cartel planned the obsolecense of their lightbulbs in order to sell more,and this article explains how it generally doesn’t exist because we as consumers generally pick the cheapest, newest and most advanced thing on the market, so “planned obsolecense” is more like following the rules of the free market. even stuff like apple chargerers that were changed several times only did so because they tried to make the charger cheaper and tiny. also users don’t generally read the manuals and don’t care about the product once the battery life ends. this can be fixed with easier integration of products .
apple iphone 4s ad:
the ad shows how apple advertised small changes as revolutionary.
general motors:
this auto company invented planned obsolecense during the great depression by releasing new models every year. this was because ford’s car saturated the market. so general motors started fabricating demand and so people started buying new cars when they saw a better,newer model,not when their cars died out. this became a part of our consumer culture,and a basis for our world economy. bernard london even suggested that the federal government would print expiration dates on durable goods to stimulate more demand. than as the energy crisis of 1970 hit people stopped falling to the planned obsolecense trap ,though it lingered on in the tech industry.
nissan rogue:
it’s an auto review of a car that was in the market since 2014, yet it’s reviewed here as a good car.
fixing old products article:
the article talks about how desiging a new product so that it’s easily fixable is good, yet designers don’t do so since it’s not profitable. this is also in part because of design anorexia, or desiging new products so that they’ll be as tiny as possible,even to the point of compormising the ability to fix or some key features in their usage.
right to repair:
since products are designed so that repair is near impossible, some democratic senators started talking about federal legislature that would force producers to allow for repairing options.
limiting preformance of phones:
apple inhibited the performance of their iphones when the battery neared the end of its useful life, though now they stopped doing so.
france planned obsolecense:
france banned planned obsolecense and so the fight to ban it entirely extends to the rest of the EU.
product durability index:
it’s an index france launched in order to show how long products are supposed to last. the index will alert consumers on the durability of the products they buy.
🤔📚 | Renovating the Dictionary
the word guy:
originally coming from guy fawkes, the catholic who tried to bomb the british parliament in 1605, the term has evolved over the years, starting from a tradition to burn effigies of fawkes every november 5. the effigies were then termed as “guys”. than the term morphed into crappy people,than to men in general. now it’s a gender neutral word. calling people “guys” at work depends on the office culture. one exmaple of the modern usage of the word “guy” is in the song “bad guy”, in which billie eilish refers to herself as a “bad guy”. it’s an exmaple of semantic drit
semantic drift:
it’s when words change their meaning over time, either because of random trends or because of current events.
nonplussed:
originally meaning “so surprised that you become unsure how to act”, now it’s meanig transformed into being nonchalant
disinterested:
originally meant not being influenced by considerations of personal advantage, now it means not being interested
aggravated:
originally meant to become worse or more severe ,now it means to irritate
extra:
originally meant being additional to something else, now it means being extravagant or excessive
could care less:
originally meant caring, now it means not caring
basic:
originally meaning the foundation of a building, now it can mean the fundamentals of a subjects, and than it transformed into a too normal-esque person
bald-faced:
originally meaning shameless, and the original term was barefaced. now we see a change to bold-faced
irregardless:
meaning regardless. meaning transformed from regardless to irregardless.
plethora:
now meaning “an excess of something”,the meaning was transformed from “excess of bodily fluid, specifically blood”, so the solution to a plethora was bloodletting
awful:
now meaning “really bad”,originally meant worthy of respect or fear
incredible:
originally meaning “not credible” the meaning transformed into “truly great”
fortuitous:
originally meaning “happening by chance” ,now meaning “accidental”
super:
originally “highest grade of goods”, now meaning “great”
etymology:
the research into the origin of words .
metaphor:
taking an idea from one field and implementing it in another.
synecdoche:
a figure of speech where a part represents the whole, or the whole represents the part
metonymy:
the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing.
generalization:
a general statement on a group of objects obtained from knowledge about one of them
specialization:
becoming highly skilled in one thing, or applying knowledge from the group of objects and tuning it to one object in the group.
analogy:
similar to metaphor, taking one idea and applying similarities to another
hyperbole:
exaggerations done as a figure of speech
pejoration:
changing the meaning of a word to take a worse meaning/context
amelioration:
changing the meaning of a word to take on a better meaning/context
word reappropriation:
taking a word used as a slur against a group of people, and chaing it to a more positive term. best example is the n word, that was reappropriated with removing the -er .
ax instead of ask article:
for a long time people pronounced ask as ax, and it’s an example of how our pronunciation of words changed over time. as a result of the pronunciation changes and modern accents, a lot of the comedic punches in shakespearean plays were lost to time.
great vowel shift:
between 1400 and 1700, the pronunciation of vowels changed over time thanks to post-black death migrations from eastern and central England to the south, which carried their accents to the capital of London, and from there to the whole country and language. french loanwords may have impacted it, though others claim that the war with france made vowels change in an attempt to sound less french. here’s a picture that explains how the pronouncation changed:
asdf:
it’s the first 4 characters on a qwerty keyboard, and so when typing out gibberish they tend to appear. as a result it’s the name of a modern webcomic too.
language usage interview:
according to gretchen mculloch claims that thanks to internet usage, language starts to move in a more “bottom-up” approach, since now everyone can impact how language is used. a good example would be the acronym “LOL”,which originally meant “laughing out loud”, though now it’s used to show minor laughter. keysmashing is also being used to represent frustration and the counstruction “because [noun]” is now commonplace in the englsh slang because of the internet. as a result of the shift, we sometimes don’t get the tone and emotion people tried to deliever when typing the message, which can lead to misunderstanding, and mistaking a positive tone for a passive agressive one.
old people trashing how young people speak:
it’s because of envy and resentment felt towards the young, as well as setting higher standards for their behaviour, and not understanding the current trends of our world.
gretchem mcculloch podcast:
she’s a linguist who in her podcast talks about how getting mad at how young people speak is a tradition going back all the way to socrates, and how a lot of these complaints were just coming from boomers of their time.
origin of the word quiz:
now meaning a test, originally it meant either “an odd person” and was used in sentences such as “they did a prank on a student seen as a quiz”. maybe it comes for the latin question “qui es?” (or who are you in latin). though a theater manager named daly tried to bet that he could make a word out of nothing. the term was used as a test since 1843, and as meaning “a question made to make someone look ridiculous” since 1807.
sources of new words:
1000 words a year are being added to our lexicons, coming from derivation, back formation (or removing a phantom affix from a root), compounding words, repurposing words, converting words from one class to another, naming things after people or places (it’s called eponyms), loanwords, onomatopoeia (or building the word on a similar sound it makes), nonce words (or words simply coming from thin air), grammatical or spelling errors, portmanteaus (or compounding with a twist, like taking one word, and roaming some part of it and adding the other part to another word)
shibboleth:
it’s a term based on a story from the book of judges in the bible, where judge yiphtah wants to check of someone is from the tribe of ephraim in order to kill them, because they wanted to burn his home. since the ephraimites pronounced the word שיבולת as sibboleth or סיבולת they knew which people to kill. now the word is about identifying ethnic descent from using specific words or accents, an example would be identifying germans from telling them to pronounce the word “week” (which they would pronounce “veek” if they have the accent).
AP guidance update:
the associated press changed their style and now requires no hyphens (this symbol”-”) in order to compund words. editors and writers got mad as a result.
Kazakhstan alphabet:
originally they used the arabic script until 1929, when the soviet government forced them to change into latin. than in 1940 they did another change to cyrillic, and now they plan on another change to latin. this change is dramtic since kazakhstan is a close russian ally and this change will distance them from russia, as well as the fact that 25% of kazakhstan is russian, and that 94% of the population understands russian well ,in comparison with 74% of kazakhs. the kazakh school system also allows for students to choose if they want to study in russian or kazakh, and russian is used as an administrative language for most of the time.
Concluding Questions
nuclear semioticians:
researchers are trying to find out how to convey to future generations where is nuclear waste. since nuclear waste lasts longer than human civilisations and languages, there’s a fear that future generations will uncover nuclear waste by mistake. one idea is to breed “radiation cats” that change colors when coming near nuclear waste. another idea included nuclear priesthood that would transfer the knowledge to the future. other ideas of oral tradition are also being shown, as well as building stone monoliths containing info on nuclear waste in all languages, as well as symbols such as skull and bones pictographs, as suggested by carl sagan.
people stop listening to new music at age 33:
according to a study done on spotify users, when users are at their late teens they start to discover new songs not on the radio, but eventually stop listening to new music at around age 33. those with kids start out doing so when they start having kids.
the original blogpost:
it claims that men’s music tastes starts to mature earlier than women ,and that people in their early 30’s start to think that music was better in the past.
selling throwback uniforms:
this articles shows the top 30 throwback shirts of the jerseys of all time.
airlines liveries:
planes are painted in various ways (ussuriysk in art stand as an example), and they do so for several reasons: celebrating milestones, marking history as well as partnering with other companies/organziations.
hotels renovating:
hotels renovate both to replace worn out furniture, as well as designing a better experience to the tourist, signaling a new ownership, and trying to show a newer identity. though the main problem with renovation is the damge it does to the tourist’s experience while the process happens.
mad men final scene:
the final scene is about how we’re impacted by consumerism ,and how it twists our understanding of the world around us. mad men is a tv series about donald draper, the creative director of sterling cooper in new york and his attempts at balancing his worklife and family life.