In this issue: LIFESPAN DIVIDE NAKED SHOPPING PLEASURE SEEKERS And much, much more... --------------------------------- BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL *Feeding hungry minds since 2004 --------------------------------- Issue 99 --------------------------------- Brainmail is a free monthly (usually) newsletter dedicated to intellectual miscellany and ephemera. A file of hand picked curiosities, cerebral snacks and fortuitous facts. To subscribe or unsubscribe (or to search the whole ten year brainmail archive) visit: http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/ Like it? - then surely share it on Twitter and Facebook. --------------------------------- : INSIGHTS & IDEAS > Lifespan divide Income polarisation is turning into lifespan polarisation as the gap in life expectancy in the UK has widened for the first time since the 1870s. For example, the richest 5% of men in the UK live 96.2 years on average, 34.2 years longer than the poorest 10%. The richest women live to an average of 98.5, 31.5 years longer than the poorest 10%. Ref: Sunday Times (UK) > Getting from A to B A study by the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen says that the time it takes to get from A to B depends on how interesting A is. Essentially, if the starting point (A) features a prominent landmark people find it easier and hence faster to proceed. Listeners start to process directions before the person giving them has finished too, so the ordering of information is vital. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) > Naked shopping A Berlin supermarket - Original Unverpackt - sells all of its 500 products, from pasta to pears, without packaging. The business was set up via crowdfunding finance. Ref: original-unverpackt.de > Off-food is on-trend WeFood in Denmark is possibly the world's first supermarket selling food that's past its sell-by date. Profits from the flagship store in Copenhagen also benefit local charities. Ref: www.noedhjaelp.dk > Game changers I can't believe I'm reading Tatler magazine! In amongst the skeletal socialites there's a list of more useful items. They include a football that can capture the kinetic energy from a 30-minute football game and transfer it into 3 hours of power for a reading light. In a similar vein, the Gravity Light is a bag filled with dirt that you pull to the top of a cord. As the bag descends it creates enough power to light a room. Genius. See GravityLight.org Ref: Tatler (UK) > Cheesy idea In France you can subscribe to cheese. A new service, based in Paris, will deliver a chunk of cheese anywhere in the city within 60 minutes. See www.labellevie.com Ref: Time Out (UK) > Pleasure seekers It's long been known that certain kinds of music affect mood. Now a start-up called Nervana claims to have created headphones that stimulate a listener's nerves (non-invasively) to lift a listener's mood still further. Ref: Engadget (UK) > Back to black You can't get blacker than black right? Wrong. Vantablack absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visible light, which is enough to make 3D objects painted with Vantablack appear 2D or vanish altogether on a dark night. Light striking the material is trapped between nanofibres, absorbed, and ultimately dissipated into heat. Good for tanks, warships and ugly power stations. Ref: South China Morning Post (China) > Robotic overlords A Pew report says that two-thirds of Americans think that in fifty years' time, robots and computers will "probably" or "definitely" be performing most of the work currently done by humans. However, 80 per cent also believe that their own job will "definitely" or "probably" still exist. Is this contradictory, egotistical, or just plain hopeful? Ref: Motherboard/Vice (US) > Science fiction themes What are the key themes in science fiction? Historically, they've included robots, space travel, time travel, bodily transformation, superpowers, alien invasions, immortality, and the post-apocalyptic world. A look at sci-fi produced in 2015, however, lists climate change, gender identity and inequality, income inequality, a desire for good science, anxiety caused by the acceleration of technology, body and mind modification, living beyond the Earth, openness vs. privacy, biotech apocalypses, the nature of consciousness, and organic AI (machine learning in the context of social interaction and play). Ref: iO9.com --------------------------------- : THE NUMBERS 10 per cent of Icelanders publish a book within their lifetimes. Ref: Financial Times (UK) Almost 50% of NHS psychologists suffer from depression, according to a British Psychological Society study. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) The number of refugees arrested in the US on terrorism-related charges since 2001 is 10. The number of natural-born US citizens arrested on terrorism charges is 320. Donald Trump, are you reading this? Ref: Harper's (US) According to a study by Buddy Media, engagement rates on Facebook are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. Another study claims that engagement is 32% higher on weekends. Afternoons are really good too. This is why most of you have received brainmail on a Friday afternoon. Ref: Buffer.com The majority of Spaniards die at home. In the UK it's a rather unhealthy 17 per cent. Ref: The Times (UK) 20 per cent of people in the Middle East are now living with diabetes. This figure is expected to rise to 1 in 3 by 2030. Ref: Emirates247.com (UAE) I love this to bits. From the 13th to the 18th century, 70 per cent of Englishmen were named Robert, Thomas, John, Richard or William. Ref: Daily Mail (UK) The number of people that visit the theatre in London each year is twice the number attending a Premier League football match. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) Are you reading this on a phone? Research conducted by the University of Bordeaux claims that people who talk on the phone for 15 hours per month are associated with a 200-300 per cent rise in the risk of developing glioma and meningioma tumours. Ref: The Week (UK) 58 per cent of people in the UK feel "connected" to other people in their immediate vicinity. This is the lowest of any EU country with the exception, rather strangely, of Germany. Ref: The Times/ONS In London there are 54,000 homes being built that will be priced at or above GBP 1M. In 2014, only 3,900 homes in this price range were sold in London. Ref: Financial Times (UK) Polls in Russia show that Stalin is becoming more popular. 40 per cent of Russians believe that the Stalin era brought "more good news than bad." Back in 2012 the figure was 27 per cent. Ref: New York Times/Levada Center The size of an average home in the US has almost tripled over the last 50 years. Nevertheless, around 10 per cent of Americans rent self-storage space and self-storage has been the fastest-growing segment of the commercial real estate market for the past four decades. Ref: National Public Radio/NY Times (US) The average American home has more TV screens than people. Ref: USA Today (US) --------------------------------- : WORD DETECTIVE Uberisation: The conversion of traditional jobs and services into discrete tasks that can be requested on demand; the emulation of the Uber taxi service, or the adoption of its business model. Ref: Wordspy.com --------------------------------- : CHARITY OF THE MONTH YoungMinds is a UK charity concerned with the mental health and wellbeing of young people. http://www.youngminds.org.uk/ --------------------------------- : QUOTE OF THE MONTH "Many people take no care of their money until they come to the end of it, and others do the same with their time." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe --------------------------------- : BOOK(S) OF THE MONTH Tempting to suggest Digital Vs. Human by yours truly, but it's not published until April. So how about Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. If that's a bit intense for you, how about a book about rust? Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman. --------------------------------- : SHOP OF THE MONTH More of a club than a shop (you need to join), but the Society Club in London's Shoreditch is a bar plus bookshop where the cost of any books you buy is deducted from the cost of membership. They sell cakes and cocktails and host poetry events too. It's quite possibly the future of libraries. Ref: Elle Decoration (UK) --------------------------------- : BRAINMAIL 100th ISSUE DRINKS EVENT If you're in London on 21 April there's an event to celebrate not only issue 100 of brainmail, but also my new book. If you'd like to attend please email me or post a comment on this link: http://toptrends.nowandnext.com/ 2016/02/26/brainmail-issue-100/ --------------------------------- : STILL HUNGRY? Not a lot of people know this, but brainmail is put together using some of the leftover bits from the What's Next trends report. So if this snack-sized newsletter is leaving you a bit hungry, go to nowandnext.com for something more substantial (and that's free too). --------------------------------- : BRAINMAIL LIVE If you are looking for an interesting speaker for your next conference, workshop, or event ask your speaker agency about Richard Watson or contact him direct via nowandnext.com. Richard, who is based in London, is the creator of brainmail (along with Matt Doyle and Phil Beresford, both of whom had the good sense to stay in Australia). --------------------------------- : SMALL PRINT The material appearing in brainmail is sourced from a variety of usually reliable publications worldwide. However, we cannot guarantee the truthfulness of stories and a degree of commonsense should be applied before quoting or using any material in a commercial context. If something appears to be too good to be true it probably is.