How music impacts our brain making us feel different ways. During peak emotional moments in the songs identified by the listeners, dopamine is released in the nucleus accumbens, a structure deep within the older part of our human brain.
_____________________________
_____________________________
Happiness = set-point (genetics) + life circumstances + volitional activity (things we can control). Different things have different levels of impact on happiness:
- Zero To Small Effect: age, gender, education, social class, income, having children, ethnicity, intelligence, physical attractiveness.
- Moderate Effect: number of friends, being married, religiousness, level of leisure activity, physical health, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism (negative correlation), internal locus of control.
- Large Effect: gratitude, optimism, being employed, frequency of intercourse (yeah, that means what you think it means), percent of time experiencing positive affect, self-esteem.
______________________________
______________________________
Kids in third and fourth grade are beginning to stop reading for fun. It’s called the “Decline by 9,” and it’s reaching a crisis point for publishers and educators. According to research by the children’s publishers Scholastic, at age 8, 57 percent of kids say they read books for fun most days; at age 9, only 35 percent do. This trend started before the pandemic, experts say, but the pandemic accelerated things.
______________________________
______________________________
The world is at a startling demographic milestone. Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened. Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation. The falling birthrates come with huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow and the standings of the world’s superpowers.
_____________________________
Tuna Thoughts 