Gettin' your house in order

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. How craving attention can be just like an appetite; already-burned fossil fuels could warm planet for centuries; classic Pink Floyd album cover comes to life; and Sound of Music museum officially opens in Salzburg, Austria.

But first, our weekly poll!

For basically all of human history until the 1950’s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, most people didn’t worry about what they should eat because they were too busy worrying whether or not they would eat. Confronted with excess post WWII, droves of people dove right in, leading to unprecedented health deficiencies.

Back then, society had to correct itself and develop a type of discipline it never needed before, and according to psychologist Mark Rego, the same can be said today about the vortex of information most are exposed to on a daily basis.

The internet is an infinite source of opinion, counter-opinion, and counter-counter-opinion, he noted in a recent Psychology Today article. Even without delving into the horrors of infinite scrolling on short-form videos, it’s easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole.

Why should the appetite for food be the only thing that needs moderating? Rego says he’s on a communications diet, and recommends everyone cut back heavily on basically every form of media they consume.

Some may worry this will risk their need to be informed. The reality is most people probably only need about 20% of what they read or watch on a daily basis to be informed; the rest is just overloading the system, stressing and tiring out the mind, and leaving no room for it to wander. 

A study published the other day in PLOS Climate painted a fairly grim picture of what humanity can expect of Earth’s climate over the next five centuries.

Lead author Dargan Frierson, an associate professor of atmospheric and climate science at the University of Washington, and his team wanted to investigate what would happen if carbon emissions all but ceased in 2024, versus what would happen if humanity continued burning fossil fuels at its the current rate.

Ultimately, the vast majority of carbon emissions come from the “carbon majors,” a group of just 178 oil, gas, and cement companies that have collectively released 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 or CO2-equivalent materials into the atmosphere since 1854. 50% of it came after 1986.

Frierson and his team ran the aforementioned scenarios, and found if emissions were mostly halted, the majority of future planet warming would be a result of carbon major emissions up to 2024. If they continued, the majority of warming would be caused by future emissions.

Most notably, the team found the amount of warming that will happen as a result of CO2 already pumped into the atmosphere will be the same, regardless of which scenario ultimately occurs.

“I don’t think a lot of people realize that we essentially have to stop burning fossil fuels in order to get the warming to stop,” Frierson said.

A first-of-its-kind museum opened in Salzburg, Austria the other day, devoted entirely to the 1965 classic musical film adaptation of The Sound of Music, featuring the legendary Julie Andrews.

The home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, there’s perhaps no better city for this museum to call home than Salzburg.

Of course it’s also situated in the heart of the country the von Trapps developed their love of music, against the grim backdrop of Nazi-occupied Austro-Hungary.

The opening was attended by Elisabeth von Trapp, the granddaughter of Georg and Agathe von Trapp, whose story was the real-life inspiration for the musical and film.

“It is intimate enough so you really have a beautiful sense of the storyline of both the Sound of Music and the Trapp family singers—my relatives. I’m very proud of that,” Elisabeth von Trapp said of the new museum.

She was able to take the day off for the opening; otherwise, she’d probably be going about her regular business providing guided tours highlighting landmarks throughout the city that played a role in the story.

Those who wish to visit the museum are able to check out roughly 450 different Sound of Music mementos, including props and costumes from the film, cinema posters, and recordings of the music, where they’ll surely be able to find a few of their favorite things.

Pink Floyd is known for some of the most iconic album covers in history, and the cover of 1977’s Animals is no exception.

The Battersea Power Station has long been defunct, and is actually now the headquarters for Apple’s European operations. Fittingly, the tech giant announced the other day that it will convert a section of the building into a live music venue for music fans to visit and almost undoubtedly catch some Pink Floyd cover tunes.

“Apple’s deep love for music dates all the way back to the very beginning, from the launch of the iPod to the long-running iTunes Music Festival to the debut of Apple Music,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and International Content shared in a press release.

“Today, with the opening of Apple Music Hall, we are once again taking an unprecedented step further in our commitment to artists and fans by supporting live music in ways only Apple can do.”

Animals was inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and the cover was intended to evoke the melancholy and rage of those stuck in the dystopian allegory. As you can see above, the Pig (representing history’s tyrants) floats above the powerplant, right where Roger Waters left it.

Quizmaster’s choice

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