Makin' strides

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: It’s time for a chrysanthemum, and we don’t mean in the garden; A neuroscientist shares the 6 ways he keeps his brain healthy; and one of LIV’s golfers is headed to YouTube!

Let’s get into it!

If you’re feeling like one of the stiffest cocktails available, we present to you: the Chrysanthemum.

The drink was likely invented in 1916, when it first appeared in Recipes for Mixed Drinks by Hugo R. Ensslin, a prominent bartender in New York at the time.

His version of the drink prescribed equal parts dry vermouth and Bénédictine, a French liqueur invented in 1863 from 27 different botanicals, the majority of which remain a mystery outside the minds of a select few.

Bénédictine itself packs a punch, but for added measure, the Chrysanthemum also calls for a dash of absinthe to even out the honey-spice notes of the liqueur and the dry vermouth.

This drink has no base spirit, but it’ll get you where you’re trying to go. Its recipe was adjusted to call for two parts dry vermouth and one part Bénédictine when it appeared in the Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930 by the famed London Savoy Hotel’s Harry Craddock.

With its floral name, one might suspect there’s tea in the concoction, but it’s nowhere to be found in this beverage; its name was most likely a tribute to the “King of Ragtime,” African-American pianist Scott Joplin, who was as old school and cool as the drink itself.

Alex Korb is a neuroscientist and professor at UCLA, and the author of The Upward Spiral, which is about reversing the course that leads to depression, and how to spiral upwards instead of down.

In that sense, he probably knows a thing or two about brain health. In fact, he recently wrote an article outlining six things he does to keep his mind healthy and strong.

For starters, he advises consistent movement over one intense workout. Exercising throughout the day, including carrying groceries, climbing stairs, and going for a brisk walk all fall into this category for him.

Instead of using a reward system to earn the right to enjoyment, he uses enjoyable activities as the fuel for productivity.

Enjoyable activities like playing an instrument or sport, or even gamifying household chores actually reinforce motivational reward circuits in the brain. In other words, they don’t need to be the reward; they can be what helps you do the work.

When there are multiple less enjoyable activities to be done, he prioritizes the meaningful ones. Tediousness and frustration are going to be roadblocks for everyone at some point, but is the task meaningful/valuable/important? If so, getting it done is much more rewarding and motivating. As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing; I love having written.”

Archeologists from the University of Barcelona were conducting an excavation of the ancient town of Oxyrhynchus (today’s Egyptian town of Al Bahnasa) when they made a first-of-its-kind discovery.

The mummified remains of a person that lived 1,600 years ago was found in a tomb, and on the mummy’s abdomen laid a papyrus fragment of Homer’s Iliad, marking the first time actual literature was found as part of a funeral ritual.

“It is the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process,” said Maite Mascort and Esther Pons, leaders at the Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission in the university’s Institute of Ancient Near East Studies.

The significance of the discovery is that it was a literary text specifically, rather than passages pertaining to some sort of magical or ritualistic phenomenon.

The text in this particular mummy’s tomb was determined by a papyrologist earlier this year to be from the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad, in which the Greek forces before Troy were revealed.

“It is worth noting that, since the late 19th century, a huge number of papyri have been discovered at Oxyrhynchus, including Greek literary texts of great importance, but the real novelty is finding a literary papyrus in a funerary context,” explained Prof. Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, director of the Oxyrhynchus project.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund announced last week that it will indeed pull its funding for the offshoot golf league LIV at the end of the year, after weeks of rumours swirling about the circuit’s future.

Whether you love him or hate him, Bryson DeChambeau is one of the world’s top golfers, and after missing the window to rejoin the PGA Tour earlier this year and opting to remain with LIV, it appears he’s left with few options.

While both Bryson and fellow LIV star Jon Rahm reached deals with the European DP World Tour to have their fines for joining LIV wiped and for them to join the tour, it remains to be seen if the PGA Tour will consider reopening the door that Brooks Koepka walked through earlier this year at considerable personal cost.

"I think, from my perspective, I'd love to grow my YouTube channel three times, maybe even more," DeChambeau told ESPN of his page that has 2.69 million subscribers.

He said it’s unfortunate that the PGA Tour remains uninterested in bringing him back, “considering what I could do for them.”

Asked about LIV losing its funding, he said he was “completely shocked” and that the announcement came as a total surprise. When he was initially brought in, he was told the league would be funded until at least 2032.

Tuned in

Time for another round of complete the lyric, with today’s trivia!