It's About Time
 

Time and your perception of it, your relationship to it.
Every once in awhile somebody throws out a it's been X years since Y happened and that always make stop and
think, does that jibe with my perception.

Over at Wait But Why they put a bunch of them together, and a couple of them jarred me. So I stole them to jar you.
What can I say, you always jar the ones you love.

fuck me running

I keep catching myself in counterfactual thoughts like, "That wasn't 25 years ago! It was just in 1995!"

Yeah, me too. It's amazing how we smush time between memorable events. :haha:

counterfactual, sure.

but the framing of the question makes a difference too, especially the units of measure and the age of the reader.

1800s vs 1960 == ancient history
1960 vs 2020 == my whole life
those don't see like apples to apples. perhaps the point, but "the 1800s" also includes 159 years ago--not the same.

Question? There's no question, they're just framing distances between now and some memorable happening then going back about the same amount of time to another landmark occasion.
If it extends past your frame of reference then it's just interesting information. If all three fall in your memory bank then see if your bank needs adjusting. For a lot of people(me too) it does.

I had a professor who served in the Navy at the end of WWII. When he taught the 2nd half of the Intro to US History Course he always stopped before the war because, "That's just life man."