"The days are long, but the years are short."

from Boing Boing:

Dad shares time-lapse of his daughter from birth to age 18 [and son to 14]
A Dutch filmmaker made a touching time-lapse video that journeys through his daughter Lotte's entire childhood, from birth to age 18.

Frans Hofmeester shared his "Portrait of Lotte, 0 to 18 years" on YouTube Friday in celebration of her birthday. The video's description reads:

To better understand the psychological phenomena of memory and time, Hofmeester sought for a concept that could be supported through the mediums of film and photography.

The time-lapses confront us with our mortality. In a montage of less than 6 minutes, the viewer can observe one of the most mysterious and profound processes in human life - to grow up and age.

Hofmeester attempts to create and preserve a sense of reality. Thus, the portraits are created without the use of extra make-up or filters - bare, honest, unpolished and uncensored.

Lotte's brother Vince's life is also being documented in this way, though he's still got four more years of portraits to go.

This 116-Year-Old Brooklyn Woman Is the World’s Oldest Person

from NYmag:

Here are some things that did not yet exist when Susannah Mushatt Jones was born in Alabama on July 6, 1899: the Model T, and for that matter the Ford Motor Company. The teddy bear. Thumbtacks and tea bags. Puccini’s Tosca and Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” The Flatiron Building and the subway system beneath it. Emma Morano, an Italian woman born four months later, who is today the only other living soul who was around before 1900.

One hundred and sixteen years ago, Susie’s tenant-­farmer father, Callie, could theoretically have voted, though Alabama’s poll taxes and rigged literacy tests pretty much took care of that. As for her mother, she was barred from the polls twice over, because voting rights for women were two decades off. Mary Mushatt had 11 children — Susie being the third and the oldest girl — and cooked on an open fire with water drawn from a well. Corn bread was baked by burying it in the fireplace’s ashes. The family raised their own produce and meat. Susie walked seven miles to what was then called the Calhoun Colored School, a private academy specializing in practical education. Her family paid the boarding-school tuition by barter: wood cut for the fire, bushels of corn they’d grown.

Her relatives say she did not dwell on the bad aspects of the prewar South. Tee — family members call her that, short for “Auntie” — was the type to put her head down and keep moving. Which is what she did after graduation: In December 1922, she made the three-day train trip to Newark, New Jersey, where a well-off family had hired her to be a nanny and housekeeper. A year later, she jumped to an easier and more glamorous job with a couple in Westchester: Walter Cokell was the treasurer of Paramount Pictures, and he and his wife, Virginia, had no children. Winters took the Cokells and her to Bel-Air and to Florida. She met Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan (all younger than she). Her already-good cooking got better and more refined.

In 1928, she married a man named Henry Jones, but they soon split up. (She doesn’t talk about him but kept his surname.) She had a room in Harlem for a while, in an apartment shared with other women from Alabama, but most of her time was spent as a live-in. After Mr. Cokell died in 1945 — killed himself, actually — she moved on to other domestic jobs. The Andrews family, with five children, was probably her favorite. Gail Andrews Whelan, now in her 70s, says Jones was a great caregiver — neither draconian nor a pushover, someone who laid down the law but also “always had your back,” and could serve breakfast to 30 girls after a slumber party.

Jones retired in 1965, a few months after the Civil Rights Act took effect. She went back to the farm in Alabama for a while, then returned to New York for good. Here, she was similarly surrounded by family, because after her journey north she had become a magnet. More than a dozen Mushatts made the trip after her, in a microcosm of the Great Migration, most settling in Brooklyn. A high percentage of her siblings and their descendants went to college, some with her financial help. Quite a few have lived longish lives, but none remotely like hers. One of her brothers reached 92, and died seven years ago. Of the 11, only she remains.

When she was about 80 — that is, 35 years ago — she moved into a seniors’ home in Canarsie. At 100, she had to stop cooking for herself and give up her neighborhood-watch role, as her eyesight started to go. (Really, it’s just cataracts, but she is too stubborn to sit for the surgery.) Late in life, she lost her aversion to curse words, though she’d subsequently deny any cussing she did. Miss Susie is her building’s micro­celebrity, and on June 17, she became the world’s oldest living person upon the death of Jeralean Talley, who had six weeks on her.

She is fragile, no question about it. Sleeps a lot, can’t hear well. But she still loves her bacon — four strips, every morning, eaten with gusto. Has a pretty good appetite, in fact. Chews Doublemint gum. Her hair, long since turned white, has come in brown again. She voted for Barack Obama, twice. (A birthday letter from him hangs on her wall.) And next fall, Susannah Mushatt Jones will perhaps get to vote for a woman as well. Whoever’s elected would be her 21st ­president.

*This article appears in the December 14, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.

The oldest thing in the world

The oldest living thing on Earth is a massive "meadow" of sea grass growing in the Mediterranean between Spain and Cyprus. It's somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years old and reproduces by cloning itself. Also, it's being killed by climate change.

thanks, BoingBoing

Old people give most honest advice (also, harshest)

Seems like i may have gotten this a bit early in life...

from BoingBoing

Apparently, as your ability to control impulses declines with age, so does your ability to smooth over other people's feelings via white lies and omissions. The upside to this: Advice from old people is more likely to be honest ... if a little on the painful side.

Scientific American reports on a recent study that's supposed to show how dwindling executive function can simultaneously impair your social graces and improve your Dear Abby skills.

Researchers recruited 19 undergrads and 32 adults in their 60s and 70s. They split the older adults into two groups, based on the adults' abilities to control their behaviors and impulses--called executive function, which naturally declines with age. Then the researchers showed all three groups a photo of a visibly obese teen, along with a list of her complaints, like trouble sleeping and lack of energy--symptoms associated with childhood obesity.

What advice could they offer this girl? Well, only half of the higher functioning adults and a third of the college kids brought up the girl's weight as the possible source for her problems. But 80 percent of the adults with cognitive declines mentioned weight. They also gave twice as many helpful tips, like more exercise, a better diet, and delivered them with more empathy.

Sadly, I'm not sure we can declare this an unequivocal win for cognitive decline. After all, "honesty" is a relative thing, dependent on your own beliefs. The same process that might prompt your Grandma to offer useful and empathetic weight-loss advice is probably also the driving force behind somebody else's Grandma's tendency to yell racist epithets at the mailman.

Both old ladies are telling you what they really think—which seems to be what this study is actually about. But being willing to tell people what you really think doesn't necessarily equal good advice.

Image: Some rights reserved by Sukanto Debnath