The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn’t sold out.

Source: When America was ‘great,’ according to data

Lots of interesting stats and charts in the article. It pairs well with Max Kiener’s Why Time Flies and Tim Urban’s The Tail End. The main takeaway: don’t yearn for years past, but make the most of the here and now. The feeling that time accelerates is normal and a reminder that we only have so much left.