Links for January 9, 2022

🎧 Spotify listening trends are eerily correlated with the market’s highs and lows — FastCompany

Last year, a group of researches examined patterns in music sentiment pulled from aggregated Spotify data. Their findings suggest that these listening trends can predict market movements:

Linking our sentiment measure with the stock markets, we find that higher music sentiment is associated with higher returns to a country’s stock market during the same week. It also leads to lower returns the next week, suggesting the initial reaction was a temporary one driven by sentiment.

♟ The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving — ESPN

Sitting still and playing chess at the grandmaster level in a tournament setting is extremly physically demanding:

Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day. Based on breathing rates (which triple during competition), blood pressure (which elevates) and muscle contractions before, during and after major tournaments, Sapolsky suggests that grandmasters' stress responses to chess are on par with what elite athletes experience.

(Emphasis mine)

🪄 Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History — Defunctland

Speaking of Queuing Theory, there is an art to making lines feel shorter to wait in. Disney is an expert at this, and the YouTube channel Defunctland gives us a fascinating and comprehensive look into how Disney's strategy for managing its crowded theme park queues has changed over time.

Thanks to my friend Jim for sharing this with me.

🐦 Relevant Tweets

My family has agreed to honor my final wishes.

1. I want my remains to be scattered at Disney World.

2. I don't want to be cremated.

— Jared Slagle (@ProRodeoVoice) December 23, 2021

And if you liked yesterday's optical illusion, here's another mind-bending video:

Similar to this pic.twitter.com/ONpaeDCrcL

— manxpie (@manxpie86) June 16, 2021

Have a great week,
John