"X happened closer to Y than today"

There's an interesting way to put time into perspective, and especially what events you consider recent or not-so-recent. It's to compare when two things happened versus today. One basic pattern is, "Event (X) occurred closer to Event (Y) than today."

Take WWII as an example of a huge historical milestone. WWII ended in 1945, so a thing that happened in 1984 is closer to then than it is to today (2024). Thus you could say— accurately!— "The Apple Macintosh launched closer to WWII than to today!"

Also, the movie Ghostbusters (1984) came out closer to WWII than to today.

As someone who remembers seeing Ghostbusters in its first theatrical release I'm like... *gulp*.

You can also flip around the order. WWII ended (almost) 69 years ago, and 69 years from now is... 2103. So, the 22nd century is closer to today than WWII is.

Now I have "Costco" in my Newsfeed 🙄

Well, well, well, my iPhone news reader app is once again watching what I'm reading and trying to give me just more of the same. After I clicked on, I dunno, maybe two articles about Costco in the past week, now it's showing me "Costco" as a news topic:



There are seven articles, all about Costco— and all indeed with similar file photos atop the stories— under this news heading, with the option (via tapping "...") to fetch more.

And no, Costco doesn't replace Pizza. My newsreader still shows me "Pizza" as a news topic from that time 4 years ago when I read a few articles on pizza in the same week. 🙄