Heroic Newsboy Funerals

daily.jstor.org

37 points·samclemens··8 comments

"Getting through childhood was no guarantee of a long life: in 1900, the average life expectancy in the US was 46 years for men and 48 years for women."

Nnnnggg no, that's not how averages work.

Interesting article though.

Please explain how averages work.

The average life expectancy is from birth - so it includes infant mortality. You need to find the average life expectancy of someone in their 20s.

The distribution of ages wasn't hugely different except at the ends of the bell curve. Now, many more people make it past infancy and live past 75.

The past is a horrifying place. Here's to a brighter future.

Ever onward. Ever onward.

n steps forward, m steps back?

Recently there was an article about the wife of a deceased coworker who had to use the tech support channel to inform his former colleagues about his death/suicide. There's something to be said about an implicit, unconditional belonging to a community (not to be confused with being a 5$-supporter of a Twitch streamer) and that is something we have lost in western society for the most part.

I initially read this as "Historic Newsguy Funerals." Newsguy was my Usenet provider back in the late 90's and my misreading piqued my interest. The article is actually about city newspaper boys from the early 1900's.

New York World (1885) "Only a Newsboy' - https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/221180856

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