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Do you think there is anything from the past we should bring back?
(Hot take alert)
I personally think mass protests should be brought back. Many governments around the world are rejecting democracy and so can really only be held accountable with drastic measures. I'd even argue people should be armed and follow domething like in the Charlottesville gun rallies or the 1968 DNC riots as a model for protesting particularly egregious stuff like Trump's impeachment trial. A few hundred thousand armed people pointing at the US Senate saying 'A trial without witnesses is unconstitutional, the president is not above the law' would definitely send a message to the Republicans there and watching in FOX.
Pretty uncontroversial, but spaces that aren't connected to internet, radio, television, telephone. When people gather in these spaces they have to entertain each other or create entertainment out of action or building.
The smartphone's ever-presence has been its strength as a compute platform, but it screwing with everyone's focus.
80% of Americans are on their phone or laptop while watching TV nowadays. One screen isn't even enough. I really like movies, and still can watch them without needing supplemental stimulation, but other people I've talked with will say they've watched a movie recently and yet know almost nothing interesting about what they watched because their brain was disabled by the lack of continuous focus. To me, that time has been completely wasted. They were constantly stimulated, so the screen-time wasn't that restorative, but nothing much of substance is remembered. Ridiculous.
One of my favorite places is a coffee shop where I used to live that doesn't have wifi. Last time I was there, I had an engaging conversation with a nice elderly man. Turns out we both enjoy woodworking, and he showed me a piece he had on the wall in the shop, and the told me about how he spent a lot of time building boat interiors and the issues that come up doing that.
Hard to find that kind of friendliness when everyone is previously engaged. Not to say there's no place for focusing on your own stuff, but having that shop was nice.
I suppose that’s great if you’re not terribly introverted. Before smartphones I used to carry a book everywhere, and preferred reading to having conversations with strangers. I do the same with a Kindle sometimes.
Oh for sure. I'm pretty introverted but not particularly shy. I can deal with intentionally going somewhere that I might be talked to suddenly, but it wouldn't be somewhere I go to spend most of my time.
Granted, plenty of folks there would indeed be reading something, and you're just as well left alone if you are.
That sounds nice! One question though...I don't know if it's because it's cheap where I'm from but wifi in public places only seems to be for tourists here because in reality it really doesn't make a difference money wise with my phone. My point being that the lack of free wifi wouldn't make a difference here unfortunately.
I think its a combination of the lack of wifi and a shared understanding that its not the kind of place you go and post up with a laptop. It’s extremely cozy and community-oriented, run by two sisters who have been running it for 15 or so years. The folks who go there are mostly regulars, and if not, become regulars pretty quickly.
The owners are super sweet too. My (now) wife and I went there the day after we got engaged, and we told them about the engagement. One of them quietly went out and got a “congratulations” card, they signed it, put it in an envelope and handed it to us while we had our breakfast ❤️
When I was deployed everyone hung out in a big hangar, and my small crew (4 people) also had our own little shack with an xbox 360 but no internet. The hangar did have internet but I didn't bring a phone or laptop so I couldn't make use of it.
I'm an introvert, and that was probably the most social I've ever been in my life - and it was great. I was also able to entertain myself with books (kindle) and I read more than I had since I was in my teens (used to be an avid reader, but in the past ~10 years I'm lucky if I read 2-3 books a year).
I will always look back on it as a wonderful experience. It's hard to even comprehend what it's like to go months without reddit/youtube/texting/tv/etc., but it was so liberating and relaxing. I also loved the feeling of not being responsible for answering other people 24/7, as that is somewhat of an expectation now that cell phones are commonplace.
Along with the revival of reading, the revival of local multiplayer is something I hadn't realized I'd missed so badly. Playing Diablo 3, WWE Smackdown (10? 12?) (both games I personally have never touched before or since, but which I enjoyed simply for the experience), watching people play SSB, playing ping pong any time of the day or night - online multiplayer will never be a true replacement for sitting right next to friends and sharing an experience together.
I wanted to ask, what do you people do to minimize your life from the huddle of the fast paced digital world, and still manage to have a good/happy social life.
I mean I get it. I'm not the kind of guy who gets jealous from people's Instagram posts. I mostly use Instagram for certain comics/artsy stuff. But still I think it gets difficult to find a fun social activity/group that does not involve internet in this day and age. Its like everyone is so caught up in their own thing, and yet it seems everyone is bored/fatigued by this cycle of smashing fingers on a brightly lit plastic box, but when you try to get out in the world, it doesn't seem if anyone is interested in the old school way of life.
Although, to be sure, a part of why I feel so suffocated is because of the extended isolation that has been going on courtesy the damned disease. But still I think it is true in our normal daily lives.
I'm curious about your dependence on the internet for a social life. I'm not the most socially vibrant person, so maybe my needs aren't great enough to have to turn to the internet. For the most part all organization and communication takes place over SMS (or in person for co-workers I'm friends with).
These days I'm very lucky to have moved into a cabin with a couple of friends. That has my social needs met at a reasonable level. Being stranded in my apartment alone was terrible.
It's not so much as my life is dependent on internet as it is that most (all?) of the people around me (in college dorm) tend to prefer watching a TV series, or playing Assassin's Creed nth edition, over things like taking a walk outside, going for a cycle, or something that does not involve sitting around in the same closed space. Due to which I tend to have not a lot of choice but to succumb in the same routine, in a way.
If I ever catch myself doing it (which is rare) I realize that I'm just not that into what I'm watching and turn off the movie/TV show.
In high school/college my friends and I made movie watching a major activity. We'd gather up into a decent sized group and work our way through IMDb's top 250 films. Maybe I'm an asshole for it, but I'd berate anyone who pulled out their phone until they put it away. We managed to maintain the no-phone culture pretty well over the years.
As for internet-free spaces I'd be interested in seeing someone create a cafe that is a giant Faraday cage without any internal WiFi.
Fair enough. a 'socialization room/den/club' would be pretty helpful to soothe the atomization of people that has been going on for the last few years.
I think we should bring cloaks back. They're super stylish and useful! But I'm not going to wear one before anyone else does, because I'll look like a weird try-hard or something. But they should come back!
Ponchos are actually en vogue now and there's lots of fashion designers experimenting with them.
Good luck getting away with it outside of LA or NYC though.
YYEEEESS
So give it like, 10-20 years and they'll be everywhere. I AM READY
Honestly if you just move to a fashion conscious city you can get away with wearing all kinds of outlandish shit. If you lived in SoHo, you could walk the streets dressed like this today!
Personally, I want to look just like this.
But I live in a warm area, so even if they do become fashionable, I still won't be able to pull this off.
oh that is a great look!
Your point re: warm area applies to me too. Which ... dang. You're right. Unless we can try something around like, arabic-style clothing (because dark, drapy cloth insulates from heat quite well!) ------- oh except. Now I'm thinking about it, that's a DESERT. Which I do NOT live in the desert. So. Hm.
You're right, is what I"m saying.
I occasionally wear my hooded heavy larp cloak to get the mail and/or walk the dog during winter times.
I agree that it's stylish as he'll and comfy like a blanket but as soon as you open it you lose all your heat. And since your arms are tucked inside, carrying a backpack is difficult.
The idea is that the cloak is supposed to have lots of pockets in it so you don't need a back-pack. One of the reasons messenger bags and backpacks became more popular is because people don't wear jackets as part of standard dress anymore. And even when you do have a jacket on, the pockets aren't really designed to be practical.
In olden times people were much more okay with having lumpy pockets and the pockets also looked better with stuff in them. I feel like a lot of modern, ready-to-wear clothing doesn't really pay enough attention to the utility of pockets and just focus on having a nice silhouette. This is especially true for women's clothing, but men's clothes are also kind of getting worse at still fitting properly if you have any amount of weight in the pockets.
But back to cloaks, you can carry a LOT in those pockets if they're designed to be tough enough. If it's about as resilient as a canvas tote-bag you can even possibly stick a small, Macbook sized laptop in there. (The charger is another story though).
Well, there are also cargo pants but some consider them unstylish. I've always liked them.
Cargo shorts are where it's at for me... they are my jam, and I rock them all summer! :P
That is why you need my second thing that should come back..... FANNY PACKS
yes a fanny pack will solve all your problems! I bought one and it's AMAZING
They made a comeback on the streetwear scene a couple of years ago, worn across the body. Still fairly common to see around these parts (Los Angeles). Got a couple myself a while back (for free), but only recently started wearing them out.
Yeah. This was really driven by the street wear scene out of Japan and Hong Kong.
I’m glad for it. They’re so much more practical for day-to-day stuff than a tote or a backpack. For most days I really just need a book, a notebook, a pen, and possibly a water bottle or my camera. The camera doesn’t always fit, but it has its own strap so it’s no big deal if it doesn’t.
this I don't really understand -- wearing a fanny pack across the body negates many of its perks, since when I wear mine now I can immediately have access to important things without dealing with them impeding my arm movement in the front. which an across-the-body wear doesn't do.
First and foremost: style. It’s a trendy look, so that’s how it’s worn. Also, feels more comfortable to wear across the body than around the waist. For me, at least. Wearing mine like that right now. My arm movement isn’t impeded and I don’t find it any more awkward to put stuff in/get stuff out vs. wearing it around the waist. Your mileage may vary, of course.
You are making a believable argument! Next time I wear it, I'll try it cross-body :)
To be sure, I have seen tourists going around with them. But I certainly got looks when I was carrying it around with my friends. But it's so convenient you can put all your stuff there and don't have to worry about pockets getting too heavy, or the awkwardness that comes with keeping your wallet in your butt pocket.
that is 100% my experience. it's amazing!
In the same vein as this, I really wish that we could have simple cars again, I know it's impossible to make a car today that complies with all safety regulations and has extremely minimal electronics, but boy do I wish it was a thing anyway.
I've recently been working on a car from the mid 80s, still carbureted, no power steering, no A/C (here in the UK it's dead weight most the year anyway...) and the whole car weighs next to nothing. It's an amazing feeling to be able to fix anything on your car without having to take it to a garage so they can use their absurdly expensive scanner on it to find what's wrong. The only issue is getting parts, but that's only because it's so old haha.
I feel you on this one and for more than just cars. Can we even find a dumb TV that has an actual power button on it anywhere? I must have reached the age where technology annoys me more than it impresses me now. Everything is built to fail, everything is built for someone with an IQ of seven (meaning anyone with an average IQ is going to be annoyed by the UI), and nothing is end-user serviceable anymore. Just buy your black box then throw it away three years later and buy another one.
What the hell happened to simple, long-lasting designs? Are they just not profitable anymore? I find that hard to believe because I'd pay half extra just for reliability and sensible design.
At least when it comes to household appliances, it turns out lots of them were heinously inefficient (energy, water, etc.) and prone to breaking. They got around the prone-to-breaking by being extremely serviceable. But the trade off is that instead of needing a handyman around to fix something a couple of times a year, you just go shopping for a new one every 3-5 years.
The efficiency is hard to beat though. Putting sensors and computers in everything means they can be way WAY smarter about how they operate than their purely mechanical forebearers. And the gap keeps increasing. It’s made up for by the fact that the computers make it all fault prone enough that you have to keep replacing them, but I’m sure they’ll iron that out someday (/s).
I have a ten year old Cuisinart grinder for my beans here. It was failing to finish a grind and would stall out.
I ripped it open, tore out two apparently pointless circuit boards (which had calcified and were clearly the problem) and then hard-wired the motor to the power directly. Turns out that was too much juice but no worries, I have a dial attached to the cord to control the power feed now. Took less than an hour, and it runs better than ever. No way I was tossing out a perfectly good grinder.
I'd just like the electrical parts to match the reliability of the mechanical ones. I've really come to hate on the disposable mentality given its clear environmental costs. When the motor in this thing eventually jams up I'm sure I'll rebuild it too, it's honestly not that hard to pull apart a motor and give it a good cleaning/lube job.
Yeah the move-fast-and-break-things project management culture of software development ended up corrupting the world of hardware design. It's a shame. I had hoped the "we need to make rock solid reliable hardware" people might have tempered that mentality somewhat, but I now realize that was a naive expectation on my part.
My solution to this was to buy a 43" LG computer monitor. It's actually better featured that I expected as a TV surrogate. It comes with a remote that lets you switch inputs and control volume. I have it hooked into a PS4, PC, and Chromecast.
Engineering Explained has a series of cool videos about it.
It sounds like some of the drawbacks are inherent to the design sadly. Without major breakthroughs I'm not sure how they'd get rid of a some of the root causes behind its efficiency and emissions problems.
It sounds like it would work as a range extender, because its lower weight and mechanical simplicity (over a regular engine) does the environment more good in the long run than the emissions and efficiency drawbacks hurt.
A lot of the rotary engine's drawbacks could be solved by continued development. Direct injection can help a lot with emissions and the unburned fuel problem, roller barrel valves can account for increased efficiencies and variable timing. I'm expecting both if the always present rumor of Mazda developing it as a range extender.
I'm a huge fan of rotary concepts myself! I'm very excited to see that LiquidPiston appears to be making advancements in the area.
Boost in --> apex seals out is a very relevant meme about rotary engines. A close friend rebuilt his FD's motor 3 times before swapping it out for an LS2.
Many modern protests look to me like role-playing. It worked for the Civil Rights movement, so we think it will work for us. Magical thinking?
I still think it's a decent way to get the attention of the press and politicians, but after you do that you need a concrete plan for what to do once people are watching and want to talk to you. Is the goal to get specific people elected? Pressure a legislature for or against a specific bill? Get an executive to take some concrete action?
I think it might be better to start with a concrete goal and then figure out the means.
Zeppelins as a form of travel, even if it's only luxury travel. They were pretty luxurious and spacious even for the 30's and 40's when they were popular. Sure, you're probably not going to be water sliding on one or have the same interior space as a cruise ship, so I understand why it probably can't compete.
But the idea of a sky cruise as a form of travel sounds amazing to me regardless. Just being up there, enjoying the view and passing the time would make for one heck of an experience.
To be fair Zeppelins stopped airing because they were prone to this so they would need to somehow redesign the thing to avoid that.
They weren't really more prone to disaster than any kind of flight at the time. With modern materials and safety standards they could probably make zeppelin travel work if the economics made sense. Unfortunately, they haven't been ever since commercial aviation really started to take off. You have to be super sensitive to the weight of everything, have fairly strict restrictions on what people can carry on board, and on top of all that it's just not very fast.
Cruise ships have many of the same problems, but they can make up for it in volume by being the size of a small city and packing in thousands of people. Zeppelins can't get that big. And even as far as a plaything for the rich goes, if you're rich enough to afford what that sort of things would cost today, you'd be rich enough to have a private jet.
What about smaller ones as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to planes in an era of flight-shaming? Maybe multiple balloons strapped together? I'd love to see more airships, they're neato.
Also Crunch bars, those packets of Black Forest mix and exceptional Pokemon games. I rarely see the first, and haven't been attracted to any of the last since Gold.
You'd be more efficient with one big one than many small ones. And even then it's not really clear that it would be any less bad for the environment than commercial flights once all the lifecycle costs are factored in. Plus, we already have trains that can do the slow, but pleasant overland travel experience if that's what you want.
Yes, but trains speed along too quickly for me to point out the window and laugh at the pedestrian peasantry.That saddens me.I'd like to see some community movie nights brought back to the local town hall, with old black and white films up on a projector. I don't know whether the town I'm currently in ever did them, but my dad's old village did and he said they were an absolute barnstormer. There doesn't even have to be alcohol involved, just a snack bar, or some tea and cakes. It'd be nice to have an event where we can dress up smartly and pretend we're stepping into a different world for the evening. You can meet all kinds of people down at a community centre, some of them even quite nice. Maybe after spending so long isolated, people will find a new appeal in the old means of socializing.
Amtrak breaks down often enough that you'll have plenty of time to stand still and gawk at pedestrians. :-p
The Hindenburg burned like it did because it was filled with hydrogen. It was originally designed to use helium, but the U.S. had put restrictions on helium export and thus hydrogen was much cheaper and more obtainable.
I agree. It seems like somebody should be able to overcome the technical hurdles and build a really nice zeppelin for luxury vacations. It seems like a really nice way to vacation travel, kind of like a really nice train would be a nice way to vacation travel.
This excellent video presents compelling reasons for the demise of zeppelins (and a few for their return): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LyaYaFzSPac
They‘re still around mainly for sightseeing purposes though
Growing some of your own food in your back yard and keeping a few chickens. It's hard work, but it now seems like a good idea to grow some of your own food.
Community dances. Barn dances, swing dancing, etc. It's not a good idea at the moment, but when things return to normal, it's a good way of keeping in touch with your neighbors. People would have to learn a little more about how to dance, though.
In the late aughts to early 2010s it was a hipster thing to raise chickens in the back yard. It kind of fell off as an activity, though, once people started to realize hens only really lay eggs for about a year and after that they’re just walking meat.
I don’t even like chicken eggs that much, I’d raise them for meat. Not necessarily for economic reasons, but around here we consider “galinha de quintal” tastier than what you get on the supermarket. I also like the idea of killing what I eat – it doesn’t seem logical to condone animal suffering only when it’s away from my view.
Yeah. It's work. It's also not terribly efficient. If you lose a couple chickens you can lose all the money you've put into them. And that's the exact reason I don't have them myself, yet.
It actually just occurred to me that the real drop off in the trend probably happened because of bird flu. Damn these global pandemics!
Seriously. Pandemics for the not-win!
I live in a climate where we only get about 5-6 months of good growing season, we have a garden but we only get a few meals out of what we can grow. Raising livestock in city limits is prohibited as well. There was a push recently to allow chickens but was defeated by the NIMBY heavy council. I totally would get some viable hens for eggs during the good months and slaughter towards winter, having helped raise chickens as a kid keeping them alive in the winters is a huge cost sink unless you're running an operation at scale.
Community dances happen in my community regularly, I've never been to one but once this pandemic is over my kid will be roughly the appropriate age to go to the Jellybean dances so that should be fun.
I’d absolutely raise chicken if I had a backyard. In Brazil that is quite common in the country and poor city neighborhoods.
Kinda tough to do backyard chickens without a backyard!
And without chickens!
Yes it is!
Social dancing is alive and well in many places, you just have to know where to look. Before the quarantine, I would go to a class for Scottish country dance at least once a week, and to a formal ball maybe once or twice a month. My branch would actually be celebrating its 50th anniversary with a ball right around now, if it weren't for the quarantine. And I hadn't gotten around to attending regularly, but there was also a contra dance every week in the same area.
I guess these things are a little harder to organize in rural areas, but in urban or even suburban environments there's almost guaranteed to be a group to regularly dance with within a 30-minute drive.
Cities that you can easily navigate without a car.
I mean I know there's some of them, but they should ALL be like that.
I agree, although we would need to dump the 2-party system via dumping FPTP and single-winner electoral districts to do that.
Did you miss the whole Hong Kong stuff? Mass protests never went away.
No, but something like this hasn't happened in the US for a while.
Oh I didn't know you meant US-specific. There was this recently. There also isn't much to protest against, it's a pretty stable country.
O rly?
Corrupt and/or impotent politicians in various positions of power
Defunding and sabotage of regulatory bodies
Mass surveillance
Fracking
Climate change
Police brutality and militarization
Prison industrial complex
Military industrial complex
Migrant detention centers
Gitmo
That's a quick 10 just off the top of my head. I don't know if you were implying that the issues aren't dire enough to justify attempts to move past the usual processes of government, but you should at least recognise that just because things don't affect you enough to get worked up (or more likely, you think they don't affect you enough to get worked up) doesn't mean that's the case for everyone.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think people shouldn't get worked up and protest, but almost all those things you listed are systematic issues which have been going on for years, and not what triggers mass protests. Regular protests yes, but mass ones are mostly triggered by something sudden and specific, like a declaration of war, a bill being proposed, or a leader being elected.
Saying these issues don't trigger protests and saying there isn't much to protest against are two very different statements. More than anything your clarification is saying the country's stability stems from how apathetic/docile/propaganda-fed the populace is.
Yeah I see that now. From my comment it comes across as if I thought the US had no problems, which wasn't what I intended.
From Ancient Greece : direct democracy, sortition, ostracism and also that thing where rich people payed for parties and stuff (liturgies).
Direct democracy probably makes a lot more sense for a city state than for a millions+ nations.
But on the other hand, we can make it easier with technology.
Besides, it doesn't need to happen at national level. What about municipal direct democracy?
Maybe, but remember that the wishes of the majority are not always in the interest of justice, and most authoritarian regimes emerged with great popular support.
Democracy is kinda awesome when compared with the alternatives, but direct democracy could be an easy way to turn our worst tendencies into law.
To me, these tend to sound more like social problems to be solved, rather than reasons to limit democracy.
Many problems of representative democracy stem from politicians gaming the system, using temporary plurality to entrench themselves. It's easier to mislead people about people and parties than policies. Voting about policies rather than people oversteps these issues.
And also, sub state level politics tends to be less about morality and more about concrete issues of daily life, so many problems of national politics doesn't really affect it. This makes it ideal level to experiment with democracy in my opinion.
But yeah, I don't think it makes sense to just immediately start voting about everything (we need to build better political culture around consensus building without party politics first), but the goal should definitely be always moving towards wider democracy.
I couldn't disagree more. Policies are complicated and nuanced and often require balancing trade-offs between winners and losers. It is very easy to mislead people about policies. Far far easier than the massive campaigns of character assassination it takes to mislead someone about people or parties.
People and parties are things people have relationships with and they can evaluate how that relationship has worked for them over time. Policies are atomized and their effects are subtle. Far too subtle for anyone who isn't an expert to really understand. Even the experts often don't fully understand them.
Democracy is far better than the current
alternatives, I’ll give you that. But it’s value is not absolute.
Like Switzerland you mean ?
We had a transition from three big parties 35/35/30 to four big parties 34/22/22/22 after parts of the 'Volk' out of 'Volksabstimmung' strongly shifted to the environmental party last election. Still doesn't feel like people had a 'direct' impact. But at least the hope is nice (:D)
Suits help men look handsome and elegant. In Brazil suits are only used on weddings, or if your profession demands them.
I understand climate would make suits bothersome in most of the country, but not all of it. And we could at least use them them as evening wear more often.
Also hats (in appropriate occasions and attire),
Using hyper technical fabrics to make an outfit that was designed for Northern Europe work in other climates makes no sense. Why not adopt the traditional formal wear of actual tropical civilizations instead of aping the styles of 19th and 20th century colonizers?
this response was meant for other person, I copied it to the correct place. I’m leaving it here so its response make sense
We do not “ape” colonizers, we are in great part the colonizers. Our heritage is mainly a mixture of native Brazilian, African, and Portuguese.
My grandfather was a tailor, and worked for regular folks as well as lawyers and politicians. Me made suits for all my uncles until he was physically unable to do so. He took great pride in his profession. He was African Brazilian of Nigerian origins. There was no contradiction whatsoever in that role.
Oh no I did it again hahaha
Sorry
I'm not sure what in there you read as "combative."
Yes. Western standards of dress became universalized because of Western colonialism creating a ubiquitous global business culture. Most other traditional styles of dressing became costume or occasion-wear.
This is like saying having a Black stormtrooper "needlessly politicizes Star Wars." It's only an apolitical topic if you want to constrain it to an extremely narrow and exclusionary scope of discussion.
Trends and fashions and conceptions of what the proper ways to dress are didn't just fall out of the sky. They have a history. They are innately tied to cultural history and development.
That was not my reply. My reply was "Why not adopt the traditional formal wear of actual tropical civilizations instead of aping the styles of 19th and 20th century colonizers?" You were reading sarcasm into a comment that wasn't there.
Cause people like pockets? I mean... its not like the majority of clothes are defined as "western" any more. And most of those aren't very "western" anyway. Hell our folkdress doesn't look anything like "western clothing" and we are part of the west (this can be debated). :)
Sure things have a politicized and problematic past - but they also have a convenient and non-problematic current. As important as it is to remember to see and be aware of the issues (past and current), ignoring the benefits for those issues at face value isn't all that grand.
Plus - not to fling in the firey torch of cultural appropriation in to the mix but I am fairly sure that OUR leisure wear (in this "western by approximation country" I live in) is based on random input from other places. My ancestors wasn't big on beach ware as far as I know. (I mean I am sure I would have heard of some random viking invading a European village and stumbling awkwardly up the embankment towards the parish church in a sarong and flipflops)
What I'm saying its like food - its spread is due to a large set of factors (500 years of colonization helps sadly) but often remain due to its actual benefits (tasty, easy to make etc). From suspiciously Portuguese deep fried vegetables in Japan, Samosas/Sambosas leaping continents like crazy and a German/Mexican way of burning food being spread all over the planet in fast food joints these dishes may have been sent over due to gruesome brutal reasons, but they tend to stick around because their tasty. I mean its not like any place my ancestors conquered or the slave forts my nation state kept in colonies made the dish of rancid putrefied herring popular in those places.
Our history is nasty AF, and the nastyness continues as ripples of that - BUT that doesn't mean that all the ripples are nasty. Pockets are awesome! A pair of hotpants are way better to keep your phone than trying to tuck it in to a belt or sling. And rancid herring is disgusting.
You're trying to have a completely different discussion that the point I brought up. This sort of knee-jerk defensiveness is just unhelpful as it makes it impossible to have an actual conversation that merely references the historical facts of colonialism without having to fend off people stumbling over themselves to justify that they're not racist.
Nothing in my comment said that we should stop wearing these things merely because of a problematic past. I if lack of air conditioning is the problem getting in the way, it makes more sense to adopt styles of dress congruent to the climate you're in rather than trying to invent new technologies specifically to duplicate styles that evolved for a different climate. The motivation for why people would think this is a reasonable course of action in the first place is colonialism, but that's just a simple historical fact.
Commenting because I think you misread my intentions: I am not at all trying to devalue your point - perhaps I was a bit too flippant and misread your motivations as more light hearted, if so I apologize.
I was more in the "me and NaraVara sharing a couple of beers talking" mode and therefor may have been a tad too jovial about it all.
Since you think it detract from the argument, I'll stay out of the conversation.
copied from my other comment because I answered to the wrong person
We do not “ape” (awful word choice BTW...) colonizers, we are in great part the colonizers. Our heritage is mainly a mixture of native Brazilian, African, and Portuguese, and we are very mixed.
My grandfather was a tailor, and worked for regular folks as well as lawyers and politicians. He made suits for all my uncles until he was physically unable to do so, and took great pride in his profession. He was African Brazilian of Nigerian origins. There was no contradiction whatsoever in that role.
I don't think things from the past come back. They're gone now, and they're gone for a reason. If something that used to be popular becomes popular again, it can't be because of the thing itself; something must have changed in the surrounding cultural environment to make it relevant again.
Perhaps it's true to say they don't come back with the same level of importance or ubiquity, but one of the most important facets of technological progress for me is choice.
I can still choose to learn blacksmithing, but I can also choose to use mass-produced metalwork at minimal cost. I can choose to collect vinyl, but I can also choose to remotely access a collection of hundreds of millions of songs.
Those things may never reach their previous prominence, but they can be brought back. They are brought back, by those dedicated to the craft, or the format, or the lifestyle.
It has downsides, without doubt; sometimes things truly are lost irrevocably in the name of progress, and that can be a tragedy. With a little care, though, the new can exist with space for the old to remain.
Disagree. Most technical advances have trade-offs and lose out on some of the stuff that made the old way of doing stuff special. Digital music is objectively better than analog in just about every perceptible way. But vinyl made a comeback because people enjoy the physicality and focused listening made possible by having a disc.
People are gravitating towards polaroids and film cameras for similar reasons. It lets them focus on getting a good shot instead of culling or editing in post on their cameras. It gives them a thrill of anticipation as they wait for it to develop. It creates something physical and rare rather than ephemeral but (potentially) ubiquitous.
The story just posted about Elon Musk reminded me what I should contribute here - bring back proper civics education. Too many people think only about their rights and not their responsibility.
I wholeheartedly agree. This will never happen though because 90% of people who actually gave a shit want to abolish the second amendment.
I want 90s industrial music to make a comeback. I know it's still a thing and I keep up with some of the people making it, but I love the darkness of it and the edge that it and some adjacent music had (like the soundtracks for Starcraft, Grand Tour Racing, Jet Moto, etc).
Is that the proper term for the sort of music that the earlier C&C games had?
EDIT: Well, everything before Generals.
Static websites.