I never thought Brussels Sprouts tasted bad in the past -- always delicious! Also, JFC, at least make your own Guac -- it's like the easiest thing to actually make yourself. I can't think of anything easier.
Life Improvements Since the 1990s
111–120 of 480 posts
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#112> Fresh Guacamole can be easily bought due to pressure pasteurization Where do I find this? I tried this spring and summer but couldn't find guacamole that doesn't spoil within a day or two, especially after being opened, which is too soon to be practical.
Get the single serve packs then.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the most basic level, life expectancy has increased everywhere [0] and so quality of life has increased for a large number of people who would otherwise be dead. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Life expectancy has already lowered quite a bit from the pandemic we can't put a lid on, and when (if) that settles down cataclysmic climate change will continue its work. Sorry but the future seems quite bleak.
One human constant through history is that the future always seems bleak to most of it.
This seems like an understudied thing to me.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#114> Fresh Guacamole can be easily bought due to pressure pasteurization Where do I find this? I tried this spring and summer but couldn't find guacamole that doesn't spoil within a day or two, especially after being opened, which is too soon to be practical.
Yo Quiero is using the process on their pre packaged guacamole.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#115I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of engineering and design professionals and methodologies. The average product and service that the average actor in the economy interacts with is designed and optimized to…
> Today the glue probably works better (barring regulation that forces compromises to product efficacy)
Regulation might do that and there is much more going on:
Regulation also protects health and safety of customers and workers (especially important with chemical products) and prevents fraud, and it corrects market distortions that damage businesses, including instituting changes that the nature of the market prevents any one business from implementing, and opening up competition.
Other things limit technological innovation, including incumbents with market power who profit more from eliminating competition than from improving their products.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then brings in legislation like the Cookie notices and Link Tax, but does absolutely nothing to protect and drive the European Tech industry (where is the European FAANG?), allowing monopolistic American corporations to ship all the high-paying jobs to the US. Europe had ARM, a whole slew of microcomputer companies (and still the Raspberry Pi foundation today), Nokia, Linux, MySQL, etc. - all largely sold off or…
Isn't this openess forced upon the EU by their strongest ally?
The EU has long been run by neo-liberals, so they actually choose the policies deliberately.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#117I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of engineering and design professionals and methodologies. The average product and service that the average actor in the economy interacts with is designed and optimized to…
The downside to broadening the talent pool for design/manufacturing is that it means workers now have to be among the best in the world to get business and thus earn a good living. It no longer suffices to be the best in a local region. If each local region needs its own widget factory, then to become a top widgetsmith you only have to compete with the local widgetsmith talent pool. Just as there can be many high sch…
The upside I think of is that this enables more specialization and "division of labor", which is one of the basic drivers of prosperity.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#118I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather than before.
I'll take 91. I get to experience all the exciting personal computing technology again before it all becomes web appliances and dark patterns. Back when the internet, if you could get it, was a place of wonder instead of terror.
If you are going back Marty, there are a few timelines I’d like altered.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#119I think he kind of missed the elephant that is modern communication technology has reduced the marginal cost of skilled services enabling pretty much every object designed in an office and manufactured in a factory to benefit from a broader array of engineering and design professionals and methodologies. The average product and service that the average actor in the economy interacts with is designed and optimized to…
The downside to broadening the talent pool for design/manufacturing is that it means workers now have to be among the best in the world to get business and thus earn a good living. It no longer suffices to be the best in a local region. If each local region needs its own widget factory, then to become a top widgetsmith you only have to compete with the local widgetsmith talent pool. Just as there can be many high sch…
> that it means workers now have to be the best in the world to get business and thus earn a good living. It no longer suffices to be the best in a local region.
Yes, though for most jobs there is far more demand than can be met by the best in the world. When someone needs a lawyer or software developer, they are very unlikely to hire the best in the world.
Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s
#120I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather than before.
>I often ask people: “if you could be 20-years old in 1991 or 2021, which would you pick?” An incredible number of people pick ‘91. Some people even ask to go back to the seventies. There's a podcast by Jason Feifer (was called Pessimists Archive) where the repeated theme across many episodes is the recurring fallacy of the "good ole days" : https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ E.g. you ask today's generat…
> but if you ask those in 1991 what the good old days were, they wouldn't say "right now!"
Is this sourced? In Europe, 1991 was when the Soviet union fell. Sure, in many now-ex-USSR countries 1991 wasn't the best of times because the collapse wasn't very well managed. But in West, suddenly the impeding doom of nuclear war near disappeared overnight.
2021 has ... exciting climate events and Covid.
edit. What is the soundtrack of 2021? In 1991 it supposedly was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ . TIL the year ended with band donating bunch of royalties from the single to Gorbachev 10 days before he resigned and the USSR disappeared. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(Scorpions_song...