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Life Improvements Since the 1990s

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Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#221

Post by RegBarclay »

iambateman wrote: post #14

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. This article explains why I would much rather be young now rather than before.

I was 23 in 1991. It was OK, but just yesterday I was talking with a twentysomething guy who was playing for me a song he'd written using GarageBand on his phone. I told him, man, I wish I'd had YouTube and GarageBand when I was his age. It's really hard to say what I'd do. I'd probably not change anything. I've noticed that computer technology isn't really anything special to my kids. I'm not sure I would have taken up an interest in programming as a youth in 2021 as I did in the 80s and 90s.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#223

Post by Jeff_Brown »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #20

I 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…

> missed the elephant that is ...

Definitely a big deal, but mostly invisible on the demand side. You're talking about improvements to the supply process; the article is about what consumers experience.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#224

Post by sodafountan »

LightG wrote: post #188
sodafountan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like biology and aptitude play a big part in what you end up doing in life. Here's a definition of aptitude from Google: What is an example of an aptitude? Aptitudes are natural talents, special abilities for doing, or learning to do, certain kinds of things easily and quickly. They have little to do with knowledge or culture, or education, or even interests. They have to do with heredity. Musical talent…

Interesting point, meine Obergruppenführer.

Does the word "Aptitude" trigger you, comrade?

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#225

Post by treis »

phreeza wrote: post #215
treis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are somewhat dangerous as the additional airspace allows CO2 to build up. I haven't seen good studies either way, but there's lots of anecdata out there of people reporting symptoms.

That doesn't make sense to me, why would a larger space allow for more CO2 buildup, if there is a connection to the outside?

There will be some mixing of fresh air through the snorkel but that's a small opening and a long tube. It will still mostly be the air you exhaled. For a traditional snorkel that's a small volume relative to a breath but not so much for those masks. Plus, if you're diving under the water a traditional snorkel will be completely purged while these masks will retain the air.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#226

Post by GoatOfAplomb »

phreeza wrote: post #215
treis wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are somewhat dangerous as the additional airspace allows CO2 to build up. I haven't seen good studies either way, but there's lots of anecdata out there of people reporting symptoms.

That doesn't make sense to me, why would a larger space allow for more CO2 buildup, if there is a connection to the outside?

I started to write this out but realized a more polished explanation might be more useful:

"Snorkels constitute respiratory dead space. When the user takes in a fresh breath, some of the previously exhaled air which remains in the snorkel is inhaled again, reducing the amount of fresh air in the inhaled volume, and increasing the risk of a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood, which can result in hypercapnia. The greater the volume of the tube, and the smaller the tidal volume of breathing, the more this problem is exacerbated. Including the internal volume of the mask in the breathing circuit greatly expands the dead space."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snorkel_(swimming)

(The face mask snorkels are relevant to the "greater the volume of the tube" part.)

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#228

Post by tylerjdurden »

jacobmischka wrote: post #57

I can't pinpoint what it is specifically, but something about this website visually makes reading it seem unpleasant. I think the lines of text are too wide, the font is too large and thick, the line height is too small, and paragraphs really need to be padded vertically, the indentation instead makes it seem like a high school essay and made me want to close the tab immediately.

On the other hand, I really liked the way the links behave when you hover over them.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#229

Post by Clewza313 »

dalbasal wrote: post #81

This reminds me of a golden age blog post, when lists turned out to be an understudied literary device. I'm a fan of "dumps." Some interestingly debatable ones here: " Intellectual Property Maximalism rollback: copyright terms have not and probably will not be indefinitely extended again to eternity to protect Mickey Mouse, and in 2019, for the first time since 1998, works entered the public domain " I think the easy…

One other big change since the 1990s, though, is that Creative Commons is now a real thing. Many publications/sites including Wikipedia, Stack Overflow and open-access journals release everything as CC by default, and Wikimedia Commons has become a treasure trove of materials that can be freely remixed.

Re: Life Improvements Since the 1990s

#230

Post by selimthegrim »

seniorThrowaway wrote: post #197
minikites wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be right. It's not about present society being a global maximum, it's about present society being a local maximum. The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again…

>The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again later. The example I like to think about for this is imagine being born in the eastern European bloodlands - Eastern Germany, the Baltics, Poland, Byelorussia or Ukraine around 1895-1900. Things are pretty good up until the Great War starts, which back then you would be old enough to be considered a…

Or, most of Afghanistan in the period 1979-99
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