Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)

#101

Post by gwern » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #18

Other food: - Mangoes went from unknown/exotic in the US to being a standard fruit in your produce aisle. - it’s surprising how cars in the 80s didn’t actually have cup holders. I always thought that was just a joke until I bought an 80s car and learned I’d need to buy the cup holders aftermarket - frozen vegetables overtaking canned vegetables - sugar free sodas

I hadn't thought about mangoes but now that you mention it, it does feel like they showed up in the USA at some point since the 1990s.

> - sugar free sodas

I am not convinced this was actually a good thing. After all these decades of studies in ever more obese human populations, it should not be this hard to find any benefits at all, and there should not be so many warning signs. You certainly can't see it in any obesity rates or soda tax results (or my relatives...), the experimental weight loss results have always been oddly unimpressive, and there are lots of concerning results about the effects on microbiomes (https://gwern.net/doc/genetics/microbiome/2022-suez.pdf) or on cardiovascular health (https://gwern.net/doc/biology/2024-witkowski.pdf https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10334259/), which is all very weird if they are 0 calories and don't affect insulin metabolism, as you would expect unambiguous, immediate, large benefits (contrast this with, say, GIP/G1P). So, maybe sugar-free will finally wind up being a wash or slightly beneficial, but it's not going into my list either way.

(Also, I eat mangoes and frozen vegetables and a little reluctantly eat nü brussel sprouts, but I don't drink soda, so it's against the spirit of my personal list to begin with.)

Re: Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)

#102

Post by gwern » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

uxp100 wrote: post #16

varjag wrote: post #5

Some of the improvements on the list are non-issues best described as cultural differences. Consider: …not making a dozen phone calls playing Phone Tag, to set up something as simple as a play date Well this is why hardly anyone was bothering with setting up play dates back in the day† and were letting kids roam. Different culture facilitated by poor connectivity and scarcity of content. † The title says the 90s but…

People were definitely having play dates in the 90s…

I guess I misremembered all those playdates I had as a kid in the 90s, where the other kids didn't live close enough to simply walk or bike to (which, as a '90s kid, I was still able to do, although American parents apparently slammed the window firmly shut on that starting in the '00s), and we had to rope the adults in for car transport. After all, varjag knows better than I do, and knows they were actually in the 1980s.

Re: Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)

#103

Post by gwern » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

waingake wrote: post #76

Let's not forget that comparing the 2020's to the 90's is like comparing the 90's to the 60's. Would we have a more substantial list between those two decades?

Probably not, as economic things like living standards or quality of life generally seem to be logarithmic and have diminishing returns, but why not make a list and show us?

Re: Everyday life improvements since the 90s (2022)

#104

Post by munksbeer » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:36 PM UTC

dcminter wrote: post #27

alabastervlog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smoking one's huge. It's hard to overstate how incredibly gross most public spaces (and homes...) were before indoor smoking largely vanished.

I went off pubs after the smoking ban in Britain; suddenly it was much more obvious that they all smelled of sweat and stale beer.

Many of us still love going to pubs. So much better not waking up reeking of second hand smoke. I went skiing in Austria a few years back and some of the places still allow smoking inside. I couldn't handle it, I can't believe I ever did.