Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“When we all have pocket telephones”

openculture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 208 posts

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#81

Post by hammock »

superchroma wrote: post #74
hammock wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They say it in interviews, on podcasts, etc. Most comedians refuse to play shows on college campuses now (once a highly lucrative venue for them) because of the audience

Comedians weren't lining up to do college campuses 20 years ago either.

College campus is never the preferred venue however as I said, it’s a money maker. Similar to corporate gigs.

The difference is now they’re not worth the trouble.

Seinfeld (not even who you think of as “anti-woke”) has a good take on it you could search for. https://ew.com/article/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-politically...

>“I don’t play colleges.” Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,'” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about”

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#82

Post by PopAlongKid »

areyousure wrote: post #65
eesmith wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Average federal tax rates for all households, by comprehensive household income quintile. 1979 to 2018" at https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-averag... "Average Total Federal Tax Rate (percent)" is lower for every percentile from 1979 to 2018. Year 1979 2018 Lowest Quintile 9.3 0.0 Second Quintile 15.0 8.1 Middle Quintile 19.1 12.8 Fourth Quintile 21.7 16.7 Highest Quintile 27.1 24.4 All Quintiles…

In case anyone was curious, United States federal tax receipts were $463 billion in FY1979 and $3.33 trillion in FY2018, a growth of a factor of ~7.2 = ~5.2%/year. The population has grown by a factor of ~1.44 = ~0.95%/year and the effect of inflation has been a factor of ~3.63 = ~3.36%/year, which multiply together to a factor of ~5.2 = ~4.33%/year. The receipts grew faster by a factor of ~1.38 = 0.82%/year. This ca…

Likewise it makes the false assumption that taxes are collected in the same year that income is received. Beginning in the 1980s, many billions of dollars that were subject to tax ended up in IRAs and 401k retirement plans where taxes are deferred for many decades in most cases. Likewise, like kind exchanges of property also defer huge amounts of taxes. So looking at annual tax receipts omits a huge amount of taxed-but-deferred income.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#83

Post by 867-5309 »

superchroma wrote: post #74
hammock wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They say it in interviews, on podcasts, etc. Most comedians refuse to play shows on college campuses now (once a highly lucrative venue for them) because of the audience

Comedians weren't lining up to do college campuses 20 years ago either.

the majority of comedians are residents of said campuses

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#84

Post by WaitWaitWha »

> Now, increasingly, cellphones are *day-to-day life*. Far from the literal “pocket telephones” envisioned a century ago, they’ve worked their way into nearly every aspect of human existence, including those Haselden could never have considered.

It is now essential to be considered part of the society, to the point that someone who does not want to or cannot carry a cell phone is sneered at. Anecdotally, I was in the USA and during a few day lay-over, I wanted to get a hair cut. I was refused service at a hair cutting chain because I did not have a cell phone with me (it was in the hotel, did not want spam, would not get there and back on time, etc.). I offered credit card or cash, but was rejected, and explicitly told I have to have cell phone.

I am not angry, just sad.

As @nonrandomstring noted, "absurdity of reality is escaping parody".

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#85

Post by 867-5309 »

otikik wrote: post #23
nonrandomstring wrote: post #7

Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal. In a world where all things are absurd, ipso facto nothing is absurd. An interesting question becomes what remains? What are the solid relations that underpin our humanity? Having a boss that tells you what to do? No, long s…

My dog has no nose. Ask me how does it smell.

actively it cannot, passively like dogshite

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#86

Post by 867-5309 »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #48
usrusr wrote: post #45

That blog post seems weirdly anachronistic: that cartoon might have predicted 2005 astonishingly well, but in 2022, how often do we really use our phones for two-way real-time audio? How often do you actually hear a ringtone begging for immediate attention?

Pretty flippin’ often.

ah the flip phones of 2005..

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#87

Post by otikik »

ekianjo wrote: post #75
otikik wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrelevant

Nope, because most people are not companies nor wealthy either, so you don't make such an argument on the extremes. That's what is truly irrelevant.

At the time of this writing, 3 Americans own as much as the bottom half of all the Americans [1] .

https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/#richest-amer...

I don't know how you qualify that. I would qualify it as extreme. The fact that "most people are not companies" doesn't matter, what matters is where the wealth is.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#88

Post by 867-5309 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #36

I'd bet the majority of phone interactions are Internet based, though- not people wishing to text/talk but notifications from apps telling you about the latest inconsequential thing to promote interaction with them.

remember when we used to playback our voicemails on analogue tape, and check our mail, and interact with strangers, and read the headlines, all maximum once a day..

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#89

Post by alistairSH »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #84

> Now, increasingly, cellphones are * day-to-day life* . Far from the literal “pocket telephones” envisioned a century ago, they’ve worked their way into nearly every aspect of human existence, including those Haselden could never have considered. It is now essential to be considered part of the society, to the point that someone who does not want to or cannot carry a cell phone is sneered at. Anecdotally, I was in t…

Wow, that's a new one for me (only app payments accepted). In the US, at least.

Re: “When we all have pocket telephones”

#90

Post by ltbarcly3 »

eesmith wrote: post #78
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if taxes are higher now vs some point in history (probably higher than some, lower than others) but your implicit claim that 'taxes' == 'US Federal Income Tax Rate' is so laughable I can't believe you can make it with a straight face. Not everyone is from the US, and the people from the US know that there are like 5 levels of taxation, from local sales tax to property tax to state income tax, state perso…

"so laughable I can't believe you can make it with a straight face" Which is why I didn't. I specifically pointed out that there are other taxes. My point was to get ekianjo to present data to support their claim. Do you have better data?

This reminds me of the guy who lost his keys. He was looking by the street light when his friend asked him if he lost his keys by the light. "No, I lost them over by my car, but it's too dark to see anything over there."

Here is a graph from wikipedia that shows that taxes in the US are in total about as high as they have ever been (which was 2000). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Federal%... You can very clearly see that while Federal taxes are gradually decreasing, that is more than made up by Payroll taxes.

Post reply on HN