I would add to this that covid did cause a major resurgence in a different flavor of prepper: “back to the earth” people who strive to, among other things, produce more of their own food (be it growing produce, raising livestock, or even doing more cooking and baking using raw ingredients rather than relying on premade food). Interest in gardening, homesteading, baking, and learning to live off the land skyrocketed during peak covid. Sure a lot of that interest has subsided, but much like how the great depression permanently changed the attitudes of people who lived through it in regards to reusing things instead of tossing and replacing, the experience of scarcity and uncertainty regarding basic goods (for most first-world folks, for the first time in their lives) made a permanent mark on at least some of the population. And this is a much more practical type of prepping, because instead of coming from a fantasy of what disaster might befall the world, it was a direct response to a disaster that actually happened.

I heard that the Milo and Otis allegations were an urban myth, but when I went to verify this I found that the actual truth is unknown (and possibly forever unknowable)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/animals-abused-milo-and-otis/

True, but it’s less of a universal experience than in the 90s, and thus would be significantly less relatable to a growing population of teens, many of whom have few or no accessible third spaces left. My understanding is it’s mostly upscale malls and shops that are still thriving; most other standard mall retail has moved online.

He also talks about how they chose 1999 very intentionally for the simulation, as it was the peak of human civilization before the era of the machine. But nowadays instead feels like we’re already entering the era of the machine: we spend most of our time on devices and are surrounded by surveillance and now AI is entering the mix. Plus the 2020s also has featured a variety of other dystopian features like pandemic, inflation, extreme inequity, growing monopolies, the rise of fascism, and a very real chance of WWIII from multiple directions among them.

You have to remember 1999 was in fact an exceptionally peaceful and optimistic time in western society (at least in the US, which is where the film focuses on), but the year still had its “everyday woes,” making it the setting with a perfect balance between an ideal life and a crappy one. 2024 is way too far in the crappy direction.

Hey, we invented fat-free “butter” so why not

(Edit: sarcasm, to be clear)

I wish we lived in a world where I could

Saving Private Ivan

I mean, you could totally make Home Alone II today as long as you set it pre-9/11, so I take this to mean “these movies that were set in the ‘present day’ could not be redone and set in the ‘present day’ of 2024.”

You couldn’t make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.

You couldn’t make American Beauty for a LOT of reasons (including prevalence of digital video, marijuana legalization, increased public awareness/concern about pedophilia, etc)

You couldn’t make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)

You couldn’t make Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream because heroin and cocaine are quaint drugs by 2020s standards

You couldn’t make Paris is Burning because Harlem gentrified big time (I know this is a documentary but still)

You couldn’t make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)

I almost said The Truman Show because we basically live in that world already but fuck it, I wanna see a 2024 version where the producers have to keep desperately introducing crazier plot developments to try and compete for a TikTok-addicted audience unamused by “just another reality TV show”, and constant set issues like cast members getting fired right and left for sneaking smartphones onto set.

Off the top of my head: being multilingual appears to have various benefits for the brain, such as delaying the onset of dementia.

Hard disagree. I am not a linguist, but did study language acquisition a bit in the context of childhood development and unless the science on the topic has changed dramatically in the last decade, it seems pretty clear that there are physiological differences between child and adult brains that dramatically impacts language learning.

For example, there is a critical age period for being able to distinguish different sounds, something that if not learned during this period may be impossible to ever pick up. This age period is shockingly young; I don’t remember exactly but iirc it’s less than one year old.

The most well-known example is that in Japanese, R and L are the same letter (their R/L letter sounds like a cross between the two, with a bit of D thrown in). Thus Japanese people have difficulty distinguishing between R and L in English; I personally verified this with a bunch of my Japanese friends (including a number who spoke English very well) and they could not distinguish between “election” and “erection,” no matter how clearly I enunciated. However this is far from the only example out there; native English speakers similarly struggle differentiating various sounds in languages from countries like India and China that are clear as day to those speakers. This is not a matter of will or attention or even practice, it’s a brain issue.

Given this, I find it highly unlikely that there aren’t other elements of language learning that are harder (or even impossible) to properly learn outside the critical window.

Everyone makes fun of California’s prop 65 warnings, but this is exactly the situation they exist for: knowing which colorful plate sets to avoid at Crate & Barrel.

You say this like we don’t still have kitchenware with lead (or other nasties like cadmium) in them, often for purely aesthetic reasons. Most of these are discontinued products still in circulation, but some are still being produced (in theory they’re “safe for use” because the heavy metals are sealed behind something nontoxic, but scratches and chips may expose them).

I’ve heard there’s another reactor in the Willapa Hills that was constructed but never activated. Like some ghost story it still sits, unused, to this day.

Washington State checking in. They don’t call us “the evergreen state” for nothing!

All it took was sacrificing our river ecosystems and invalidating native tribes’ entire way of life

All I want to know is: will this push companies to rethink infinite scroll? Like, even to make it a toggleable option.

I really appreciate that Lemmy still has distinct pages. “I’ll stop at the end of this page” is the easiest way to quit a social media session, which is why most companies have eliminated it.

Possibly a stupid question, but is there anything toxic in the solar panels or their infrastructure that could contaminate the plants or soil below? Particularly if the panels were damaged in, say, extreme weather, but also as a result of general wear and tear. I’m thinking heavy metal dust, carcinogenic liquid components, that sort of thing. As per the article this seems like it could be a good land use pairing, but not if it renders the soil unfit for agriculture due to a buildup of contamination.