The two of these things aren’t mutually exclusive to be honest. It’s possible to
I very much miss places and experiences which don’t exist any more, or have changed as society has changed.
An example is the way music is consumed. When purchasing physical media it took much more effort, thus you were more invested. You would typically visit a music shop, purchase the album, take it home and listen to it. There would usually be an album liner where you could read the lyrics, see photos of the band (which you’d only otherwise be able to see in magazines) and you felt like you had a direct connection with them.
The purchase of the physical asset connected you in some way to the artist and made for a type of relationship with the music which is much harder to emulate with streaming services, where the music is free and available immediately.
As a result, the way I like to discover music is at odds to the way Spotify wants to provide me music. It wants to provide me more of the same, I want to discover things I haven’t heard before.
That being said, Spotify has given me access to music I didn’t know existed by artists I love but had never heard of till I found them on someone’s random playlist. And it’s perpetually there when I’m driving, exercising and working. It plays for it doesn’t require rhe effort or thought of dubbing tapes or recording from the radio.
But it’s also improved music in general. It used to be possible for an artist to make one or two good tracks for radio play and then create subpar filler for the rest of the album, but now all of the tracks of the album are sold separately so every track has to be of equal quality. Additionally you aren’t bound to just the one song played on the radio when looking for new artists.
Friendly suggestion to anyone reading this that many of your favorite artists are on SoundCloud and other platforms: it costs nothing to send them a message to say you love their music.
Direct platforms like bandcamp also make it feel so good to know most of every dollar is heading their way.
As someone who grew up poor, I never got the record store experience, because if I wanted music, it would either be on the radio, or I’d need to play it myself.
The limited childhood budget would be like $20, which means, you could buy one CD with eight or ten tracks to listen on repeat, or… buy something like SimCity 2000, for possibly hundreds of hours of fun (I had a family friend neighbor who threw out an old PC/donated it to us because they got outdated real fast in the 90s).
Accounting for inflation, that $20 is probably closer to $40-80 now, and a Spotify subscription is definitely a lot less costly than even that, for not one disk, but an endless amount of music.
The value proposition, the cost of entertainment has dropped precipitously, and now as a rich adult and technocrat, artificial intelligence can autonomously create new music, much in the way Spotify can discover tracks that “you like”.
Every night, I’ve got 138-357 MB of brand new music, that no one’s ever heard of, courtesy of my algorithm, recombining chunks of music from everything I’ve ever heard, to create brand new bangers.
If these tracks were released to Spotify, people wouldn’t be able to tell they weren’t made by people. AI is after all, a plagarism machine, built on the hard work of real people and artists.
But between plagiarism and piracy, I feel this new streaming world answers a great need:
The desire for culture, to be free, for any and all, to enjoy.
I’m glad you came to some conclusion, I’m still trying to find a pattern in it. everything he said is true in a biased generalizing fallacy type of way. Even though he contradicted himself at least twice.
I have a fuckin’ dolt of an uncle who was trying to tell me that points ignition is better than electronically controlled ignition. Like??? Yeah dude I love adjusting my spark timing by hand it’s so much fun 🙄
I’m guessing here, but it could be the feel of direct control and accomplishment. If it goes out, you can fix it. If you adjust it, you control it.
Manual transmission gives you that feeling of complete control of the vehicle. If you keep it in 2nd, it stays in 2nd. Whereas drifting around in an automatic is possible, the feeling isn’t the same. If you exceed the limited rpm, the system kicks in and shifts to 3rd.
It’s more of a pride/accomplishment/feeling than a fact. The fact is, automatic vehicles are more efficient in most cases. But people (myself included) prefer manuals for the feeling of control.
Maybe that’s the same with your uncle and his knowledge and skill.
Ignition, not transmission. In old cars, there’d be a contact that span round and touched other contacts to trigger the spark plugs at the right time. In a modern car, that’s done electronically, and so doesn’t start out and need replacing, and can vary the spark timings based on things like speed and temperature while the engine’s running instead of just when you have the bonnet open.
So I actually prefer manual transmission myself, but there is no reason to prefer points. They’re super frustrating. It would be like going backwards from fuel injection to carburetors. Like I’m a tinkerer don’t get me wrong but some stuff is just… worse
I find that very hard to believe when I can keep my car from unnecessarily downshifting when going up a slight incline. Or putting it in neutral while coasting.
Hell when I first got my car the avg mpg was 21mpg and after driving it for a few months I’ve gotten it up to 30.
This is obviously anecdotal evidence so if anyone has more info on it that’d be great
There’s a few articles out there. A search on Google scholar might show some more results but I just clicked one of the first ones for, “automatic vs manual transmission efficiency”
To the driver, a continuously variable transmission (CVT) operates a lot like an automatic. You don’t have to operate a clutch, and you simply put the car in drive to go. Unlike manuals and automatics, however, CVTs have infinite combinations of gear ratios. What that means is that a CVT can always send power to the wheels from the engine in the most fuel-efficient way possible.
I lived in Southern California in the early nineties on very little money. The only real “hardship” was that I needed a co-signer to rent an apartment until I was about twenty five.
Other than that, it’s not like I was living in luxury, and I certainly could not have bought a house, but it was comfortably doable on slightly more than minimum wage. (And several of my classmates did buy houses in southern California on starting salaries while still in their twenties)
I make roughly seven times more money now, and feel like I wouldn’t be able to afford a two bedroom apartment anywhere in California.
It wasn’t harder then. At least not for me.
But we did have a way better music environment. Like a lot better. I can say this because I spent the 2010s taking my daughter to hundreds of shows at every size and style of venue imaginable. It was a lot of fun. It was our thing. But it didn’t compare to the vibe back in my time. Everything got gentrified. Even the “dive” venues felt suburban.
Entertainment in general has gotten a whole lot greedier while providing a whole lot less.
Tv’s ending up not being supported anymore after 2 years, leading to needing to buy a new one or rent a device to still get tv from your isp is absolute shit.
I haven’t been able to buy decent work pants and or shoes for the past 5 years, i remember my first work boots lasting me 11 years and costing €40. My most recent ones were similar in material make up and cost €170, but they looked worn after 2 weeks. I used to buy work pants for €60 and they would last literal years upon years. My last pairs of pants (3 combined) were €80 a piece on discount and were worn beyond repair within a year…all 3 pairs.
To think i pay more than double the rent, income is up only €60 a month compared to then.
There is a lot that has gone backwards.
Having to look 3 times to cross the street on a green because the world is filled by people in cars not paying attention anymore and i get into near collisions 4/5 times a week is also absolutely insane. It feels like i’m the only person that understands traffic lights xD
Tbh i find it hard to think of positives about everything that has changed…
My energy bill is going up significantly because our government has decided we now (as a result of ev’s) are using too much electricity. I don’t own a car, any car for that matter as i can’t afford one…but now i’m punished for my neighbours big fat fancy ev.
Our energy usage (2 people) is far below the 1 person average and we are now being punished for it?
Health insurance (legally required over here) is also going up significantly, we can’t even find a doctor as they are all at their limit and don’t take on new patients.
This really needs to stop.
So eh…good things…good things…hmm, can someone help me out a little?
Library services are more accessible than ever due to increased internet connectivity. As a child, I checked out my limit of books at the library every week and always finished before the week was up. Now I can sit on my couch at home and return books as I finish and immediately check out new ones.
Western Europe, 1950s era. Capitalism had to make compromises. The soviet union was right next door - if people realized that seizing the means of production would improve their quality of life, they’d have a communist revolution on their hands. So concessions were made. “See, you don’t need communism to have a good life, we’re giving you all those things too!”
And finally, the capitalists won and the soviet union was no more, parceled up and sold to the capital owners in the west. Now they don’t feel the need to make concessions without a major communist power in their backyard. So they roll back the progress slowly, hoping no one notices.
Personally I take <side> on <topic> because <reasons typical for my side> and I take offense that you would suggest that it’s entirely a manufactured issue created by the capital class to keep us fighting each other instead of them. Even suggesting it just serves the purpose of <other side>!
(not to imply that culture war bullshit doesn’t have real world consequences, that’s why the capital class picks these topics as wedge issues)
When I was a kid, things were pretty much the same! Y’all are doing roughly what I would do. Life was pretty OK back then. You kids have similar things to deal with. And everything nowadays looks to be about as challenging as what we used to have. Life was quite OK back then! But you kids have experienced a similar quality of life.
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