Sure some habitat loss is due directly or indirectly to climate change, like polar bears, seals, and penguins losing the ice they need to breed and/or feed. But other instances are completely unrelated. For example, monarch butterflies in North America have experienced huge decreases in population due to an increase in herbicide use that destroyed massive numbers of milkweed plants, the only plant they lay eggs on, as well as destruction of the trees the monarchs over winter on in Mexico (eg through clear-cutting for avocado farms). Climate change has also hurt monarchs in various ways, but the specific issue of monarch habitat loss is generally unrelated.
…the average American had between 400 and 500 calories worth of snacks a day, which is typically more than what they ate at breakfast. Even worse, the snacks usually carried little to no nutritional value
All food has gotten expensive due to inflation/greedflation, but (at least in my area) snacks, desserts, and some sugary drinks got hit especially hard. Except maybe for people living in food deserts, snacks are way more of a luxury good than “whole” foods are nowadays.
They missed “environmental catastrophe unrelated to climate change that is getting ignored because it’s unrelated to climate change”
Soil depletion, micro plastics, habitat loss, fertilizer runoff, invasive species, heavy metal contamination, light pollution, etc etc. Yes climate change is a big fucking problem, but if it were to magically get resolved overnight we’d still wake up to a mountain of other human-created environmental issues. But because everyone is so focused on climate change specifically, we’re standing still (or even moving backward) on other issues. For example: electric cars are heralded as an environmental solution, but they: still require a lot of mining and resource extraction, still pollute through tire and brakepad wear, still produce a mountain of waste at the end of their lifespan, still use asphalt roads that require salting in winter, and still promote poor land use that creates all kinds of domino-effect problems (environmental and otherwise). Similarly hydroelectric is promoted as a sustainable energy source, but they wreak absolute havoc on river ecosystems.
As someone who watched Haruhi back when it was originally broadcast, it’s amazing that people are still discussing the series seventeen years later. In an era when an anime’s impact seems to only last a single season before the fandom moves on, this is especially impressive. Haruhi deserves to stick around, if for no other reason than its historic value; it’s difficult to describe to younger fans just what an impact the anime made on the scene when it dropped.
I don’t personally know many people who are Gen Z (I’m a Millennial, and most people I know are Millennials, Xers, or Boomers). So most of what I “know” of Zoomers comes from things I’ve read, either social media conversations like this one or news articles/thought pieces. The impression I’ve gleaned from those is that Zoomers are not frugal: they’re Apple customers, chronic online shoppers (often for products like fast fashion that are individually cheap but quickly add up), and are spending big on experiences like travel and concerts. For example, another comment in the thread asserts that “[Zoomers] needlessly spend more money than their older generation counterparts [on technology because they replace rather than repair].”
Now I take these types of demographic assumptions with a grain of salt, especially having witnessed all the nonsense articles and conclusions made about my generation. However there is some logic behind the explanations I’ve heard for why Zoomers are spenders rather than savers. Such as, perhaps Zoomers are more focused on living (and spending) in the moment given their experience being deprived during their formative years that happened to fall during covid lockdowns. Perhaps Zoomers spend more frivolously because why bother save for a bleak future (“go ahead and splurge a little: it’s not like you’ll ever afford a house either way!” or “In the 21st century you can do everything ‘right’ and still easily end up failing, so why bother following the ‘right’ path?”) Perhaps it’s because we’ve created a world (at least in the US) where people are lonelier than ever and everything costs money: you can’t even hang out at the mall for free anymore because the mall was torn down last year, so you either spend money at another “3rd space” like a coffee shop, or you try to fill an emotional hole by purchasing things to make being stuck at home all the time more bearable (especially if you’re still living with your parents because you can’t afford to move out). Perhaps it’s because there’s more addictive stuff to spend money on that’s targeted at youth, like online streamers and pay-to-play games. Again I don’t know if any of this is true, but IMO it at least passes the sniff test.
However your comment asserts the opposite of what I’ve heard, so I was curious where you got your info from, especially since it’s presumably based in some kind of research if it was part of a work report. Did you survey Zoomers asking about their spending habits? Did you analyze credit card data? Etc.
I can’t speak to its reception with film critics, but the word of mouth opinions I heard were very positive. It was also nominated for a number of Oscars.
Agreed, the novelty of anime was a huge draw for me as well (especially since at the time there weren’t any anime-influenced Western cartoons). There are of course still standouts in anime that were revolutionary at the time and have since aged well (such as NGE and Cowboy Bebop, both of which are now over two decades old). There are also a few series that maybe weren’t masterpieces but still feel unique, as well as a handful that are cultural behemoths in and of themselves (like Gundam). But as with all media, the more you consume the more patterns emerge until the whole medium starts to feel tired.
There’s a fan recut that takes all the time skip scenes and puts them in chronological order that’s much more straightforward. Personally I can’t imagine watching it that way, but I also refuse to acknowledge The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya except in broadcast order. There’s definitely a large contingent that prefer both these media in chronological order though, so you’re not alone.
[Gen Z] have a strong focus on saving and responsible spending and are quite frugal.
I feel like the general stereotype is the opposite, that they’re big spenders without much regard for saving (or at least they’re spending what they can given their broke-youngster financial situation). I’m curious why you say the opposite is true?
I wouldn’t agree that Marvel films have a competent plot, but maybe that’s because I generally struggle to follow the plot through all the other crap, and am left wondering “was that a plot hole or did I space out during all the explosions and miss a critical line of dialogue?”
Sure, some aspects of the 00s were shit, but that felt like a bump in the road: things were still on the up-and-up overall, and the general expectation was that we could change the future for the better, resolve the world’s issues, and live better lives than our parents. That all came crashing down sometime around 2010 with the Great Recession, failure of Occupy, and realization that Obama wasn’t the knight in shining armor we’d literally hoped for. So the difference is that Millennials remember a pre-9/11 world and the less-great-but-still-hopeful early 00s, whereas Gen Z doesn’t.