Better to debate whether pop music and fashion have improved.
I thought we had definitively established that fashion hasn't changes significantly since the 90s.
The teens certainly felt like a shittier decade, although I suspect that in terms of "number of people abroad killed by the US for no good reason" they might have been better than the aughts. But maybe not.
As for feeling generally worse than the aughts, I mostly blame it on social media turning everyone into assholes.
I thought we had definitively established that fashion hasn't changes significantly since the 90s.
That fight was back in the aughts, oldster.
As for feeling generally worse than the aughts, I mostly blame it on social media turning everyone into assholes.
I have a hard time separating out all the confounding factors, personally and societally.
In the aughts, I had a series of miserable jobs; in the teens, things were much better: advantage teens.
In the aughts, I had a pretty good marriage, in the teens I had a deteriorating marriage, and then a sad divorce, but the divorce has worked out fairly pleasantly: probably still advantage aughts on the personal front, but things are on the upswing.
In the aughts, the internet and blogs were the best shiny new toy ever and I thought it was all terrific and was super impressed with myself because I was good at talking about stuff on the internet; in the teens FB and Twitter and their other social media spawn took over and everything kind of got grim and sad and unpleasant; advantage aughts.
In the aughts, the US was killing a whole lot more people worldwide; horrifying as current politics are, George Bush is still a much much worse president than Donald Trump: advantage teens.
In neither decade did we do much effective about climate change, but I've only been emotionally afraid that terrible things will happen in the teens; advantage, in terms of my personal comfort, aughts.
I really am not paying enough attention to tell when it started, but men's clothing is much tighter than in the 90s. I don't always have enough room for things to swing freely unless I buy the special "classic" fit trousers. And dress shirts no longer have room for my torso and stuff bath towels.
I don't always have enough room for things to swing freely unless I buy the special "classic" fit trousers.
Cinched in the waist, with accordion pleats, for explosive comfort?
I'm having trouble comparing Aughts-life, grad school and early Heebie U, mostly child-free, with Teen-life, solidly in my job, pregnant or nursing or having surgeries for the vast majority of it, with young children for the entire thing.
(I still cannot believe my youngest is about to turn five. We are so entirely in the kid stages of parenting. It's really fun.)
I hadn't really been factoring in my personal situation.
Postdoc/pre-tenure in the aughts, tenured through most of the teens. Which should mean that the teens were less stressful, but relocating to a new school and new city turned out to be more stressful than I anticipated, even thought it worked out well in the end.
Speaking of fashion (and general ambiance), I rewatched High Art this weekend and I think it definitely deserves a spot on any list of top ten most 90s movies ever.
How does leaving Ohio become more stressful?
If you find a New Ohio and move there?
Space exploration is something that has gotten less notice in this decade, unless you count Trump's bullshit.
Anyway, I think I have high blood pressure from reading the news.
Which is proof that Trump is worse than Bush.
9: It took years to get rid of the condo I had there. So technically I hadn't really left Ohio until 2017. And come to think of it I have felt less stressed since then.
I also find Trump more stressful than Bush. I think it's the cognitive dissonance of having so many norms destroyed. The complicity of the Bush years did make it seem like it was business as usual, even though the fact that causing the deaths of a hundred thousand people counts as business-as-usual is a little depressing.
It's only depressing if you stop to think. Not immediately depressing like when the president repeatedly and openly calls for violence against his domestic enemies.
15: I blame this on the press. It's easy to forget how all-in they were with Bush II and his wars until they weren't. Whereas they've been having 24/7 meltdowns over Trump ever since they day after the election.
"Depressing" is the wrong word. When threatened, I feel threatened and stressed until I can remove the threat.
Cant believe it is more than eight years since anyone used the phrase "Arab Spring" sincerely.
It's 2019 and neither "aughts" nor "teens" has taken root in spoken or written usage. Maybe they will in retrospect, but I want to note this so future scholars reading this idiosyncratic thread won't take it as indicative.
IRL I think I usually say "the two thousands".
No one has challenged me on this in person, but I should be prepared.
I say "this century" a lot, in an attempt to make myself sound elderly. Why do I do that? No idea.
Does anyone say "Since the turn of the century" (and meaning 2000, or for pedants, 2001) yet?
25: Or a whole millennium, depending how you look at it.
True. Either way, useless at separating 2000 through 2009 from 2010 through 2019.
Fewer people in brutal poverty now against ten years ago. Global population growth is slowing. Much more wind and solar power installed globally, and coal is I think flat in absolute terms, declining when normalized by economic activity of population everywhere except India.
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-projections
The twenties are going to be worse. How do I know? The new owners just renamed our minor league baseball team. The old name, the Osprey, fit because the stadium is down by the river, and there's an honest to God osprey nest out beyond right field. With an osprey family every summer! The new name has brought about surprising civic unity in this time of division: universally hated. The Paddleheads.
The Aristocrats would be less ridiculous.
30: I wonder about trends like that. They are genuinely cheering, but I don't have much of a sense of whether they're cheering on a scale that should reduce my sense of climate-change horror and doom, or whether they're not close to being big enough to be useful.
(Long ago, in a different century, we had the Timberjacks. Back when we had a timber economy. Most famous player: future country star Charley Pride.)
It's not on Wikipedia and I'm afraid to search it on Urban Dictionary.
31. I would have paid for an audio stream of Hank Azaria announcing the World Series. Brockmire is intermittently hilarious.
32. IMO the big one is population growth. As people stop having huge families for the only protection against a destitute old age, we'll all hopefully be able to manage to still feed ourselves and have water to drink in 100 years. I have no idea how we'll manage relocation from current coastal cities. It could go pretty well. Most importantly, I don't know if there are reliable estimates for how capacity to grow more food will change with rising water and rising temperature.
30: That website really has a ton of data. When I was looking for links, everyone else just was using those guys' work.
On the other side, there are now tens of trillions of dollars in negative interest rate bonds. If the US doesn't want more people to live here, our economy will in some ways look more like Japan's. Pension fund solvency and pay as you go retirement relies on positive growth and positive interest rates. There's probably a technocratic way out, based on reasoned policy and spending choices and cooperation in their execution.
Not 1000% sure we'll manage that one personally.
Fortunately, I'm in a generational trough.
So tomorrow I'm to give a tour of my institution to a bunch of American bigwigs including a few multi-billionaires and one prominent friend of 45 (and a major donor to the previous NYC institution I worked at). Not sure how I feel about this, I mean it's not Kissinger level but still...
Any dollar they give to your institution can't go to the 2020 election. Do your best.
Also, fart in their general direction.
Damn, I shoulda had beans for dinner.
The problem with 15 I think is that it has less to do with facts on the ground than awareness. As far as I can see, the majority of US history has involved variations of this being business-as-usual. How effectively ignoring it is facilitated does seem to vary.
26: I say `not since last century' too much.
48: Same cane-shaking impulse to present yourself as an elder statesman?
This line to vote is stupidly long for an off-year. Jeez.
It's 2019 and neither "aughts" nor "teens" has taken root in spoken or written usage.
They really didn't last time around. We had a whole eighty odd years for them to take root, and they didn't. Mind you, we tended to use the periodisation "Before WWI" and "During WWI", which doesn't apply this time around (small mercies).
I'm going to resent having to specify which 20s I'm talkig about, though: The Roaring 20s or the Boring 20s?
This line to vote is stupidly long for an off-year. Jeez.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
36: I have no idea how we'll manage relocation from current coastal cities. It could go pretty well.
Considering the virulent nativism which the small waves of migration from Central America, Syria, and various African nations northwards seem to have provoked/provided a convenient excuse for, I'm not even a little bit sanguine about how that's going to go.
53: well, I'm in the land of voter suppression and we have brand new voting machines, and so I'm wondering.
I never got an answer to my question about whether the new machines have meaningful paper trails or meaningless paper trails. I'm about to find out!
Is now a good time to be a pedant about the meaning of 'sanguine'.
It's always a good time to be a pedant.
I don't understand why jurisdictions are still going with machines for voting. We use a pen to fill out an oval on a piece of paper. It works fine and scales very well.
Although 54 looks fine to me -- "sanguine" meaning "cheerfully confident" works in the sentence, and that's a legit meaning. What am I missing?
finally done! and the paper trail was not just an optical scanner like I feared! It actually displays your choices. hooray!
Anyway, the final paper I'm working on under contract just got a revise and resubmit, which means I'm getting closer to being able to boycott Israel.
Right, but through four-humors medical theory it means cheerful and confident, just like choleric means easily angered rather than anything literally about bile.
When I say pedantic, I mean it. Latin was first, unless it's also in Greek.
The word you don't want to use casually is "sanguinary."
I think 58 contains it's own answer. Working well and scaling is not necessarily the goal.
or not necessarily everyone's goal.
Shed moose antlers are called paddles. The hunt is on for anyone who has ever called a live moose a paddlehead. The 'float logo' get's to something local -- people tube on the river, but not so much down by the stadium. That'll change when they get the new Wave built out, sometime in the 20s, I guess.
I guess the "peace logo" is also, unfortunately, local. Should be universal!
I doubt these 20s are going to be boring, honestly.
For me the aughts were better, but ended with the Great Recession, and the teens have been that line about adulthood being "things will slow down soon" until you die.
71: Already planning the amazing parties?
Some days it feels like I'll never get around to boycotting Israel.
How do paper trails work elsewhere? I was expecting a reciept-sized piece of paper, but instead I was given a very thick 8.5x11 piece of paper to feed in, and my ballot was printed on it, and then I fed it into a separate scanner, which had a big safe below it.
76: What about Lurker X who is printing out the Complete Unfogged?
I'd say my adult life, through the Aughts, had an underlying dread that I'd never have kids, which detracted from a lot of fun I had. Then things got really bad, but then I had a kid! And then I was really looking forward to a life without that dread and how great it was going to be and motherfucking Trump was elected, crushing the first years of my adult life that didn't have some fear (never find someone, never have a kid, cancer, grief) hanging over them.
It is striking to me what a fork we're approaching with the election next year (unless someone wants to cynically argue that whomever is elected will only be a Republican-lite and no good thing is ever possible). I mean, the swing is so extreme that it is hard for me to try to foresee the 2020's.
I mean, the swing is so extreme that it is hard for me to try to foresee the 2020's.
Well, I don't have any particular difficulty with that. I've never been able to foresee the future.
You're too far away. California is much closer.
81: Are you making up an excuse for not inviting me to your amazing parties?
How do paper trails work elsewhere?
Similar to what you describe: you bubble in your choices on a 8.5x11" piece of paper (using a black pen), then feed the paper into a scanner. The scanner reads the ballot and collects it (for recount if necessary).
We used to have touchscreens with no paper receipt whatsoever. Off your vote went into the ether: godspeed, little vote! So the current system is an improvement.
That's what we have now. I want to go back to using pottery shards.
We used to have touchscreens with no paper receipt whatsoever.
We had this until this very election.
This was still a touch screen, though. With a printer. I was just surprised that the cardstock was so thick and bulky.
I'm actually super anxious about a local election in the neighboring county. There's a former public defender running for prosecutor on a progressive-reform platform, and if he wins it will be a BFD.
79.2: Try the pants that Moby has swapped out for the "classic" fit trousers
86: We have the same in my county. I signed the petition to get her on the ballot.
I mean, she's not going to win. But if she does well it will be very helpful.
89: Everything says this guy should win. It's a blue county (59% for Hillary), and he's run a remarkably well-organized campaign, and there's a lot of energy among local Dems, and the incumbent's a Trumpy chump. But I have total 2016 Syndrome, so I'm convinced something bad will happen.
83.1 is how our ballots work too. We don't have an election today though.
There's no Republican in our local race. The incumbent is a Democrat being challenged by a more liberal Democrat.
Basically, I signed the petition because I think the current guy didn't try very hard to convict a police officer who killed an unarmed kid and the challenger wants to have an independent team for cases when the police are the defendants.
Didn't work the polls today, which was bittersweet.
I don't think the lefty independent will win, but I sure hope she does. I agree with 94.
There aren't any Republicans running in Columbus either. I doubt the anti-establishment Democrats have a chance, but I'm voting for them.
Really? When I lived there, the mayor was a Republican. I think his name was Tom.
97: Wasn't it Greg Lashutka? He was tall.
97: But yeah, since you left the Democrats completely took over city government. I'm not sure how different they are from the Republicans though -- mostly the same titans of business call the shots.
People in Ohio can't even spell "Tom" right.
100: There was a mayor named Tom Moody, but you weren't in Columbus from 1972-1984, were you? You may remember Buck Rinehart -- he was kind of memorable.
I have total 2016 Syndrome
It is real. Gonna be a looooong year next year.
Buck must have had a stint in the local news or porn during the 90s. I remember the name.
This was his greatest moment --
However, the Dispatch also said that Rinehart made "glaring mistakes." One example cited by the Dispatch was Rinehart taking "a wrecking ball to what was then the 120-year-old facade of the old Ohio Penitentiary on Spring Street, only to learn later that the city didn't have permission for demolition.
That place was falling down anyway. Or at least the walls were when I was there.
Of course, there's a certain dignity to be found in a rat infested ruin that you just can get from hockey plus insurance.
The voting line was moving really slowly, which I think was because of the District Attorney race. If you wanted to vote for the challenger, you couldn't pull the straight ticket lever and had to go through 20 judicial candidates.
Congratulations!
When do the executions begin?
This is looking like a good night for the Dems.
109: congratulations !!! ???? I have no idea what I am congratulating you for but it sounds like a good thing.
It's a very good thing! Congratulations!
Mainstream pop music is fucking terrible at the moment.*
I don't have any strong opinions on fashion, other than that it seems currently easier for me to buy clothes that I like than it was 10 years ago. So, plus one for the present day.
* this isn't the standard complaint of the old. Some of my all time favourite music has been released recently, and I was already well into my 30s during the "aughts". But listening to Radio 1, in the UK, is ... sad. Maybe it was always thus, but the specific in vogue production tricks and vocal hooks/mannerisms are so ubiquitous and so homogenous it's depressing.
Anyway, I'm very glad the Trump specifically put his dick on the block in Kentucky.
Not as happy as I'd be if the down-ticket races also went Democrat, but still.
So, I went to a talk by my State Senator to an audience of health policy wonks in which she said that although she disagreed with our Republican Governor's Secretary of Health and Human services often enough, she never doubted her commitment to mental health and we were lucky in our Senate President .... She didn't say a word about our Democratic House Speaker who has also been pro gambling, wasn't super keen on paid family leave and doesn't seem interested in slowing the growth of fossil fuels.
I wonder what Cocaine Mitch is thinking about now?
Probably mostly grateful Trump will be on the ballot in the same election.
The last remaining Republican state reps in northern Virginia have gone sown. Kind of a shame that Tim Hugo lost to a cenrtal casting Handsome Wealthy 36-Year-Old Moderate Military Vet Dem Star Recruit- he was doomed anyway, barwly won against a nonentity in 2015.
I voted against a ballot question that would have extended a property tax break for veterans, to include veterans who reside in assisted living facilities. Fuck you, greatest generation, You've had 75 years of tax breaks now, it's time you start paying your fair share.
I have no idea what I am congratulating you for but it sounds like a good thing.
I was just elected to local office. By a bit of a whisker, but its enough. Now I get four years to work on things like sidewalk upgrades and watershed restoration, which is actually pretty exciting to me.
I'll be burning this pseud pretty soon as a precaution. Not sure what to do about my regular pseud.
130: excellent news, thanks for the added context. Congratulations.
We had city council races. Our Democratic endorsed incumbents won, and one of our endorsed candidates for an open seat. Republican backed candidates won two of the six seats. Interestingly, no man beat a woman in any race (four women beat men, one woman beat a woman, one man beat a man).
Congrats, FP! The local prosecutor race I was watching ended well: the Dem won 56% to 43%, which is closer than Hillary's margin but still a solid win.
Our independent lost, but it read much closer than I figured. I think some Republicans are still mad at him for sending one of their more comically corrupt officials to prison.
Anyway, I'm glad my neighbor circulated the petition so I could help without cost or effort.
It's even easier than boycotting Yuengling.
It's not the Yuengling was the best beer or anything. It was just the best beer that was cheap and everywhere. Straub is my main substitute, except I hardly drink now.
"Straub is my main substitute, except I hardly drink now."
Is that better or worse for commenting?
Not drinking is just horrible all around.
Aha, so it's not only excellent news for John McCain, it's also very good for commenting.
I hardly drink now
This is a good description of how it feels to drink a White Claw.
I don't think I've actually tried either.
I think I'm going to have to become a wine guy because beer and whiskey are much worse on my stomach.
124. The Esteemed Speaker (D) of the Lower House of the Great and General Court is well-known for his ante-deluvian views.
Millennial Zima
This is funny. I have the impression that lots of people think White Claw really is seltzer with liquor in it, when in fact it's a malt beverage (like Zima; or Olde English).
RCV will determine the close outcomes DA and Sup. District 5, the two big races last night in SF. In the supervisor race, it appears to be preserving the very slight lead of the challenger (identified progressive, something of a left-NIMBY shitlord from what I hear) - a 131-vote lead reallocates to a 218-vote lead. In the DA race, it's advancing the appointed incumbent over the reformist candidate, who starts trailing by over 2,000 and after reallocation has a 240-vote lead.
In the DA race the second and third runners-up had significant chunks of the vote (33-31-21-15) so their reallocations would normally make more of a difference than in the Sup. race (47-46-5-1), but the Sup. race started super-close so anything could happen.
Dangling participle: the incumbent DA is the one who starts trailing and reallocates to a lead.
Olde English at least has some tradition behind it.
Millennials killed the prestige-brand malt liquor industry.
I have the impression that lots of people think White Claw really is seltzer with liquor in it, when in fact it's a malt beverage (like Zima; or Olde English).
I mean, if that liquor is malt liquor, it's not a wrong statement, from what I can tell.
So, I guess the Republicans aren't conceding the gov of Kentucky yet. I saw a comment from a high KY official that sounded like sort of an informal RCV -- hey those libertarians would have gone with our guy in a two way race, and so our guy really is the choice of the voters.
RCV looks pretty different when the predominant splitters are on the other side.
Donald Trump can't be wrong. Reality must be.
155: I thought the whole point behind things like white claw (from corporations point of view) was that you could use the cheapest fermentation approaches available. Malt liquor is too fancy for that, iiuc.
Taxes for brewed alcohol, as opposed to distilled, are enough lower to offset that.
I can't find the vituperative review, it may have disappeared from the internet, but Japan has something called "happoshu", "sparkling alcohol", designed specifically to get around taxes that varied by malt content. Often the cheapest alcohol you can buy in the convenience store, and it tastes it.
It looks like since I last checked they have 0%-malt varieties, using corn or peas, called "third beer" or "other miscellaneous alcoholic beverages".
I once knew an alcoholic with a degree in economics. He figured out that PBR was the most alcohol/$ in the bar. And it too tastes just awful.
He wasn't a great guy either. Eventually got banned.
In other alcohol news, I've started seeing these fake liquor products at a local grocery store. For when you want your cheap wine to taste like tequila.
My cheap wine usually tastes like Concord grapes.
I'm thinking of trying to sit in the dark and breathe slowly as a way of lowering my blood pressure. It sounds plausible.
You can only sleep so many hours a day.
The link in 166 is hilarious. Next time I'm in a liquor store I'll check to see if they have any of those, but I doubt it since we don't have the kind of two-tiered regulation system that they're designed to game.
We have just that kind of system, but I've not seen that stuff. I remember that in Ohio the grocery stores would sell watered-down vodka to get around rules.
160/161 : yes the tax difference is the big gain, but I think malt has to basically be a beer, whereas these things use whatever is legally food-safe (handwavy technical term), fermentable, and cheap, which isn't likely to be barley.
170. Isn't the whole idea that they are sold in convenience stores and gas stations that have beer & wine licenses? I suppose if Total Wine has them, that kind of counts, or it's just more evidence that TW is a convenience store rather than a liquor store.
166 is wierd. I mean who would want to drink whiskey flavoured wine? I mean I know Queen Victoria used to put scotch in her claret "to strengthen it", but that was an idiosycratic pairing of two legit drinks. And oh god, fake Bailey's. Isn't the real thing bad enough?
Why would you expect to find liquor in a wine store?
Isn't the whole idea that they are sold in convenience stores and gas stations that have beer & wine licenses?
Yes. We don't have those in Alaska. All packaged alcohol sales are in licensed liquor stores.
I mean who would want to drink whiskey flavoured wine?
No one would want to drink it, which is why they use deceptive packaging.
I just saw something saying that Jennifer Aniston is now as old as Wilford Brimley was when Cocoon was released. I don't want to check that.
Wilford Brimley was surprisingly young in Cocoon. I think I hit the Brimley line next year. And then I start endorsing oatmeal.
Nigel Farage is the same age as Keanu Reeves.
Never has it been more obviously true that by fifty every man has the face he deserves.
183: his mother's English; he is entitled to citizenship and to stand for parliament on a Be Excellent To Each Other And Never Hurt Dogs platform.
179: That doesn't happen until next year. Nothing to worry about.
'20s fashion: I'm bringing back the robe de style, *with* panniers.
The mockery will be something to worry about, but look at the pocket space!