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These people are amateurs: The USA lead the way: https://clickamericana.com/topics/family-parenting/life-for-kids/dange…

I would assume also because people also just didn't live as long back then. Life was in general a 20 year term. Average life span in 1800 of 50 years. Today it's 78.6. https://clickamericana.com/topics/health-medicine/us-life-expectancy-i… https://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health/what-life-expectancy-toda… Those probably aren't the best places for me to get numbers, but I think they're good enough for a rough example of what I mean.

I think he might be referring to the slide with 20 ft drops made with two pipes...as in the Darwinian versions shown here.... https://clickamericana.com/toys-and-games/dangerous-old-playgrounds-ou…

At one point the US military borrowed binoculars from citizens. https://clickamericana.com/media/newspapers/why-the-navy-wanted-binocu… It's hard to even imagine now. But presumably people sent them. They were helping. It was their war. Now the military probably buys 20 times the binoculars they'll ever use. At 20 times the price a citizen pays for them. And it's all run by career service bureaucrats. The taxpayers foot the bill but the specific expenses are unknown. And the war isn't the peoples war now. It's usually some kind of undefined action cheered on by think tanks and special interests and pumped up by news stories of terrorists. The citizens are mostly removed from the process, as it goes right on regardless of who they vote for. Unless they enlist, then they are involved, but that is less for principal now and more for a free college education or because what else to do? This is what has changed in society. Life has become a faceless bureaucracy running on it's own agenda. Corporate, government, you name it. The concept of community is a pale shadow of what it once was. I don't know if this is better or worse, it's probably not great if your military has to beg for binoculars but seems the new hazards may be even more dangerous.

But its not Doc Brown can’t be wrong: https://clickamericana.com/wp-content/uploads/Back-to-the-Future-III-C…

This was the 1970s, baby. We had Supergraphics! https://clickamericana.com/topics/home-garden/supergraphics-1970s

Being a Disney aficionado, I have to note: the price in the 60s was only to get in the park. You had to buy separate tickets for each attraction once you were in (either ala-carte or in a book that came with several categories for $3-4). They moved to the current model (one ticket all attractions as long as you are willing to wait in line) in the 80s when EPCOT opened in Florida. With inflation it's still higher today (especially if you stay at a hotel), but not as much as the article makes it out to be. https://clickamericana.com/topics/family-parenting/life-for-kids/disne…

No, it seems like it was always “Visa”. See the scanned advertisement https://clickamericana.com/topics/money-work/visa-card-debuts-1976-197… I'm just talking about the name in text. The logo has always been in all-caps.

> Actually talk to actual voters? Like American politicians did for 200 years before the internet? I dunno. Lincoln's campaigns look quite commercial and media savvy: https://clickamericana.com/topics/politics/abraham-lincolns-campaign-m…

I do wonder what it would be like to use an editor where the main cursor navigation was forward/backward incremental search. One case of this is the Canon CAT[1] word processor, which used "LEAP" keys for cursor movement (and nothing else). I'm often curious how productive it would be to use while coding. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat Bonus link: http://clickamericana.com/media/advertisements/the-canon-cat-word-proc…

A few notes: - There was a massive change in the NAEP Reading Achievement Levels in 2007. Reading levels were much more hand-wavey before then. See for yourself here: https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/achieve.aspx#2009ald. Consequently, reading levels "dropped" quite a lot without dropping much at all. This is presented in the NAEP Reading Performance statistics; in fact, more people have achieved NAEP Advanced reading performance in 2022 than before across all grade levels except grade 8: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cnb - Average time spent reading has been low since well before the smartphone. According to the BLS, the same data source that the author was pulling from by proxy, in 2003, men and women spent an average of ~32m/day and ~41m/day reading, respectively. Meanwhile, both groups spent >2hrs/day on TV. In fact, average reading time went way down once the TV became mainstream, as the bottom graphic of this article demonstrates: https://clickamericana.com/topics/family-parenting/people-spend-free-t… People have gravitated to the most entertaining platform to kill time since time immemorial; books beat out nothing, cheap theater beat out books, TV beat out the theater, modern smartphones + fast, cheap Internet is beating out everything; who knows what's next. - Anecdotally, I've been traveling a lot for work for many years. "Fast" Wi-Fi in air travel didn't become ubiquitous until 2021 or so. When I started traveling weekly…

Six months ago (March 3rd, 2023) I approached a similar claim with actual data. Below is that post, and after the break is a brief update with pricing as of today. While there are absolutely sets today that exceed the highest 90s prices of sets, they are also monster sets today, with much higher part counts. Bottom line, you can get legos cheaper today than 30 years ago, and that's BEFORE inflation. ### Time travel to March 3rd, 2023 ### They really are not and have not gone up in price, but rather down when adjusted for inflation. There are a lot of larger sets available though, which I think drives this perception that "Lego is expensive", when in reality they're cheaper than they used to be. Just as an example, lets look at 90s some sets https://clickamericana.com/wp-content/uploads/Vintage-90s-Toys-R-Us-ca… 3 sets to look at here from toys-r-us in the 90s $19.99 for 203 piece set, just shy of 10 cents per piece. $12.99 for a 90 piece set, over 14 cents per piece. $7.99 for a 56 piece set, also over 14 cents per piece. Keep in mind all the above are not licensed sets, which are common today. Licensing does drive prices up. But I'll still include some in the mix. Now today, at Target lets try to find similar cost sets and see how they stand up. For $19.99 we can get some clone troopers! https://www.target.com/p/lego-star-wars-501st-clone-troopers-battle-pa… Or a minecraft house…

Cute. It's the first prefab pod bathroom. Patent #2,220,482. The patent gives a clearer idea of the design. It kind of glosses over how this integrates into the rest of the structure. It can have its own outer enclosure and stand alone, which is probably how it's set up in the Dymaxion house, which is round. Most modern pods have at least two right-angled flat sides, so the thing can be stuck in a corner. It looks uncomfortable and dangerous. An entire bathroom of stamped sheet metal, including the floor. Oh, we'll just corrugate the floor a bit for traction. Right. Electric resistance heating, with 1930s insulating materials. Scary. Nothing in the patent about the "fog gun" for cleaning. Nor does there seem to be a floor drain, which is common in Japan but rare in the US. Making it out of fiberglas, like modern bathtubs, would be much more promising. Which is how most prefab pod bathrooms are made now. Too bad Lillian Gilbreth never worked on this problem. She was the wife of the famous time and motion study guy, and she is responsible for most modern kitchen design. Kitchen counters, all the same height, recessed sinks, not too deep, stove height matches counter height, wall mounted cabinets above the counters, drawers below - all that is her doing.[1] Before Gilbreth, kitchen were uncoordinated tables, cabinets, and appliances.[2] If she'd done a bathroom design, it would have worked. [1]…