CodfishCartographer posted:

Reminds me when words per minute was like, A Thing. I remember my mom taking typing courses to improve her wpm for a secretary position, now it's bizarre when someone can't type quickly.

Blue Moonlight posted:

We made flash cards out of 3x5 notecards for our kids, and my wife still uses them as an outline/organization tool sometimes.

I suspect they’re largely relegated to school speeches and exam “cheat sheets” otherwise.

The Moon Monster posted:

Has anyone ever seen an actual Tunnel of Love in the wild? They showed up in TV from the 90s and earlier all the time, but I've been to plenty state fair/carnival type events and I don't think I've ever encountered one. On a similar note how about kissing booths? That concept seems too skeevy to have ever actually existed so I assume it's basically the Andy Griffith show equivalent of a rainbow party.

Mister Kingdom posted:

Our high school ditched its driver's ed class because a student wrecked the only car.

In other ridiculous American school news:

The main takeaway I got from my middle-school health class (boys & girls took separate classes) was to not have sex because your dick would rot off. To emphasize this, we were shown graphic color slides of syphilitic penises.

We had no such required classes in high school so the best advice I got was from a PE coach: "Don't put your dick where your mouth hasn't been first."

Cracker King posted:

Scott single ply is the worst and the bane of my childhood.

It’s like the only brand left on the shelf during shortages.

PeterCat posted:

One reference I didn't understand growing up in the '80s is when people would refer to Barbie being a consort to GI Joe..

I did not know that in the '60s and '70s GI Joe was a 12-in figure and not the 3 and 3/4-in figure of the '80s.

PhazonLink posted:

King of the Hill had an episode where Hank used the heat to prevent overheating his POS truck.

oh god is KotH old media now?

RCarr posted:

The PT Cruiser is probably the shittiest car produced in the last 20 years.

Toupee Groupie posted:

The best thing about this ad is that the car it was advertising was actually no longer being made, so if you saw this ad, and went to your Nissan dealer to get a 300zx, they would shrug, and try to get you to buy another model. This was the start of the era when Nissan started going down the tube, and ended up being rescued from bankruptcy by Renault a few years later.

Sweevo posted:

God I hated that printer paper - it was always thin and poor quality, tore when you tried to remove the perforations, and I have never seen a single sheet of it that's actually A4 size. It's always slightly off.

Splicer posted:

When your mom said he was "off with his c-word mistress" that's not what she meant.

MightyJoe36 posted:

In 1974, all cars manufactured in the United States by law were equipped with a mechanism that prevented the car from being started until the driver and passenger had their seat belts buckled.

There was such a public outcry that by model year 1975, the law was repealed and the only mechanism they had was the buzzer reminding you to buckle up.

here's an article about it: https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2009/11/the-great-safety-belt-interlock-fiasco/

Earwicker posted:

i dont understand how a random 20something who works at a coffee shop knowing about a very popular movie from 1999 makes it a "coffee shop thing"

Vietnamwees posted:

But was she wearing the MINIMUM amount of flair!?

Slimy Hog posted:

I presume you've never seen popular movies from before you were born then?

Elissimpark posted:

More a reference to older media, but I'm studying nursing and the uni has a lab set up like actual nursing stations, including a safe with a digital combination for scheduled drugs.

The combination of the safe is 1 2 3 4 5 6.

With an average age probably in the low 20's, I think the class would have been puzzled by any references to the luggage of assholes.

I am sad and old.

Mr Luxury Yacht posted:

Yeah same with music. You were exposed to a lot of older stuff between your parent's choices and whatever was on the radio in the car.

I've definitely run into a few "dear god I feel old" moments with my company's newer hires/interns because of it. Like I get not really listening or watching older stuff but they're just entirely unaware of its existence (or the people who made it) in a way that wasn't the case for those of us 8-10 years older who grew up without on demand streaming.

Imagined posted:

Last year I read 'The Dead Hand' and 'Command and Control' and, honestly, I can't believe the human race survived the 20th century. It was not through any lack of trying to do otherwise, I assure you.

Anne Whateley posted:

People still have no idea what other people weigh. People think Chris Christie was like 250, 275.

barnold posted:

speaking of the earlier chat about memorizing phone numbers, I still have a Rolodex. I bought it on clearance when I worked at Staples in like 2011. I still keep it updated just in case a disaster happens and I lose all the contacts in my phone somehow

Shrecknet posted:

GoutPatrol posted:

Up until kindergarten I didn't listen to any contemporize music. My parents only played classical or the oldies station (WCBS) which then was still meant oldies in the original sense - pre Beatlemania. The only CDs and cassettes in the house were classical and a Time Life oldies set. I didn't hear modern music until Ace of Base.

My dad told me very matter-o-factly once that when he was a little kid in the 50s, you listened to pop music with your little 45s. Girls would have little lunch pails that held them. Once you were older and in college, you moved on to jazz. Then as an adult, you listened to classical music. And that was that.

Parahexavoctal posted:

In "What's My Age Again", by Blink-182 (1999), the verse about a prank call failing because of caller-ID

is obsolete.

Not because pay phones are rare now. Not because caller-ID is now so widespread that even idiots like the song's narrator should know about it.

Because Lawrence v. Texas was in 2003.

OnlyBans posted:

Are you having sex with car warranty spam callers? Because if you are, hats off. That's a good counter scam.

Son of a Vondruke! posted:

Most of the ones I've seen hold a cardboard sign.

FreudianSlippers posted:

How did it feel living in a hippie coming of age novel?

CoolCab posted:

i would almost certainly blame dietary rather than narcotic consumption. the "better" (read: more expensive/aspirational, meat and dairy every day maybe every meal) your diet the less fiber you get and that has only changed extremely recently, if at all. not enough fiber is a one way ticket to constipation town.

there is a disproportionate amount of constipation cures in ancient medical texts like galan, probably because rich men who could pay for doctors tended to have this problem a lot.

ClothHat posted:

I remember my grandfather specifically talking about this during a long drive one time. From his description it did sound like tire breaks were a near constant issue, but that was due to how lovely a lot of the roads were at the time.

feedmegin posted:

Crumpling like paper is a safety feature in modern cars. The car crumpling and absorbing the shock is a lot better than you, the driver, crumpling. They intentionally make them that way for a reason.

PeterCat posted:

Ok, this is my favorite thing. Someone watches a Youtube video and becomes an expert.

There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, yes, cars are better than they were in the 1960s. This shouldn't be a surprise, there have been 60 years of engineering improvements between then and now. If you compared a car from 1909 to a 1959, the 1959 would be better in almost every aspect, except it probably wouldn't get around as well on really lovely roads since it lacks the ground clearance of the older car.

The video makes a very good point in how far things have advanced from 1959 to 2009. However, looking at that video as the last word in the discussion misses a lot of things. One of the biggest is the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, written by Ralph Nader. The broad thesis of the book is that auto manufacturers knew about risks to people inherent in their cars, had the technology to mitigate or eliminate these risks, and used regulatory capture of the government to suppress information about these risks and block the passage of laws to make cars safer all in the name of higher profits. The book and the growing movement towards reducing the dangers of driving caused a number of laws to be passed mandating safety features that were introduced by the later 60s.

Focusing on the the exact car in the video and the fact that the 59 Impala had notoriously weak frame, even for the time, misses the point, just as focusing on the chapter about the Corvair in Unsafe at Any Speed misses the point of the book. It's not the exact details of a particular model, but the whole system that allowed a car with known safety issues to be sold to the public.

The late 60s muscle cars, 68 and later, were decently reliable, fairly quick if ordered with the high performance engines, handled OK if ordered with the HD suspension, and had features like padded dashboards, 3 point seatbelts for the front seat occupants, headrests to prevent whiplash, and safety glass. The leap in technology from 1959 to 1969 is immense.

Cars are on the whole safer today, there is something to be said about the dynamics of a crash and a heavy car vs a lighter car. That's giant modern body on frame pickup trucks do so much damage smaller unibody cars today, or in this vintage test film, why a full size 1971 Ford Galaxy absolutely annihilates at 1971 Pinto.
This is largely where the idea that new cars are collapsible pieces of junk comes from, it's a holdover from when compact cars were introduced in the 1970s and they were indeed beer cans on roller skates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xauHCEVsEJU&t=17s

Powered Descent posted:

I was in much the same boat; my first car was a CRX. It was so much loving fun to drive since it was super tiny and light, practically a go-kart. But I'm very glad I never crashed in it, because, yeah, go-kart.

Vietnamwees posted:

1500 lbs only!? So not even 1 ton!? Christ, that car really is tiny!

Arivia posted:

if you show a floppy disk to a zoomer they think you 3d printed the save icon as a piece of art or something

then they have no idea what a file folder is and can't figure out where to work with software that isn't in the cloud (i wish i was making this up, i read an article about universities having to teach file/folder management in like science 101 so kids could learn how to use lab equipment)

Arivia posted:

are you saying that was the first game you bought or the first game you sold either way that looks cool