Ask Lemmy

I got hit with this by an elderly person one day. They went on about how there's so much food out there that they could just forage for, but they choose to beg for it. I was working, so all I could do was smile and nod, but that smile was just frozen in place like a grimace.

During this whole rant my boss and I kept glancing at each other like they were insane. I can't remember the exact details, I cleansed my brain of that garbage, but there were a few times my boss' eyes flashed and I thought he was going to flip out.

They left like they were the avatar of mercy and understanding. I may have forgotten what they said exactly, but I'll never forget how they looked, because that went right down in my mind under "people I'll never become". I mean... you have to actively try to become that ignorant, right?

...Right?

Even if people did choose to do so, it should be a huge red flag to happen then. If people would rather sleep on the street than participate in society, maybe shit is fucked up.

Isn’t the just world fallacy a pretty popular opinion?

In my experience there seem to be four types of people: those who don't have a lawn; those who have never heard of clover on lawns; those with clover on their lawns; and those who live under the unrelenting glare and iron thumb of a homeowner's association.

That's not a boring unpopular opinion. It's a boring popular one.

At work we had the radio on in the workshop, and we were discussing my preference for 90s music.

Then some shite song came on that I remembered from decades past, and I had to add "but as you can hear, there was plenty of garbage back then too"

Hmm... I actually can explain why certain things were better in the past compared to today. It comes down to market research, consumerism/saturation of capitalism.

Take modern music, for example. The 60s and 70s was a time where the music industry hadn't flattened out in any way. The labels and publishers were trying to work out what people responded to. And people were responding to all kinds of stuff. It was just a mishmash of tastes and people liked what stoked their imagination.

And with regards to the artists and musicians, they were mainly just making whatever the hell sounded good and felt good. No one quite had any idea what they were doing.

Almost everything was really original for the above reasons.

You had bands who released albums, containing what you could vaguely call rock but with many other influences, containing three tracks, one of which was 20 mins long and the other two being 10 mins each. And such a band would go on tour selling out stadiums and selling millions of copies of said album.

Of course, there was bad music then. But the sheer proportion of amazing music was insane.

And it was because we hadn't yet been market researched into oblivion. It was like the wild west; anything goes.

I'll give another example... car design. Market research has managed to narrow car design down to a very generic form that is not the most beautiful but the least offensive and somewhat pleasant to the most amount of people, to guarantee sales.

Back before such deep market research, designers were artists who would take a risk and design something in their vision. Not everyone would like it. Perhaps the design would be divisive. Ok, some bad ugly cars would come out but there would be some incredible designs. Now, almost every car looks like a generic blob.

Eh I think they are more aimed at adults just by the way they are marketed including the toys which mostly make money in the adult collectors market. They just give the excuse to bring kids.

I kinda feel that "plain black coffee" in it's various forms - Americano, drip brew, whatever - is the only way to actually drink coffee. That's not to say I don't approve of milk coffee or lattes or whatever - I love them - but they're drinks which have coffee in them, even if it's a dominant flavor. A banana smoothie isn't a banana.

People tend to think that dark roasts/more bitter coffees are "stronger". They actually have slightly less caffeine, as the longer the beans are roasted and higher temperatures they are cooked at naturally cooks off some.

For the most part a lighter/darker roast is all about what one likes to taste.

It almost always means "I don't like to have to defend my lack of morals/humanity" but since they feel found out they feel pressured to lie about it to keep up appearances.

I recall some Roman writer complaining about the worthlessness of the youth and how Rome was doomed.

Just before a boom of conquest.

Moralising elders waxing nostaltic have probably been around longer than preserved writing.

Edit: it was Horace:

aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit nos nequiores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem.

Our parents' era, worse than their ancestors, bore us still worse, and soon we will give more wicked offspring.

Text and translation obtained via Wikisource: Horace, Odes 3.6, published 24 or 23 BCE, during the earlier years of the reign of Octavian Augustus.

We could argue about the quality of a youth that bowed to what would be a monarch in all but name, but it's hard to deny their courage and effectiveness in battle, which would have been an important virtue in Rome at the time. That "wicked offspring" stabilised an Empire wracked by decades of civil war and unrest, expanded it and by Horace's standards should have been quite honourable.

(Note: this is not an endorsement, just commentary on the mentalities of the time)