Like in Seinfeld you will have episodes where Kramer is smoking in offices....and even in the doctor's clinic! There was an episode where Kramer took out a cigar and smoked in a doctor's waiting room. I thought he would immediately get in trouble but none of the other characters cared.
And then you got movies from back then like Jackie Brown (which is a great movie by the way) where you see character's smoking in a mall cafeteria. A mall! A family friendly environment! And it's considered normal!?!?!? Blows my mind.
Clouds would come out of family bars and diners when you opened the door. Movie theaters and art galleries would have people smoking inside as it was part of their intellectual aesthetic. During weddings giving out Cuban style cigars as a present was assumed. Schools would not allow it officially, but every bathroom and teacher lounge would clearly smell from the people hiding for a smoke. Same for hospital waiting areas and bathrooms. Trains had smoking and non smoking wagons, which people complained about, feeling smokers were being ostracized. Beaches were full of cigarette buts to the point that accidentally stepping on a not yet cold one was a common concern. Not "going for a smoke" at work was considered socially isolating, and particularly for men saying you don't smoke would lead to others questioning your heterosexuality in a non PC manner. Teenagers would start smoking around the family as a "proof of adulthood" as soon as they had their first part time job to pay for it.
If you had asked me I would have said, nah I don't smoke and I don't like the smell but I get used to it. When I got out of that place I suddenly realized that it I didn't "not like it" it really bugged me. And no, I never really got used to it.
So strange.
I will say bars do not smell better now that the cigarette smoke is gone. At least for some dive bars. That smoke was doing some heavy lifting...
But planes back then had smoking and non-smoking.
And the "first class row" behind me was smoking.
So imagine I was in first class row 3, and the people in first class row 4 were smoking.
I felt like I should try to go back to coach row 18 or whatever, which was probably 10 rows away from smoking in 28.
in the office: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/14040813590...
in university: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/mediaviewer/rm154904524...
in airplanes: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/15032513024...
A friend of mine from Yugoslavia described their lunchroom looking like a grand Caffe with walls full of strong liquor, various kinds of beer on the tap. They started drinking beer at 11 am in the sun in front of the building and kept going till 1-3 am (often talking about work!). He often slept on the sofa and didn't go home for weeks. His boss was always the first to arrive and was happy he wasn't the only one there. Sleeping at work showed a high level of dedication.
In a way I miss it because it was such a social thing to do. I have zero interest in smoking any more but the rituals around it were nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_XNn1bwOM
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2620/how-do-they-...
Sometimes it was thick with smoke and the walls would have tar.
After the Oxford St, Kings Cross Tube station fires, along with the Bradford stadium fire in the 80s they thought that safety could be improved a tad.
Personally, I like my air fresh.
You make it sound like indoor smoking in public places is a thing of a past.
To spice it up a bit, they had lots of cigarettes to try from developing markets. Sometimes these had extra flavour that appealed to the smoker, so more nicotine and tar.
They had this 70s style going on in the early 2000s, at a time when smoking had been outlawed from enclosed public spaces plus lots of outdoor spaces such as sports grounds and train platforms.
Out of the 70s context, the dedication to normalising smoking in the BAT offices made the place sound like more of a cult. I did not work there myself but I had a friend that did. He didn't smoke once he left the 'cult'.
He spent the better part of a day, flying via Moscow.
The next time he had to fly he grudgingly accepted it.
Sometimes even Shaw's unreasonable man has to come to terms with defeat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Check_(program)
New York schools statewide constantly were and are bombarded with constant media and FUD that the single moment you see someone light a cigarette, that's marketing.
* https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/what-happens-body-qu...
According to the article I have 5 years to go till my body has completely recovered from the effects of smoking.
I did not smoke on a plane, but smoking on trains (and many places indoor) was "normal" before like 2010 around my place. I did not like it even as a smoker and rather went out.
But fully echo you that quitting was one of the best decisions of my life.
Two years quit and I was still having dreams where I am lighting up…
Twenty-seven years since now and it's all a distant memory. Even forgotten in dreamland…
plastic everywhere
social media as news
teflon
fossil fuel cars
sugar/ultra-processed food
Lifestyle marketing, romance, appeals to independence, metaphor, and humor. All timeless advertising tropes. It's cigarettes themselves that are passé.
Ever since quitting years ago I never really recovered. It’s like 35% of my mental focus and clarity evaporated.
All these moments when something had to be figured out suddenly things became easy if you only went for a smoke. Solutions became crystal clear obvious and effortless.
At a price.
Without it is always like a little bit of heavy fog is obscuring everything. That I know could be instantly lifted by this terrible drug.
I even remember my first time what a transcendental clarity it summoned. It was as if some thick veil fell from me in an instant. That’s very, very addicting and just useful.
Does overclocking your brain is worth the accelerated parts wear and tear? Well I made a decision that it isn’t. That I am intelligent and privileged enough to hopefully achieve the things I want and enjoy them for longer.
I wish coca leaves were available stateside. Not sure the growing requirements, but it seems like they have a lot of similar neuro benefits without much of the harm from the narcotic derivative.
PHP / Wordpress I think.
But what was the point? It seemed like they were trying to sell gold collectibles to rich people in Malaysia.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/data-finder.htm?&subject=Life%2...
The main reason for the increase there is a reduction in child mortality, not an increase in overall healthiness. Ironically, one of the main factors improving the adult population statistics is the decrease in smoking.
But look at something like HALE (Healthy Life Expectancy from WHO[1]) that's much lower and is currently decreasing.
I wonder though if we didn't trade the low-hanging fruit of lung cancer for the kinds of things that kill us now. I won't argue that we didn't add a decade to our average lifespan, but it does seem our lives have become more sedentary than they were. (Mine certainly has—but then I'm also forty-plus years older, ha ha.)
I wonder how 70's man and 70's woman fared who didn't smoke or live with a smoker—if you compared just that group with modern man and woman.
As for people pointing at lifespans for the healthy part, how much of the change is systemic use of anticoagulants? And of course less tobacco, but I wouldn't rush to say people are in much better shape now.
I think those studies, taxes and everything else was as much an expression of that thinking as it was an influence on it.
I figured sure it's a pattern, but it'll take like 150 years or something, nope, here we are in less than 100 years and there are Nazis again.
plastic will still be everywhere. The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
> social media as news
Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
> teflon
teflon has gotten a lot better since it was introduced. It will stick around.
> fossil fuel cars
will be seen like rotary phones: they will not understand why they are so cumbersome or why so many people had resistance against electric cars. It's like electric lights versus living with only oil/candle lights.
I think a near term would be: "you had to go to a cinema to watch a movie?"
Look at all the wood you have in your house.
Notice that it is still there. Despite the fact that bacteria are very, very good at eating wood.
Even in the hypothetical case that bacteria evolve that can digest plastic, the idea that they would somehow instantly spread to consume all plastic in the world is ludicrous.
We would just need to take a few new precautions with it.
This is not a catastrophe by any stretch of the imagination.
Perhaps. But “social media as news” is definitely going to get a lot worse.
> Teflon ... It will stick around.
Please tell me that was a deliberate choice of words :)
I don't know when but I think attitudes abut sex/gender in future will be really different - not your side won and my side lost but just different then we understand. Like people won't do single sex sport different. I think the model for sports in the future is things like those obstacle course shows - Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities; so they know that a woman doing X is much more amazing then a man doing X+10.
Unlike lobotomies, there will always be some subset of the population who needs those kinds of surgeries. That said, as they've become increasingly sought after I do sometimes wonder if there will be enough detransitiors to cause us to be more cautious about performing them as readily in as many situations. Especially at young ages.
> Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities;
I doubt that'll happen. Not as long as we have sports with winners and losers. Too often it would mean that women would never (or almost never) win. Women would need to accept never stepping into the winners circle and taking the trophy home. Either that or we'd end up giving two trophies at the end of every game, one trophy for the best male winner, and another for the best female loser. At that point however, the men and women aren't really in the same competition with each other and you might as well just have two separate teams.
There are also a number of sports where it would be dangerous for women and men to compete together. It works out fine when they're just taking turns running an obstacle course, but it's less fine when you've got men killing and causing serious harm to women in contact sports like rugby, MMA, and ice hockey. There are sports that many women wouldn't want to participate in at all if they had to play against men. We shouldn't deny those women the ability to play the sports they love on teams where they feel safe. That said, I've always felt that the men's teams should be open to anyone who wants to participate and can qualify (and often that's already the case today).
Not to overly infantilize the fairer sex here, but imagine that same proposal only with children. We don't put 6 year olds on NFL teams for many of the same reasons. No amount of bonus points awarded to the kids for the handicap of their size/skill would make it acceptable. It'd be less safe, it'd be demoralizing for children to lose all the time, and it'd be less fun for the players and less fun to watch for spectators. People want to see the best of the best go head to head. We can compartmentalize them because even pitting teams of the best 10-12 year olds against each other is exciting. Everybody has a reasonably fair chance. What teams would even pick up the 8 year old football player when they could get even a poor adult player instead? I know that the differences between men and women athletes aren't as extreme but I think it illustrates the issues.
Plus having separate teams for people of different sexes, ages, weight classes, and skill levels means that there are more games to play/watch/bet on/sell tickets for.
Not that limited use isn't reasonably fine.
All or almost all of fire is my guess. My guess is that celebratory fire is last to go, bonfires, fireworks, in 2070 probably roasting marshmallows is at the edge of reasonable behaviour, but the idea that we deliberately burned things as part of normal life will seem very odd.
In 1870 fire is the usual (and incredibly wasteful) way humans make light and heat everywhere. In 1970 there's more abstraction, the light is electrical but from thermal generation, so there is still fire but it's somewhere else, and your heat is more likely from fire inside a metal box in a distant room, a gas, oil or in some cases coal boiler to heat air or water.
My guess is that even in pessimistic models in 2070 that's all electrical and the electricity is generated from sources which do not involve fire. PV, wind, hydro, even the geothermal and nuclear plants don't actually make fire to heat steam, they're just hot.
I'm in a neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska that is maybe 5 years old—new housing development. There are no chimneys on any of the homes.
When I was in the Bay Area, sure, not a surprise. I am surprised the Midwaste gives a shit.
(To be sure, everyone seems to have fire pits in their backyards, ha ha. You take what you can get, I suppose.)
If so, why just covid? If not, when is the right time, if any, to give vaccinations that appear to be very effective (or do we think the data is unreliable/dishonest here?).
I certainly have my own take here but I'm trying to ask a neutral question and understand your perspective before it gets downvoted away.
But for most psycho-active substances, such optimal dose / frequency is quite low (if not 0). A beer during a BBQ with friends? Fine. Some recreational drug to enhance the experience of say, a music festival? That I can understand.
But needing a smoke 10, 15..20x all day, every day? Look in the mirror, and admit: you're just an addict, damaging your health.
It was alright for a couple of projects but the day I drink matcha is firmly a “matcha day” with its characteristic of great energy at first and then feeling kind of shitty the rest of the day. It shapes your day too much.
I am sure there are some substances that are similar to nicotine in mechanism and less harmful to the heart and blood thickening but they aren’t easy to get usually or aren’t well researched.
Despite all nicotine is fairly well known and tested on huge population not to mention virtually unlimited access for any interested adult.
Mushrooms have a similar portrayal I would say as some god-given superfood.
Hookah bars got wrapped up in the smoking ban too which I think was an overreach. You go to a hookah bar to smoke, you don't go there to watch a game, shoot pool, and have a beer. The one hookah bar in town actually sued the state over it. Because they also sold hookah supplies, they were exempted.
But the post I was responding to made it sound like a plastic-eating bacteria would just instantly dissolve all the plastic in your house.
Bathrooms needing an openable window for ventilation lasted longer than chimneys here and I guess those were gone by like the turn of the century because fans†?
I can recall the week that no-smoking indoors at restaurants/bars passed and it was literally shocking to walk into a place and not have it be hazy. It really felt weird.
Anyway, air quality + quality of life was much worse. Sometimes the future does get better.
Today that sounds to me like urban folklore (or Big Tobacco folklore).
That's how the Kings Cross Fire started. Escalator full of potential fuel, smoker drops a used match, it falls inside the machine, fire. It wasn't legal technically to be smoking on that escalator, but it would have been legal in a few paces so "everybody" did it. The investigators found signs that such fires had likely started or almost started many times before, the disaster was just that this time it burned for long enough to create a pool of extremely hot gas flowing up the inclined ceiling for the escalator, and we got to discover the Trench Effect in the least fun way possible.
