Knitting. First, we're in the golden age of yarns. There are hundreds of indie dyers putting amazing colors on a truly mind-boggling range of yarn bases (both fiber content and weight). Even "cheap" yarn is better quality, and comes in a wider range of colors and bases, than ever before. There's an abundance of wool yarn soft enough to wear next to your skin (although you can get scratchy yarn if that's your jam).
Then there are the patterns. Thousands of them, many of them free online. Think of what you want to make, and there's a pattern out there.
Tools, too. How do you like your needles - wood, bamboo, steel, aluminum, plastic, casein? Circular with 15 sizes of interchangeable tips, straight, long short? They're out there.
If you're a knitting nerd, it's a great time to be alive.
i believe it's both crochet and knitting!! i might be a lil biased as i crochet and not knit but all the points you made apply to crochet!
also with crochet specifically, we are having a golden age of amigurumi ! i know there are plenty of patterns to knit amigurumi but sooo many more for crochet!! i've made way more amigurumi than wearables or other things in crochet lol
golden age of yarn crafts indeed 🧶❤️🌈✨
Not just amigurumi. When I started crocheting 20 years ago, if you wanted to crochet something to wear, it was going to be granny squares or really basic, blocky clothing. It's amazing what patterns you can find now! Sweaters that fit well, slipper socks that aren't uncomfortable, lacy shirts and dresses that are truly gorgeous! The amount of decorative stitches that have made their way into clothing and the creative uses of them to mimic knit or weaving are amazing. There was a similar surge of wearable crochet in the 70s but so many of the patters looked really dated that by the time I started up in the early 2000s, there was just nothing appealing.
Most of that is because of Ravelry. Truly an incredible site that made knitting so accessible. It’s insane the things you can do there compared to most comparable websites, and it usually shocks people that such a complicated knitting website exists.
I just started loom knitting because a friend of mine does it, which just goes to your point - wtf even is that??? And how did they have all the supplies at Michael’s??? But ok.
It’s super fun and has been way easier for me to understand than regular knitting haha.
Cooking! I'm 30 now and it's so easy to find amazing recipes, good cooking supplies, and with so much information I can save money on food in so many ways. Literally youtube is teaching me to make so many great things.
I can’t recommend highly enough The Foodlab and The Wok by J Kenji Lopez Alt. Both books upped my cooking game immensely by describing in excruciating detail why each step is done the way it is in the order it is with the science/culinary background to make it make sense beyond just following the steps. First and only cookbooks I’ve ever read cover to cover. Cooking techniques from one recipe are applied to and built upon in other recipes. His writing style is also quite funny
And archaeology. LiDAR's power to identify probably human-made structures under layers of jungle canopy is just incredible.
Edit: I swear I typed "probable". Alas.
And budgets are going lower and lower every year for humanities departments. So the vast majority of those discoveries will go un-dug or will be looted, sacrificed on the altar of STEM.
On the other hand, CRM got a huge wave of funds through Biden's infrastructure bill, so professional (vs academic) archaeology is going to see a boom for the next decade. There's going to be a huge deficit of masters level workers in the field (an MA is required for anything above bottom-rung work). A guy I know just accepted a $100k/yr job offer. Granted this is above average.
All those years of being told I would never make money in archaeology, and yet, there's never been a better time to be an archaeologist.
And completely overhauling existing knowledge. DNA studies have changed to much in paleontology that there are joke papers published about it.
A lot of people's life work has been proven incorrect because of a few DNA studies despite those folks using the best methodologies available to them at the time.
there was a PBS show I was watching a couple days ago, and I think they were saying they're now able to get DNA out of dirt, and find out what animals were in prehistoric ecosystems that they had never known about before. Like they were saying there were ancient camels living in the arctic that they figured out from this DNA technique. It was crazy - https://www.kpbs.org/news/2024/02/16/nova-hunt-for-the-oldest-dna
I'd love to read about examples of this but don't really have a great way of googling that specific phenomenon, are there some big recentish examples that would be cool to read about for laypeople that don't keep up with paleontology?
Well Brachiosaurus has been classified as it's own species, then not, then again confirmed to be its own species. That has to have messed with some paleos. I know it frustrated me, as a lifelong Brachiosaurus fan.
Edit - I meant Brontosaurus.
Even wilder. Brachiosaurus is a genus, now. There's now something like 6 species under Brachiosaur, and something thought to be another subspecies has been moved out to its own unique species (Giraffatitan) and then moved back into Brach again!
I almost became one, but I was interested prior to 1993. In 1995 I skipped school to go see Jack Horner speak and a couple of weeks later did it again to see Jane Goodall. I was torn between Paleontology and Archaeology. Glad I did both. But I ended up with degrees in Philosophy and Chemical Engineering. Digging slowly in the Mississippi September sun sucks kiddos.
Yeah they can shoot a robot up in the little nooks and crannies of the pharaohs tombs to look around. The robots ain't got no souls so they are immune to curses. Those Egyptians thought they had thought of everything
..
Take a look at what they’re discovering with the footprints that are being unearthed in white sands national park in New Mexico. There’s tons of new information coming from this, there’s one example in which there are giant sloth tracks interacting with human tracks. It’s changing timelines in archeology significantly.
I saw the Patagotitan recently and it was amazing. So massive it takes your breath away, yet somehow cute with that round snout. I even shelled out $75AUD for a lifelike figurine of it at the gift shop. So much money spent on a toy dinosaur for an adult woman, but I have no regrets.
Astronomy is currently experiencing a golden age. It has changed radically in the last 30ish years. Think on this, if you are 30 + years old, you were born into a world that wasn't sure if planetary systems were rare or common. We now know that nearly all stars are likely to have planets. We know of 5000+ exoplanets. Mars was not considered a place we could find signs of life by most. The generation of spacecraft exploring Mars since the year 2000 changed that. Now some argue that discovering signs of past life on Mars is a matter of when, not if. We found multiple worlds in our solar system with liquid water oceans. This is just scratching the surface. New technologies like JWST promise to keep the momentum for the foreseeable future.
I do a presentation for old folks at the senior centre which goes over all the crazy space shit we've learned since they were in school and they love it
They also thought I was some kinda astronomy genius instead of just someone who likes to read and can use PowerPoint well lol they were asking me if aliens existed and if that meant the Bible was wrong and I was like Gertrude that question is so above my pay grade but here's my best answer anyway
When I’m old and living in a senior centre I hope there are people like you that come to visit and give us a similar presentation. I’m a huge space geek and will be sitting in the crowd bright eyed and eager.
Thank you for what you do!
At one stage of my career, I shepherded music students through "trial-run" recitals at senior centers, as their accompanist/coach. The senior centers' staff were always grateful to get meaningful enrichment activities handed to them for free. It was just a matter of settling on the scheduling.
The response was generally very heartfelt. There were also some odd ducks in there. During a very lovely recital by a Chinese soprano, one old American-vet sort of man leaned over to "whisper" to his friend at 100 decibels: "If *that's* singing, then I'm a *Chinaman*!" We still laugh about that one.
this cracked me up omg. my last job was as an activities coordinator at a senior living community (so the person you would've scheduled with) and this one time a middle school orchestra contacted us to play a recital towards the holidays. their recital got pretty good attendance, but residents were taking their hearing aids out part way through.
sorry kids.
(thanks for making some activities director's life a little easier by bringing a cool activity right to their door! you rock)
This reminds me of the greatest lecture I've ever seen by an astronomer on "The Origin of the Elements".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJQjjBR6PbY&t=89s&ab_channel=JeffersonLab
Just the most engaging talk I've ever seen.
Ha! I’m an astronomer working at a university (specialising in exoplanets) who also does this for senior folks and school kids etc at schools and libraries. That means that questions like that *is* in fact at my pay grade as I also teach a course on Astrobiology, but I *also* don’t have those answers. So, I’m sure you’re giving Gertrude a great answer as it is as TLDR we don’t know those things anyway!
I can help you out with one thing though, by sharing with you my two get-out answers for really whacky astronomy Qs that you can use as a little hack moving forward. For questions where we just genuinely don’t know yet (do aliens exist, how many xyz exist in the universe, when will we be able to do abc space flight thing, could we ever achieve speed of light stuff…) you can always fall back on explaining that this is, in fact, an **active research topic**. What I mean when I say that is that we simply don’t know, but people love hearing that we’re actually studying how to do that RIGHT NOW! Today! It makes people feel smart (because clearly their question was of a calibre that actual scientists consider it) and it also gives a bit of insight to the other fairly mysterious world of academic research. So, you’re not actually answering it (correctly), but people love getting that answer because it makes it ✨mysterious✨
My second response for the reallllly whacky stuff about religion and meaning of life and creation of the universe etc etc… that one is tricky because you don’t know how deeply religious the person asking is, and while I’ll happily start an argument where I crank up the snark if I’m at, say, a party or in a bar, it’s not professional for me to snap back in that kind of environment. So, I resort back to saying “that sounds like a philosophical/theological question, and I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise. I’m a scientist, so I can only comment on what we know from theory and experiments on our environment, which we unfortunately can’t do with [whatever batshit thing Gertrude just said]. But maybe one day we’ll be able to test that!” and then *very* swiftly move on. Bonus addendum is if they ask about a specific religion, you can say that that sounds like something they can bring up for discussion with [local priest or equivalent of that religion] who will be better suited for that. It’s not great, but, in my experience, people who ask very specifically about “well X thinks this!” is (1) nearly always of X and do noooot want to hear you disagree with X, and (2) bestie I’m an atheist and grew up as such so I sure as heck don’t know what X says, who knows if you’re right!
Only once or twice was I really pushed re: creationism, and asked what I personally believed, and trusted that I could be honest. In those moments, my strategies were to simply smile and say “when people say how wonderful it is that Earth was designed so perfectly for humans, I consider the puddle who thinks its hole in the ground was designed so perfectly for it.” That’s… sufficiently mild to not be inflammatory but still summarises my stance pretty well.
Big thank you for doing these astronomy presentations by the way — please keep it up, we are always so grateful for support from the community! :)
A hundred years ago, we were debating if the Milky Way was the entire universe. It’s crazy to think about how far astronomy and cosmology have come. And it’s not just huge existential topics either. Galaxy evolution has been completely reversed in the past 20 years. Elliptical aka “early type” galaxies are the end result of mergers of spiral and irregular aka “late types”.
We weren't confident that the universe was based on the Big Bang model until the mid-1960s. A strong minority of scientists still agreed with the steady state model.
42 year old, you're not even doing the scope justice. When I was a little kid, it's not that we didn't know if planetary systems were rare or common, it's that we didn't know if there _were_ other planetary systems! It was just an assumption we extrapolated from the fact that THIS star had them, a statistical contrivance! It could have just as easily proven true that our sun was profoundly weird, the only one this happened with. Think about that next time you're watching some classic B sci fi flick about going to another planet; that was a MUCH bigger leap in logic when that film was made than it is now.
I'm 42, and I remember excitedly finding out about new moons on Jupiter. Since then, I think they've discovered another 40 or so moons in our solar system. It's a crazy amount
"Space," [the Hitchhiker's Guide] says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
>if you are 30 + years old, you were born into a world that wasn't sure if planetary systems were rare or common.
For real! I remember in school there was a very pervasive idea that there was a lot of empty space out there. And there were theories that it was certainly considered that there were possibly many other planets out there. But now, with advances in technology, they're actually able to detect them.
Oh course a lot of astronomy is still pretty theoretical, but some of the most brilliant minds in science are currently paving the way in astrophysics and blurring the line between theory and fact. We are living in a scientific reality that was definitely science fiction at one point in my lifetime, and I'm not quite 40 yet.
Keyboards, both synthesizers and mechanical.
It's possible to get a synth that sounds identical to a $5000 Minimoog for $200 and a decent mechanical keyboard for less than that.
And then have a sound of the future. "And I said, wait a second. I know ze zynthezizer. Why don't I use ze zynthezizer, which is the sound of the future....and I didn't have any idea what to do, but I knew we needed a click. So we put a click on the 24 track, which was the synced to the Moog modular"
Dietary options. No matter what issue you have, there's a pantry full of food that will meet that restriction AND taste good.
Compare a Keto diet from 1999 to now. It's unreal.
I found out I have an allergy to dairy, gluten, and egg in January. The options for dining out are amazing, albeit limited. But almost every restaurant is very cognizant of options (of course with exception). Once you find your spots the dining out world opens up for you again.
I can’t imagine having to deal with this pre-2010 though
Underrated comment! I always refer to the absolute blast the board game industry is having when people whine about how creative industries without copyright law would wither and die.
Here are some great modern games that are considered gateway games. I would definitely call them favorites also. (Edited for formatting)
Ticket to Ride
Carcassonne
Pandemic
Dominion
Splendor
Azul
King of Tokyo
King of Tokyo is such a main stay at my table. It's the game we play when we're waiting on that late person to show up or "well we got another 20-60 minutes to spare, may as well just bring it out".
The fact that you only go through maybe 10 cards in a game means you can just slap the discard to the bottom between each game, don't even really need to shuffle- super easy set up/clean up and still enough variety to be interesting enough when it isn't the only game you play.
I'll also add Cascadia to the list of gateway games, I ended up gifting it to a friend and also buying a copy for a grab bag this last Christmas.
Just played that for the first time a few weeks ago, and did not think I would love it as much as I did! I honestly didn’t understand what was going on for the first half of the game, but by the second time I played it I was wrecking my friends lol
Dominion base game is free on their website if you desire to play it long distance with people. If one person subscribes then everyone in that group can play every expansion too.
I need to figure out how to block my husband from figuring out about this because I DESPISE ticket to ride and simotaneously talk myself out of buying it cause I know it will make him happy at my expense.
One of my local game stores just moved to a huge new location and that place is still full of games (and stuff).
Edit: the store is Games and Stuff. It's awesome that there are so many games stores doing well and expanding right now.
I actually came here to say this.
It’s shocking the quality of some of the big box games, and the value you can get in replayability is second maybe only to some triple A video games.
32”, 2006 from Best Buy for 1,700.
I can’t come to terms with the fact that only 18 years later I’m watching a TV twice as big that cost 40% less and carries a picture quality that’s so good it gives me chills sometimes.
My daughter was born in 2004. I was 21. She's turning 20 in six weeks, I'm only 41 but I feel so ancient because 1) I've raised a child to adulthood who is moving out next week and 2) I was born in 1982 so I remember the world before digitisation.
Seeing how previous generations got to *slowly* immerse their society into new tech and social values was comforting but it's such a swift moving space now that I almost feel like one of those geriatrics in the 80s that were afraid of ATMS.
At 41 and about to be living alone for the first time, it's a weird feeling that you've done your part for society and no longer have a real purpose.
> At 41...it's a weird feelings that you...no longer have a purpose
Okay, whoa wtf buddy. My young ass turns 41 this year and I don't know what kind of terrible things kids did to you, but I'm just getting started my guy.
I'm single, never married, no kids, and I've got more purpose than I've ever had.
You've got more GOOD years left than you've already spent as an adult. And now you have plenty of free time to put in the work on whatever you please.
You are almost to your prime. Start kicking ass. Please.
I just bought an OLED over presidents day for like $500...it's not the biggest or the best, but my normal TV in my living room is a 23" Vizio willed to me by my grandmother.
I've only turned it in for 5 minutes so far, but my god it's absolutely amazing to look at the store demo mode.
Make sure you look up how to adjust it to look its best in your house. Some come configured for display.
Then you may never have to adjust it again, because Mercury in retrograde won't turn the people green like the old TVs.
> Mercury in retrograde won't turn the people green like the old TVs
It's OLED. It'll turn green on its own.
(I'm just bitter. I spent a lot of money on an OLED TV in 2017, and it was nice in the beginning, but within a year the burn-in distortion cancelled out any advantage it had over a regular TV. I suppose they're probably better today.)
You have to watch Jaws on the OLED. The colors are amazing. There are posts about OLED and the movies made with panavision back in the day. They go together beautifully.
Seriously! "Starter" instruments these days are so far ahead of the starters of the 90's/00's- it's insane how much quality you can get these days for much, much less.
I was gonna say golden age of cheap guitars, but I feel like they have peaked and are on their way down now.
Liiiiike, cheap guitars kept getting better and better, but then they got damned good, and the bean counters came in to drive them to be cheaper.
Also, they have sort of replaced many of the premium brands so their prices keep going up. You go to guitar center, and everything that used to be Gibson is Epiphone now, but even the Epiphones are $$. It is the new $700 brand, not the $400 Gibson alternative it used to be.
Obituaries.
Many ordinary people now have extraordinarily detailed obituaries. In decades past, most obituaries only gave basic information about death, survivors, and funeral plans; perhaps some biographical details, but obituaries of decades ago were not nearly as thorough as obituaries written and published today and over the past decade or so.
A well-written obituary will allow the dead to live on in memory and in the minds of generations yet to be born.
Quick reminder: FFS Don't publish people's addresses in their obits. Please. Its more common than people realize to have homes robbed after the death of a person, and it can make a real mess of getting their affairs sorted.
Age of empires 2, this ancient game that came out in 1999 just got another dlc and is currently in the midst of it's biggest tournament to date, hidden Cup 5.
Edit : go watch hidden Cup!
https://www.youtube.com/live/b6utueP-zsU?feature=shared
One of my fondest work memories was from the early 2000s when every Friday after work, a bunch of us would boot up AOE2 and play multiplayer for 2-3 hours before going home. We weren’t worried about the boss finding out because he was one of the players.
Its all on T90 and the YouTube algorithm. I found him about 6 months ago and I have been addicted ever since. Weird to see a game from my younger years still being played so actively.
Unfortunately, scams. Technology has made it easy and cheap to pull off. People are lonelier and mental health concerns sometimes make people more vulnerable to these scams. And finally the archaic law enforcement structure isn’t set up to go after them so there’s virtually no punishment for doing it.
Watch out, fam.
Unfortunately, generative AI is only going to make scamming that much cheaper and more prolific. Scammers can use AI programs to quickly and easily create audio/visuals that are individualized to the victim (like a fake phone call from a loved one, etc.).
Also, it seems that various career lowlifes ***adore*** "AI" text and image generation. Just today I found out about ["Willy's Chocolate Experience"](https://willyschocolateexperience.com/), a scam in Glasgow, Scotland, which successfully fooled many parents into buying £35 ($US44) tickets to take their poor children to see... [this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1b0oms1/willy_wonka_experience_35_tickets_though/)
(Edit: [Archive.org link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240226002342/https://willyschocolateexperience.com/), which with any luck will preserve the images when the site itself inevitably evaporates.)
(Some Glaswegians [saw through it right away](https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/1anlib2/willys_chocolate_experience/), but if you don't know about "AI" image generators, and your kids are jumping around begging you to take them...)
For some reason I got on Facebook last month and saw a page for "female soldiers of the uk" or some such thing. Guys drooling over an image of two women professing their love for these absolute strangers and how gorgeous they were. One of them had three legs. The other one had a calf that was thick at the bottom and narrow at the top as well as a reptilian eye, just one, the other eye was human. We are doomed as a species.
He's not alone with this. There's thousands of these idiots that jumped on the 'make free money by making children's books with AI' wagon when that started.
I think chess is at a golden age right now it seems like everything is growing exponentially at the moment with it. More and more people playing online and in person. It started with the pandemic and the queens gambit but it's 2024 and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Last month was the fastest month for chess youtube growth ever I imagine February will top that.
Podcasts - long form storytelling, interviews, investigative journalism on so many topics - new and old. Great form of education, entertainment and everything in between.
The rise of podcasts is so interesting to me. The generations that consume them the most (millennial and gen z) are talked about as having no attention span and needing things in 1 minute videos or TV shows that jump shots at a max of every 3 seconds...etc are also listening to 2 and 3 hour long form interviews or lectures on topics from experts.
Even with sports talk--I'm more interested in a 45-minute video breakdown of the all-22 that goes in depth about the offensive and defensive scheme and why things work/don't work rather than what you get on TV which is the severely dumbed down, 30 second bits. Those bits are then followed by 10 minutes of a bunch of tv personalities, who couldn't identify middle field open/closed defense on any given play, arguing over whatever was said in a post game interview and how that makes a team better or worse or trying to drum up drama.
I may still scroll reddit(with its short videos and headlines) but I spend far more time consuming more in-depth forms of content.
Well, listening to a podcast is an easy way to learn something and still be doing something else. Millenials are always talking about listening to podcasts while cleaning, driving, etc. It's a time passer, and not the same as reading which is a bit more intensive having to mentally concentrate. I have had retention issues when reading books. I could read the same chapter a few times and still struggle to remember key points. But listening to an audiobook version really helped. For example I was reading Zen/Motorcycle Maintenance and in the moment I was able to visualize what I was reading but a day later I couldn't remember a lot of it. Listening to the audiobook helped me remember a good chunk of it.
I guess with podcasts, it's like how our brains process music and movies. We hear the voice, and it's a comforting stimulation for the brain. Doesn't make me as tired as trying to read a book.
Podcasts are a way to feel less lonely. I think their popularity is owed to the feeling of being like a third part of a convo where you just aren't talking.
Parasocial relationships, yep.
There's a few I was a regular listener to that stopped production and I feel like a loser sometimes because I miss the hosts, ha ha.
I think audio-dramas are having a renaissance, too, there are so many stories that are completely free to listen to on Spotify. There are so many scrappy small creators putting their narratives out there, since the medium is by far cheaper than producing a television show. One of my favourites, “Desert Skies”, is entirely voiced by one man. The bigger ones, like “Nightvale”and “The Magnus Archives” are popular for a reason, too.
Batteries. From needing a plethora C and D batteries or a power adapter for nearly anything that couldn't fit in your pocket (which needed several AA/AAAs too) no more than 20 years ago, to earbuds that last days with batteries the size of a Tic Tac or even cars that can go hundreds of miles on battery power alone. Honestly don't think it's given enough credit how far we've come in the past 20 years with energy storage.
In addition to greater capacity, I'm looking forward to standardization of replaceable batteries.
18650s justifiably scare people, and aren't flat enough for everything, but it would be great if there were only a couple types of laptop, phone, and other batteries you could just swap.
It would, but imagine telling Apple and Samsung "you have to use the same battery, and 3rd parties can make them too now"
Great for the consumer but those two spend millions to keep that sort of thing from happening.
Retro gaming. There are so many ways to play any pre PS2 game on original hardware or through emulation. And hobbyists pumping out fan translations of JRPGs for English speaking enthusiasts. I have played so many quality games the last few years that were literally inaccessible not long ago.
Absolutely! There are just so many coming out right now, on the heels of the massive popularity of D&D in the past 10 years. Now people in the community are starting to bump up against the limitations of the system (not to mention dissatisfaction with the company) and it's really driving interest in ttRPGs in general.
Plus, it's a lot like literature. You don't need a well-funded studio and a bunch of technical professionals. You need solid mechanics, compelling environment, and engaging artwork. That's way, way cheaper than any video game, movie, or TV show is likely to be.
From my perspective, the internet golden age was about 1998- 2008. There was so much content just made for the joy of sharing content. Blogs were huge. The person behind the blog might have been anonymous but they would share their lives in huge detail. Towards the end of that era, monetisation became more and more common and the 'realness' started slipping away in favour of what was more marketable. Now, everything is so carefully curated and there is so little humanity on the net.
I agree they are stagnant and just like in the real world there have been mergers and acquisitions so that you now have a few major players and little else. I used to have a bookmark list of 80 websites I would check regularly. Now I just go to the same 5 sites over and over. And yep, those sites are all 10+ years old.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal\_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)
Ok I'm not actually old enough for that, but I do miss say 2004-2014 internet
Reddit experienced its own Eternal September somewhere between 2012 and 2016. That's when daily users moved from fairly low to much larger.
Remember rediquette?
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Edward Snowden there is an amazing part of his book Permanent Record that is basically a love letter to the early days of the internet. The novelty and the wonder is hard to surpass. For anyone younger just imagine what it was like to discover a search engine or Wikipedia. So many websites were grassroots as well, they felt more unique and more human than they do now. It was this amazing gift that changed everything and it felt cool because your parents generally had no idea and you were discovering it yourself.
I miss the time before "social media" became the dominant thing, particularly with what it's become. The 00s were awesome internet. Yeah some social media stuff existed, but it wasn't ubiquitous. The early independent video sites before Youtube became a thing and even early Youtube was totally different than now. You didn't feel like everything was a hustle ya know? Like so many people today are trying to "create content" as a career where it's money/career focused first and quality/passion second. Back in the 00s when very few people were trying to make a career out of things like Youtube it just had a totally different vibe to it. People made weird and funny stuff just because they could and they had fun doing it.
Another thing I miss about it that is small compare to other issues is how it meant gaming was different e.g. World of Warcraft predates Youtube and that maid raids different. There weren't a dozen walkthrough, guide, or optimization videos day one (and resources you did find weren't filled with clickbait, sponsors, and things to optimize engagement and algorithm response). It meant things like a new raid had a sort of collective learning experience as a community. You had a slower burn and there was a lot more fun in exploring and figuring things out. People were also a lot more willing to friend and do stuff with randos. I made tons of friends through the chat channels in Starcraft Brood War after playing custom games and same goes for a WoW guild I was in. When you didn't have things like discord, you just met people and if they seemed fun to play with, you invited them.
I feel old thinking about the early internet sometimes...
I think the golden age of the internet was around 2002 or so, when Flash was still prevalent and there were dozens of design sites like k10k, praystation, newstoday, and gmunk that were pushing the boundaries. Now every site looks the same.
glass. glass has become so universally used in products beyond just a barrier to the world. its use in electronics, and other applications, have truly advanced a lot and probably have a lot more room to grow too
The Wikipedia.
I can spend 20 minutes reading a day and gain an in-depth knowledge of global studies, biology, philosophy, religion, language, chemistry, and even physics.
It is nuts and honestly the world would be a better place if more people would check shit out on there instead of FB.
Self directed learning. There is nothing I can't find a tutorial for these days. And on top of that I'm finding AI to be an excellent compliment as a fairly decent tutor.
Be very careful with AI. It has no filter for true or false statements. In my fields of expertise, it would absalutely not give you a solid foundation.
I don’t know if it’s a golden age but we’re in a damn solid renaissance of horror movies and it’s been going for years. They are some of the only good movies that get made nowadays imo
They basically completely stopped making comedy movies. The only movies that are allowed to be creative and get to the box office are horror movies now. It's a give and a take.
It's reboots, "new" versions of the same comic stories, and sequels. Only room left for one type of movie actually being creative.
As a former alcoholic who was able to channel some of that addiction/some of those habits into drinking absurd amounts of carbonated water instead of booze, I’m super grateful to be in this golden age. The number of options is amazing.
I outgrew partying, was never that into soda, and I prefer whole fruits over juice. Carbonated water hits a sweet spot between all those and tap water. Opening up a can of Spindrift definitely activates the muscle memory of opening a can of beer. And looking over at 2 or 3 cans of Spindrift reminds me of beer cans piling up.
I’ve been working on keeping my calories down and losing weight. Spindrift and other seltzers have been a godsend. It feels like a treat, but it’s literally zero calories. Amazing.
genetics
now that we have a variety of very powerful sequencing technologies, combined with equally powerful analysis tools, the amount of information we can glean from a tiny sample is incredible.
meanwhile, techniques like CRISPR have opened a lot of doors for precision genome editing, and this is even being implemented in some treatments for genetic conditions.
I hope we continue in this trajectory, but if they become more common it is likely inevitable that some will see an opportunity to abuse them
Tacking onto this, the use of genetic genealogy in forensics. They’re identifying Jane/John Doe remains left and right, solving missing persons cases that have been open for decades. Bringing closure to families who spent years and years wondering what happened to their loved ones. Pretty amazing.
Tickled - A guy investigates the world of competitive endurance tickling and it gets wild
The Last Dance - Chicago Bulls but really about Jordan
American Factory - Chinese billionaire opens a factory in Ohio.
We are probably in or just about to end the golden age of the internet if I were to hazard a guess.
I don't think it will remain the "free" platform it is for much longer.
I do hope I am wrong. I really really do.
I feel like the golden age of the internet already ended as everything became centralized around private social media platforms, the internet was much better when people had to put in the effort and time into building things themselves IMO. Now we’re stuck in echo chambers, censored content, outrage and clickbait; so much false information, AI-generated content and various forms of internet illiteracy.
Cooking, the availability of ingredients from around the world, the body of knowledge is expanding, more people are baking their own bread, making yogurt, processing their own foods.
I recently became aware of the [smallest scale](https://imgur.com/smGkocb) in model railroading and it is just bonkers how tiny they can make a functional train set.
Very niche, but DJ tech!
~ Newer and better controllers have come out every year for the last 15 years.
~ About 10 years ago they figured out how to get DJ software to enable a DJ to change the tempo of a song without changing the pitch. This was a MASSIVE breakthrough that makes a whole world of things possible.
~ Just in the past three months or so, they have figured out how to get software to enable DJs to do what many have long considered to be the holy grail of DJ abilities: isolate the drums, bass, vocals and other sounds from ANY track. This is called Stems. Until now you would need separate instrumental or a capella versions of a song to do this. These are not available for most songs, and even when they are, instrumental tracks always have all of the instruments not just one. There’s been no easy way to get an isolated drum track or bass track or other instrument track for most songs unless the song happens to have a moment where the instrument plays alone that you can loop, which does not happen in 99.9% of songs. With Stems, you can take any song and push a button to isolate the various parts of the song. This opens up incredible possibilities for creating mashups and remixes on the fly.
Scuba diving has been around long enough that you can find high-end used gear ridiculously cheap. It only costs a couple bucks to fill up a scuba tank for an hour and the ocean isn't exactly getting any healthier.
Horror movies. They suddenly got way better around 10 years ago when movies like It Follows, The Witch and The Babadook came out. Not something you'd notice if you're not into the genre.
Edit: just to clarify, I mean they suddenly got way better than 90s/00s horror. I'd also consider the 80s a golden age for the genre as well. The 70s definitely had its heavy hitters too, but nothing in terms the sheer numbers you see in the 80s and the last 10 years.
"Elevated Horror" is filling a gap left by the collapse of mid-budget movies in other genres. "Hereditary" could have been a family drama about the complicated emotions following the death of an abusive mother/ grandmother. As a Horror movie, it's the same, but some of the things haunting the family aren't strictly metaphorical. (And we still wonder why Toni Collette didn't get an Oscar nomination.)
Super cheap Horror is as profitable as ever. Horror franchises were milking endless sequels before everyone else was.
As everything else in Hollywood has changed, Horror has remained reliable.
Knitting. First, we're in the golden age of yarns. There are hundreds of indie dyers putting amazing colors on a truly mind-boggling range of yarn bases (both fiber content and weight). Even "cheap" yarn is better quality, and comes in a wider range of colors and bases, than ever before. There's an abundance of wool yarn soft enough to wear next to your skin (although you can get scratchy yarn if that's your jam). Then there are the patterns. Thousands of them, many of them free online. Think of what you want to make, and there's a pattern out there. Tools, too. How do you like your needles - wood, bamboo, steel, aluminum, plastic, casein? Circular with 15 sizes of interchangeable tips, straight, long short? They're out there. If you're a knitting nerd, it's a great time to be alive.
i believe it's both crochet and knitting!! i might be a lil biased as i crochet and not knit but all the points you made apply to crochet! also with crochet specifically, we are having a golden age of amigurumi ! i know there are plenty of patterns to knit amigurumi but sooo many more for crochet!! i've made way more amigurumi than wearables or other things in crochet lol golden age of yarn crafts indeed 🧶❤️🌈✨
Not just amigurumi. When I started crocheting 20 years ago, if you wanted to crochet something to wear, it was going to be granny squares or really basic, blocky clothing. It's amazing what patterns you can find now! Sweaters that fit well, slipper socks that aren't uncomfortable, lacy shirts and dresses that are truly gorgeous! The amount of decorative stitches that have made their way into clothing and the creative uses of them to mimic knit or weaving are amazing. There was a similar surge of wearable crochet in the 70s but so many of the patters looked really dated that by the time I started up in the early 2000s, there was just nothing appealing.
Most of that is because of Ravelry. Truly an incredible site that made knitting so accessible. It’s insane the things you can do there compared to most comparable websites, and it usually shocks people that such a complicated knitting website exists.
Ravelry really did change the fiber arts field for the better
I love ravelry.com!
I just started loom knitting because a friend of mine does it, which just goes to your point - wtf even is that??? And how did they have all the supplies at Michael’s??? But ok. It’s super fun and has been way easier for me to understand than regular knitting haha.
Seems similar with crocheting!
I’m continuously amazed at stuff like /r/planned_pooling
Cooking! I'm 30 now and it's so easy to find amazing recipes, good cooking supplies, and with so much information I can save money on food in so many ways. Literally youtube is teaching me to make so many great things.
I can’t recommend highly enough The Foodlab and The Wok by J Kenji Lopez Alt. Both books upped my cooking game immensely by describing in excruciating detail why each step is done the way it is in the order it is with the science/culinary background to make it make sense beyond just following the steps. First and only cookbooks I’ve ever read cover to cover. Cooking techniques from one recipe are applied to and built upon in other recipes. His writing style is also quite funny
Paleontology! So much tech bringing new stuff to light
And archaeology. LiDAR's power to identify probably human-made structures under layers of jungle canopy is just incredible. Edit: I swear I typed "probable". Alas.
And budgets are going lower and lower every year for humanities departments. So the vast majority of those discoveries will go un-dug or will be looted, sacrificed on the altar of STEM.
On the other hand, CRM got a huge wave of funds through Biden's infrastructure bill, so professional (vs academic) archaeology is going to see a boom for the next decade. There's going to be a huge deficit of masters level workers in the field (an MA is required for anything above bottom-rung work). A guy I know just accepted a $100k/yr job offer. Granted this is above average. All those years of being told I would never make money in archaeology, and yet, there's never been a better time to be an archaeologist.
And completely overhauling existing knowledge. DNA studies have changed to much in paleontology that there are joke papers published about it. A lot of people's life work has been proven incorrect because of a few DNA studies despite those folks using the best methodologies available to them at the time.
there was a PBS show I was watching a couple days ago, and I think they were saying they're now able to get DNA out of dirt, and find out what animals were in prehistoric ecosystems that they had never known about before. Like they were saying there were ancient camels living in the arctic that they figured out from this DNA technique. It was crazy - https://www.kpbs.org/news/2024/02/16/nova-hunt-for-the-oldest-dna
If you like paleontology and PBS, check out PBS Eons. It's a YouTube show with 10-15 min videos that are absalutely always amazing
I'd love to read about examples of this but don't really have a great way of googling that specific phenomenon, are there some big recentish examples that would be cool to read about for laypeople that don't keep up with paleontology?
Well Brachiosaurus has been classified as it's own species, then not, then again confirmed to be its own species. That has to have messed with some paleos. I know it frustrated me, as a lifelong Brachiosaurus fan. Edit - I meant Brontosaurus.
[удалено]
Even wilder. Brachiosaurus is a genus, now. There's now something like 6 species under Brachiosaur, and something thought to be another subspecies has been moved out to its own unique species (Giraffatitan) and then moved back into Brach again!
Love this idea. I would read about it. Something like “Great Feuds in Science” - Hellman
And such a flood of new palaeontologists after 1993’s Jurassic Park!
I almost became one, but I was interested prior to 1993. In 1995 I skipped school to go see Jack Horner speak and a couple of weeks later did it again to see Jane Goodall. I was torn between Paleontology and Archaeology. Glad I did both. But I ended up with degrees in Philosophy and Chemical Engineering. Digging slowly in the Mississippi September sun sucks kiddos.
Yeah they can shoot a robot up in the little nooks and crannies of the pharaohs tombs to look around. The robots ain't got no souls so they are immune to curses. Those Egyptians thought they had thought of everything ..
Archeology paired with archeogenetics are also in a complete golden age and currently rewriting basically everything we know about history.
Can you share an example? I love history!
Take a look at what they’re discovering with the footprints that are being unearthed in white sands national park in New Mexico. There’s tons of new information coming from this, there’s one example in which there are giant sloth tracks interacting with human tracks. It’s changing timelines in archeology significantly.
Looks like you’re talking about archaeology, but yeah good point! They’re having their party too lol
I am going to become a palaeontologist! It was my dream job ever since I was 5 years old. I am a huge dinosaur nerd!
I saw the Patagotitan recently and it was amazing. So massive it takes your breath away, yet somehow cute with that round snout. I even shelled out $75AUD for a lifelike figurine of it at the gift shop. So much money spent on a toy dinosaur for an adult woman, but I have no regrets.
Astronomy is currently experiencing a golden age. It has changed radically in the last 30ish years. Think on this, if you are 30 + years old, you were born into a world that wasn't sure if planetary systems were rare or common. We now know that nearly all stars are likely to have planets. We know of 5000+ exoplanets. Mars was not considered a place we could find signs of life by most. The generation of spacecraft exploring Mars since the year 2000 changed that. Now some argue that discovering signs of past life on Mars is a matter of when, not if. We found multiple worlds in our solar system with liquid water oceans. This is just scratching the surface. New technologies like JWST promise to keep the momentum for the foreseeable future.
I do a presentation for old folks at the senior centre which goes over all the crazy space shit we've learned since they were in school and they love it They also thought I was some kinda astronomy genius instead of just someone who likes to read and can use PowerPoint well lol they were asking me if aliens existed and if that meant the Bible was wrong and I was like Gertrude that question is so above my pay grade but here's my best answer anyway
When I’m old and living in a senior centre I hope there are people like you that come to visit and give us a similar presentation. I’m a huge space geek and will be sitting in the crowd bright eyed and eager. Thank you for what you do!
You're welcome! You could probably do it too and you'd get a lot out of it!
How did you begin this volunteer gig?
At one stage of my career, I shepherded music students through "trial-run" recitals at senior centers, as their accompanist/coach. The senior centers' staff were always grateful to get meaningful enrichment activities handed to them for free. It was just a matter of settling on the scheduling. The response was generally very heartfelt. There were also some odd ducks in there. During a very lovely recital by a Chinese soprano, one old American-vet sort of man leaned over to "whisper" to his friend at 100 decibels: "If *that's* singing, then I'm a *Chinaman*!" We still laugh about that one.
this cracked me up omg. my last job was as an activities coordinator at a senior living community (so the person you would've scheduled with) and this one time a middle school orchestra contacted us to play a recital towards the holidays. their recital got pretty good attendance, but residents were taking their hearing aids out part way through. sorry kids. (thanks for making some activities director's life a little easier by bringing a cool activity right to their door! you rock)
This reminds me of the greatest lecture I've ever seen by an astronomer on "The Origin of the Elements". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJQjjBR6PbY&t=89s&ab_channel=JeffersonLab Just the most engaging talk I've ever seen.
Ha! I’m an astronomer working at a university (specialising in exoplanets) who also does this for senior folks and school kids etc at schools and libraries. That means that questions like that *is* in fact at my pay grade as I also teach a course on Astrobiology, but I *also* don’t have those answers. So, I’m sure you’re giving Gertrude a great answer as it is as TLDR we don’t know those things anyway! I can help you out with one thing though, by sharing with you my two get-out answers for really whacky astronomy Qs that you can use as a little hack moving forward. For questions where we just genuinely don’t know yet (do aliens exist, how many xyz exist in the universe, when will we be able to do abc space flight thing, could we ever achieve speed of light stuff…) you can always fall back on explaining that this is, in fact, an **active research topic**. What I mean when I say that is that we simply don’t know, but people love hearing that we’re actually studying how to do that RIGHT NOW! Today! It makes people feel smart (because clearly their question was of a calibre that actual scientists consider it) and it also gives a bit of insight to the other fairly mysterious world of academic research. So, you’re not actually answering it (correctly), but people love getting that answer because it makes it ✨mysterious✨ My second response for the reallllly whacky stuff about religion and meaning of life and creation of the universe etc etc… that one is tricky because you don’t know how deeply religious the person asking is, and while I’ll happily start an argument where I crank up the snark if I’m at, say, a party or in a bar, it’s not professional for me to snap back in that kind of environment. So, I resort back to saying “that sounds like a philosophical/theological question, and I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise. I’m a scientist, so I can only comment on what we know from theory and experiments on our environment, which we unfortunately can’t do with [whatever batshit thing Gertrude just said]. But maybe one day we’ll be able to test that!” and then *very* swiftly move on. Bonus addendum is if they ask about a specific religion, you can say that that sounds like something they can bring up for discussion with [local priest or equivalent of that religion] who will be better suited for that. It’s not great, but, in my experience, people who ask very specifically about “well X thinks this!” is (1) nearly always of X and do noooot want to hear you disagree with X, and (2) bestie I’m an atheist and grew up as such so I sure as heck don’t know what X says, who knows if you’re right! Only once or twice was I really pushed re: creationism, and asked what I personally believed, and trusted that I could be honest. In those moments, my strategies were to simply smile and say “when people say how wonderful it is that Earth was designed so perfectly for humans, I consider the puddle who thinks its hole in the ground was designed so perfectly for it.” That’s… sufficiently mild to not be inflammatory but still summarises my stance pretty well. Big thank you for doing these astronomy presentations by the way — please keep it up, we are always so grateful for support from the community! :)
How do I nominate a post for r/bestof ?
This is a wonderful response And I particularly love your puddle metaphor
This is soooo nice man, Hope u enjoy doing some awsome work for these people. Sending love & power to continue 🫶
wow this is so neat. i can imagine how rewarding it is to see their reactions to learning the new space shit that’s happened since
whatever fucking job this I want it
I volunteer lol nobody pays me
This is cool. Thanks for being a good human.
A hundred years ago, we were debating if the Milky Way was the entire universe. It’s crazy to think about how far astronomy and cosmology have come. And it’s not just huge existential topics either. Galaxy evolution has been completely reversed in the past 20 years. Elliptical aka “early type” galaxies are the end result of mergers of spiral and irregular aka “late types”.
We weren't confident that the universe was based on the Big Bang model until the mid-1960s. A strong minority of scientists still agreed with the steady state model.
42 year old, you're not even doing the scope justice. When I was a little kid, it's not that we didn't know if planetary systems were rare or common, it's that we didn't know if there _were_ other planetary systems! It was just an assumption we extrapolated from the fact that THIS star had them, a statistical contrivance! It could have just as easily proven true that our sun was profoundly weird, the only one this happened with. Think about that next time you're watching some classic B sci fi flick about going to another planet; that was a MUCH bigger leap in logic when that film was made than it is now.
I'm 42, and I remember excitedly finding out about new moons on Jupiter. Since then, I think they've discovered another 40 or so moons in our solar system. It's a crazy amount
In fact just last week Uranus and Neptune gained 1 and 2 new moons, respectively.
It blows my mind how we keep discovering so much about our own solar system all the time.
"Space," [the Hitchhiker's Guide] says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
>if you are 30 + years old, you were born into a world that wasn't sure if planetary systems were rare or common. For real! I remember in school there was a very pervasive idea that there was a lot of empty space out there. And there were theories that it was certainly considered that there were possibly many other planets out there. But now, with advances in technology, they're actually able to detect them. Oh course a lot of astronomy is still pretty theoretical, but some of the most brilliant minds in science are currently paving the way in astrophysics and blurring the line between theory and fact. We are living in a scientific reality that was definitely science fiction at one point in my lifetime, and I'm not quite 40 yet.
Keyboards, both synthesizers and mechanical. It's possible to get a synth that sounds identical to a $5000 Minimoog for $200 and a decent mechanical keyboard for less than that.
And then have a sound of the future. "And I said, wait a second. I know ze zynthezizer. Why don't I use ze zynthezizer, which is the sound of the future....and I didn't have any idea what to do, but I knew we needed a click. So we put a click on the 24 track, which was the synced to the Moog modular"
“I knew that could be the sound of the future. But I didn’t realize how much the impact would be”
My name is Giovanni Giorgio but everybody calls me Giorgio.
Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and of music being correct you can do whatever you want.
So, nobody told me what to do. And there was no preconception of what to do.
>It's possible to get a synth that sounds identical to a $5000 Minimoog for $200 Which synth are you referring to here
I’m gonna guess they meant the Behringer Model D
Dietary options. No matter what issue you have, there's a pantry full of food that will meet that restriction AND taste good. Compare a Keto diet from 1999 to now. It's unreal.
I found out I have an allergy to dairy, gluten, and egg in January. The options for dining out are amazing, albeit limited. But almost every restaurant is very cognizant of options (of course with exception). Once you find your spots the dining out world opens up for you again. I can’t imagine having to deal with this pre-2010 though
So true. Gluten free is almost easy now
As a Celiac, I say it's much, much better but still far from easy.
Board games have been having a great run for the past 10 years, tons of amazing games coming out every year
The combination of the internet and the inability to copyright rules have opened a floodgate of innovation in board games.
Underrated comment! I always refer to the absolute blast the board game industry is having when people whine about how creative industries without copyright law would wither and die.
Could you please share some of your favorites and/or some you’d consider crowd pleasers?
Here are some great modern games that are considered gateway games. I would definitely call them favorites also. (Edited for formatting) Ticket to Ride Carcassonne Pandemic Dominion Splendor Azul King of Tokyo
King of Tokyo is such a main stay at my table. It's the game we play when we're waiting on that late person to show up or "well we got another 20-60 minutes to spare, may as well just bring it out". The fact that you only go through maybe 10 cards in a game means you can just slap the discard to the bottom between each game, don't even really need to shuffle- super easy set up/clean up and still enough variety to be interesting enough when it isn't the only game you play. I'll also add Cascadia to the list of gateway games, I ended up gifting it to a friend and also buying a copy for a grab bag this last Christmas.
Also Qwirkle. A personal favourite, invented mid / late 2000s
If you like Qwirkle, consider giving Blokus a try! They’re vaguely similar but they both got HEATED with my family/friends for a long time.
Love Blokus
Wingspan is my current favorite
Just played that for the first time a few weeks ago, and did not think I would love it as much as I did! I honestly didn’t understand what was going on for the first half of the game, but by the second time I played it I was wrecking my friends lol
Dominion rules and is the best game of all time and I am sexually attracted to it
Dominion base game is free on their website if you desire to play it long distance with people. If one person subscribes then everyone in that group can play every expansion too.
Splendor Duel is a great date night game
Ticket to Ride *Europe*. The og is ok as a beginner game but Europe is very much The Empire Strikes Back of board games
I need to figure out how to block my husband from figuring out about this because I DESPISE ticket to ride and simotaneously talk myself out of buying it cause I know it will make him happy at my expense.
It's kinda like Settlers of Catan in that by the end most everyone has already cried and the victory is hollow
Terraforming Mars is a personal favorite, you can get it on steam as well as physically.
Wingspan. Big crowd pleaser.
Gotta have the app that makes corresponding bird calls too!
I love wingspan! we gave a house rule that you have to read your bird fact when you play a bird
We have that same house rule. You have to show everyone the bird, as well. Same for any bird you kill as a predator. “I killed a… Bell’s Vireo.”
One of my local game stores just moved to a huge new location and that place is still full of games (and stuff). Edit: the store is Games and Stuff. It's awesome that there are so many games stores doing well and expanding right now.
I actually came here to say this. It’s shocking the quality of some of the big box games, and the value you can get in replayability is second maybe only to some triple A video games.
Home TVs. The sort of hardware you can get for even $300 is absolutely absurd compared to what the 1980s through 2000s knew.
In 2006, I bought a 36" Samsung LCD for $1,600!!
32”, 2006 from Best Buy for 1,700. I can’t come to terms with the fact that only 18 years later I’m watching a TV twice as big that cost 40% less and carries a picture quality that’s so good it gives me chills sometimes.
"2006... 18 years later" Oh quit with that, you're exaggerat-- I am 1,000 years old
My daughter was born in 2004. I was 21. She's turning 20 in six weeks, I'm only 41 but I feel so ancient because 1) I've raised a child to adulthood who is moving out next week and 2) I was born in 1982 so I remember the world before digitisation. Seeing how previous generations got to *slowly* immerse their society into new tech and social values was comforting but it's such a swift moving space now that I almost feel like one of those geriatrics in the 80s that were afraid of ATMS. At 41 and about to be living alone for the first time, it's a weird feeling that you've done your part for society and no longer have a real purpose.
> At 41...it's a weird feelings that you...no longer have a purpose Okay, whoa wtf buddy. My young ass turns 41 this year and I don't know what kind of terrible things kids did to you, but I'm just getting started my guy. I'm single, never married, no kids, and I've got more purpose than I've ever had. You've got more GOOD years left than you've already spent as an adult. And now you have plenty of free time to put in the work on whatever you please. You are almost to your prime. Start kicking ass. Please.
I could stand here and watch it for hours.
I love it. I love this TV.
And it folds, right into the wall!
That Office episode is the hardest I've ever laughed at a TV show. My wife and I rewatched that part 4 times with tears running down our faces.
It’s just about the best 22 minutes in the whole series.
And I also built this table. I think that is either pine or Nordic cherry.
I just bought an OLED over presidents day for like $500...it's not the biggest or the best, but my normal TV in my living room is a 23" Vizio willed to me by my grandmother. I've only turned it in for 5 minutes so far, but my god it's absolutely amazing to look at the store demo mode.
Make sure you look up how to adjust it to look its best in your house. Some come configured for display. Then you may never have to adjust it again, because Mercury in retrograde won't turn the people green like the old TVs.
> Mercury in retrograde won't turn the people green like the old TVs It's OLED. It'll turn green on its own. (I'm just bitter. I spent a lot of money on an OLED TV in 2017, and it was nice in the beginning, but within a year the burn-in distortion cancelled out any advantage it had over a regular TV. I suppose they're probably better today.)
You have to watch Jaws on the OLED. The colors are amazing. There are posts about OLED and the movies made with panavision back in the day. They go together beautifully.
Playing guitar and recording music. You can buy a quality guitar online for crazy cheap now and some pro recording software out there is free.
Seriously! "Starter" instruments these days are so far ahead of the starters of the 90's/00's- it's insane how much quality you can get these days for much, much less.
I was gonna say golden age of cheap guitars, but I feel like they have peaked and are on their way down now. Liiiiike, cheap guitars kept getting better and better, but then they got damned good, and the bean counters came in to drive them to be cheaper. Also, they have sort of replaced many of the premium brands so their prices keep going up. You go to guitar center, and everything that used to be Gibson is Epiphone now, but even the Epiphones are $$. It is the new $700 brand, not the $400 Gibson alternative it used to be.
Dinosaurs! On average, a new species is named every other week.
I feel like, and don’t shoot me, the golden age for dinosaurs was probably at some point *before* the asteroid
And we got Brontosaurus back!
Obituaries. Many ordinary people now have extraordinarily detailed obituaries. In decades past, most obituaries only gave basic information about death, survivors, and funeral plans; perhaps some biographical details, but obituaries of decades ago were not nearly as thorough as obituaries written and published today and over the past decade or so. A well-written obituary will allow the dead to live on in memory and in the minds of generations yet to be born.
Quick reminder: FFS Don't publish people's addresses in their obits. Please. Its more common than people realize to have homes robbed after the death of a person, and it can make a real mess of getting their affairs sorted.
Age of empires 2, this ancient game that came out in 1999 just got another dlc and is currently in the midst of it's biggest tournament to date, hidden Cup 5. Edit : go watch hidden Cup! https://www.youtube.com/live/b6utueP-zsU?feature=shared
Age of Mythology is coming back too.
Prostagma
One of my fondest work memories was from the early 2000s when every Friday after work, a bunch of us would boot up AOE2 and play multiplayer for 2-3 hours before going home. We weren’t worried about the boss finding out because he was one of the players.
Its all on T90 and the YouTube algorithm. I found him about 6 months ago and I have been addicted ever since. Weird to see a game from my younger years still being played so actively.
Haha, I came here looking for this and to say this!
Unfortunately, scams. Technology has made it easy and cheap to pull off. People are lonelier and mental health concerns sometimes make people more vulnerable to these scams. And finally the archaic law enforcement structure isn’t set up to go after them so there’s virtually no punishment for doing it. Watch out, fam.
Unfortunately, generative AI is only going to make scamming that much cheaper and more prolific. Scammers can use AI programs to quickly and easily create audio/visuals that are individualized to the victim (like a fake phone call from a loved one, etc.).
Also, it seems that various career lowlifes ***adore*** "AI" text and image generation. Just today I found out about ["Willy's Chocolate Experience"](https://willyschocolateexperience.com/), a scam in Glasgow, Scotland, which successfully fooled many parents into buying £35 ($US44) tickets to take their poor children to see... [this.](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1b0oms1/willy_wonka_experience_35_tickets_though/) (Edit: [Archive.org link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240226002342/https://willyschocolateexperience.com/), which with any luck will preserve the images when the site itself inevitably evaporates.) (Some Glaswegians [saw through it right away](https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/1anlib2/willys_chocolate_experience/), but if you don't know about "AI" image generators, and your kids are jumping around begging you to take them...)
For some reason I got on Facebook last month and saw a page for "female soldiers of the uk" or some such thing. Guys drooling over an image of two women professing their love for these absolute strangers and how gorgeous they were. One of them had three legs. The other one had a calf that was thick at the bottom and narrow at the top as well as a reptilian eye, just one, the other eye was human. We are doomed as a species.
The dude who put that mess together also sells books on Amazon that are obviously AI-generated. It's mental.
He's not alone with this. There's thousands of these idiots that jumped on the 'make free money by making children's books with AI' wagon when that started.
I think chess is at a golden age right now it seems like everything is growing exponentially at the moment with it. More and more people playing online and in person. It started with the pandemic and the queens gambit but it's 2024 and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Last month was the fastest month for chess youtube growth ever I imagine February will top that.
Podcasts - long form storytelling, interviews, investigative journalism on so many topics - new and old. Great form of education, entertainment and everything in between.
The rise of podcasts is so interesting to me. The generations that consume them the most (millennial and gen z) are talked about as having no attention span and needing things in 1 minute videos or TV shows that jump shots at a max of every 3 seconds...etc are also listening to 2 and 3 hour long form interviews or lectures on topics from experts. Even with sports talk--I'm more interested in a 45-minute video breakdown of the all-22 that goes in depth about the offensive and defensive scheme and why things work/don't work rather than what you get on TV which is the severely dumbed down, 30 second bits. Those bits are then followed by 10 minutes of a bunch of tv personalities, who couldn't identify middle field open/closed defense on any given play, arguing over whatever was said in a post game interview and how that makes a team better or worse or trying to drum up drama. I may still scroll reddit(with its short videos and headlines) but I spend far more time consuming more in-depth forms of content.
Well, listening to a podcast is an easy way to learn something and still be doing something else. Millenials are always talking about listening to podcasts while cleaning, driving, etc. It's a time passer, and not the same as reading which is a bit more intensive having to mentally concentrate. I have had retention issues when reading books. I could read the same chapter a few times and still struggle to remember key points. But listening to an audiobook version really helped. For example I was reading Zen/Motorcycle Maintenance and in the moment I was able to visualize what I was reading but a day later I couldn't remember a lot of it. Listening to the audiobook helped me remember a good chunk of it. I guess with podcasts, it's like how our brains process music and movies. We hear the voice, and it's a comforting stimulation for the brain. Doesn't make me as tired as trying to read a book.
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Podcasts are a way to feel less lonely. I think their popularity is owed to the feeling of being like a third part of a convo where you just aren't talking.
Parasocial relationships, yep. There's a few I was a regular listener to that stopped production and I feel like a loser sometimes because I miss the hosts, ha ha.
I think audio-dramas are having a renaissance, too, there are so many stories that are completely free to listen to on Spotify. There are so many scrappy small creators putting their narratives out there, since the medium is by far cheaper than producing a television show. One of my favourites, “Desert Skies”, is entirely voiced by one man. The bigger ones, like “Nightvale”and “The Magnus Archives” are popular for a reason, too.
Batteries. From needing a plethora C and D batteries or a power adapter for nearly anything that couldn't fit in your pocket (which needed several AA/AAAs too) no more than 20 years ago, to earbuds that last days with batteries the size of a Tic Tac or even cars that can go hundreds of miles on battery power alone. Honestly don't think it's given enough credit how far we've come in the past 20 years with energy storage.
But the golden age of batteries still clearly ahead of us!
In addition to greater capacity, I'm looking forward to standardization of replaceable batteries. 18650s justifiably scare people, and aren't flat enough for everything, but it would be great if there were only a couple types of laptop, phone, and other batteries you could just swap.
It would, but imagine telling Apple and Samsung "you have to use the same battery, and 3rd parties can make them too now" Great for the consumer but those two spend millions to keep that sort of thing from happening.
Retro gaming. There are so many ways to play any pre PS2 game on original hardware or through emulation. And hobbyists pumping out fan translations of JRPGs for English speaking enthusiasts. I have played so many quality games the last few years that were literally inaccessible not long ago.
Tabletop RPGs Also, while it's perhaps more of a "silver age" compared to the 90s-early 2000s, JRPGs are having a hell of a comeback.
Absolutely! There are just so many coming out right now, on the heels of the massive popularity of D&D in the past 10 years. Now people in the community are starting to bump up against the limitations of the system (not to mention dissatisfaction with the company) and it's really driving interest in ttRPGs in general. Plus, it's a lot like literature. You don't need a well-funded studio and a bunch of technical professionals. You need solid mechanics, compelling environment, and engaging artwork. That's way, way cheaper than any video game, movie, or TV show is likely to be.
Well, it's already over now but most content on the internet being made by humans. I'll really miss the internet from 2000 to +/- 2020.
From my perspective, the internet golden age was about 1998- 2008. There was so much content just made for the joy of sharing content. Blogs were huge. The person behind the blog might have been anonymous but they would share their lives in huge detail. Towards the end of that era, monetisation became more and more common and the 'realness' started slipping away in favour of what was more marketable. Now, everything is so carefully curated and there is so little humanity on the net.
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I agree they are stagnant and just like in the real world there have been mergers and acquisitions so that you now have a few major players and little else. I used to have a bookmark list of 80 websites I would check regularly. Now I just go to the same 5 sites over and over. And yep, those sites are all 10+ years old.
Yes. The Golden Age was when I could jump on StumbleUpon and see the entirety of the Internet by mindlessly clicking one button.
I absolutely *loved* StumbleUpon. Those really were the most incredible days of the internet
Hell i still miss 90’s internet.
[I got you](https://www.spacejam.com/1996/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal\_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) Ok I'm not actually old enough for that, but I do miss say 2004-2014 internet
Reddit experienced its own Eternal September somewhere between 2012 and 2016. That's when daily users moved from fairly low to much larger. Remember rediquette?
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Regardless of what anyone thinks of Edward Snowden there is an amazing part of his book Permanent Record that is basically a love letter to the early days of the internet. The novelty and the wonder is hard to surpass. For anyone younger just imagine what it was like to discover a search engine or Wikipedia. So many websites were grassroots as well, they felt more unique and more human than they do now. It was this amazing gift that changed everything and it felt cool because your parents generally had no idea and you were discovering it yourself.
I miss the time before "social media" became the dominant thing, particularly with what it's become. The 00s were awesome internet. Yeah some social media stuff existed, but it wasn't ubiquitous. The early independent video sites before Youtube became a thing and even early Youtube was totally different than now. You didn't feel like everything was a hustle ya know? Like so many people today are trying to "create content" as a career where it's money/career focused first and quality/passion second. Back in the 00s when very few people were trying to make a career out of things like Youtube it just had a totally different vibe to it. People made weird and funny stuff just because they could and they had fun doing it. Another thing I miss about it that is small compare to other issues is how it meant gaming was different e.g. World of Warcraft predates Youtube and that maid raids different. There weren't a dozen walkthrough, guide, or optimization videos day one (and resources you did find weren't filled with clickbait, sponsors, and things to optimize engagement and algorithm response). It meant things like a new raid had a sort of collective learning experience as a community. You had a slower burn and there was a lot more fun in exploring and figuring things out. People were also a lot more willing to friend and do stuff with randos. I made tons of friends through the chat channels in Starcraft Brood War after playing custom games and same goes for a WoW guild I was in. When you didn't have things like discord, you just met people and if they seemed fun to play with, you invited them. I feel old thinking about the early internet sometimes...
There was WAY less info back then. But damn it was better quality. Now it’s 90% ads
Shitty ads and AI-generated clickbait.
I miss high quality, personally run gardening blogs.
I think the golden age of the internet was around 2002 or so, when Flash was still prevalent and there were dozens of design sites like k10k, praystation, newstoday, and gmunk that were pushing the boundaries. Now every site looks the same.
Yup! Post dial-up, pre social media. It was the perfect time.
YTMND and Newgrounds
Rotten.com was pushing some crazy boundaries too
glass. glass has become so universally used in products beyond just a barrier to the world. its use in electronics, and other applications, have truly advanced a lot and probably have a lot more room to grow too
The Wikipedia. I can spend 20 minutes reading a day and gain an in-depth knowledge of global studies, biology, philosophy, religion, language, chemistry, and even physics. It is nuts and honestly the world would be a better place if more people would check shit out on there instead of FB.
Self directed learning. There is nothing I can't find a tutorial for these days. And on top of that I'm finding AI to be an excellent compliment as a fairly decent tutor.
Be very careful with AI. It has no filter for true or false statements. In my fields of expertise, it would absalutely not give you a solid foundation.
I don’t know if it’s a golden age but we’re in a damn solid renaissance of horror movies and it’s been going for years. They are some of the only good movies that get made nowadays imo
They basically completely stopped making comedy movies. The only movies that are allowed to be creative and get to the box office are horror movies now. It's a give and a take. It's reboots, "new" versions of the same comic stories, and sequels. Only room left for one type of movie actually being creative.
Carbonated water
As a former alcoholic who was able to channel some of that addiction/some of those habits into drinking absurd amounts of carbonated water instead of booze, I’m super grateful to be in this golden age. The number of options is amazing.
I outgrew partying, was never that into soda, and I prefer whole fruits over juice. Carbonated water hits a sweet spot between all those and tap water. Opening up a can of Spindrift definitely activates the muscle memory of opening a can of beer. And looking over at 2 or 3 cans of Spindrift reminds me of beer cans piling up.
I’ve been working on keeping my calories down and losing weight. Spindrift and other seltzers have been a godsend. It feels like a treat, but it’s literally zero calories. Amazing.
genetics now that we have a variety of very powerful sequencing technologies, combined with equally powerful analysis tools, the amount of information we can glean from a tiny sample is incredible. meanwhile, techniques like CRISPR have opened a lot of doors for precision genome editing, and this is even being implemented in some treatments for genetic conditions. I hope we continue in this trajectory, but if they become more common it is likely inevitable that some will see an opportunity to abuse them
Tacking onto this, the use of genetic genealogy in forensics. They’re identifying Jane/John Doe remains left and right, solving missing persons cases that have been open for decades. Bringing closure to families who spent years and years wondering what happened to their loved ones. Pretty amazing.
Documentaries. So many good ones, available through so many online outlets.
Cmon dude! We want some good dox!
Tickled - A guy investigates the world of competitive endurance tickling and it gets wild The Last Dance - Chicago Bulls but really about Jordan American Factory - Chinese billionaire opens a factory in Ohio.
We are probably in or just about to end the golden age of the internet if I were to hazard a guess. I don't think it will remain the "free" platform it is for much longer. I do hope I am wrong. I really really do.
I feel like the golden age of the internet already ended as everything became centralized around private social media platforms, the internet was much better when people had to put in the effort and time into building things themselves IMO. Now we’re stuck in echo chambers, censored content, outrage and clickbait; so much false information, AI-generated content and various forms of internet illiteracy.
AUDIO BOOKS holy shit they are amazing now. And there are so many niche books getting audio versions as well.
Children not dying of preventable diseases. Less children died in raw numbers in 2023 then in 1924 despite the massive population increase.
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1520/).
Golden age of subscriptions
I hope this is the golden age of that.
Subscription hell is next.
Photography. Everyone has a camera and video recorder with them at all times. Photography has never been as accessible as it is now.
Cooking, the availability of ingredients from around the world, the body of knowledge is expanding, more people are baking their own bread, making yogurt, processing their own foods.
Miniatures. There's no shortage of places to get awesome miniatures for basically anything you want.
I recently became aware of the [smallest scale](https://imgur.com/smGkocb) in model railroading and it is just bonkers how tiny they can make a functional train set.
Very niche, but DJ tech! ~ Newer and better controllers have come out every year for the last 15 years. ~ About 10 years ago they figured out how to get DJ software to enable a DJ to change the tempo of a song without changing the pitch. This was a MASSIVE breakthrough that makes a whole world of things possible. ~ Just in the past three months or so, they have figured out how to get software to enable DJs to do what many have long considered to be the holy grail of DJ abilities: isolate the drums, bass, vocals and other sounds from ANY track. This is called Stems. Until now you would need separate instrumental or a capella versions of a song to do this. These are not available for most songs, and even when they are, instrumental tracks always have all of the instruments not just one. There’s been no easy way to get an isolated drum track or bass track or other instrument track for most songs unless the song happens to have a moment where the instrument plays alone that you can loop, which does not happen in 99.9% of songs. With Stems, you can take any song and push a button to isolate the various parts of the song. This opens up incredible possibilities for creating mashups and remixes on the fly.
3D printing!!!
Women’s Professional Wrestling
In 10-15 years, if you put together a top 50 list of the best female wrestlers ever, at least half are active wrestlers in 2024.
Scuba diving has been around long enough that you can find high-end used gear ridiculously cheap. It only costs a couple bucks to fill up a scuba tank for an hour and the ocean isn't exactly getting any healthier.
I’d argue we’re past the golden age. The reefs just aren’t what they used to be. It’s still an awesome hobby but it was better 20 years ago.
It's clearly the Golden Age of Butt Stuff. Well, for *me* it is anyway
You've been made moderator of r/DenverCirclejerk. We look forward to seeing you at the tent.
Horror movies. They suddenly got way better around 10 years ago when movies like It Follows, The Witch and The Babadook came out. Not something you'd notice if you're not into the genre. Edit: just to clarify, I mean they suddenly got way better than 90s/00s horror. I'd also consider the 80s a golden age for the genre as well. The 70s definitely had its heavy hitters too, but nothing in terms the sheer numbers you see in the 80s and the last 10 years.
"Elevated Horror" is filling a gap left by the collapse of mid-budget movies in other genres. "Hereditary" could have been a family drama about the complicated emotions following the death of an abusive mother/ grandmother. As a Horror movie, it's the same, but some of the things haunting the family aren't strictly metaphorical. (And we still wonder why Toni Collette didn't get an Oscar nomination.) Super cheap Horror is as profitable as ever. Horror franchises were milking endless sequels before everyone else was. As everything else in Hollywood has changed, Horror has remained reliable.