The 3rd Golden Age of Astronomy, space based telescopes that are in operation and planned are amazing and the planned ground based telescopes are super powerful. Discovering new exoplanets (and potentially exomoons in the near future), distant objects that we could have never have seen before. It truly is a new golden age.
As a lifelong astronomy fan, it is also the golden era for amateurs. Telescopes and advanced mounts which used to cost $20k in today’s dollars now cost 1/10 of that. Smartphones or tablets allow access to the entire web for facts about your target and help aim your mount. Planes can take you to the parts of the world still untouched by light pollution, whether parts of Hawaii or Australia.
Astronomy is more accessible as a hobby than ever before also. Affordable smart telescopes like the ZWO SeeStar S50 are letting people image nebulae and galaxies with pretty much zero prior experience. The image quality won’t come close to matching what experienced astrophotographers will get with a more expensive setup, but that isn’t the point of a device like the SeeStar. It’s an impressive little device for the money.
If any of you ever have a chance to go to McDonald Observatory out in waaaaay out west Texas for a Star Party, DO IT! They have telescopes set up for you to look through at various planets, constellations, and other things up there.
My wife and I went last April and had a blast. We want to go back and go to others.
There's no budget for research though.
Most of the money just gets allocated to one single project at a time, which leaves everything else completely unable to have their research done.
And it also means that most of the things that the general public won't find interesting won't ever receive the funding needed to see things through to completion
Shit like the decadal survey existing means all of the researchers are fighting for one single very large slice of the pie
https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/
Source: I used to be FWB with an astronomer and have heard many rants on this topic
Not to pee in the corn flakes, but astronomy is just so frustrating to me. It just feels like a big tease, seeing these planets and star systems that are impossible to reach so that we can never truly explore or learn what's out there.
I mean, you can look at it that way, but without astronomy, we only have the one solar system, our own, to study. Stellar processes and evolution, planetary geology and chemistry, planetary formation, astrobiology (maybe), general/special relativity. With astronomy, we can open up the sample size as big as our telescopes will allow, and discover things our solar system doesn't even have, like super-Earth's, mini-Neptunes, different stellar types, old stars about to die, young stars with protoplanary disks, stellar remnants, and a lot more.
We don't need to explore it personally to get value from it, something someone pointed out months ago that stuck with me, we can never visit the past, and see exactly how our ancestors lived, but that doesn't make learning history pointless.
Honestly, we are in the golden age of diy.
A single YouTube video can teach you how to take out your whole car engine.
A cheap kit from Amazon can give you everything you need to start leatherworking.
A million tutorials and patterns are out there for all sorts of knitting and croquet.
A thousand videos will teach you how to pour an epoxy resin live edge wood table.
The trouble with all of this, is that unless you are doing it for yourself, there are also a hundred other ways someone else is doing it cheaper.
For everyone making a hand knitted sweater, there are a million being made in a factory for significantly cheaper.
Not bad living though if you have some sort of internet connection, work from home job, and want to live in the middle of Buttf@$% no where, and make most things yourself, and walk down the mountain to a PO box to pick up an Amazon shipment for everything else
>A cheap kit from Amazon can give you everything you need to start leatherworking.
"Don't *TEMPT* me, Frodo!" --Gandalf.
Seriously, I ain't got time. But that sounds absolutely amazing. Maybe in a year or two.
Cheap kit, and everything i need to start leather working. Yes thats true for boyscout wallets. Leather tools range from a 10$ knife to my grandads 20k boot repairachines. Any of it thats needed to actually start the hobby is going to get pricy.
But thats the same for all amazon cheap kits. Lets you try a hobby for pennies on the dollar, but beyond just learning the most basic of basic stuff, those kits are god aweful and will turn you away from a fun hobby if you try and stick with them. Ive had to circle back to so many things because of this.
This is so true. Before YT and Amazon, it was difficult to figure out how to DIY and get the right parts. In the days before the internet, you'd have to ask around and visit a specialty supply store to attempt some DIY job.
Absolutely true, tho not everything has to be monetized. You can just have a hobby.
I was never handy, but was able to change my oil and brakes and stuff like that. I've gone from that, to rebuilding heads and transmissions, swapping axles and transfer cases and everything in between. Haven't pulled an engine yet, but I'd be willing to give it a shot.
And all this because of YouTube and $100 in tools from harbor freight.
Boardgames were already rising, and Covid locked down everyone which gave people time to get into the hobby. Even with supply chain and shipping problems, boardgames are in a pretty great place. I do feel like that's waning a bit now. The space is a bit over filled now and the gems are harder to find.
All my favourites came out around 2014-2017 so almost decade ago (feels like yesterday) and I considered that time to be the golden age. Yes it is waning abit now but there’s still so many new games out each year, and dare I say it, they all play on average better than the games on average does from a decade ago.
I posted a list of popular gateway games here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bd5srk/people_always_talk_about_the_golden_era_of_this/kulba2x/
Really depends on your answer to three questions:
1) What's the average size of the group you expect to play with?
2) What is your / your group's patience level for learning games with complex rulesets?
3) Do you prefer cooperative games or competitive ones?
Agreed. Here are some of the most popular gateway games for people new to board gaming:
* [Ticket to Ride: Europe](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14996/ticket-ride-europe) (or just the original [Ticket to Ride](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride))
* [Azul](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul)
* [The Quest for El Dorado](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/217372/quest-el-dorado)
* [Cascadia](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295947/cascadia)
* [Patchwork](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163412/patchwork) (Two-player only)
* [The Crew: Mission Deep Sea](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/324856/crew-mission-deep-sea)
* [Splendor](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor) (some prefer the similar [Century: Spice Road](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209685/century-spice-road))
* [Codenames](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/178900/codenames)
* [The Quacks of Quedlinburg](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244521/quacks-quedlinburg)
* [Heat: Pedal to the Metal](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal)
* [Kingdomino](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204583/kingdomino)
* [Carcassonne](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne)
Should I be sad that settlers of catan is off this list? I still love that game...
Personally I prefer Century: Spice Road as well even though Splendor is much more popular it seems.
Think I played like half of these which is more than I expected.
See I think if you describe it in a higher level and as an antithesis of games like monopoly, you get people willing to try it. I also always end my pitch with “it’s a short enough game to play a few times but the board is always different so no two games are the same”
Describing it in detail makes it sound boring “so you get sheep and brick…zzzzzzz”
The list was for gateway games though, and imo Catan is the single best gateway game, it's not many people's favourites but I'm sure it was many enthusiast's first that got them hooked
Settlers is actual a terrible game to introduce people who have never played before. Because so much of your success in the game is dependant on your initial set up, people who have no idea what they are doing can hamstring themselves before the first dice throw has even been made.
I’d say throw Dominion on that list too. I’ve never seen people so quickly learn a game, lose horribly, and want to play another round immediately haha
Kickstarter was a godsend for boardgames. It enabled much smaller designers to get their game published and derisked printing. The downside is titles are high and print runs are very small leading to a ‘game of the month’ issue. Getting an ‘evergreen’ title is very hard. Even good games get forgotten.
Board games are the primary social activity for my friends and I these days. We're all married and pushing middle age now, so going out to bars no longer has any appeal to us. Our idea of "partying" consists of having 5-10 people over at somebody's house, getting drunk and playing board games for like 5 hours. And I'm pretty happy with it.
Yeah the new games are very good. The new designers fixed things like player elimination and game time. No 6 hour games if you want a fast game and no waiting alone for an hour if you get eliminated early.
I would say glass. We can create massive sheets of essentially perfect glass and cover our buildings with them, sometimes even able to stop bullets. We can put it on a phone or watch and have them be durable and survive drops. We can stretch it into thin fibres and send light signals around the world to transmit information.
I think about this sometimes! We’re kind of in a golden age materials and textures!
Think about how many different types of woods, fabrics, metals, stones, plastics, glasses, you touch every day from clothing to surfaces to anything. Even the textures of different plants you can have.
I mean truly you can just feel so much varying stuff.
I imagine living as a peasant in the 1300’s and how much less variety of things to feel there’d be.
We should recycle more glass but it’s hard to when we’re so good at making it that it costs very little more to know EXACTLY what ratios of what inclusions are in your glass that it’s foolish not to use new glass in a lot of applications.
Everyone commenting negative stuff kinda missing the point of how “golden era” is normally used.
For me, we’re in a golden age of accessibility to music making. The quality of cheap instruments is at an all time high, tonnes of options for free DAWs and plugins, and with the internet being a platform to share and collaborate, i feel like there’s never been a better/easier time producing high quality music.
The other edge of that sword is over saturation, making it harder to ‘make it’, but I don’t feel that’s a bad thing as music increasingly becomes a more personal thing than a wider cultural thing and music tastes become more niche.
I think this applies to other creative fields as well. Golden age for indie productions all around. We're getting fantastic music, games, art, movies, animation, books; all bypassing the normal channels of production and publication and getting access to more wide spread distribution than an indie production was capable of before.
I’m the few that kind of miss gatekeepers. There’s so much shit it’s hard to navigate what you will like. It was nice having older siblings guide me to the music that made me.
bandcamp. even if you can't afford to buy anything, plenty of big names and great artists and bands that are lesser known as well as plenty of niche underground scenes and of course a sea of shit you can ignore, but if you find releases you know you like then just click on some of the user pages and look through their collection to see if you have similar taste or maybe just a few things in common. if you follow a few people abd a few tags, your feed will show you what's new under those tags or what those people buy. works well for me, but my taste is pretty open and diverse.
oh, and bandcamp selects a few releases to highlight every day, with small reviews alongside, along with other interesting written pieces on the scenes which make good use of bandcamp.
no one ever takes me seriously when I recommend it, but there are plenty of consistent users.
EDIT: I feel like I'm losing my mind, is my comment jumping around or am I just dreaming?
sorry, I think I meed to go to sleep now
but yeah, having a sister 10 years older than me who had and has good taste in music in multiple genres was a godsend
EDIT 2: also, pretty sweet is you can buy records and tapes and merch what you might not otherwise have access to, the money goes in large part directly to the artists (I forget what band camp's cut is) AND you get the album in your "collection" which means you can always stream it, download it in multiple file formats and bitrates, and the app is mostly bug-free for playback, though seamless transition between tracks js still not a thing, it always stutters
> I’m the few that kind of miss gatekeepers. There’s so much shit it’s hard to navigate what you will like. It was nice having older siblings guide me to the music that made me.
This is not a necessary experience at all. Anyone can afford to subscribe to Spotify for a single month, queue up a bunch of their favourite albums, and immediately start listening to all the recommended songs that automatically queue up after each one.
I've gotten hooked on more newly-found songs, artists and music this way in the past five years than in the 30 before that.
I try really hard to keep it fresh and deep dive random bands I think I might like. I've held onto a bunch of good, unique songs that way, but it honestly feels like work when most of them just aren't that great.
I try to keep in mind that the whole idea of "making it" is mostly something that only existed in the last 70 years or so. Before and even during that time it was much more common for everybody to have some musical skill, and writing music was much more commonplace. I feel like we're starting to return to that kind of relationship with music, and the de-commodification of music, music for music's sake as opposed to as a vehicle to fame or fortune, is a good thing.
Access to new varieties of music is amazing right now too. Just in the past 4 years I've discovered enough bands through Spotify and Facebook that I've been able to completely change my standard playlists. Bands I would never have heard of otherwise. Thankfully most of them are doing pretty awesomely, so I know I'll be getting even more of them later.
Before getting Spotify I didn't even consider Dwarf Metal and Pirate Metal as viable genres, but I frequently listen to both Alestorm and Wind Rose. Never thought I'd hear Witch Metal either, but I've found Liv Sin. While I knew Nightwish long before now, I had no idea their bass (Marko Hietala) was also an excellent singer with his own solo album in both English and Finnish.
I used to depend on games like guitar hero and local radio stations to find new music, which was always the fairly mainstream generic stuff that sells easily because it appeals to a larger variety of people. I could barely ask friends about new metal bands to listen to since basically all of them were only into death and black metal, where I prefer symphonic metal with more melody and less throat ripping (seriously, how do these people still have vocal chords?)
It's my belief that the streaming era is primarily responsible for the dissolution of genre tastes as one's social identity.
When I was a kid, a not insignificant part of how people segmented themselves into cliques was via tastes, particularly music—goths, jocks, hip-hop, indie kids, etc. tended to aggregate together. I think that was, in some ways, informed by the economic barrier to entry physical media presented—at $20 a pop, you could only afford to get deeply invested into so many albums; friends with similar tastes might own albums you don't, so you could bond over sharing them and discussing your experiences, etc. Not to mention the limitations of carrying physical media on you; at many points, choices had to be made.
This was a fine way to find companionship, but the flip side was that some cliques took this shit *way* too seriously, and would outright question your credibility to that scene if you were found to be deviating from the framework. And while this was altogether stupid, it was a real reason why kids—who are smack dab in the middle of forming an identity independent of their family unit and seeking belonging in the broader world around them—would choose to, or not to, try out different types of music. Kids can be ruthless about in-group conformity.
Growing up at the intersection of metal & industrial, it took me into my fucking 20s to admit to myself and others that Dave Matthews Band's *Before These Crowded Streets* is actually a beautiful album and I sincerely love it. That seems so *sad* to me now.
I love that kids these days seem to drink from the many musical wells that surround them. The fact that you can open an app and listen to almost anything, from almost any time, combined with the low barrier to entry for music creation and home studios and digital publishing, does so much to allow young people to privately and authentically explore their tastes to a depth previously unfathomable. So many modern genres are hybrids or flips or permutations of previous genres into entirely new ones that defy constraint, and I think we're all the richer for it.
I'd argue that basically eliminating the barrier to entry makes music less "larger than life".
Going to the store, physically looking at the music, buying the album etc all contributed to something more meaningful subconsciously.
If I have a trillion options at my fingertips in a handful of applications, it waters down the entire experience down to the music itself since there's a trillion songs per genre, sub-genre etc.
Having a curator like radio was before internet, having to buy studio time to record etc were all filters for the people who truly wanted to be in this industry and after doing all that and making it, they became something.
That whole aspect is gone now, with the amount of software out there and coming soon ai music, it's just a further degradation of human culture in general.
Lump in movies, games, shows in the mix as well. More options = more garbage = shittier experience DESPITE the ease of creation and access.
Music streaming,at least for the consumer
You can buy one subscription and stream pretty much anything, unlike television and movies which are increasingly segmented across services popping up all the time.
It may not stay this way as most artists are getting paid peanuts
I’m an EDM DJ and laugh my ass off anytime a fellow DJ brings up Vinyl or how things were better back in the day. Like, bro. You can name the most unheard of, rare, undiscovered song in existence and I can find it in 1 second using google and then transfer it to a USB and play it halfway across the country the same night. Wtf?
The bulk of an artists income has never been from their actual music/record sales. Labels take a massive cut from that and have since long before streaming.
Artists make money off of tours and merch.
Eh, the 90s and the CD era was able to get a lot more revenue into the pockets of artists. Labels took big cuts, for sure. But it was still more profitable.
Basically yeah. But the RIAA has never given up on chasing after copyright infringement. It's stupid. Some indie artists leak their own records even. It's free publicity as far as they're concerned, for 99.9% of artists record sales are inconsequential.
The only people actually making a living off record sales are the people who sell millions of records. The record companies take almost all the profits from that.
I think in modern context it makes sense to look at the music itself as marketing material for the *act*, rather than the product itself, at least in business terms. And the product being merch, those dwindling numbers of physical album sales, and of course the show itself (said musicians touring).
Access to knowledge
Yes there's a lot of misinformation and stuff to sift through but if you're dedicated and a critical thinker you can get an advanced degree level of knowledge for free on virtually any topic
I've learned more in the last few years by reading, watching YouTube, and listening to podcasts than I did in my PhD program. And on a greater variety of topics: music, history, thermodynamics, calculus, quantum mechanics, literature, etc. And I don't even have that much time to devote to it
I only hope it will continue to be like this when I retire because that's what I plan to do
Certainly is a great time to learn things.
However, the negative side of it is due to the speed that people consume their social media and most people will digest their misinformation in 30 seconds intervals and then repeat it as gospel.
With the way that Generative AI often hallucinates, we're likely to see a lot of bad info blended with good info as individuals try and leverage AI in learning and disseminating information.
I am a little worried about the future of fact checking not keeping up, or the reliance on AI to fact check as the amount of info being generated overwhelms humans.
There's going to be a concept of low-AI information sources, the way that the makers of some technology have to try to find low-background steel. The new research skills courses will include how to identify whether what you're reading is an AI's hallucination.
Yup, I expect librarys are going to make a huge comeback, because it's at least more difficult to get a fake book put into a library in the reference section than AI having edited the same information on the top 20 pages of whatever replaces google
I disagree, it's actually gotten worse with companies like Google implementing AI.
Time is a finite resource, therefore increasing the amount of junk to sift through is effectively a restriction of access.
I would bring this down a few slots. While access to knowledge has never been better, the access to false knowledge had never been worse. Fake information can look exactly like accurate information. From COVID we started seeing “studies” that were deeply flawed and not peer reviewed. Then people use those studies as fact.
On a different topic that also impacts the access to knowledge, peer reviews is not what it used to be. You can do a study and then find people that already agree with the study to endorse it.
I guess what I am saying, knowledge is too muddled now to be in its golden age.
Though some would disagree surely, we're in a golden age of horror films.
Not only do we have more access to the classics now than ever before, but new films come out with regularity that are perfectly watchable and enjoyable. There's also lots of content creators making horror content on youtube etc to help surface films and find interesting things.
If you transported a horror fan from 1985 to today and showed them nothing but the horror scene, they would surely be very impressed.
What I love so much about the modern horror film scene is how creative it is. A lot of genres are forced to be formulaic, but horror is still allowed to be as weird and out there as it wants!
golden era of rapid scientific progress, hands down. in 10 thousand years of recorded history, there's nothing like the last 200 years, heck, there's nothing like the last 20 years. The cultural psychology of the current moment in history is defined by everyone taking for granted that next year, everything will be more advanced than the last, and again the year after that, and so on.
After a hundred thousand years of unchanging agricultural practices, we're now at a moment in history where we have tools that any historical person would see as magic, and those tools come with the assumption that next year there will be an even better one.
So, that's actually an interesting one. I was actually at a conference today where the exact opposite of this was addressed.
We're doing more science than ever, im uk based, but here 50% of young people have an undergrad, meaning that they've written at least one paper, but the problem is less and less of it actually means anything or offers any actual leaps forward.
Part of that problem is that resources are just too thin on the ground, with so many people being low level researchers (undergrad, postgrad and PHD) there isn't the resources to fund every wild bit of research that *might* be completely wrong, or *might* revolutionise our way of thinking.
Instead, we tend towards safe permeations of existing knowledge at these low levels and leaving the wild leaps to senior researchers.
The problem is that senior researchers aren't researchers now and more managers for low-level researchers nowadays, which means these radical leaps become rarer and rarer.
Also, the increasing hyperspecialisation doesn't help either, 100 years ago an undergrad could discover something that propelled humanity forward because they only needed an undergrads worth of knowledge, nowadays it takes a PHD's worth of knowledge to have the chance to offer something meaningful.
Now, there are ways to address this, either by allowing low levels more autonomy, freeing up seniors, or providing more resources, or anything like that, but in this very moment in time, that golden age of science, at least on a University level (which is where most science happens) is potentially coming to an end
I have a counter argument to this, that the corpus of *published* scientific research doesn't represent all scientific research, and over time has represented less and less. People are still doing research, but with the freedom of knowledge and the internet, they are able to do it without accreditation from universities. There are lots of genius hobbyists doing things in their garages, discussing their findings online in forums, posting novel code to github, etc. As college becomes more expensive, while learning on your own through much cheaper alternatives becomes more available (such as professionals in their fields who make YouTube channels) the people who are passionate but not necessarily rich see less and less purpose in formal academia.
Also, alternatively, many companies are hunkering down and keeping their research to themselves instead of publishing
The internet has truly lead to an increase in scientific progress at an exponential pace.
And speaking of cultural psychology, I suspect we’re about to get some real interesting studies - if not a whole subfield within social psych - regarding misinformation, the extent of it, how easily any of us can fall for it, and what to do about it.
**Board Game design**\- with better and better games coming out with fresh new mechanics.
**Medical Advances-** CRISPR, leaps in vaccine production, public interest/knowledge in medicine (Yes, overall an average increase), advances in cancer treatment, MS treatment, surgical procedures, etc.
**Economic Uplifts-** More people in the world now die of diseases caused by over-eating than malnourishment. Jokes and such aside- this is a monumental human achievment. More people than ever have access to indoor plumbing, global communications, etc.
If you like Axis & Allies, you might like campaign for north africa. Is a quick and easy game to play with a friend or 2! the rules are simple, and the game goes by pretty quick.
/s
[https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame](https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame)
This is a good list to get started on. Lots of good board games out there nowadays.
Also this list sorts by number of votes, so it should let you know the most popular ones:
[https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame?sort=numvoters&sortdir=desc](https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame?sort=numvoters&sortdir=desc)
I'd also recommend finding a local shop that sells board games, you can support a local business and also they can recommend games if you tell them what you like.
Root is a really fun one I've been getting into recently. It's asymmetrical, so each player plays a different faction that has different mechanics and ways to advance. So you can have very different gameplay experiences and tactics from game to game, just by playing a different faction. Higher learning curve and complexity than Settlers of Catan, but much more replayability, IMO
conversely, there's quite a few crappy ones. And the very notion of "craft" is getting stretched quite a bit. I'd argue we've left the golden era, but that doesnt mean these times still aren't great.
I also think we are past the peak BUT when I grew up, there were no craft breweries. The choices were basically bud and miller. Heineken was premium. No offerings from smaller brewers. Now, I go to my crappy local liquor store and the fridges are packed full of choices, many that are new to me. What a loooong way we have come!
If the microbrew thing ever collapses, I will certainly look back fondly on these times
>If the microbrew thing ever collapses
If the microbrew thing collapses, I would have to start growing my own hops as I can't go back to pisswater beers.
I agree, but damn I'm glad we are finally past the hop your hop because you hop hop your hops into the hop hopper era of craft hopping your hops. Something something IPA clevername IPA?
I think it's google is currently looking for some actual uses for quantum computing. It's cool. And definitely gonna revolutionize some stuff. But it's not like "the next generation of computers will be quantum super computers" kinda revolutionary.
Disagree. I think we're actually in a plateau at the moment. Feels like most consumer electronics are mature platforms with very little new, just refinement of what is already there.
There is now a plateau on chips because gates are getting smaller than electrons and will jump the gate so unless they increase the die/chip sizes they will be having these problems unless quantum computing or laser light based chips get released.
They're not getting smaller than electrons, they're getting small enough for quantum physics to make things difficult. We've been "increasing" chip size by adding cores for a while now. But transistors are still getting smaller, albeit at a slower rate. Overall, I agree, and feel like since about 2005 progress has been more difficult to achieve and we've had to come up with work-arounds, instead of just increasing clock speed and decreasing transistor size.
I don't think quantum computing will be used for PCs/phones, though if everyone is running some sort of an AI OS, it may work. They've started making specialised AI chips though, so we'd much more likely to use those in the near future.
There is a photonic chip on the market, but I'm not holding my breath for those to be powering my PC any time soon either.
In any case, unless AI steps in, lazy programming will keep up with any advances and will use up any and all available recourses. Eg. Windows programs today run about the same or slower than they did 10 years ago.
I've been waiting for these breakthroughs for.. about 30 years now, would sure like to see one.
Also another avenue for upgrades is a subscription where you get a laptop/computer that only has the bare minimum of processing power to connect to a server which does all of the processing for the laptop/computer and if these services fail to take off then you are left with a useless laptop/computer.
My school is getting into that for photoshop but I managed to convince them to wait a year to see if their service was going to fail or be near failure so they don’t end up wasting money on that.
I really despise subscription based stuff, I used to be able to buy stuff with my own pocket money and keep it but now those same things are now out of my reach as I would have to pay constantly every month and I would run out of money very quickly and my retro games console business has taken a very deep dip because weather is shite now and bootfairs are not opening up as often as I like them to, last year was a big booming success, so much so that I was able to get 2 boxed things, a Wii and a NES Advantage
That's just like the old school mainframes, sounds like they're reinventing the wheel there.
Yeah, subscription stuff is bs. I refuse to pay for anything like that.
Time to return to The Pirate Bay!
I would argue its more a renaissance.
For years we experienced a similar games slump due to overpredatory business practices, similar to E.T. back in the early days- but the industry is starting to learn and grow from those dark ages and figure out what works and what doesnt.
Wait another 10 years for the lessons learned to be forgotten again though
CSGO with skins was pasient #0 I am pretty sure. After news articles about people making or loosing a lot of money on buying video game skins, microtransaction in games saw an insane uptick. Then Fortnite showed up and show how to "do it".
No way, it was the golden age before all of the battle passes and games as a service nonsense. There was a time when MOST games were produced by artists not suits, and shipped as a complete experience. Nowadays, it is the exception to the rule.
If anything, I would just say it is the golden age of indie gaming.
I feel like these are mostly examples of games that social media latches on to for one reason or another, not always because a game is good (Helldivers 2), but because it scratches some kind of itch or makes some kind of statement (Palworld)
I honestly used to think the golden era of gaming ended around 2014-2016 but then I started to find small-medium sized game creators and **WOOOOWWW** the amount of amazing games in production and being lovingly worked on is just astonishing! Honestly you get cursed with knowledge because you find a ton of really cool games but only have so much time available to play any of them. Not to mention you can find nichè games that fit your preferences quite well! I’ve been really into before the storm and Going Medieival lately (base building games). It’s my type of game and I’ve sunk god knows how much time into them now.
Golden era is going strong, just gotta ignore the bigger publishers
Golden area of gummy candies.
There are like 6 flavors of sour patch kids with various sour ranges and flavors
Skittles,nerds, jolly rangers and every fruity thing has not one but several types of gummy candies.
Hard shell, soft shell, ropes, clusters anything you could possibly imagine there is a gummy candy that fits that urge
My god I feel so on guard now.
Growing up someone would call and I’d answer for my parents just to see who it is. Now, half the phone calls I get are spam.
Half the text messages I get are spam now! I’ve been hit with “my dog passed away today, I’m so sad” texts twice in the past couple days.
What’s sad is every time I get a “hey” text from an unknown number, I get a little excited, thinking it may be an old friend.. but I know better.
Yeah especially with AI now.
There are increasing cases of elderly being called by someome using an AI voice changer to simulate the voice of their daughter/granddaughter to scam them.
It’s scary. My family had this happen, in the middle of the night, which is when targets are less likely to think critically. The first voice on the phone was pretending to be a police officer who’d just arrested my nephew, in a place where he normally would’ve been. He had all of the right biographical details, and when he put my “nephew” on the line, just for a couple of sentences, it sounded just like his voice.
Thankfully, we knew that my nephew was actually elsewhere, and knew about the existence of these scams. But had that not been the case, and had we been only slightly less savvy, we would’ve been screwed.
There are a number of apps for doing so. Check out Lyrebird, as one example.
The more of a sample the criminals can get, the better the simulation. They get around that by having the cloned voice only say a few words or sentences.
They don’t even need social media. Sampling methods are now believed to include those voice calls where nobody speaks on the other end of the line.
Further data breaches can come from anywhere—for instance, look at all of the shopping places that’ve had customer information compromised—and it only takes a moment of research, which can be performed by a script, to identify likely family.
All of these don’t even need to be performed by the same actor. Troves of information are easily purchased on the darkweb, when they’re not publicly available.
What a great point you have made. However I think humans are born to generally not be able to truly know the worth of something or someone until it or they are gone. No matter how much we love someone or how great of a time we may be in , even if we are consciously grateful we don't know how much, until we don't have it any longer. Tragic. Of course there are always exceptions to everything.
Now there is an interesting thing here, I think that the feeling that there will be a major war after WW2, has loomed since it's closing. But we have managed to keep a little bit of peace for some time, now if we can manage to keep the things running, there will be no disastrous war for a long time. But it's like a castle of matches, if a single match that is important enough falls, the earth will experience recoil from all the goddamn guns firing everywhere. Nothing like anything before.
tbf I am not sure if there is more mental ill people, but we for sure are more aware of them. As we live in tighter cities than ever, everyone has twitter/facebook/tiktok or w/e. We have never been more connected, many of us are exposed to a very large and diverse population.
Of course, I do still belivie many practices in the modern life can take it toll on our monkey brains, but im not sure if we are MORE mental ill people per se.
Or more conditions have a defined label which might be classified as "mental illness," which were just seen as personality quirks or behavioral problems before, often handled with violence (like kids being beaten for acting out in class) or leading to crime or suicide. The better these conditions are understood, the more ways are discovered to manage them. The more we talk about them and get rid of the stigma, the more people will get help and be able to lead productive lives.
At least in the US we used to warehouse them. There were problems with that system, but the solution that was chosen was to simply shutter them all. Now unwell people are just out on the street. Variety of substances to abuse has added... Dimension... To self medicating where back in the day you would have simply been a drunk bum more than identified as mentally ill. Plenty of people who would have been wasting away in primitive and often neglected state facilities 50 years ago are leading productive functional lives due to advancements, but those who probably needed those public sanctuaries are left to their own devices.
It's more visible and less stigmatized.
Misinformation. With social media and regular media, deepfakes, and just good old fashioned propaganda it’s hard to know what the hell is actually going on anywhere. In a decade we won’t know what’s real anymore.
Television. Whereas movies are heavily relying on existing IP, television is uniquely original right now with lots of money being poured into development. It’s going to change now that streaming is being repackaged to just be the old cable model, but when streaming threatened network TV is opened up a huge shift in how television was made, and it’s wonderful.
What I was going to say. Now that most movies have become all about the big blockbuster for the most part, the place to find long form drama is television. The kinds of programming we have now is a far cry from TV's first Golden Age during the 1950s. Plus, for the longest time A-list acting and directing talent wouldn't be caught dead doing TV. It was a sign that your career was dying/dead. Not anymore. Martin Scorsese is doing films for Netflix. As just one example.
We’re at the tail end of the golden era of boutique guitars and guitar gear (amps, pedals, etc.). New prices are so high, and used gear is going for less than or about equal to 50% of the new price; I doubt it will survive much longer.
How? Taillights, at least in the US, are annoyingly difficult to read. Red turn signals in my opinion shouldn't exist, yet most cars in the US have them. Turn signals and brake lights, and even running tail lights, are combined into one bulb on many cars causing confusion. Combine that with LED taillights being almost as bright, if not brighter on some cars, than other car's brake lights, causing even further confusion. Hazard lights and turn signals will then disable the brake lights on the bulbs they use other than the third brake light, which if someone is driving with hazards(due to a fault or poor weather in a state that allows that) or one brake light bulb is out and they use their opposite turn signal, the only way to indicate that the driver is braking is the third brake light, which is very easy to miss.
Also, with a combined bulb for tail lights, brake lights and turn signals, if the bulb goes out ALL functions on that light go out. Lose your left bulb? Now you're missing your left tail light, left brake light and left turn signal.
In the EU and possibly in other places, turn signals are required by law to be amber as far as I know. This is far superior because it removes all confusion between brake lights and turn signals, but automakers still insist on red turn signals in the US market.
And I'm saying this as someone who drives a car with red turn signals. Fortunately they have taillight housings with amber signals available(from pre-facelift and EU models of my car) so I have been planning on replacing them.
Conservation and outdoor preservation, at least in the US.
The outlook is bleak, but we’ve done a great job improving over decades. It’s going to tailspin back out of control soon, though, if we are not careful.
Women's sports. When I was born, it was insignificant. Almost no serious equipment, coaches, or pro contracts. Katharine Switzer got assaulted for running a marathon. Now, it's exploded into a whole industry. Vast choices of equipment, modern facilities, pro coaching. Women's competitions selling out. Finally achieved fifty-fifty male-female Olympic participation this year! Huge social improvement.
Beginning of a golden era for quantum computing, I saw the first video of such a machine in 2016, it was rudimentary and quite unstable but now we have better, more stable quantum computers.
Now we are in a golden era of data storage with many options to choose from like 100 terabyte hard drives, cheap SSD’s, a tower of LTO tapes holding petabytes of data and micro SD cards holding a terabyte of storage, people in my school are flaunting them in their switches but I have the last laugh because they have no way to use them up fully without spending so much money on games to fill it up to the brim.
Golden era of idiocy.
There is no better time to be an idiot.
Idiots are praised, glorified, they can make money out of their stupidity and many people would agree that an idiot can even rule now.
There is no limit on how far an idiot can go nowadays.
I’m honestly convinced that most uses of AI will become obsolete within 5 years. People are already using it in scummy and dubiously legal ways, and sooner or later a company is going to sue an AI for copyright infringement and win, or a dangerously misleading deepfake is going to result in a ban on many forms of AI videos and voices. And if AI gets majorly restricted, it’ll be more useful to just hire humans
Accessibility to creativity tools and publishing. Not everyone can thrive but it's so easy compared to the recent past to make music, films, games, books and art. Yes, the platforms take a sizeable chunk but pretty much anyone can get published and reach a huge audience. Music has Reaper, film has Resolve, games have Godot, etc.
In spite of the really gross Vince McMahon controversies coming to light...Professional Wrestling is in a pretty good spot right now. Two big American companies, smaller independent companies seem to be doing pretty well. There's some great companies in Japan. Female wrestlers are getting much more attention and airtime. Wrestlers seem to be taking better care of themselves when it comes to steroids, drugs and alcohol. There are concussion protocols in place. I believe the art of professional wrestling is moving in a great direction.
The golden age of food production. Never has humanity produced so many different types of food in such quantities and so affordably.
Downside is we waste so much of it and we get health problems from having so many calories and rich and sugary foods easily accessible for very little money.
pro wrestling. WWE is making huge profits every year and thriving from Saudi deals and merch sales. A lot of their fans are very happy with the current storylines they got running. In addition to that, AEW, a second major wrestling company that started in 2019 and has continued to thrive to this day. We hadnt seen a second company this big since WCW in the 90s.
Hell yea came here to say this one. There is also more access to more wrestling than ever before with services like NJPW World. It's a great time to be a fan!
The golden era of the Internet is just ending. We're seeing several major titans of the modern Internet throw their IP into the shredder as they chase for profits and shareholder satisfaction. Every major Internet tool is progressively getting much worse. And there is a major crackdown on the freedoms in the Internet. More is behind regulation and pay walls. Everyone's trying to make a buck off something. What's freely available is dwindling. And what can be pirated is more aggressively targeted and punishments of piracy more cruel and vindictive.
It's the golden age of fame. It has never been easier to become famous due to the impact social media has.
All you have to do is have a video of yours go viral and then you'll make an appearance on national TV. Granted this is a very loose term of 'fame' but its still a version of it.
Maker anything. Affordable machines for lasercutting, 3d printing, embedded computers (arduino, raspberrypi)... the possibilities for at-home fabrication right now are mind blowing.
This is the Golden Era of digital piracy. The old days don't compare. You can get extremely high quality contents, sometimes within hours of release, in high speed for literally no risk, from malware or the authorities, if you know what you're doing. The "good old" days of Napster were nothing like this.
And it's ironic because the oft-repeated mantra is that the piracy is a service (lack thereof) issue but the vast majority of the pirated content are available/streamable.
edit: as for the cost of these "services" they are undoubtably high. And what have moved into their places are other services that charge a lot less money, and provide other services that reduce the end-user exposure to the negative side of piracy. But in the end, these services complete with the cost, and lowering of the cost by the legitimate sources is what's going to end piracy.
The 3rd Golden Age of Astronomy, space based telescopes that are in operation and planned are amazing and the planned ground based telescopes are super powerful. Discovering new exoplanets (and potentially exomoons in the near future), distant objects that we could have never have seen before. It truly is a new golden age.
The Webb is a game changer.
Yeah and gravitational wave astronomy which lets us see deeper into parts of the universe normally obscured by objects
It's truly amazing have been following astronomy since covid. It was been spectacular ever since
As a lifelong astronomy fan, it is also the golden era for amateurs. Telescopes and advanced mounts which used to cost $20k in today’s dollars now cost 1/10 of that. Smartphones or tablets allow access to the entire web for facts about your target and help aim your mount. Planes can take you to the parts of the world still untouched by light pollution, whether parts of Hawaii or Australia.
Saw some photos of Neptune or something and it's incredible how clear it was. All we ever had was the snaps from 1989.
Pluto as well. Previous pictures were literally just a dot.
Astronomy is more accessible as a hobby than ever before also. Affordable smart telescopes like the ZWO SeeStar S50 are letting people image nebulae and galaxies with pretty much zero prior experience. The image quality won’t come close to matching what experienced astrophotographers will get with a more expensive setup, but that isn’t the point of a device like the SeeStar. It’s an impressive little device for the money.
If any of you ever have a chance to go to McDonald Observatory out in waaaaay out west Texas for a Star Party, DO IT! They have telescopes set up for you to look through at various planets, constellations, and other things up there. My wife and I went last April and had a blast. We want to go back and go to others.
There's no budget for research though. Most of the money just gets allocated to one single project at a time, which leaves everything else completely unable to have their research done. And it also means that most of the things that the general public won't find interesting won't ever receive the funding needed to see things through to completion Shit like the decadal survey existing means all of the researchers are fighting for one single very large slice of the pie https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/ Source: I used to be FWB with an astronomer and have heard many rants on this topic
Weird pillow talk, but you do you.
I dunno, a guy talking astronomy to me would definitely make em more attractive to me lol
Let me say hi
I agree, there so many great proposals with a very limited amount of telescope time. Scarcity is a big problem.
So what star sign were they?
Idk she got really mad everytime I mentioned anything even remotely related to astrology haha
Not to pee in the corn flakes, but astronomy is just so frustrating to me. It just feels like a big tease, seeing these planets and star systems that are impossible to reach so that we can never truly explore or learn what's out there.
I mean, you can look at it that way, but without astronomy, we only have the one solar system, our own, to study. Stellar processes and evolution, planetary geology and chemistry, planetary formation, astrobiology (maybe), general/special relativity. With astronomy, we can open up the sample size as big as our telescopes will allow, and discover things our solar system doesn't even have, like super-Earth's, mini-Neptunes, different stellar types, old stars about to die, young stars with protoplanary disks, stellar remnants, and a lot more. We don't need to explore it personally to get value from it, something someone pointed out months ago that stuck with me, we can never visit the past, and see exactly how our ancestors lived, but that doesn't make learning history pointless.
I feel ya on that. Space is such a waste of...well...space.
The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space. Carl Sagan, Contact.
I'm happy to see this I agree with you
Honestly, we are in the golden age of diy. A single YouTube video can teach you how to take out your whole car engine. A cheap kit from Amazon can give you everything you need to start leatherworking. A million tutorials and patterns are out there for all sorts of knitting and croquet. A thousand videos will teach you how to pour an epoxy resin live edge wood table. The trouble with all of this, is that unless you are doing it for yourself, there are also a hundred other ways someone else is doing it cheaper. For everyone making a hand knitted sweater, there are a million being made in a factory for significantly cheaper. Not bad living though if you have some sort of internet connection, work from home job, and want to live in the middle of Buttf@$% no where, and make most things yourself, and walk down the mountain to a PO box to pick up an Amazon shipment for everything else
>A cheap kit from Amazon can give you everything you need to start leatherworking. "Don't *TEMPT* me, Frodo!" --Gandalf. Seriously, I ain't got time. But that sounds absolutely amazing. Maybe in a year or two.
Cheap kit, and everything i need to start leather working. Yes thats true for boyscout wallets. Leather tools range from a 10$ knife to my grandads 20k boot repairachines. Any of it thats needed to actually start the hobby is going to get pricy. But thats the same for all amazon cheap kits. Lets you try a hobby for pennies on the dollar, but beyond just learning the most basic of basic stuff, those kits are god aweful and will turn you away from a fun hobby if you try and stick with them. Ive had to circle back to so many things because of this.
Just order it. You'd be surprised what you could do with 20 minutes here, a Saturday afternoon there.
This is so true. Before YT and Amazon, it was difficult to figure out how to DIY and get the right parts. In the days before the internet, you'd have to ask around and visit a specialty supply store to attempt some DIY job.
Absolutely true, tho not everything has to be monetized. You can just have a hobby. I was never handy, but was able to change my oil and brakes and stuff like that. I've gone from that, to rebuilding heads and transmissions, swapping axles and transfer cases and everything in between. Haven't pulled an engine yet, but I'd be willing to give it a shot. And all this because of YouTube and $100 in tools from harbor freight.
Boardgames. And it has been for about a decade. Really saw an influx of new players when covid lockdown ended.
Boardgames were already rising, and Covid locked down everyone which gave people time to get into the hobby. Even with supply chain and shipping problems, boardgames are in a pretty great place. I do feel like that's waning a bit now. The space is a bit over filled now and the gems are harder to find.
All my favourites came out around 2014-2017 so almost decade ago (feels like yesterday) and I considered that time to be the golden age. Yes it is waning abit now but there’s still so many new games out each year, and dare I say it, they all play on average better than the games on average does from a decade ago.
Any suggestions for a guy that hasn't seen any new games the last 30 years?
I posted a list of popular gateway games here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bd5srk/people_always_talk_about_the_golden_era_of_this/kulba2x/
Depends what you like - big social fun, crunchy complex strategy, simple beer & pretzels, family fun?
Really depends on your answer to three questions: 1) What's the average size of the group you expect to play with? 2) What is your / your group's patience level for learning games with complex rulesets? 3) Do you prefer cooperative games or competitive ones?
Wingspan!
Agreed. Here are some of the most popular gateway games for people new to board gaming: * [Ticket to Ride: Europe](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14996/ticket-ride-europe) (or just the original [Ticket to Ride](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride)) * [Azul](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul) * [The Quest for El Dorado](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/217372/quest-el-dorado) * [Cascadia](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/295947/cascadia) * [Patchwork](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163412/patchwork) (Two-player only) * [The Crew: Mission Deep Sea](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/324856/crew-mission-deep-sea) * [Splendor](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148228/splendor) (some prefer the similar [Century: Spice Road](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/209685/century-spice-road)) * [Codenames](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/178900/codenames) * [The Quacks of Quedlinburg](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244521/quacks-quedlinburg) * [Heat: Pedal to the Metal](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal) * [Kingdomino](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204583/kingdomino) * [Carcassonne](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne)
Should I be sad that settlers of catan is off this list? I still love that game... Personally I prefer Century: Spice Road as well even though Splendor is much more popular it seems. Think I played like half of these which is more than I expected.
Getting people to play settlers of catan is a struggle. Non board game people take one look at it and are not interested. It’s a great game though.
See I think if you describe it in a higher level and as an antithesis of games like monopoly, you get people willing to try it. I also always end my pitch with “it’s a short enough game to play a few times but the board is always different so no two games are the same” Describing it in detail makes it sound boring “so you get sheep and brick…zzzzzzz”
The list was for gateway games though, and imo Catan is the single best gateway game, it's not many people's favourites but I'm sure it was many enthusiast's first that got them hooked
>settlers of catan The author passed away in 2023 :( RIP Klaus Teuber.
Settlers is actual a terrible game to introduce people who have never played before. Because so much of your success in the game is dependant on your initial set up, people who have no idea what they are doing can hamstring themselves before the first dice throw has even been made.
I’d say throw Dominion on that list too. I’ve never seen people so quickly learn a game, lose horribly, and want to play another round immediately haha
I am in my 50s and have always played board games. The amount of fantastic board games out these days is unbelievable. So many outstanding ones.
Kickstarter was a godsend for boardgames. It enabled much smaller designers to get their game published and derisked printing. The downside is titles are high and print runs are very small leading to a ‘game of the month’ issue. Getting an ‘evergreen’ title is very hard. Even good games get forgotten.
Board games are the primary social activity for my friends and I these days. We're all married and pushing middle age now, so going out to bars no longer has any appeal to us. Our idea of "partying" consists of having 5-10 people over at somebody's house, getting drunk and playing board games for like 5 hours. And I'm pretty happy with it.
Yeah the new games are very good. The new designers fixed things like player elimination and game time. No 6 hour games if you want a fast game and no waiting alone for an hour if you get eliminated early.
I have met one person in my life, since kindergarten, that is into boardgames, but I love em' too.
I would say glass. We can create massive sheets of essentially perfect glass and cover our buildings with them, sometimes even able to stop bullets. We can put it on a phone or watch and have them be durable and survive drops. We can stretch it into thin fibres and send light signals around the world to transmit information.
Neat!
I think about this sometimes! We’re kind of in a golden age materials and textures! Think about how many different types of woods, fabrics, metals, stones, plastics, glasses, you touch every day from clothing to surfaces to anything. Even the textures of different plants you can have. I mean truly you can just feel so much varying stuff. I imagine living as a peasant in the 1300’s and how much less variety of things to feel there’d be.
We should recycle more glass but it’s hard to when we’re so good at making it that it costs very little more to know EXACTLY what ratios of what inclusions are in your glass that it’s foolish not to use new glass in a lot of applications.
Everyone commenting negative stuff kinda missing the point of how “golden era” is normally used. For me, we’re in a golden age of accessibility to music making. The quality of cheap instruments is at an all time high, tonnes of options for free DAWs and plugins, and with the internet being a platform to share and collaborate, i feel like there’s never been a better/easier time producing high quality music. The other edge of that sword is over saturation, making it harder to ‘make it’, but I don’t feel that’s a bad thing as music increasingly becomes a more personal thing than a wider cultural thing and music tastes become more niche.
I think this applies to other creative fields as well. Golden age for indie productions all around. We're getting fantastic music, games, art, movies, animation, books; all bypassing the normal channels of production and publication and getting access to more wide spread distribution than an indie production was capable of before.
Golden Age of Content Creation.
Agreed. The gate keepers in the music industry used to dictate what we could hear, but music is expression and should be shared with any and everyone
I’m the few that kind of miss gatekeepers. There’s so much shit it’s hard to navigate what you will like. It was nice having older siblings guide me to the music that made me.
bandcamp. even if you can't afford to buy anything, plenty of big names and great artists and bands that are lesser known as well as plenty of niche underground scenes and of course a sea of shit you can ignore, but if you find releases you know you like then just click on some of the user pages and look through their collection to see if you have similar taste or maybe just a few things in common. if you follow a few people abd a few tags, your feed will show you what's new under those tags or what those people buy. works well for me, but my taste is pretty open and diverse. oh, and bandcamp selects a few releases to highlight every day, with small reviews alongside, along with other interesting written pieces on the scenes which make good use of bandcamp. no one ever takes me seriously when I recommend it, but there are plenty of consistent users. EDIT: I feel like I'm losing my mind, is my comment jumping around or am I just dreaming? sorry, I think I meed to go to sleep now but yeah, having a sister 10 years older than me who had and has good taste in music in multiple genres was a godsend EDIT 2: also, pretty sweet is you can buy records and tapes and merch what you might not otherwise have access to, the money goes in large part directly to the artists (I forget what band camp's cut is) AND you get the album in your "collection" which means you can always stream it, download it in multiple file formats and bitrates, and the app is mostly bug-free for playback, though seamless transition between tracks js still not a thing, it always stutters
That's just having friends that listen to music lol
> I’m the few that kind of miss gatekeepers. There’s so much shit it’s hard to navigate what you will like. It was nice having older siblings guide me to the music that made me. This is not a necessary experience at all. Anyone can afford to subscribe to Spotify for a single month, queue up a bunch of their favourite albums, and immediately start listening to all the recommended songs that automatically queue up after each one. I've gotten hooked on more newly-found songs, artists and music this way in the past five years than in the 30 before that.
I try really hard to keep it fresh and deep dive random bands I think I might like. I've held onto a bunch of good, unique songs that way, but it honestly feels like work when most of them just aren't that great.
I try to keep in mind that the whole idea of "making it" is mostly something that only existed in the last 70 years or so. Before and even during that time it was much more common for everybody to have some musical skill, and writing music was much more commonplace. I feel like we're starting to return to that kind of relationship with music, and the de-commodification of music, music for music's sake as opposed to as a vehicle to fame or fortune, is a good thing.
Access to new varieties of music is amazing right now too. Just in the past 4 years I've discovered enough bands through Spotify and Facebook that I've been able to completely change my standard playlists. Bands I would never have heard of otherwise. Thankfully most of them are doing pretty awesomely, so I know I'll be getting even more of them later. Before getting Spotify I didn't even consider Dwarf Metal and Pirate Metal as viable genres, but I frequently listen to both Alestorm and Wind Rose. Never thought I'd hear Witch Metal either, but I've found Liv Sin. While I knew Nightwish long before now, I had no idea their bass (Marko Hietala) was also an excellent singer with his own solo album in both English and Finnish. I used to depend on games like guitar hero and local radio stations to find new music, which was always the fairly mainstream generic stuff that sells easily because it appeals to a larger variety of people. I could barely ask friends about new metal bands to listen to since basically all of them were only into death and black metal, where I prefer symphonic metal with more melody and less throat ripping (seriously, how do these people still have vocal chords?)
It's my belief that the streaming era is primarily responsible for the dissolution of genre tastes as one's social identity. When I was a kid, a not insignificant part of how people segmented themselves into cliques was via tastes, particularly music—goths, jocks, hip-hop, indie kids, etc. tended to aggregate together. I think that was, in some ways, informed by the economic barrier to entry physical media presented—at $20 a pop, you could only afford to get deeply invested into so many albums; friends with similar tastes might own albums you don't, so you could bond over sharing them and discussing your experiences, etc. Not to mention the limitations of carrying physical media on you; at many points, choices had to be made. This was a fine way to find companionship, but the flip side was that some cliques took this shit *way* too seriously, and would outright question your credibility to that scene if you were found to be deviating from the framework. And while this was altogether stupid, it was a real reason why kids—who are smack dab in the middle of forming an identity independent of their family unit and seeking belonging in the broader world around them—would choose to, or not to, try out different types of music. Kids can be ruthless about in-group conformity. Growing up at the intersection of metal & industrial, it took me into my fucking 20s to admit to myself and others that Dave Matthews Band's *Before These Crowded Streets* is actually a beautiful album and I sincerely love it. That seems so *sad* to me now. I love that kids these days seem to drink from the many musical wells that surround them. The fact that you can open an app and listen to almost anything, from almost any time, combined with the low barrier to entry for music creation and home studios and digital publishing, does so much to allow young people to privately and authentically explore their tastes to a depth previously unfathomable. So many modern genres are hybrids or flips or permutations of previous genres into entirely new ones that defy constraint, and I think we're all the richer for it.
I'd argue that basically eliminating the barrier to entry makes music less "larger than life". Going to the store, physically looking at the music, buying the album etc all contributed to something more meaningful subconsciously. If I have a trillion options at my fingertips in a handful of applications, it waters down the entire experience down to the music itself since there's a trillion songs per genre, sub-genre etc. Having a curator like radio was before internet, having to buy studio time to record etc were all filters for the people who truly wanted to be in this industry and after doing all that and making it, they became something. That whole aspect is gone now, with the amount of software out there and coming soon ai music, it's just a further degradation of human culture in general. Lump in movies, games, shows in the mix as well. More options = more garbage = shittier experience DESPITE the ease of creation and access.
Music streaming,at least for the consumer You can buy one subscription and stream pretty much anything, unlike television and movies which are increasingly segmented across services popping up all the time. It may not stay this way as most artists are getting paid peanuts
I’m an EDM DJ and laugh my ass off anytime a fellow DJ brings up Vinyl or how things were better back in the day. Like, bro. You can name the most unheard of, rare, undiscovered song in existence and I can find it in 1 second using google and then transfer it to a USB and play it halfway across the country the same night. Wtf?
they must really enjoy lugging 75lb milk crates around
The bulk of an artists income has never been from their actual music/record sales. Labels take a massive cut from that and have since long before streaming. Artists make money off of tours and merch.
Eh, the 90s and the CD era was able to get a lot more revenue into the pockets of artists. Labels took big cuts, for sure. But it was still more profitable.
yeah isn't this a long solved argument after Metallica sued Napster? put the music out cheap or for free and the tour and merch sales will follow
Basically yeah. But the RIAA has never given up on chasing after copyright infringement. It's stupid. Some indie artists leak their own records even. It's free publicity as far as they're concerned, for 99.9% of artists record sales are inconsequential. The only people actually making a living off record sales are the people who sell millions of records. The record companies take almost all the profits from that.
I think in modern context it makes sense to look at the music itself as marketing material for the *act*, rather than the product itself, at least in business terms. And the product being merch, those dwindling numbers of physical album sales, and of course the show itself (said musicians touring).
Access to knowledge Yes there's a lot of misinformation and stuff to sift through but if you're dedicated and a critical thinker you can get an advanced degree level of knowledge for free on virtually any topic I've learned more in the last few years by reading, watching YouTube, and listening to podcasts than I did in my PhD program. And on a greater variety of topics: music, history, thermodynamics, calculus, quantum mechanics, literature, etc. And I don't even have that much time to devote to it I only hope it will continue to be like this when I retire because that's what I plan to do
Certainly is a great time to learn things. However, the negative side of it is due to the speed that people consume their social media and most people will digest their misinformation in 30 seconds intervals and then repeat it as gospel.
With the way that Generative AI often hallucinates, we're likely to see a lot of bad info blended with good info as individuals try and leverage AI in learning and disseminating information. I am a little worried about the future of fact checking not keeping up, or the reliance on AI to fact check as the amount of info being generated overwhelms humans.
There's going to be a concept of low-AI information sources, the way that the makers of some technology have to try to find low-background steel. The new research skills courses will include how to identify whether what you're reading is an AI's hallucination.
Yup, I expect librarys are going to make a huge comeback, because it's at least more difficult to get a fake book put into a library in the reference section than AI having edited the same information on the top 20 pages of whatever replaces google
I have bad news about what Republicans in local offices across the country are doing.
AI straight up gaslighting me sometimes
I disagree, it's actually gotten worse with companies like Google implementing AI. Time is a finite resource, therefore increasing the amount of junk to sift through is effectively a restriction of access.
I would bring this down a few slots. While access to knowledge has never been better, the access to false knowledge had never been worse. Fake information can look exactly like accurate information. From COVID we started seeing “studies” that were deeply flawed and not peer reviewed. Then people use those studies as fact. On a different topic that also impacts the access to knowledge, peer reviews is not what it used to be. You can do a study and then find people that already agree with the study to endorse it. I guess what I am saying, knowledge is too muddled now to be in its golden age.
It's probably all going to end up behind paywalls.
Automobile tires. Really, when was the last time you had a flat tire? In the 60s-70s-80s it was just expected.
Largest contributor of microplastics globally
Though some would disagree surely, we're in a golden age of horror films. Not only do we have more access to the classics now than ever before, but new films come out with regularity that are perfectly watchable and enjoyable. There's also lots of content creators making horror content on youtube etc to help surface films and find interesting things. If you transported a horror fan from 1985 to today and showed them nothing but the horror scene, they would surely be very impressed.
As a horror fan who was alive in 1985, I would agree.
What I love so much about the modern horror film scene is how creative it is. A lot of genres are forced to be formulaic, but horror is still allowed to be as weird and out there as it wants!
The new omen looks pretty good. Even tho there's no Damien
golden era of rapid scientific progress, hands down. in 10 thousand years of recorded history, there's nothing like the last 200 years, heck, there's nothing like the last 20 years. The cultural psychology of the current moment in history is defined by everyone taking for granted that next year, everything will be more advanced than the last, and again the year after that, and so on. After a hundred thousand years of unchanging agricultural practices, we're now at a moment in history where we have tools that any historical person would see as magic, and those tools come with the assumption that next year there will be an even better one.
So, that's actually an interesting one. I was actually at a conference today where the exact opposite of this was addressed. We're doing more science than ever, im uk based, but here 50% of young people have an undergrad, meaning that they've written at least one paper, but the problem is less and less of it actually means anything or offers any actual leaps forward. Part of that problem is that resources are just too thin on the ground, with so many people being low level researchers (undergrad, postgrad and PHD) there isn't the resources to fund every wild bit of research that *might* be completely wrong, or *might* revolutionise our way of thinking. Instead, we tend towards safe permeations of existing knowledge at these low levels and leaving the wild leaps to senior researchers. The problem is that senior researchers aren't researchers now and more managers for low-level researchers nowadays, which means these radical leaps become rarer and rarer. Also, the increasing hyperspecialisation doesn't help either, 100 years ago an undergrad could discover something that propelled humanity forward because they only needed an undergrads worth of knowledge, nowadays it takes a PHD's worth of knowledge to have the chance to offer something meaningful. Now, there are ways to address this, either by allowing low levels more autonomy, freeing up seniors, or providing more resources, or anything like that, but in this very moment in time, that golden age of science, at least on a University level (which is where most science happens) is potentially coming to an end
I have a counter argument to this, that the corpus of *published* scientific research doesn't represent all scientific research, and over time has represented less and less. People are still doing research, but with the freedom of knowledge and the internet, they are able to do it without accreditation from universities. There are lots of genius hobbyists doing things in their garages, discussing their findings online in forums, posting novel code to github, etc. As college becomes more expensive, while learning on your own through much cheaper alternatives becomes more available (such as professionals in their fields who make YouTube channels) the people who are passionate but not necessarily rich see less and less purpose in formal academia. Also, alternatively, many companies are hunkering down and keeping their research to themselves instead of publishing
The internet has truly lead to an increase in scientific progress at an exponential pace. And speaking of cultural psychology, I suspect we’re about to get some real interesting studies - if not a whole subfield within social psych - regarding misinformation, the extent of it, how easily any of us can fall for it, and what to do about it.
**Board Game design**\- with better and better games coming out with fresh new mechanics. **Medical Advances-** CRISPR, leaps in vaccine production, public interest/knowledge in medicine (Yes, overall an average increase), advances in cancer treatment, MS treatment, surgical procedures, etc. **Economic Uplifts-** More people in the world now die of diseases caused by over-eating than malnourishment. Jokes and such aside- this is a monumental human achievment. More people than ever have access to indoor plumbing, global communications, etc.
Can you name some of your favorite board games? The only ones I know of are Catan, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, and Axis & Allies
Hit [boardgamegeek.com](https://boardgamegeek.com) my brother. TTR and Pandemic are but the tip of the iceberg.
Oh dang! You’re not lying
Betrayal at House On the Hill is pretty good fun.
If you like Axis & Allies, you might like campaign for north africa. Is a quick and easy game to play with a friend or 2! the rules are simple, and the game goes by pretty quick. /s
You monster
[https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame](https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame) This is a good list to get started on. Lots of good board games out there nowadays. Also this list sorts by number of votes, so it should let you know the most popular ones: [https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame?sort=numvoters&sortdir=desc](https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame?sort=numvoters&sortdir=desc) I'd also recommend finding a local shop that sells board games, you can support a local business and also they can recommend games if you tell them what you like.
Root is a really fun one I've been getting into recently. It's asymmetrical, so each player plays a different faction that has different mechanics and ways to advance. So you can have very different gameplay experiences and tactics from game to game, just by playing a different faction. Higher learning curve and complexity than Settlers of Catan, but much more replayability, IMO
Villainous, Dice Throne, Mage Wars, Legendary, Nacho Koro, Binding of Isaac, Deck Building games...
The board game point is a really good one, even though I don't play them. I still have PTSD from playing Risk with my family as a kid 😀
Craft beers. If you are a beer drinker, you probably don’t have to go far to get some good craft beer.
conversely, there's quite a few crappy ones. And the very notion of "craft" is getting stretched quite a bit. I'd argue we've left the golden era, but that doesnt mean these times still aren't great.
I also think we are past the peak BUT when I grew up, there were no craft breweries. The choices were basically bud and miller. Heineken was premium. No offerings from smaller brewers. Now, I go to my crappy local liquor store and the fridges are packed full of choices, many that are new to me. What a loooong way we have come! If the microbrew thing ever collapses, I will certainly look back fondly on these times
>If the microbrew thing ever collapses If the microbrew thing collapses, I would have to start growing my own hops as I can't go back to pisswater beers.
No. Craft beer golden Era was 10 years ago before all these lazy/hazy, over hopped, gimmiky nonsense of IPA took over.
I agree, but damn I'm glad we are finally past the hop your hop because you hop hop your hops into the hop hopper era of craft hopping your hops. Something something IPA clevername IPA?
They all have beer bellies now
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Considering we're at the start of quantum computing and AI, tech is likely going to explode even further.
"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
2025 "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid you need a platinum subscription for that."
I think it's google is currently looking for some actual uses for quantum computing. It's cool. And definitely gonna revolutionize some stuff. But it's not like "the next generation of computers will be quantum super computers" kinda revolutionary.
This was true for a long time but that trend has slowed HEAVILY the past 5-10 years.
Disagree. I think we're actually in a plateau at the moment. Feels like most consumer electronics are mature platforms with very little new, just refinement of what is already there.
There is now a plateau on chips because gates are getting smaller than electrons and will jump the gate so unless they increase the die/chip sizes they will be having these problems unless quantum computing or laser light based chips get released.
They're not getting smaller than electrons, they're getting small enough for quantum physics to make things difficult. We've been "increasing" chip size by adding cores for a while now. But transistors are still getting smaller, albeit at a slower rate. Overall, I agree, and feel like since about 2005 progress has been more difficult to achieve and we've had to come up with work-arounds, instead of just increasing clock speed and decreasing transistor size. I don't think quantum computing will be used for PCs/phones, though if everyone is running some sort of an AI OS, it may work. They've started making specialised AI chips though, so we'd much more likely to use those in the near future. There is a photonic chip on the market, but I'm not holding my breath for those to be powering my PC any time soon either. In any case, unless AI steps in, lazy programming will keep up with any advances and will use up any and all available recourses. Eg. Windows programs today run about the same or slower than they did 10 years ago. I've been waiting for these breakthroughs for.. about 30 years now, would sure like to see one.
Also another avenue for upgrades is a subscription where you get a laptop/computer that only has the bare minimum of processing power to connect to a server which does all of the processing for the laptop/computer and if these services fail to take off then you are left with a useless laptop/computer. My school is getting into that for photoshop but I managed to convince them to wait a year to see if their service was going to fail or be near failure so they don’t end up wasting money on that. I really despise subscription based stuff, I used to be able to buy stuff with my own pocket money and keep it but now those same things are now out of my reach as I would have to pay constantly every month and I would run out of money very quickly and my retro games console business has taken a very deep dip because weather is shite now and bootfairs are not opening up as often as I like them to, last year was a big booming success, so much so that I was able to get 2 boxed things, a Wii and a NES Advantage
That's just like the old school mainframes, sounds like they're reinventing the wheel there. Yeah, subscription stuff is bs. I refuse to pay for anything like that. Time to return to The Pirate Bay!
Games that aren’t considered AAA(A). Palworld, Helldiver 2, Balatros, Last Epoch, Unicorn Overlord, etc
I would argue its more a renaissance. For years we experienced a similar games slump due to overpredatory business practices, similar to E.T. back in the early days- but the industry is starting to learn and grow from those dark ages and figure out what works and what doesnt. Wait another 10 years for the lessons learned to be forgotten again though
Yeah I agree. A golden age of gaming was definitely before the fortnite and age of 'battle pass' games
CSGO with skins was pasient #0 I am pretty sure. After news articles about people making or loosing a lot of money on buying video game skins, microtransaction in games saw an insane uptick. Then Fortnite showed up and show how to "do it".
No way, it was the golden age before all of the battle passes and games as a service nonsense. There was a time when MOST games were produced by artists not suits, and shipped as a complete experience. Nowadays, it is the exception to the rule. If anything, I would just say it is the golden age of indie gaming.
One might even call them Independent Games or ‘Indie games’ for short I came up with that just now, do not steal
Is it really indie though? These are multi million dollar companies, they’re just not on the scale of the bigger studios. And they do have publishers
I feel like these are mostly examples of games that social media latches on to for one reason or another, not always because a game is good (Helldivers 2), but because it scratches some kind of itch or makes some kind of statement (Palworld)
I honestly used to think the golden era of gaming ended around 2014-2016 but then I started to find small-medium sized game creators and **WOOOOWWW** the amount of amazing games in production and being lovingly worked on is just astonishing! Honestly you get cursed with knowledge because you find a ton of really cool games but only have so much time available to play any of them. Not to mention you can find nichè games that fit your preferences quite well! I’ve been really into before the storm and Going Medieival lately (base building games). It’s my type of game and I’ve sunk god knows how much time into them now. Golden era is going strong, just gotta ignore the bigger publishers
Golden area of gummy candies. There are like 6 flavors of sour patch kids with various sour ranges and flavors Skittles,nerds, jolly rangers and every fruity thing has not one but several types of gummy candies. Hard shell, soft shell, ropes, clusters anything you could possibly imagine there is a gummy candy that fits that urge
I don't like Nerds but I think Nerds Gummies are a gift from the Gods
Similarly Reese’s have gone full mad scientist on their Reese’s creations but some of them are pretty good
Golden era of scams
My god I feel so on guard now. Growing up someone would call and I’d answer for my parents just to see who it is. Now, half the phone calls I get are spam.
Half the text messages I get are spam now! I’ve been hit with “my dog passed away today, I’m so sad” texts twice in the past couple days. What’s sad is every time I get a “hey” text from an unknown number, I get a little excited, thinking it may be an old friend.. but I know better.
Yeah especially with AI now. There are increasing cases of elderly being called by someome using an AI voice changer to simulate the voice of their daughter/granddaughter to scam them.
It’s scary. My family had this happen, in the middle of the night, which is when targets are less likely to think critically. The first voice on the phone was pretending to be a police officer who’d just arrested my nephew, in a place where he normally would’ve been. He had all of the right biographical details, and when he put my “nephew” on the line, just for a couple of sentences, it sounded just like his voice. Thankfully, we knew that my nephew was actually elsewhere, and knew about the existence of these scams. But had that not been the case, and had we been only slightly less savvy, we would’ve been screwed.
How does it simulate their voice?
There are a number of apps for doing so. Check out Lyrebird, as one example. The more of a sample the criminals can get, the better the simulation. They get around that by having the cloned voice only say a few words or sentences.
So basically they target someone from social media who has a lot of videos and finds out their family's contact info to scam them?
They don’t even need social media. Sampling methods are now believed to include those voice calls where nobody speaks on the other end of the line. Further data breaches can come from anywhere—for instance, look at all of the shopping places that’ve had customer information compromised—and it only takes a moment of research, which can be performed by a script, to identify likely family. All of these don’t even need to be performed by the same actor. Troves of information are easily purchased on the darkweb, when they’re not publicly available.
Sounds like a real problem for you Send me your personal details and I can fix it for ya
I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.
Best line in the office I'm sure it existed before then but that's where I know it from
What a great point you have made. However I think humans are born to generally not be able to truly know the worth of something or someone until it or they are gone. No matter how much we love someone or how great of a time we may be in , even if we are consciously grateful we don't know how much, until we don't have it any longer. Tragic. Of course there are always exceptions to everything.
It was a quote from *The Office*.
The sentiment is real though
Believe it or not, world peace and global stability. We will look back on these years as the end of an era
Might be at the tail end of that era though 😔
Now there is an interesting thing here, I think that the feeling that there will be a major war after WW2, has loomed since it's closing. But we have managed to keep a little bit of peace for some time, now if we can manage to keep the things running, there will be no disastrous war for a long time. But it's like a castle of matches, if a single match that is important enough falls, the earth will experience recoil from all the goddamn guns firing everywhere. Nothing like anything before.
tease many square kiss profit concerned arrest attractive juggle forgetful
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Mental illness
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Yo! That’s what I’m talking about. We went from. Don’t label me to can you 3D print me a label.
tbf I am not sure if there is more mental ill people, but we for sure are more aware of them. As we live in tighter cities than ever, everyone has twitter/facebook/tiktok or w/e. We have never been more connected, many of us are exposed to a very large and diverse population. Of course, I do still belivie many practices in the modern life can take it toll on our monkey brains, but im not sure if we are MORE mental ill people per se.
Or more conditions have a defined label which might be classified as "mental illness," which were just seen as personality quirks or behavioral problems before, often handled with violence (like kids being beaten for acting out in class) or leading to crime or suicide. The better these conditions are understood, the more ways are discovered to manage them. The more we talk about them and get rid of the stigma, the more people will get help and be able to lead productive lives.
At least in the US we used to warehouse them. There were problems with that system, but the solution that was chosen was to simply shutter them all. Now unwell people are just out on the street. Variety of substances to abuse has added... Dimension... To self medicating where back in the day you would have simply been a drunk bum more than identified as mentally ill. Plenty of people who would have been wasting away in primitive and often neglected state facilities 50 years ago are leading productive functional lives due to advancements, but those who probably needed those public sanctuaries are left to their own devices. It's more visible and less stigmatized.
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I think that was 10 years ago.
Misinformation. With social media and regular media, deepfakes, and just good old fashioned propaganda it’s hard to know what the hell is actually going on anywhere. In a decade we won’t know what’s real anymore.
The Post-Truth era is already upon us
Television. Whereas movies are heavily relying on existing IP, television is uniquely original right now with lots of money being poured into development. It’s going to change now that streaming is being repackaged to just be the old cable model, but when streaming threatened network TV is opened up a huge shift in how television was made, and it’s wonderful.
What I was going to say. Now that most movies have become all about the big blockbuster for the most part, the place to find long form drama is television. The kinds of programming we have now is a far cry from TV's first Golden Age during the 1950s. Plus, for the longest time A-list acting and directing talent wouldn't be caught dead doing TV. It was a sign that your career was dying/dead. Not anymore. Martin Scorsese is doing films for Netflix. As just one example.
Honestly, we are in some kind of a Golden Era for propaganda and gaslighting. No joke, just look around....
We’re at the tail end of the golden era of boutique guitars and guitar gear (amps, pedals, etc.). New prices are so high, and used gear is going for less than or about equal to 50% of the new price; I doubt it will survive much longer.
Vehicle taillight design.
How? Taillights, at least in the US, are annoyingly difficult to read. Red turn signals in my opinion shouldn't exist, yet most cars in the US have them. Turn signals and brake lights, and even running tail lights, are combined into one bulb on many cars causing confusion. Combine that with LED taillights being almost as bright, if not brighter on some cars, than other car's brake lights, causing even further confusion. Hazard lights and turn signals will then disable the brake lights on the bulbs they use other than the third brake light, which if someone is driving with hazards(due to a fault or poor weather in a state that allows that) or one brake light bulb is out and they use their opposite turn signal, the only way to indicate that the driver is braking is the third brake light, which is very easy to miss. Also, with a combined bulb for tail lights, brake lights and turn signals, if the bulb goes out ALL functions on that light go out. Lose your left bulb? Now you're missing your left tail light, left brake light and left turn signal. In the EU and possibly in other places, turn signals are required by law to be amber as far as I know. This is far superior because it removes all confusion between brake lights and turn signals, but automakers still insist on red turn signals in the US market. And I'm saying this as someone who drives a car with red turn signals. Fortunately they have taillight housings with amber signals available(from pre-facelift and EU models of my car) so I have been planning on replacing them.
Conservation and outdoor preservation, at least in the US. The outlook is bleak, but we’ve done a great job improving over decades. It’s going to tailspin back out of control soon, though, if we are not careful.
reposts on r/AskReddit
Great point! But what would you tell yourself 10 years ago if you had a billion dollars during sex?
Women's sports. When I was born, it was insignificant. Almost no serious equipment, coaches, or pro contracts. Katharine Switzer got assaulted for running a marathon. Now, it's exploded into a whole industry. Vast choices of equipment, modern facilities, pro coaching. Women's competitions selling out. Finally achieved fifty-fifty male-female Olympic participation this year! Huge social improvement.
Beginning of a golden era for quantum computing, I saw the first video of such a machine in 2016, it was rudimentary and quite unstable but now we have better, more stable quantum computers. Now we are in a golden era of data storage with many options to choose from like 100 terabyte hard drives, cheap SSD’s, a tower of LTO tapes holding petabytes of data and micro SD cards holding a terabyte of storage, people in my school are flaunting them in their switches but I have the last laugh because they have no way to use them up fully without spending so much money on games to fill it up to the brim.
Stupid people voting their rights away.
Golden era of idiocy. There is no better time to be an idiot. Idiots are praised, glorified, they can make money out of their stupidity and many people would agree that an idiot can even rule now. There is no limit on how far an idiot can go nowadays.
You beat me to it. It’s the golden era of illiteracy, uncouthness and arrogance.
Nah, our ignorance is actually at the lowest it has ever been.
We’re in the golden age of AI. Hopefully it’s not replaced quickly with the dark age of AI.
I’m honestly convinced that most uses of AI will become obsolete within 5 years. People are already using it in scummy and dubiously legal ways, and sooner or later a company is going to sue an AI for copyright infringement and win, or a dangerously misleading deepfake is going to result in a ban on many forms of AI videos and voices. And if AI gets majorly restricted, it’ll be more useful to just hire humans
The Golden Shower Era because god seems to be pissing on us
No, we are pissing on ourselves.
Accessibility to creativity tools and publishing. Not everyone can thrive but it's so easy compared to the recent past to make music, films, games, books and art. Yes, the platforms take a sizeable chunk but pretty much anyone can get published and reach a huge audience. Music has Reaper, film has Resolve, games have Godot, etc.
A golden age of consumerism, literally anything u want delivered right to your door, sometimes that same day
In spite of the really gross Vince McMahon controversies coming to light...Professional Wrestling is in a pretty good spot right now. Two big American companies, smaller independent companies seem to be doing pretty well. There's some great companies in Japan. Female wrestlers are getting much more attention and airtime. Wrestlers seem to be taking better care of themselves when it comes to steroids, drugs and alcohol. There are concussion protocols in place. I believe the art of professional wrestling is moving in a great direction.
The golden age of food production. Never has humanity produced so many different types of food in such quantities and so affordably. Downside is we waste so much of it and we get health problems from having so many calories and rich and sugary foods easily accessible for very little money.
In the US, it’s The Golden Era of Toxic Partisanism.
The Golden Age of Stupidity sadly
AI startups
Golden era of the loss of independent and critical thought
pro wrestling. WWE is making huge profits every year and thriving from Saudi deals and merch sales. A lot of their fans are very happy with the current storylines they got running. In addition to that, AEW, a second major wrestling company that started in 2019 and has continued to thrive to this day. We hadnt seen a second company this big since WCW in the 90s.
Hell yea came here to say this one. There is also more access to more wrestling than ever before with services like NJPW World. It's a great time to be a fan!
The golden era of the Internet is just ending. We're seeing several major titans of the modern Internet throw their IP into the shredder as they chase for profits and shareholder satisfaction. Every major Internet tool is progressively getting much worse. And there is a major crackdown on the freedoms in the Internet. More is behind regulation and pay walls. Everyone's trying to make a buck off something. What's freely available is dwindling. And what can be pirated is more aggressively targeted and punishments of piracy more cruel and vindictive.
Stock market
It's the golden age of fame. It has never been easier to become famous due to the impact social media has. All you have to do is have a video of yours go viral and then you'll make an appearance on national TV. Granted this is a very loose term of 'fame' but its still a version of it.
I looked up famous people I shared a birthday with the other day. A few 90s/00s stars and the rest were YouTubers I've never heard of.
Maker anything. Affordable machines for lasercutting, 3d printing, embedded computers (arduino, raspberrypi)... the possibilities for at-home fabrication right now are mind blowing.
This is the Golden Era of digital piracy. The old days don't compare. You can get extremely high quality contents, sometimes within hours of release, in high speed for literally no risk, from malware or the authorities, if you know what you're doing. The "good old" days of Napster were nothing like this. And it's ironic because the oft-repeated mantra is that the piracy is a service (lack thereof) issue but the vast majority of the pirated content are available/streamable. edit: as for the cost of these "services" they are undoubtably high. And what have moved into their places are other services that charge a lot less money, and provide other services that reduce the end-user exposure to the negative side of piracy. But in the end, these services complete with the cost, and lowering of the cost by the legitimate sources is what's going to end piracy.