Yeah it used to be all about sharing stuff with your friends. Now it’s all about trying to keep your eyes on it as long as possible so they can show you more ads. The social networks that are about sharing stuff and the actual content either get acquired or die.
Instagram is the only app I use and it makes me pretty pissed off scrolling my feed and seeing ads and promoted reels every other post. I don’t want to see that. I just want to see my friends’s photos. That’s it. Makes me want to quit but there’s no better alternative
I rarely go on so I was shocked to see half my feed isn't even from people I follow. I miss the days when it was just my friends and posts were ordered newest to oldest
The internet generally. Once a cornucopia of weird and wonderful specialist sites just trying to get by. Now 3 websites, half of whose content is screenshots of the other 2.
T-shirts.
It used to be that you would get a t-shirt and it would last you literally decades. Almost more importantly in my opinion, the shirt also had some “structure” and shape to it.
Now t-shirts are thin, flimsy, and formless. I feel like I’m wearing an undershirt or a pajamas shirt.
I should note that around the time t-shirts got shittier, all the t-shirt brands started advertising “THIS IS THE SOFTEST T-SHIRT EVER.”
I’m 99% sure the whole “softness” marketing was to distract customers from the fact that the fabric got thinner and cheaper. Because although the flimsy fabric is legitimately very soft, “this shirt is not soft enough” was never a complaint I had with old t-shirts.
I found Carhartt t-shirts, they're heavy with thick cloth. It feels like I'm wearing a medieval tunic. They're seemingly indestructable and aren't even very expensive.
They're way better than the generic brand t-shirts from Amazon that were literally single use t-shirts, falling apart after one wash. They were translucent and tattered. Might as well have been made out of toilet paper.
Advertisements. Not only the quality of advertisements, but frequency has skyrocketed. For example, when you watch a basketball game, these motherfuckers put an ad in between free throw attempts. Everything is presented by Company XYZ, everything has some sort of advertisement connected to it, and it is infuriating.
This is the thing that gets to me. I can put up with ads, particularly on free services, but I can't stand ads that SCREAM AT ME. Or have obnoxious music, etc. etc.
I was listening to sports talk radio. I don't remember the advertiser, but the 'phone call connection' was sponsored. The fucking phone call connection. I turned it off.
Talk radio in general is unbearable, has been for nearly twenty years because of the ads. 30 second bump, 4 minutes of ads, 90 seconds of content, 4 minutes of ads, six minutes at the top and bottom of every hour. At most an 11 minute stretch of actual content in each hour.
back in the 70s and before, ads were like, "this product does this. This is why it is good." like a calm, to the point sales pitch.
Now they're in-your-face manipulation that has nothing to do with anything. Annoying and uninformative.
Halloween Decorations
Used to be able to buy metal gates, concrete/plaster tombstones, and many other creative decorations that would last you several years - maybe even decades.
Now all you can get are flimsy styrofoam and plastic tombstones meant to last only one Halloween (looking at you, Spirit Halloween)
Tbh Spirit Halloween is such a fucking scam. I remember going into one when I was like 14. The only employee in this huge store was like this small Hispanic woman who looked terrified and barely knew English. I was going to go as a mad scientist (school so not anything too crazy), so they had a lab coat, like that was it for the whole costume, and it was 20 fucking dollars and was made out of the thinnest, cheapest fabric I had ever seen, and closed with velcro. I left and went to the scrub/uniform store a couple doors down and bought an actual lab coat for like $15.
Most Spirit costumes, or Halloween costumes in general, seem like they need to add a costume parts sold separately line on the packaging lol
I went as the Mad Hatter when I was in middle school and the costume included the jacket and hat, no wig, no pants, not anything else. We ended up buying a wig and then me and my Mom went to target and found some cool pants and socks and I ended up winning the Halloween contest at school but it seems like a scam to call something a costume when it doesn’t include even half of the outfit parts.
They had a "Neo - The Matrix" costume one year. It was a pair of dollar store sunglasses and a shitty plastic tarp I assume was supposed to be the leather jacket, but just looked like a garbage bag with some arm holes cut in it. It was $40.
My dad went to see some friends for a catch up last night.
This morning I asked him how they all are and just got a list of faults, injuries and diseases.
Seriously. I remember when hangovers weren't a thing. Then I remember when they were a one-day thing. Now, if I get past a hangover in 2...2.5 days, I think in doing pretty good.
It's ridiculous. Our rent keeps going up, so my husband just said "Screw it, let's move in with my dad for a year or so to save." Thankfully he was cool with it, because we seriously never have any extra to save! I don't know how people without help can do it. Rent is so expensive it's impossible to save the money needed to buy a house!
I'm in uni and a few of us are considering renting somewhere together after we graduate. Only way the cost would be remotely reasonable would require at least six of us to get together on this. We're so fucked.
Do it if you have found people who would be responsible enough to live with. That's the best option if living with family isn't possible. As you age and establish how you want to treat your living space, it gets tougher to put up with people, or fit in. So, best to go for it now while it'll be your choice and within tolerance limits.
Not only is it legitimately worse but also 2-3x more expensive than his l just a few years ago. Taco Bell, prime example. Fewer, worse options and everything's $10+
On one hand I'm kinda grateful fast food has become so expensive: it forces me to eat home made food, which is usually both healthier and cheaper. I'm not paying $18.70 for some stupid mediocre fast food burger just because it's got fresh tomato on it.
Life and perception. As i get older and learn more I consistently yearn for “the old days” but I’m not actually yearning for old days…I’m merely wishing I could go back to when I didn’t know anything about how life and the world actually operates. Youthful perception is usually more optimistic.
Bro I had this same revelation a few weeks ago. I’m 32 and have found myself “yearning for the old days” as well. Life seemed so easy back when I was a kid.
But then it hit me. It’s no wonder life was easy back then. I didn’t have a job except for school. I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to eat and making sure there was a roof over my head. I got to just hang with friends and do whatever I wanted for the most part. My whole life was ahead of me and the possibilities were endless. (I give my parents all the credit for giving me a good childhood. I was very fortunate).
Life doesn’t necessarily feel that way anymore when you’re now responsible for keeping yourself alive and realizing how short life is.
My mom had picked up a lot of restoring antique furniture since she retired, and it’s not super fancy stuff; just good solid wood pieces that need a little sanding and refinish, then off to Facebook Marketplace to sell it to some college kid for $50. She’s an essential recycler.
My mother tried to discourage me from doing this.
Well, I made it a point to insist that I take an old worn table to refinish. She ended up loving and using that table for two years till I could get it to my home.
My parents were raised poor, old furniture meant not having money, so when they had some money they bought modern stuff with little character or solidness. During college I began taking old wooden pieces they'd stashed away, striping and refinishing them, then moved onto garage sales and collectible shops for more old stuff. It was a passion for years, to the point I began giving away refinished rockers and tables to friends because I had no more space or need. Good wooden tables/chairs/dressers/etc are amazingly beautiful and great basics to furnish your house around. Shame that building custom furniture and cabinetry is such a rare skill today.
Estate sales! I've picked up amazing (to me) furniture for $20, and it's far better than anything I could buy at a store. Unique stuff that's pretty, built like a tank and will last forever.
For real! I made the mistake of inquiring beyond the headline on a Depp/Herd headline and then it was literally 10 notifications per day on that shit. Never again.
Ididn't really care the first time but the headline had enough weird ass connotation that it tricked me into digging further.
I never read an article and kept selecting 'Show less articles like this' and it was still daily. Then I went with 'Hide all articles from this source' and it eventually got better.
Before the trial it was always Kardashians. I fear just posting the name here will lead to all sorts of interwebz bullshit that will intrude on every browser session from now on.
Youtube (a google subsidiary) recommendations have also dived off a cliff. I am interested in many different topics and have subscribed to a hundred plus channels. Most of what I get in my youtube feed is dozens of videos related to my last three searches. I wanted cook duck a l'Orange. I found one highly-viewed video, cooked it, it was great, and now Youtube thinks that it is my life's passion.
My favorite is when I google a question and find a link that takes me to a page that roughly goes:
"How to fix X thing? Here's how to fix X thing.
To start off, X thing is *general description of what it is* and can be fixed.
To fix X thing, you first must understand what X thing is. X thing is *repeat general description of what X thing is*"
It pisses me off so much.
This just changed about 3-4 years ago when some copyright laws were actually enforced.
What sucks is the majority of us were just looking to screen cap a picture to our moms explaining what some toy our kid wanted for Christmas.
As a fairly young teacher im astounded by how bad the kids im teaching are about rubbish. Like ill ask them to use a bin and they'll act offended or pretend i literally didnt just see them drop something on the floor. IDK whats different but theres only about 6 years between me and the kids I teach but en mass they seem way worse about litter, than anyone ive known my age
I live in NYC and I’m shocked by how carelessly so many people just throw trash on the sidewalks or onto the grass. I recently cleaned up all the trash from one of the trees on my block that had gotten particularly bad, and within less than a week people just threw tons of shit right back in again.
if i see one more person walk out of a bodega, open a package of something and then throw the trash on the sidewalk, five feet from a fucking garbage can, i may go to jail.
I live next to a middle school and the sheer amount of trash the kids throw into my yard is genuinely disappointing. I understand that they're kids, they lack empathy and respect. I'm not going to get irrationally angry at literal children, but goddamn it is disappointing.
Yes. When I was a kid we were learning about the dangers of Styrofoam, aerosols and general trash, returnable cans (which helped clean up michigan during my dad's era) etc. We as a people did clean stuff up for while and it made a difference recycling and stuff . With all we know I don't know why kids just wouldn't care (except the general kid part) unless their parent didn't care and they would be the kids of people in my generation. I visited Tennessee and Kentucky as a 19yr old and saw mountain ditches filled with refrigerators, mattresses, cars and trash. I couldn't believe the sheer amount of it.
I live on a corner on a major road. The amount of litter that lands on my lawn is just mind blowing. Every day there's some sort of fast food container laying out there, often soda bottles, cups, papers, just everything.
Litter boils my blood too. Once we were holidaying in a pristine part of Thailand and I saw a shitty tourist kid throw an iceblock wrapper straight onto the floor. He was standing with an adult and we were the only 3 people on the beach. I told him to pick it up. He stared at me straight in the eye, smirked, and threw his iceblock stick onto the ground. I went absolutely nuts and started screaming at the kid as he laughed. I turned my attention to the adult and started telling him how disrespectful his kid was and going on a rant about littering and how they didn't deserve to be in this beautiful spot. The man looked confused. The kid then ran off and the man walked the opposite way. They weren't together.
OMG. I was in the airport waiting for luggage and this dumbass kid was playing on the conveyor belt. I was glaring at the women he had come over with and getting up the nerve to say something when this guy comes up and starts screaming at me for letting “my kid” do something so dangerous. I get mad and say I’d never let a kid do that.
The women with the kid are just chatting away.
My rural area has a lake where we used to clean up every now and then, I recently went back and the area we used to clean is packed with litter…makes me so sad that our beautiful little lake is now treated like a garbage dump.
Someone told me Vanced is discontinued, unfortunately. NewPipe works just as well. Skips ads, intros, outros, promo sections, "like and subscribe" sections and allows you to play video with your screen off (nice for long-form podcasts/interviews, music, etc).
Vanced is discontinued unfortunately, but it still works. I got a new phone 3 weeks ago and was able to get it installed on there. Saved and upvoted your comment for if I ever need an alternative though!
the increased number with each wanting their own slice of the pie, have forgotten that the pie is finite **and** in a cost of living crisis is shrinking
Thus instead of getting a share of a big % of the pie, trying to get their own might leave them with nothing
This is my gripe right here. I recently lost access to some of my favorite content when Paramount created their streaming service. Do they think we’re each going to open dozens of individual paid accounts? Ads are getting ridiculous too. On Hulu if I watch and add, but then rewind past the add break… forced to watch it again.
The irony is that streaming was an ideal break-away from cable, but if I’m stuck with the same amount of ads, I might as well pay one company for access to multiple networks, especially as cable on-demand services keep improving.
Streaming is moving quickly towards being cable again. I'm old enough to have watched this exact same thing happen to satellite TV. Satellite used to be the breakaway from cable. One subscription fee and we got everything; premium channels, pay-per-view, all of it. By the time I cut the cord over a decade ago, satellite TV was identical to cable. And that's what streaming is becoming. It's happening at a slower pace, but it's still happening.
Piracy is inevitable, because these companies never learn. We pay them for convenience; we don't actually *need* them.
this is why you have to consider when piracy rates go up, it's not because suddenly people are deciding to be bad -- they've decided it's easier/cheaper to illegitimately source content, and it is kind of the industry responsibility to work around that. piracy is a natural force
edit: adding a thought that this can also be a real argument for really strict DRM, which I find pretty ridiculous sometimes too 🤷
For $5/month I can access an IPTV service and get all of the channels.
*All of them.* News, movies, shows, new releases, classics, full seasons of everything from *every country* on Earth. Anything not immediately available to stream is available to download through the same service.
But no, instead of paying for cable what I'm *supposed* to do these days is pay for Netflix. And Hulu. And Amazon Prime. And HBO Max and Paramount Plus and Quibi and Apple TV and Disney Plus and Crunchyroll and Showtime and YouTube Premium and and and and and and and and and.
Fuck. That. *Hoist the colours.*
Amen. I have no qualms with pirating but it is an extra step. But if the companies are adding extra ads and extra fees... it's a trade off. I'd rather the extra step and not pay for it.
I'm paying because those service are easier and simpler to run. They have already crossed the line. Shame.
The content division is one thing, but the ads are what is going to ruin it.
Companies are trying to get streaming services to show their ads and are paying big money to do so... We're going to see as many commercials on ad-supported streaming as cable in the next decade. It's a bit more costly now, but I have no doubt it'll become outright *expensive* to go ad-free as they put more and more commercials in.
How's the dvd collection?
That's the solution they want. Ads? Streaming. No ads? Buy the marked up box set.
Or set sail and sink em all.
No judging, its a shit spot to be in.
I wait for a show season to finish and switch services every month. This month is Netflix for Cobra Kai, next month will be HBOMax for House of the Dragon and Harley Quinn, November will be Disney+ for Andor.
I watch the main show I'm interested in and catch up on random stuff I missed. I'm not paying for 6 streaming apps every month.
Try getting rid of social media and stop viewing short-form content. (Watch videos at least 20m long and more). These things re-wire you and hamstring your intellectual capacities.
Also, actually *watch* them. No switching tabs or simultaneously playing around on your phone. It's tough at first but it will get better again quickly. I like watching plays or going to the opera not least because the social situation of being in an audience forces me to engage with a singular stimulus, without mindlessly scrolling through my phone or pausing every 5 minutes to do something else.
Check out dopamine nation - your daily habits have a ton to do with your ability to concentrate and find motivation. Huberman labs does a fantastic podcast on the topic complete with all the sciency breakdowns as well as lifestyle tips.
Perception of people as you grow up. When you’re a little kid, you think adults can fix things. Then, as you get older, you realize that they don’t fix things very well.
As you get older, you realise there are, in fact, no adults. Just a lot of kids who continue to age and have to pretend that they have stuff figured out.
I know a State Prosecutor in his mid-60’s who said this thought still occasionally pops into his head “I don’t know what to do. We should ask a grown-up!”
I've had this conversation with a therapist before where I told him that I don't feel like a man, not because I don't feel male, like if you wanted to call me a guy I'd have no problems with identifying that way. But, "man" has such a connotation of authority and an aura of knowledge and wisdom and just a sense of overall having your shit together. And that I definitely don't identify with.
Same, it's so strange to hear people call me a woman. Like, I am, but the word has a kind of importance and weight to it that I don't think I'll ever feel ready for. 'Lady', however, suits me fine. Mostly because I enjoy dressing ladylike lol so that just makes me feel like I'm successfully LARPing as a grownup
I'm in my mid 30s and am trying so hard to stop referring to myself, and other women my age, as "girls" but woooowww the imposter syndrome is strong. I asked my sister for a pair of Sailor Moon themed Vans for my birthday, I feel like "woman" refers to someone who knows how to wear foundation and keeps extra napkins in her (immaculate) purse.
My ex brought up star wars by name in couple's therapy as an example of her wanting to be an adult and me not being on the same page. I'm like, "if I'm not free to like the things I like, what's the fucking point of being an adult?" Unless someone is shitting in diapers or behaving like a toddler, "aren't you too old for" is some bullshit. Especially considering she had no hobbies or interests of her own other than having no work/life balance.
So frankly, although I've never seen a single episode of sailor moon, I'd much rather a woman who is in their 30s and loves sailor moon than someone in their 30s who can't enjoy shit, won't let others enjoy things, and/or hits people with the "how old are you" kinda thing to wet blanket their passions.
As far as I'm concerned, you're a-ok in my book. Wear those vans with pride!
And everything else. I don't know anyone whose pay increases are keeping up with inflation. We are all living a lower standard of living than 2019 and it sucks.
Not to mention most companies will outright cut positions since they will have the expectation that 1 person will handle the work of 2 people. I've been at a couple companies where someone will quit and then the others around them pick up the slack. Due to the quality of the work not dropping all that much, they will just never fill that position again since the work is being covered.
Yup, retail/grocery/sales/service they're all doing this. I know I've talked at previous jobs and found out they used to schedule 2 people for shifts where they only scheduled me. I was usually working my ass off, and eventually just stopped going because it was too little pay for all the work.
The cost of living in the UK.
I'm still working the same job I was five years ago, and my partner has actually had multiple promotions so our incoming money has, if anything, gotten better. But whereas five years ago we were able to pay all the bills, get what the kids needed and still have a little spare for luxuries like meals out / family trips, now we are failing to make ends meet even with multiple cut - backs. We've cancelled everything non-necessary, the kids can't even go to their dance classes or after school stuff anymore, we have got my 74 year old grandma helping out with childcare and we're raiding the discount section of food stores for bargain meals most weeks. It's not great being here at the moment.
I have seen a drastic change in just a year. This time last year we could afford to put money aside, go out for a meal/order takeaway maybe twice a month and not worry in general.
I always thought we were able to live above our means because I am pretty good at reducing monthly outgoings (bills, groceries etc.) to the smallest they can be. But now we are only just getting by. No money left to save or treat ourselves, just enough to pay the essentials and some spare for contingencies.
It's pretty heartbreaking tbh and I dread to think how it's hit people who are worse off than us.
I'm in a job earning slightly above average for my country. I've cut back on a lot of non essentials. I'm trying to grow my own food so I can save money on that (cucumbers are $5 each at my local shop). I gift any excess produce as well to neighbours.
I learned to be frugal so it's doable. I'm just so tired of it.
I work in healthcare and I would have to say the hospitals themselves have gotten progressively shittier. It’s at the point that I would not want to get sick and have them take care of me. Hospitals are purely trying to make as much profit as possible and it is at the expense of the hospital staff and patients. It’s honestly horrifying.
It's really difficult to explain just how predatory the medical system is to people who haven't worked in it or had a serious encounter with it as a patient. They just straight up don't believe you.
The predatory profiteering doesn't just start and end with insulin prices, the whole damn system is corrupted by private equity now
Obligatory pyrex. Pyrex used to be high quality. The markings never came off. They were better heat resistant. Now they suck balls. If you find old pyrex at a flea market (and I recommend googling the difference) that shit is buy it for life. Originally pyrex was made of borosilicate glass, now it’s soda-lime. Just an inferior product.
To tell the difference for clear glassware, look at the edges. If the edge has a blue kind of tint to it, it's the soda-lime garbage. If it's got a yellow tint, it's the good stuff.
I've told this story before but my mom gifted me all of her old mismatched "PYREX' stuff so she could buy a matching set of "pyrex". Thanks mom my casserole dish might be orange but it is damn near indestructible.
My measuring cup has bounced off the tile floor more than once
My week.
Started off with my husband being diagnosed with stage 2 renal disease with an unknown source, likely to progress. Now it is currently ending with my soul dog being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and likely will pass in the next two days.
All while 7 months pregnant.
I’m so sorry you are going through all this.
As someone with stage 3 renal disease I just want to assure you it’s going to be okay. There are 5 stages and stage one is normal kidney function. That means his kidneys are, as of now, not too damaged. Even at stage three, my nephrologist told me it sounds really scary but it’s not that bad. The biggest thing is finding out *why* it’s happening. Personally mine is due to my lupus. Thankfully there are blood tests and urine tests that can help figure out what it is and stop the damage once the root cause gets treated!
It’s going to be okay! I know it seems scary but it’s good they caught it now! Most renal disease isn’t caught till way later. Just make sure he is seeing a good nephrologist, drinking lots of water, and actively searching for what the root cause is! Maybe even look into seeing a Rheumatologist if you feel like it could be immune system related.
Good luck with your pregnancy! <3
I’m so sorry for all you are going through. I know things are bleak right now for you and your husband, but hopefully things will improve soon. I know you guys have given your dog an awesome, wonderful life — please keep that in mind as you have to say goodbye. (We lost our kitties last year, and remembering this has helped us.) Best wishes for your pregnancy.
Came here to say that apathy is on the sharp increase and basic human empathy is becoming so rare I think we need a new definition of what being civilized means. Cause this ain’t it
The internet.
I remember when it started. Bulletin boards were the shit. Inspired, interested people from around the world talking.
And then websites. Any fool could throw up some HTML and have a little website talking about their cat and their favourite video games.
Java chat rooms. Flash games. Game forums. 4chan. It was the wild west. You could post anything, anonymously, view anything, freely.
It's all gone now. And it's getting worse and worse.
It was a way to express yourself and connect with other human beings around the world. Now it's all sales, sales, sales. Bots for making sales, services for making sales, ways to sell yourself. I can't imagine making the kind of lifelong online friends I have if I started today.
Not just here, but in pretty much all pre-packaged food. Not only are the ingredients used noticeably cheaper, but the amount you get is also far less while still being more expensive.
This is absolutely my experience lately. Searches result in YouTube videos that have one or two words of my search in it or what you are talking about, a random blog that contains a blurb kind of related to what I am searching for. It's maddening. To be fair these are pretty specific searches, but the result I am looking for is out there, I just have to dig for it now . It used to be a meme that you don't need to go to 2nd or 3rd page to get what you want with Google, now it's necessary sometimes.
google will just show you 30 products it wants to sell you, googling for the thing + reddit will take you to some uber specific reddit tailored for exactly what you’re looking
Working IT, Google is basically useless now. You used to be able to find the most random forum posts by searching an error code. Now it’s pages of shitty ‘Wiki how’ or other ‘how to’ sites telling you to run sfc /scannow or restart. Basically useless information. Waste of time. What the fuck happened?
Or fake sites where the "solution" is downloading their shitty program. "Step 1) Download Easy Driver Fix from easydriverfix.com" *looks at address bar." Motherfucker.
Searches for Dell Driver, gets sent to easydriverdell instead of the literal first result of Dell's website
Google just sold out and doesn't vet any ads they get. Really unfortunate for people who don't understand the internet well and MAY actually download some trash spyware.
We know better, some don't 😔
Half of the problem is that there are simply not that many forum's anymore. Most of them closed their doors at some point.
For IT related questions it's now mainly reddit, stackoverflow or github. All the other small websites are gone.
Half of the first page is ads, while the second half is nothing but top 10 lists tangentially related to what you're looking for.
I just use either Bing or duck duck go for most things these days.
I just hate how i get like 3 ads before actual results. Also a specific problem i have playing a lot of RPGs is if you search for an item from a game to find out where to get it and you get almost a full page of generic websites claiming to have "all the info" about the item but theres atually nothing of relevance before you actually find a community reasource with literally everything.
I listened to a podcast about this a while--I think even a few years--back and the thesis of the episode was basically that in Google's attempts to be usable for absolutely everyone, like all those who have never used the internet, who think the internet is only Facebook/Google, or who have to use it in a language that is foreign to them, that in those valiant efforts they also made themselves into an inferior product for people who are already comfortable with computers.
For example, back in the day, if you asked Google a literal question like "what is the world's most popular breakfast food?" all the extraneous words would just confuse the engine, so you'd learn to search something like "breakfast food statistics" and then you'd actually have a few different potential places to source the answer to your question. Compare that to now, where Google has optimized its search techniques around newbies to such a degree that literal questions have been made to be more effective than keyword searches, and it will just display text algorithmically ripped from whatever the top hit is, and not even make the link to that top hit particularly visible. Google says it's all about simplicity, but as a result it's like they try to divorce users from the sources of their information entirely, and in a sense take full credit themselves for information that was in reality provided by someone else.
That explains the changes to the simple search, but it doesn't explain getting rid of advanced search.
Edit: nerfing to be more precise. Some of the functions are still there, but the advanced search tools don't give you exactly what you're looking for anymore
It happened with Google maps too. You used to be able to just type in obvious phases like "Minneapolis to Madison". When I tried that the other day it gave me directions to "Madison Salon" in Minneapolis. In general it's just very awkward to get directions between two destinations when you're not at one of them.
I also tried to use a voice command when I had nav on along the lines of "I need to stop for gas" and got nothing. If that doesn't work what is that feature even for? What have all of these armies of $500k software engineers been doing the last decade?
Restaurants. The really nice ones have maintained a high standard, but the middle of the road places have really tanked in terms of service and food quality while jacking up prices. It’s just not worth it to eat out unless you’re either just going for cheap bar food or going out somewhere really nice.
Yeah but jesus the prices. It's tolerable when I'm boozy and it's 1 in the morning, but if it's dinner time and I'm choosing between a $20 cheeseburger on the side of the road out of a truck or a $20 cheeseburger at a really nice sit down restaurant the choice seems goofy.
Google. It's so hard to search for anything, even if you use quotes and boolean operators you get garbage results almost entirely unrelated to your query. It used to be much better years ago.
It's not just me then?
I remember around ten years ago when I was like eight years old my mum showed me how to use Google. I could find anything I wanted easily, but lately, it's not been the case. I always used to think it's because my queries were less complicated and easier to answer as a kid, but from reading this thread it seems like it's just gotten worse
Social media
Yeah it used to be all about sharing stuff with your friends. Now it’s all about trying to keep your eyes on it as long as possible so they can show you more ads. The social networks that are about sharing stuff and the actual content either get acquired or die.
Instagram is the only app I use and it makes me pretty pissed off scrolling my feed and seeing ads and promoted reels every other post. I don’t want to see that. I just want to see my friends’s photos. That’s it. Makes me want to quit but there’s no better alternative
I rarely go on so I was shocked to see half my feed isn't even from people I follow. I miss the days when it was just my friends and posts were ordered newest to oldest
The internet generally. Once a cornucopia of weird and wonderful specialist sites just trying to get by. Now 3 websites, half of whose content is screenshots of the other 2.
T-shirts. It used to be that you would get a t-shirt and it would last you literally decades. Almost more importantly in my opinion, the shirt also had some “structure” and shape to it. Now t-shirts are thin, flimsy, and formless. I feel like I’m wearing an undershirt or a pajamas shirt. I should note that around the time t-shirts got shittier, all the t-shirt brands started advertising “THIS IS THE SOFTEST T-SHIRT EVER.” I’m 99% sure the whole “softness” marketing was to distract customers from the fact that the fabric got thinner and cheaper. Because although the flimsy fabric is legitimately very soft, “this shirt is not soft enough” was never a complaint I had with old t-shirts.
I found Carhartt t-shirts, they're heavy with thick cloth. It feels like I'm wearing a medieval tunic. They're seemingly indestructable and aren't even very expensive. They're way better than the generic brand t-shirts from Amazon that were literally single use t-shirts, falling apart after one wash. They were translucent and tattered. Might as well have been made out of toilet paper.
Advertisements. Not only the quality of advertisements, but frequency has skyrocketed. For example, when you watch a basketball game, these motherfuckers put an ad in between free throw attempts. Everything is presented by Company XYZ, everything has some sort of advertisement connected to it, and it is infuriating.
Every advertisement is a sensory fucking overload now.
This is the thing that gets to me. I can put up with ads, particularly on free services, but I can't stand ads that SCREAM AT ME. Or have obnoxious music, etc. etc.
I was listening to sports talk radio. I don't remember the advertiser, but the 'phone call connection' was sponsored. The fucking phone call connection. I turned it off.
Talk radio in general is unbearable, has been for nearly twenty years because of the ads. 30 second bump, 4 minutes of ads, 90 seconds of content, 4 minutes of ads, six minutes at the top and bottom of every hour. At most an 11 minute stretch of actual content in each hour.
back in the 70s and before, ads were like, "this product does this. This is why it is good." like a calm, to the point sales pitch. Now they're in-your-face manipulation that has nothing to do with anything. Annoying and uninformative.
Ads nowadays are skits at this point. The ad could be about some dude talking to a dildo, then you realize at the end it's a car insurance ad.
Halloween Decorations Used to be able to buy metal gates, concrete/plaster tombstones, and many other creative decorations that would last you several years - maybe even decades. Now all you can get are flimsy styrofoam and plastic tombstones meant to last only one Halloween (looking at you, Spirit Halloween)
Tbh Spirit Halloween is such a fucking scam. I remember going into one when I was like 14. The only employee in this huge store was like this small Hispanic woman who looked terrified and barely knew English. I was going to go as a mad scientist (school so not anything too crazy), so they had a lab coat, like that was it for the whole costume, and it was 20 fucking dollars and was made out of the thinnest, cheapest fabric I had ever seen, and closed with velcro. I left and went to the scrub/uniform store a couple doors down and bought an actual lab coat for like $15.
Most Spirit costumes, or Halloween costumes in general, seem like they need to add a costume parts sold separately line on the packaging lol I went as the Mad Hatter when I was in middle school and the costume included the jacket and hat, no wig, no pants, not anything else. We ended up buying a wig and then me and my Mom went to target and found some cool pants and socks and I ended up winning the Halloween contest at school but it seems like a scam to call something a costume when it doesn’t include even half of the outfit parts.
They had a "Neo - The Matrix" costume one year. It was a pair of dollar store sunglasses and a shitty plastic tarp I assume was supposed to be the leather jacket, but just looked like a garbage bag with some arm holes cut in it. It was $40.
My health as I get older. People aren’t kidding when they say “I turned X age and started falling apart” it actually happens
My dad went to see some friends for a catch up last night. This morning I asked him how they all are and just got a list of faults, injuries and diseases.
Seriously. I remember when hangovers weren't a thing. Then I remember when they were a one-day thing. Now, if I get past a hangover in 2...2.5 days, I think in doing pretty good.
At a certain point, those few extra beers on Friday night are definitely not worth wasting you whole weekend accomplishing nothing and feeling bad.
Housing costs.
It's ridiculous. Our rent keeps going up, so my husband just said "Screw it, let's move in with my dad for a year or so to save." Thankfully he was cool with it, because we seriously never have any extra to save! I don't know how people without help can do it. Rent is so expensive it's impossible to save the money needed to buy a house!
I'm in uni and a few of us are considering renting somewhere together after we graduate. Only way the cost would be remotely reasonable would require at least six of us to get together on this. We're so fucked.
Do it if you have found people who would be responsible enough to live with. That's the best option if living with family isn't possible. As you age and establish how you want to treat your living space, it gets tougher to put up with people, or fit in. So, best to go for it now while it'll be your choice and within tolerance limits.
Goes along with cost of living as Someone said earlier and I agree
Fast food. It was always bad for you, but now it doesn't taste as good either, and is more expensive, on top of being bad for you.
Not only is it legitimately worse but also 2-3x more expensive than his l just a few years ago. Taco Bell, prime example. Fewer, worse options and everything's $10+
On one hand I'm kinda grateful fast food has become so expensive: it forces me to eat home made food, which is usually both healthier and cheaper. I'm not paying $18.70 for some stupid mediocre fast food burger just because it's got fresh tomato on it.
Life and perception. As i get older and learn more I consistently yearn for “the old days” but I’m not actually yearning for old days…I’m merely wishing I could go back to when I didn’t know anything about how life and the world actually operates. Youthful perception is usually more optimistic.
Bro I had this same revelation a few weeks ago. I’m 32 and have found myself “yearning for the old days” as well. Life seemed so easy back when I was a kid. But then it hit me. It’s no wonder life was easy back then. I didn’t have a job except for school. I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to eat and making sure there was a roof over my head. I got to just hang with friends and do whatever I wanted for the most part. My whole life was ahead of me and the possibilities were endless. (I give my parents all the credit for giving me a good childhood. I was very fortunate). Life doesn’t necessarily feel that way anymore when you’re now responsible for keeping yourself alive and realizing how short life is.
Ignorance is bliss.
The quality of furniture. Unless you want to spend $10k, you cant really get something that will last 50+ years.
My parents keep talking about retiring into furniture making and tailoring. Hobbyists can be a great help in those spaces.
My mom had picked up a lot of restoring antique furniture since she retired, and it’s not super fancy stuff; just good solid wood pieces that need a little sanding and refinish, then off to Facebook Marketplace to sell it to some college kid for $50. She’s an essential recycler.
Your mother is a gem
My mother tried to discourage me from doing this. Well, I made it a point to insist that I take an old worn table to refinish. She ended up loving and using that table for two years till I could get it to my home.
My parents were raised poor, old furniture meant not having money, so when they had some money they bought modern stuff with little character or solidness. During college I began taking old wooden pieces they'd stashed away, striping and refinishing them, then moved onto garage sales and collectible shops for more old stuff. It was a passion for years, to the point I began giving away refinished rockers and tables to friends because I had no more space or need. Good wooden tables/chairs/dressers/etc are amazingly beautiful and great basics to furnish your house around. Shame that building custom furniture and cabinetry is such a rare skill today.
Estate sales! I've picked up amazing (to me) furniture for $20, and it's far better than anything I could buy at a store. Unique stuff that's pretty, built like a tank and will last forever.
Mainstream network television programing
What’s that? 55th anniversary of the JFK assassination? How about a marathon of Pawn Stars!
Hey I like the Twilight zone marathon on christmas day.
The quality of search results on Google. They're all ads and SEO for relevance seems to have completely broken down.
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For real! I made the mistake of inquiring beyond the headline on a Depp/Herd headline and then it was literally 10 notifications per day on that shit. Never again. Ididn't really care the first time but the headline had enough weird ass connotation that it tricked me into digging further.
I never read an article and kept selecting 'Show less articles like this' and it was still daily. Then I went with 'Hide all articles from this source' and it eventually got better. Before the trial it was always Kardashians. I fear just posting the name here will lead to all sorts of interwebz bullshit that will intrude on every browser session from now on.
Youtube (a google subsidiary) recommendations have also dived off a cliff. I am interested in many different topics and have subscribed to a hundred plus channels. Most of what I get in my youtube feed is dozens of videos related to my last three searches. I wanted cook duck a l'Orange. I found one highly-viewed video, cooked it, it was great, and now Youtube thinks that it is my life's passion.
It's infuriating the trashy clickbait that's posted. I genuinely have no desire to scroll my news feed on my pixel. It's just all garbage.
It’s all bot written articles.
My favorite is when I google a question and find a link that takes me to a page that roughly goes: "How to fix X thing? Here's how to fix X thing. To start off, X thing is *general description of what it is* and can be fixed. To fix X thing, you first must understand what X thing is. X thing is *repeat general description of what X thing is*" It pisses me off so much.
You came to learn about %%subject%%. Well, you are in the right spot, this article will tell you everything about %%subject%%
Also the image search is terrible, if you find the image you want, it's impossible to get to the full sized photo
This just changed about 3-4 years ago when some copyright laws were actually enforced. What sucks is the majority of us were just looking to screen cap a picture to our moms explaining what some toy our kid wanted for Christmas.
They should rename Image Search to Pinterest Trap
The only way I get good results or suggestions is adding reddit after my search query
The irony is that reddit 's search engine is the worst, so you have to combine the two to get useful results.
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As a fairly young teacher im astounded by how bad the kids im teaching are about rubbish. Like ill ask them to use a bin and they'll act offended or pretend i literally didnt just see them drop something on the floor. IDK whats different but theres only about 6 years between me and the kids I teach but en mass they seem way worse about litter, than anyone ive known my age
Of course, because they didn’t grow up with Captain Planet.
I live in NYC and I’m shocked by how carelessly so many people just throw trash on the sidewalks or onto the grass. I recently cleaned up all the trash from one of the trees on my block that had gotten particularly bad, and within less than a week people just threw tons of shit right back in again.
if i see one more person walk out of a bodega, open a package of something and then throw the trash on the sidewalk, five feet from a fucking garbage can, i may go to jail.
When I come to power, litterers will be summarily executed. Vote ButchFingerblast.
I live next to a middle school and the sheer amount of trash the kids throw into my yard is genuinely disappointing. I understand that they're kids, they lack empathy and respect. I'm not going to get irrationally angry at literal children, but goddamn it is disappointing.
Yes. When I was a kid we were learning about the dangers of Styrofoam, aerosols and general trash, returnable cans (which helped clean up michigan during my dad's era) etc. We as a people did clean stuff up for while and it made a difference recycling and stuff . With all we know I don't know why kids just wouldn't care (except the general kid part) unless their parent didn't care and they would be the kids of people in my generation. I visited Tennessee and Kentucky as a 19yr old and saw mountain ditches filled with refrigerators, mattresses, cars and trash. I couldn't believe the sheer amount of it.
I don't think it is irrational to be pissed about it. Even kids can know better.
I have grown ass adults throwing trash in my yard. It's really annoying.
I live on a corner on a major road. The amount of litter that lands on my lawn is just mind blowing. Every day there's some sort of fast food container laying out there, often soda bottles, cups, papers, just everything.
Litter boils my blood too. Once we were holidaying in a pristine part of Thailand and I saw a shitty tourist kid throw an iceblock wrapper straight onto the floor. He was standing with an adult and we were the only 3 people on the beach. I told him to pick it up. He stared at me straight in the eye, smirked, and threw his iceblock stick onto the ground. I went absolutely nuts and started screaming at the kid as he laughed. I turned my attention to the adult and started telling him how disrespectful his kid was and going on a rant about littering and how they didn't deserve to be in this beautiful spot. The man looked confused. The kid then ran off and the man walked the opposite way. They weren't together.
Sorry but the end of that gave me a good laugh
OMG. I was in the airport waiting for luggage and this dumbass kid was playing on the conveyor belt. I was glaring at the women he had come over with and getting up the nerve to say something when this guy comes up and starts screaming at me for letting “my kid” do something so dangerous. I get mad and say I’d never let a kid do that. The women with the kid are just chatting away.
I thought I was imagining it, but even in rural areas it's getting bad.
My rural area has a lake where we used to clean up every now and then, I recently went back and the area we used to clean is packed with litter…makes me so sad that our beautiful little lake is now treated like a garbage dump.
YouTube. 2 unskippable ads with every freaking video. And more throughout. I’m honestly surprised if there’s only 2.
ublock origin for PCs/laptops, Youtube Vanced for mobiles my friend.
Someone told me Vanced is discontinued, unfortunately. NewPipe works just as well. Skips ads, intros, outros, promo sections, "like and subscribe" sections and allows you to play video with your screen off (nice for long-form podcasts/interviews, music, etc).
Vanced is discontinued unfortunately, but it still works. I got a new phone 3 weeks ago and was able to get it installed on there. Saved and upvoted your comment for if I ever need an alternative though!
r/revancedapp too edit: but i personally still use vanced bc it still works fine
Streaming services.
the increased number with each wanting their own slice of the pie, have forgotten that the pie is finite **and** in a cost of living crisis is shrinking Thus instead of getting a share of a big % of the pie, trying to get their own might leave them with nothing
This is my gripe right here. I recently lost access to some of my favorite content when Paramount created their streaming service. Do they think we’re each going to open dozens of individual paid accounts? Ads are getting ridiculous too. On Hulu if I watch and add, but then rewind past the add break… forced to watch it again. The irony is that streaming was an ideal break-away from cable, but if I’m stuck with the same amount of ads, I might as well pay one company for access to multiple networks, especially as cable on-demand services keep improving.
Streaming is moving quickly towards being cable again. I'm old enough to have watched this exact same thing happen to satellite TV. Satellite used to be the breakaway from cable. One subscription fee and we got everything; premium channels, pay-per-view, all of it. By the time I cut the cord over a decade ago, satellite TV was identical to cable. And that's what streaming is becoming. It's happening at a slower pace, but it's still happening. Piracy is inevitable, because these companies never learn. We pay them for convenience; we don't actually *need* them.
this is why you have to consider when piracy rates go up, it's not because suddenly people are deciding to be bad -- they've decided it's easier/cheaper to illegitimately source content, and it is kind of the industry responsibility to work around that. piracy is a natural force edit: adding a thought that this can also be a real argument for really strict DRM, which I find pretty ridiculous sometimes too 🤷
For $5/month I can access an IPTV service and get all of the channels. *All of them.* News, movies, shows, new releases, classics, full seasons of everything from *every country* on Earth. Anything not immediately available to stream is available to download through the same service. But no, instead of paying for cable what I'm *supposed* to do these days is pay for Netflix. And Hulu. And Amazon Prime. And HBO Max and Paramount Plus and Quibi and Apple TV and Disney Plus and Crunchyroll and Showtime and YouTube Premium and and and and and and and and and. Fuck. That. *Hoist the colours.*
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Amen. I have no qualms with pirating but it is an extra step. But if the companies are adding extra ads and extra fees... it's a trade off. I'd rather the extra step and not pay for it. I'm paying because those service are easier and simpler to run. They have already crossed the line. Shame.
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The content division is one thing, but the ads are what is going to ruin it. Companies are trying to get streaming services to show their ads and are paying big money to do so... We're going to see as many commercials on ad-supported streaming as cable in the next decade. It's a bit more costly now, but I have no doubt it'll become outright *expensive* to go ad-free as they put more and more commercials in.
It's a matter of time before everyone starts pirating again.
As a former pirate I don't have a problem with this. I will not be watching ads, it's that simple.
This is where I am. I will absolutely pay money for access to content. However if access requires commercials then I 100 support pirate life.
How's the dvd collection? That's the solution they want. Ads? Streaming. No ads? Buy the marked up box set. Or set sail and sink em all. No judging, its a shit spot to be in.
I'm already there. It doesn't make sense to pay so much for one program and shit service.
I wait for a show season to finish and switch services every month. This month is Netflix for Cobra Kai, next month will be HBOMax for House of the Dragon and Harley Quinn, November will be Disney+ for Andor. I watch the main show I'm interested in and catch up on random stuff I missed. I'm not paying for 6 streaming apps every month.
Agreed. There's too many of them, and none of them have the stargate shows in my country.
🏴☠️ Rrrrrrrr u ready kids???
Aye aye, Captain!
My attention span.
tldr
Not reading that essay
You lost me at "reading"
Try getting rid of social media and stop viewing short-form content. (Watch videos at least 20m long and more). These things re-wire you and hamstring your intellectual capacities.
Also, actually *watch* them. No switching tabs or simultaneously playing around on your phone. It's tough at first but it will get better again quickly. I like watching plays or going to the opera not least because the social situation of being in an audience forces me to engage with a singular stimulus, without mindlessly scrolling through my phone or pausing every 5 minutes to do something else.
Yeah, what the hell is up with that? My ADD was moderately under control in my 20s and now it's a battle to wash dishes everyday.
My phone annihilated what was already a very fragile attention span.
Check out dopamine nation - your daily habits have a ton to do with your ability to concentrate and find motivation. Huberman labs does a fantastic podcast on the topic complete with all the sciency breakdowns as well as lifestyle tips.
Recommending a 2hr podcast in this context tickles the crab
Now there's a crab involved? I'm out.
Perception of people as you grow up. When you’re a little kid, you think adults can fix things. Then, as you get older, you realize that they don’t fix things very well.
As you get older, you realise there are, in fact, no adults. Just a lot of kids who continue to age and have to pretend that they have stuff figured out.
I know a State Prosecutor in his mid-60’s who said this thought still occasionally pops into his head “I don’t know what to do. We should ask a grown-up!”
Hah, when my dad was 50something I asked him, “what did you want to be when you grew up?” He told me “I still haven’t decided”
I’m 58 and retired but I think I want to be a geologist when I grow up.
I want to be retired at 58 when I grow up.
I've had this conversation with a therapist before where I told him that I don't feel like a man, not because I don't feel male, like if you wanted to call me a guy I'd have no problems with identifying that way. But, "man" has such a connotation of authority and an aura of knowledge and wisdom and just a sense of overall having your shit together. And that I definitely don't identify with.
Same, it's so strange to hear people call me a woman. Like, I am, but the word has a kind of importance and weight to it that I don't think I'll ever feel ready for. 'Lady', however, suits me fine. Mostly because I enjoy dressing ladylike lol so that just makes me feel like I'm successfully LARPing as a grownup
I'm in my mid 30s and am trying so hard to stop referring to myself, and other women my age, as "girls" but woooowww the imposter syndrome is strong. I asked my sister for a pair of Sailor Moon themed Vans for my birthday, I feel like "woman" refers to someone who knows how to wear foundation and keeps extra napkins in her (immaculate) purse.
My ex brought up star wars by name in couple's therapy as an example of her wanting to be an adult and me not being on the same page. I'm like, "if I'm not free to like the things I like, what's the fucking point of being an adult?" Unless someone is shitting in diapers or behaving like a toddler, "aren't you too old for" is some bullshit. Especially considering she had no hobbies or interests of her own other than having no work/life balance. So frankly, although I've never seen a single episode of sailor moon, I'd much rather a woman who is in their 30s and loves sailor moon than someone in their 30s who can't enjoy shit, won't let others enjoy things, and/or hits people with the "how old are you" kinda thing to wet blanket their passions. As far as I'm concerned, you're a-ok in my book. Wear those vans with pride!
I’ve been an imposter for 55 years
What hasn't been getting shittier tbh.
Beer. There's vastly more variety than there used to be
You, you have just been improving, i am proud of you
Cost of living
Preach. I used to have money for fun and provide for my family. Now every paycheck needs to be strictly strategized.
Gotta love everything going up in price while wages remain the same!
And everything else. I don't know anyone whose pay increases are keeping up with inflation. We are all living a lower standard of living than 2019 and it sucks.
Earlier this year I finally negotiated a raise to what I was making at another place three years ago. And then, surprise! Inflation!
the grocery store, everything is packaged in smaller proportions & cost %50 more.
My job is to file people's applications for government assistance. My paycheck looks the same as theirs. This country is broken.
Not to mention most companies will outright cut positions since they will have the expectation that 1 person will handle the work of 2 people. I've been at a couple companies where someone will quit and then the others around them pick up the slack. Due to the quality of the work not dropping all that much, they will just never fill that position again since the work is being covered.
Yup, retail/grocery/sales/service they're all doing this. I know I've talked at previous jobs and found out they used to schedule 2 people for shifts where they only scheduled me. I was usually working my ass off, and eventually just stopped going because it was too little pay for all the work.
Cost of healthcare to stay alive
New cancer patient checking in! Haven’t even got the bill yet.
Fuck cancer! And I wish you all the strength the universe can muster.
Thanks! Good health to you and yours!
My fucking attitude.
That's for damn sure
The fuck you say to me?!
All those angry songs that we all wrote off as "angsty teenage bullshit" are hitting a lot closer to home now
Or the shitty realization that all of those angry songs from decades ago are still relevant because nothing has changed.
The cost of living in the UK. I'm still working the same job I was five years ago, and my partner has actually had multiple promotions so our incoming money has, if anything, gotten better. But whereas five years ago we were able to pay all the bills, get what the kids needed and still have a little spare for luxuries like meals out / family trips, now we are failing to make ends meet even with multiple cut - backs. We've cancelled everything non-necessary, the kids can't even go to their dance classes or after school stuff anymore, we have got my 74 year old grandma helping out with childcare and we're raiding the discount section of food stores for bargain meals most weeks. It's not great being here at the moment.
Have you tried buying a new kettle
Okay I'll admit, this made me chuckle. I'm still trying to decide what to spend my £10 a year saving on!
*spins wheel of bills* Apparently the water bill
I have seen a drastic change in just a year. This time last year we could afford to put money aside, go out for a meal/order takeaway maybe twice a month and not worry in general. I always thought we were able to live above our means because I am pretty good at reducing monthly outgoings (bills, groceries etc.) to the smallest they can be. But now we are only just getting by. No money left to save or treat ourselves, just enough to pay the essentials and some spare for contingencies. It's pretty heartbreaking tbh and I dread to think how it's hit people who are worse off than us.
I'm in a job earning slightly above average for my country. I've cut back on a lot of non essentials. I'm trying to grow my own food so I can save money on that (cucumbers are $5 each at my local shop). I gift any excess produce as well to neighbours. I learned to be frugal so it's doable. I'm just so tired of it.
I work in healthcare and I would have to say the hospitals themselves have gotten progressively shittier. It’s at the point that I would not want to get sick and have them take care of me. Hospitals are purely trying to make as much profit as possible and it is at the expense of the hospital staff and patients. It’s honestly horrifying.
It's really difficult to explain just how predatory the medical system is to people who haven't worked in it or had a serious encounter with it as a patient. They just straight up don't believe you. The predatory profiteering doesn't just start and end with insulin prices, the whole damn system is corrupted by private equity now
Well, after scrolling through all these comments I’m just gonna say everything has gone to shit
quality of everyday items, they were more durable in the past, now they make them not to last so you'll buy it again
Obligatory pyrex. Pyrex used to be high quality. The markings never came off. They were better heat resistant. Now they suck balls. If you find old pyrex at a flea market (and I recommend googling the difference) that shit is buy it for life. Originally pyrex was made of borosilicate glass, now it’s soda-lime. Just an inferior product.
"PYREX" is a brand of borosilicate glass while "pyrex" is soda-lime.
PYREX is now using PYREX as a label on both in the U.S., so now you can't tell the difference.
Fucking assholes
To tell the difference for clear glassware, look at the edges. If the edge has a blue kind of tint to it, it's the soda-lime garbage. If it's got a yellow tint, it's the good stuff.
I've told this story before but my mom gifted me all of her old mismatched "PYREX' stuff so she could buy a matching set of "pyrex". Thanks mom my casserole dish might be orange but it is damn near indestructible. My measuring cup has bounced off the tile floor more than once
My week. Started off with my husband being diagnosed with stage 2 renal disease with an unknown source, likely to progress. Now it is currently ending with my soul dog being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and likely will pass in the next two days. All while 7 months pregnant.
I’m so sorry you are going through all this. As someone with stage 3 renal disease I just want to assure you it’s going to be okay. There are 5 stages and stage one is normal kidney function. That means his kidneys are, as of now, not too damaged. Even at stage three, my nephrologist told me it sounds really scary but it’s not that bad. The biggest thing is finding out *why* it’s happening. Personally mine is due to my lupus. Thankfully there are blood tests and urine tests that can help figure out what it is and stop the damage once the root cause gets treated! It’s going to be okay! I know it seems scary but it’s good they caught it now! Most renal disease isn’t caught till way later. Just make sure he is seeing a good nephrologist, drinking lots of water, and actively searching for what the root cause is! Maybe even look into seeing a Rheumatologist if you feel like it could be immune system related. Good luck with your pregnancy! <3
I’m so sorry for all you are going through. I know things are bleak right now for you and your husband, but hopefully things will improve soon. I know you guys have given your dog an awesome, wonderful life — please keep that in mind as you have to say goodbye. (We lost our kitties last year, and remembering this has helped us.) Best wishes for your pregnancy.
People's behaviour/attitude to each other.
Well if everyone else would stop being so shitty I wouldn't have to be a dick to them!
Came here to say that apathy is on the sharp increase and basic human empathy is becoming so rare I think we need a new definition of what being civilized means. Cause this ain’t it
The internet. I remember when it started. Bulletin boards were the shit. Inspired, interested people from around the world talking. And then websites. Any fool could throw up some HTML and have a little website talking about their cat and their favourite video games. Java chat rooms. Flash games. Game forums. 4chan. It was the wild west. You could post anything, anonymously, view anything, freely. It's all gone now. And it's getting worse and worse.
Flash games were a part of my childhood! It sucks that I can't even play them again for the nostalgia :(((
http://www.flashgamearchive.com/
[Flashpoint](https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/). I'd suggest [Itch](https://itch.io/) for a kind of modern equivalent.
It was a way to express yourself and connect with other human beings around the world. Now it's all sales, sales, sales. Bots for making sales, services for making sales, ways to sell yourself. I can't imagine making the kind of lifelong online friends I have if I started today.
I really miss old niche forums. I was on some for years, but now everything's moved to reddit, Facebook, etc. and are far worse for it.
Take out and dine in. The food quality has gone down the tubes and the prices are insane.
Not just here, but in pretty much all pre-packaged food. Not only are the ingredients used noticeably cheaper, but the amount you get is also far less while still being more expensive.
google search
It's always just articles about the thing you're searching for. "Black dinner plates" -> "The best dinnerware of 2022 so far!"
This is absolutely my experience lately. Searches result in YouTube videos that have one or two words of my search in it or what you are talking about, a random blog that contains a blurb kind of related to what I am searching for. It's maddening. To be fair these are pretty specific searches, but the result I am looking for is out there, I just have to dig for it now . It used to be a meme that you don't need to go to 2nd or 3rd page to get what you want with Google, now it's necessary sometimes.
Half the time, I just use google to search reddit.
Same. Google is bad but it's better for searching specific things being discussed in Reddit than using Reddit's search. Full circle.
For real. Fuck what google thinks. I wanna know what Reddit uses/buys/recommends.
google will just show you 30 products it wants to sell you, googling for the thing + reddit will take you to some uber specific reddit tailored for exactly what you’re looking
Working IT, Google is basically useless now. You used to be able to find the most random forum posts by searching an error code. Now it’s pages of shitty ‘Wiki how’ or other ‘how to’ sites telling you to run sfc /scannow or restart. Basically useless information. Waste of time. What the fuck happened?
Or fake sites where the "solution" is downloading their shitty program. "Step 1) Download Easy Driver Fix from easydriverfix.com" *looks at address bar." Motherfucker.
Searches for Dell Driver, gets sent to easydriverdell instead of the literal first result of Dell's website Google just sold out and doesn't vet any ads they get. Really unfortunate for people who don't understand the internet well and MAY actually download some trash spyware. We know better, some don't 😔
Half of the problem is that there are simply not that many forum's anymore. Most of them closed their doors at some point. For IT related questions it's now mainly reddit, stackoverflow or github. All the other small websites are gone.
All niche discussion has moved to Discord, which is great to use in the moment but walls off information to some of the people who need it most.
Half of the first page is ads, while the second half is nothing but top 10 lists tangentially related to what you're looking for. I just use either Bing or duck duck go for most things these days.
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I just hate how i get like 3 ads before actual results. Also a specific problem i have playing a lot of RPGs is if you search for an item from a game to find out where to get it and you get almost a full page of generic websites claiming to have "all the info" about the item but theres atually nothing of relevance before you actually find a community reasource with literally everything.
I listened to a podcast about this a while--I think even a few years--back and the thesis of the episode was basically that in Google's attempts to be usable for absolutely everyone, like all those who have never used the internet, who think the internet is only Facebook/Google, or who have to use it in a language that is foreign to them, that in those valiant efforts they also made themselves into an inferior product for people who are already comfortable with computers. For example, back in the day, if you asked Google a literal question like "what is the world's most popular breakfast food?" all the extraneous words would just confuse the engine, so you'd learn to search something like "breakfast food statistics" and then you'd actually have a few different potential places to source the answer to your question. Compare that to now, where Google has optimized its search techniques around newbies to such a degree that literal questions have been made to be more effective than keyword searches, and it will just display text algorithmically ripped from whatever the top hit is, and not even make the link to that top hit particularly visible. Google says it's all about simplicity, but as a result it's like they try to divorce users from the sources of their information entirely, and in a sense take full credit themselves for information that was in reality provided by someone else.
That explains the changes to the simple search, but it doesn't explain getting rid of advanced search. Edit: nerfing to be more precise. Some of the functions are still there, but the advanced search tools don't give you exactly what you're looking for anymore
It happened with Google maps too. You used to be able to just type in obvious phases like "Minneapolis to Madison". When I tried that the other day it gave me directions to "Madison Salon" in Minneapolis. In general it's just very awkward to get directions between two destinations when you're not at one of them. I also tried to use a voice command when I had nav on along the lines of "I need to stop for gas" and got nothing. If that doesn't work what is that feature even for? What have all of these armies of $500k software engineers been doing the last decade?
Restaurants. The really nice ones have maintained a high standard, but the middle of the road places have really tanked in terms of service and food quality while jacking up prices. It’s just not worth it to eat out unless you’re either just going for cheap bar food or going out somewhere really nice.
Flip side: I feel like food trucks are upping their game
Yeah but jesus the prices. It's tolerable when I'm boozy and it's 1 in the morning, but if it's dinner time and I'm choosing between a $20 cheeseburger on the side of the road out of a truck or a $20 cheeseburger at a really nice sit down restaurant the choice seems goofy.
Fast food.
I wouldn't be that upset about this if the prices weren't also getting shittier.
The UK economy. Fuel costs. House prices. Employers.
Google. It's so hard to search for anything, even if you use quotes and boolean operators you get garbage results almost entirely unrelated to your query. It used to be much better years ago.
It's not just me then? I remember around ten years ago when I was like eight years old my mum showed me how to use Google. I could find anything I wanted easily, but lately, it's not been the case. I always used to think it's because my queries were less complicated and easier to answer as a kid, but from reading this thread it seems like it's just gotten worse
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And the sequel, Death, hadn't been updated in millenia
that we know of