KIP: what is something that has gotten better in your life/lifetime?

Premise: We have loads of threads about how America is a dystopia and everything is awful and Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now and everything is going to shit because of climate change and right-wing drift.

I get it. We are a cranky bunch, happiest when complaining.

But. Can we just collect a few examples of things that have gotten better, or that are at least adequate?

E-bikes. Decent non-alcoholic beer. Online school registration. Widespread early voting.

availability of music, writing, film to a device i can carry around with me

weather forecasting

map, accommodation, transport, cultural/entertainment knowledge in the palm of my hand

i interrailed in 2006 when the internet had _stuff_ but i did it again when mobile apps were where they are now a few years ago- its been transformational

inevitable collapse of capitalism as environmental chaos destroys existing sociopolitcal structures

means of daily ongoing communication with individuals and groups

i remember phoning my friends granny to walk across the road to get him for a chat twice a week and it would cost me a quid an all

xp close to fp tbh i mean one thread genuinely isnt much to ask ffs

video games

Dialogue noise reduction/restoration plug ins

Global supply chains

Darraghmac, Long distance telephony used to be like a whole thing, until it suddenly... wasn't.

In 1989 I had to get a job just to pay for the right to talk to my girlfriend who was 110 miles away.

Restaurant reservation systems? Like, I can say what kind of food I want and when I want to eat it, and boom. Choices. In the 80s that would have been inconceivable.

Also those tetrapack wine boxes? Great for picnics. I am a simple man.

man here bragging that he had a girlfriend in 1989 is all i see

Social media, for all its ills, has allowed people to counteract the control of information and shaping of public opinion by mainstream media and powerful officials like never before.

D i tried to give the most honest and value-neutral thought i had

Vegetarian and vegan options in restaurants.

Computing power & storage, nice to basically not ever have to worry about storage anymore (on a personal use level, not talking about 'the cloud' and server farms etc).

Quality of biscuits in non-southern U.S. states

D i tried to give the most honest and value-neutral thought i had

― skin like puff pastry (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 September 2023 15:43 (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah fair i was too crabby myself in reaction

The availability of films by Jean Pierre Eustache.

Nostalgia is better now because focused on things I lived through and not some shite from before I was born.

TV’s are awesome

backup cameras are really great

Luckily only America is a dystopia where everything is awful.

I live in a zip code that gets fiber internet, not having twice-weekly outages has been pretty cool.

Noodle, while you initially appeared to have misunderstand the assignment, I appreciate that you tried to fulfill the assignment in your own curmudgeonly fashion.

That said, I am impressed that some folks are rising to the keep-it-positive spirit

dating. being a gay man.

In my lifetime? Most of these are of a theme, based on what I value I guess!

- ability to talk to other people anywhere

- WhatsApp calls to family on video and voice notes - I can see and hear family much more readily. I used to use a landline to talk to them and pay money for it!

- on that same tip, I love that we have a family group chat and no matter where we are in the world we can message the group and share photos of where we are and what we’re seeing. I remember being on a trip to St Petersburg (Russia ofc) in 2008 and going to an internet café, transferring photos from my phone to my email to send my family and checking in with them like once every two days. How the fuck did we live like that lol.

- Frederic Mallé perfume

Oh yeah, on a smaller level

- noise cancelling headphones

- spice bags

fine dining. i recall even in LA there being just a few stuffy places where you had to wear a suit jacket or something

less dogshit about these days

Less dog shit and less cigarette smoke.

Text-to-speech synthesis has improved by leaps and bounds

i was going to offer noise cancelling headphones specifically also

incredible, incredible "we are living in the future" technology

the means to power small and large electronic devices

I’ve never used noise cancelling headphones, I still just turn it up to an unsafe volume to drown out the noise

that's what our ears demand

the existence of r3d@ct3d, p@55th3p0pc0rn and k@r@g@rg@ as repositories of the widest collections of music and films ever known

Decent non-alcoholic beer.

And decent alcoholic beer! The availability of decent-to-excellent beer all over the U.S. is really remarkable given how lousy it was 30 years ago. Other forms of alcohol too, much better and broader selections of wine and spirits even in mid-sized cities. It's a good time to be a tippler.

My kids are much more accepting and tolerant of difference than I was at their age.

The quality of film transfers onto high-quality physical media

Vegetarian and vegan options in restaurants.

My world of young people is super communist and kaleidoscopically queer

The digital revolution did improve many things, for sure. In my own life the first big impact was the arrival of a personal computer with word processing software and a printer. In my generation you could find tens of millions of repetitions of that story.

Aside from digitization I should mention the removal of lead from things like gasoline and paint. The banning of DDT and many ozone-depleting aerosols.

the means to power small and large electronic devices

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Thursday, September 21, 2023 12:12 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea something I absolutely do not miss from my childhood/teenager days is that fucking everything needed batteries. I remember getting a 24 pack of AAs for my birthday once lol

Oh yeah definitely - I have a credit card sized power pack that literally sits in my wallet and it’s such a lifesaver

seeing more non-white people on televison

Seems like only Barney Miller made any real attempt at diversity back in the day

There really is too many things to list. If you handed me any piece of modern technology to younger me back in the 80s, it would seem like a goddamn miracle device.

my bowel control has come on leaps and bounds since the early 80s although it’s not a situation i expect to continue indefinitely

Drummers have gotten better, via being able to watch 1000s of other great drummers all the time on youtube and social media. This has its downsides too (ie everyone being good in the same way, everyone has chops but there are fewer opportunities to play with other humans, etc).

Like my watch currently tells me the weather, bus times, lets me communicate with many people in the world, track people I know, tells me when I have appointments or something to do, control lights, tracks a variety of health metrics, plays music. My swatch just told time and beeped every hour.

hospital food

Mattttt otmfm

In 1985 or so a $300 guitar was rubbish. Like an Aria or Squier that was barely usable.

Since computer-controlled routing became commonplace, and construction has become systematic? Cheap guitars are almost always reliable if not excellent.

Current Squiers and Epiphones approach and sometimes exceed pro quality. This would have been inconceivable in 1985. I have had some Mexican Fenders and a Squier that were playable out of the box, and with a little love are utterly delightful instruments.

e-ink is an invaluable innovation for those that struggle to read the small text in most paper books, even with reading glasses. i.e half blind, old bastards like me. But I'd gladly forsake any of these consumer luxuries if the complete collapse of capitalism and ruthless liquidation of all its client politicians by firing squads was a possibility.

Various surgical procedures

i can watch any sport i want live with pretty minimal fuss

I can buy or “find” extraordinarily good transfers of pretty much any great film I’ve heard of, usually for the price of a movie ticket, and an affordable tv gives a very good rendition of a cinema experience

so. idk if this is quite the assignment given, if it's "kip", but well.

i don't have a lot of nostalgia. i see it sometimes, people... particularly, you know, liberals, people who are upset about, like, overt fascism, and i definitely get that point of view. also, increasing corporatization, monopolization, divide between rich and poor, oppression, etc. these are all things that have gotten worse since i was younger, and i think... it's understandable to miss a time when there wasn't as much of those things. i do kind of agree with nv's original post, personally. these aren't things i _miss_ so much... a lot of the things we have lost in the last 30 years or so, i have a kind of "don't mourn, organize" point of view... the things that have been taken from us, we _will_ take them back.

at the same time, i'm hesitant to say that things have so much gotten _better_ in my lifetime. it's a matter of perspective. i mean, yes, i'm talking about the trans thing. i don't know what else i could possibly talk about. like, i don't know if it feels right to say things have gotten "better" when there's such a high-profile and widespread attempt to eradicate trans people. it feels pretty disrespectful for me to say to these kids "haha, you think _you_ have it bad?" because they do. they have it extremely bad.

me? i don't have it bad. i never imagined that my life could be as great as it is. yeah, the world has gone to shit, and i hate it, and at the same time my life is fucking amazing, because _i get to exist_. like again, i don't know if this is "kip", but for me, this is an immeasurable improvement. when i was young, nobody was trying to eradicate trans people, because they'd already pretty much _succeeded_. (and it did require overt effort - it was part and parcel of the ideology promoted as "civilization" by white imperialism and colonialism. sorry for the communist-speak.)

it's not that... i mean, i listen to '70s music, i like old doctor who, a lot of the old stuff, i _like_ it, but there's always that "yeah, but also" that goes along with it.

on a lighter note, look, i'm a fucking hoarder. in a previous lifetime i'd have old newspapers piled up to the ceiling and i'd die when a stack fell on me and they'd have to fumigate where i lived. i now have a black box about the size of a breadbox. it holds... 50.6 TB. when i fill it up, i can swap out a couple hard drives and it'll hold more stuff. it's a fucking bag of holding, isn't it? today, i downloaded pretty much the entirety of the first season of "sesame street". not literally all of them. like, two out of the 132 episodes are missing. the rest of them, though. it took me a couple hours.

i mean i gotta be honest that sort of thing has probably improved my quality of life about as much as estrogen has.

on a lighter note, look, i'm a fucking hoarder. in a previous lifetime i'd have old newspapers piled up to the ceiling and i'd die when a stack fell on me and they'd have to fumigate where i lived.

kate how the fuck is that "a lighter note", girl take a nap

as long as we're KIP . . . i grew up without ilx and now i've been here 20 years. it has been a wonderful thing for me and i honestly love you all (despite minor beef at times)

i've learned so much, and met such amazing people. it's lovely

xp

It's positive because the ability to horde untold millions of files on tiny hard drives is totally more acceptable than having gross stacks of newspapers.

I think internet memes have gotten way way better the last 15 years

I mean seriously look at any classic/vintage memes page it's some of the most cringeworthy shit you'll ever see and I remember that being all over the place back then. I think people have finally figured out how to be funny on the internet.

Various surgical procedures

I had all four of my wisdom teeth taken out two years ago, and was very nervous because all the stories I heard from my Boomer-aged parents (and TV shows) were that it was a horrible experience that would have me laid up for days. When I got there, the oral surgeon assured me the procedure has come along way since then—I didn't need anything stronger than an occasional ibuprofen afterward.

Oh yeah definitely - I have a credit card sized power pack that literally sits in my wallet and it’s such a lifesaver

how many mAh we talking? I'd be too afraid of sitting on it and catching my butt on fire

dating. being a gay man.

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, 21 September 2023 16:16 (yesterday) link

^^^^ that's the one

Paper-free, cashless, app-controlled admin society is pretty good when you think about it. I had to stand in a queue the other day and it felt like the first time in ages.
Obviously automated translation, internet searchability, booking services, Wikipedia
Medicine and care feel leagues ahead of the 90s

re: children's cartoons if things like steven universe had been around in the 90s I would probably be a way cooler and nicer and better adjusted person today

availability of reasonably good cocktails

significantly less cultural and technological gatekeeping about who gets to make music and how

as long as we're KIP . . . i grew up without ilx and now i've been here 20 years. it has been a wonderful thing for me and i honestly love you all (despite minor beef at times)

i've learned so much, and met such amazing people. it's lovely

― mookieproof, Friday, 22 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

That's kinda the only thing because I knew of a time before the web where I couldn't explore my enthusiasms. Without a platform like ilx I don't know where I'd be.

The internet, in that ability to find other people, has been mostly the best thing about our time.

It is and it isn’t. Bit of a double edged sword though I included it in my comment so I’m not going to withdraw it, maybe just caveat it.

The availability of films by Jean Pierre Eustache.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 21 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

One more week at a cinema near you :-)

availability of directions while driving

As someone who experienced my parents driving to completely the wrong side of France using some early internet directions printed off by my uncle & the tense eight hour drive that followed, I’m inclined to agree

Explainer videos for everything

Yes! I fixed our dryer last year by watching YouTube videos.

As someone who experienced my parents driving to completely the wrong side of France using some early internet directions printed off by my uncle & the tense eight hour drive that followed, I’m inclined to agree

For some reason, that story instantly called this to mind:

Vesoul

I think we’d have killed each other if we’d listened to Brel. Luckily I had an Abba mix tape with me.

I guess ABBA is less likely to lead to an incident.

I owe my life to Take A Chance on Me,
Angeleyes stopped me hating you and wishing you dead

speaking of there being much better beer now I think all that mixed drink in a can stuff like High Noon and Carbliss is actually quite good too. I'm used to that stuff tasting awful. even White Claws, I don't particularly like them, but it's good that there's stuff out there for people who don't like beer

on the other hand this stuff might've ruined my life if it was available when I was 17

Fuck this entire turn of the thread, the smoking ban sucks. Also now every venue smells of farts and stale beer.

― emil.y, Thursday, September 21, 2023 3:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

OTM

Decent non-alcoholic beer.

this is huge and a great choice. i love being in bars but these days probably only want to drink about 5% of the time. this has made everything, especially seeing music, much more pleasant for me.

A friend of mine blames the smoking ban on his schizophrenic brother's death. He said after it was applied to the supported housing place he was resident in he became more isolated and started to drink more leading him into a bleak death spiral, because communal smoking was the only social thing he did in the building.

Jesus, that's fucking bleak.

It almost goes without saying but every aspect of coffee drinking is better now, from coffee makers to the availability of superior beans. I was born into the percolator era, before even the Mr. Coffee was invented. I can remember when if you were in someone's home you were at least as likely to be offered instant coffee as the real thing.

powerpoint / keynote. so much easier to make and give presentations vs. slide carousels and overhead projectors.

Would love a presentation via overhead projectors to break up PowerPoint boredom.

slide carousels were even more boring than powerpoints, to the point of being memetic, but i really am nostalgic for the filmstrips they'd project in my youth, with a record playing to provide the sound. "When the record beeps, go on to the next slide."

but! this isn't a thread for being nostalgic about stuff. fucking... food! food is so much better! when i was a kid, we would have canned lima beans, canned corn, canned _cream_ corn, _cream chipped beef_, i mean... even just frozen vegetables are such a _tremendous_ advance over that. sushi was this weird exotic food, ewwww, who would ever eat _raw fish_? within a couple miles of me there are two places that sell gluten free vegan pizza, and they're different styles, and they're both _fucking delicious_.

when i was a kid the word "dyspraxic" didn't exist, it was called "bad at sports" and i got made fun of and bullied for it... bullying was just considered a normal part of being a kid then, people would say "well, maybe if you stood up to them they wouldn't do that" because yeah _that's_ how it fucking works.

as for the sense of impending doom and despair we have now, i mean, we had that when i was a kid too, even if i wasn't aware of it so much... there was this widespread idea (there's a thread about it) that we were all going to die in a global thermonuclear war that could happen at anytime. it was a reasonable fear! we fucking well could have, and people at the time knew it! it wasn't _inevitable_ like people believed at the time, like the shit we're dealing with now is, but it sure as hell _felt_ that way.

kip. that's me, kip.

Music media is better now. I hated vinyl in the 80s and still hate it now, and although I liked cassettes for their portability, CDs were the best thing in the world when they first arrived. But CDs sound immeasurably better now than the first generations of CDs did. The digital brittleness that Neil Young and Steve Albini used to harp on about was sort of a real thing, but you couldn't take Neil's word for it really — he'd been frying his ears onstage for so many years by then that they were basically on his head for decoration. But digital audio has gotten much, much better, and CDs sound much richer and fuller than they did at first. And that's not even taking into account stuff like SACD or audio Blu-Rays or 24/96 FLAC files or whatever. Music — as long as it's competently engineered — sounds so much better now than it used to, it's almost impossible to believe. Even non-professional recordings sound great. Ever record a live show on a cassette recorder stuffed in your pocket? It sounded like you'd buried the microphone in a bucket of sand. But you can record a show on an iPhone and be about 80% of the way to a commercially releasable product.

the legality of cannabis has been mentioned, but the fact that it costs exponentially less than it did in the 90s still blows my mind

solar panels have become way way cheaper as well

weed is legal

people have largely stopped smoking cigarettes

Kate, thank you for that post.

Yes, food. Sometimes I try to eat things that I liked as a child in the 70s/80s and they're just... gross.

There was this one time when my mother got a job two states away, and we ate canned pasta, boxed potatoes, frozen chicken patties, microwave dinners. At the time, it seemed like edible food. But whenever I reencounter food from that time period I gag. Having access to fresh vegetables and less-processed food is great.

For apraxia/dyspraxia, yes. As mentioned above, my kids (one nonverbal, one nonbinary) would have been mercilessly bullied and teased when I was a kid. But they are currently thriving and happy and beloved in their communities.

There area lot of things wrong with the world as it is, but those are some positive developments.

government services websites (yes, not all are good). i just renewed my driver's license. took me 1 minute on the California DMV website including making the payment. no trip to the DMV or fighting with a poorly designed buggy govt website. it's the simple things...

Yeah I love how US state motor vehicle registration, etc. has so long been a lazy punchline for inefficiency, etc., that Republicans still trot it out as a supposedly clever riposte to nationalized healthcare, never mind that for more than 20 years you can do pretty much anything on the web 24 hours a day.

A lot less fierce tribalism/prejudice about music genres, in some cases it feels like it has evaporated. I think the ability to try more things on the internet has created an expansion in all kinds of tastes, at least for people curious enough.

Niches expanding through online communities, easier publishing of gloriously uncommercial books and music. The growth of the weird fiction genre and it seems like there's a much bigger audience for artsploitation, instead of what you had in the 80s when Paul Schrader said "too arty for the blood crowd and too bloody for the art crowd".

Just so much interesting visual art on blogs and social media that rarely got support beforehand BUT instagram is shite and deviantart has gone to shite and I don't think there has been a proper home for visual art in a while.

Yeah I love how US state motor vehicle registration, etc. has so long been a lazy punchline for inefficiency, etc., that Republicans still trot it out as a supposedly clever riposte to nationalized healthcare, never mind that for more than 20 years you can do pretty much anything on the web 24 hours a day.

We had to go to the DMV in person (after booking appointments online), but it was incredibly chill — the entire staff was librarian-looking old ladies who took brisk care of us, and we learned that if your car is more than 12 years old (which ours is) you can register it permanently for a one-time fee, which was great.

That is a definite improvement. Twenty five years ago, getting a car registered or a driver license renewed could take several hours of standing in line.

vegetarian & vegan food options otm -- also more prevalence of food from cultures that are more vegetarian/vegan ... also availability of media from foreign countries.

^ possibly more of a "thing" for me as an American, but being able to see tv shows made without the American tropes and cultural assumptions gives me better perspective on politics/culture

Here's a random little one: the experience of getting an MRI has improved, entirely because headphones have improved. I have vivid memories of getting an MRI ten years ago, where the music was piped in through speakers and was almost completely drowned out by the BAM BAM BAM of the machine. Got one the other day and the headphones were so good that I could actually hear the music and the sound of the machine was very faint.