1,842 karma · joined April 11, 2016
Science-fiction and fantasy UK book covers were better too, which is another example of the same weird parochialism of the U.S. publishing industry as it was.
My probably unpopular opinion is that it's a reflection of a more general, largely un-self-aware New York City parochialism, which was where most of the big publishing firms were based, at least until the last decade or so.
A thing can be an everyday tool AND a status symbol. But in this case, WHEN in the bronze age has a lot of bearing. Early on, yeah copper-alloy objects were relatively rare and expensive, but later as more mining put a LOT of copper alloy into trade and those trade networks became more extensive, they were less so, and thus you could have finds like I think one in England where EVERY HOUSE had copper and bronze implements.
The Pragatto finds in the article come from relatively late in the Bronze Age, so what they answer is AT THIS RELATIVELY LATE DATE, bronze daggers were common enough, even though still expensive and rare, to be used as everyday implements of slaughter rather than being strictly ornamental heirlooms.
It engendered lots of 'ghost train' campfire stories. And they installed a lot of infrastructure to support it, including highway overpasses and crossings - there are still a couple now-purposeless overpasses on Highway 69 that once crossed it.
My wife disdains bread heels too. She grew up upper middle-class, while I grew up in a working poor family.
My theory is that one's estimation of heels is in inverse proportion to how well-to-do your family was growing up.
I won't go so far as to say that capitalism has more controls to mitigate this effect, since I think there is a fair point to be made that we do need to start checking the power of corporations, and those controls have not so far presented themselves without assuming government intervention.
This literally could mean the difference between living independently or not for a lot of people.
Not to mention everybody working today with a 401k as their retirement plan will lose value no matter their age, which means they have to work longer than planned. This is a real life impact to a lot of people.
I wore my Vic 20 manual out copying out programs from it while learning not only BASIC but some pretty fundamental stuff about computer architecture. It was so significant to me I had to buy a copy from eBAY decades later to keep on my shelf.
At least Trekkies, when outed, weren't accused of Satanism.
Conspiracy theories aren't always based in moral panic, and moral panics aren't always about a conspiracy.
Bruce Willis got paid an insane amount of money for his deepfaked face to appear in a Russian commercial. He literally got paid a couple million dollars to do NOTHING except agree to his likeness being used.
https://www.ign.com/articles/bruce-willis-russian-commercial...
This is just an iteration of the same overreaction that has been occurring since the days of splicing audio tape together.
If anything, I would argue malicious editing of REAL footage, which already occurs in media outlets today, is far more frightening than the possibility of having a deepfake video, though it might be another tool in that slimy toolbox.
So, sailors would organize plays and skits as you said, concerts, athletic competitions, etc.
Even so, if you read the resources and the ship's logs they reference, there was a LOT of petty crime, crimes of passion like assaults, murders, etc during those blockades.
Enough so that it was notable even in the height of the unwilling drafts of any man with a pulse that strayed close enough to the water.
The most likely candidates (again, in my opinion) are:
changes to driver psychology somehow due to the pandemic (empty roads, then full roads again, greater anxiety or stress related to traveling back and forth to work, or something like that)
changes in enforcement of driving laws (the protests of 2020 caused changes in police budget allocations or how police enforce minor laws like traffic laws OR staffing issues due to the pandemic with law enforcement agencies, or both)
A near universal change in how drivers are certified / licensed (could be due to changes in the pandemic or some other factor?)
OR this is a statistical fluke someone hooked onto and we are all drawing far-reaching conclusions from.
I can imagine there being some HR system that does this automatically as a default for employees that don't have a title at Apple anymore.
To me (and please keep in mind this is of course entirely subjective) design that just screams 'we have too much money and time to think about this design' is a bit repugnant and cold and de-constructive.
I really enjoy the warmth and pragmatism of medieval architectures, for example.
I say that as someone who is been in the industry since just before the first .com bust, and have seen a lot of this cycle.
Before domestication, they had to follow the game animals around on their migrations, travel to find the edible plants and fruits, etc.
Even once horse, goats, and cattle were domesticated for their meat, milk, and fur (note this is separate from agricultural cultivation), humans had to roam in really large areas, from winter grazing grounds to summer grazing grounds as still well as following the game animals around.
I think traveling is a very ingrained behavior in humanity.
This binary outlook is what leads to people who don't understand the reasons behind why existing code is the way it is to criticize. Frankly, when someone does it (and I have done it, lots of times, to my chagrin now) its a pretty good marker of engineering immaturity.
This is different than looking at something and identifying ways it could be better, btw. The latter is value-neutral and judgement-free.
I have several relatives who are home builders and have acted as my own general contractor in building a home, so this is an area of interest to me.
Comparing the average home today (yes that shitty McMansion included) to the average home 100 years ago, today's homes are way more efficient and comfortable in terms of amenities, climate control, being draft- and vermin- free, and safe.