Climate change was still a "this will be a big problem and we need to do something about it sooner rather than later" issue instead of "actively experiencing and watching the damage and misery on a near daily basis and knowing it will be getting much much worse" reality.
No amount of Captain Planet telling me to separate my recyclables is going to fix this shit.
The water here in the Netherlands has been way too high for weeks now, and we’ve had some crazy ass storms. Even a cyclone or something? I don’t even know what it’s called.
Anyway it’s going to require some crazy engineering if the Netherlands is to move into the 22nd century.
As a fellow Dutchie: I miss the early 90s optimism. Nowadays, people are disillusioned and the hidden bigotry among which I grew up has become explicit up to the point of us having a fascist government.
I came back to the nl 2 years ago. I was really surprised! A lot of people complain or suddenly have angry outbursts, even though I have never met that person before. It’s very rude to me and I prefer to have more casual conversations with strangers. It’s like some people are all up in arms about something.
Like OK building a nuclear reactor? Fuck do I know. I have no opinion on the matter. Just do whatever works best. Every solution has its problems and I never read even a single book on it so what would I know. All I know is that electricity prices need attention.
And what you mentioned about people openly being racist and nationalist. It’s awkward to me. I mean they receive social support and their kids go on holidays in Thailand and Aruba multiple times a year, without even having a job in their 30s. Sure there are plenty of issues surrounding migration but it’s an oversimplification and counterproductive, besides simply being unethical, to think that getting rid of a minority is going to solve anything. It just seems like lazy problem solving to me.
And it’s awkward because what are they protecting? If we are protecting Dutch culture, ok I can get on board with that. But what is it? For me the most Dutch thing is tolerance and openness, and being progressive. I think many people worldwide would recognize that as Dutch core values. So it’s just weird to destroy that by trying to protect it.
The Netherlands is in an interestingly unique position when it comes to rising sea levels. They've been fighting the sea (and winning) for centuries. I'm sure they'll be at the forefront for engineering future sea incursions.
For me it was the inspiration I felt from technological improvements. I grew up in a house where my father was a network engineer and would constantly have computers opened up he was tinkering with. And all through the 90s I saw more and more improvements that made me feel like the future would be even more amazing! This persisted well into the 2000s with the coming of social media and small commercial devices like MP3 players, cell phones, etc. It just seemed like everything was improving and that if a company stopped improving, another company would come along and give the people what they want! But now I live in a world where all of the things that used to excite me have betrayed me and anything new I am extremely skeptical of. I see all kinds of new and interesting technological improvements come along and while they seem like excellent ideas that would improve my life, I also see the many ways in which they would exploit me, my privacy, and my money. I would love to have a camera doorbell in which I can see who is at the door and talk to them while I’m not at home, but those devices are horribly insecure and you have to subscribe to their services. I just can’t do it and I wish we could go back to the days in which you could just buy a product that might improve in a few years and you didn’t need to worry about it watching you or costing money every month. Instead you could just be excited about your little gadget and dream about what the next version would be like.
Have you ever looked into options for self hosting doorbell camera data, or the ones that store on the device with SD cards?
I did, due to the same concerns you listed. I found that self hosting would be detrimental to my server’s data drives and reduce their lifespan from the constant activity, and the SD card ones lacked some extremely nice to have features you get from cloud native mobile apps.
Curious if there are viable alternatives that have emerged since then, as it has been a few years since I researched this stuff.
Watching the birth of the general public internet that everyone has access to.
I remember the early 90s hearing people talk about it, then seeing signs of it in the mid 90s. We all thought it was going to make the world so much better for everything and everyone.
Then starting in the late 90s everyone was getting online and it just went crazy.
It was exciting to be around for the start of it all.
We got to live life without an internet and then all of sudden it was here and we couldn’t live without it.
It was like being the generation that saw the first airplanes and commercial aviation becoming part of the world.
The internet … I’ve mentioned this before and whenever I suggest the internet started in the 90s, I get corrected that technically it was started in the 80s or even the 70s. I’m talking about the general internet that the public interacted with, the internet in the 90s that we all know and understand, the internet with cat memes and porn.
Not having to work. I was 12 or 13 at the turn of the millennium. So not working was nice.
I probably miss my Gameboy Pocket (and Pokemon). Yeah the screen was tiny, not in color, and it wasn’t backlit, and I have a Switch and Steam Deck and of course an smartphone, but…Idk, the Pocket was just so quaint and cute. I could just play that play Pokemon for hours on end, anywhere I wanted, without disturbing anyone. Which I did, sometimes even at school, which eventually got it confiscated by a teacher; I got it back at the end of the day.
It was such a paradigm change in gaming (Yes, I know the original GB or even Sega GameGear existed, but I knew few people who had one and they were bulky as all hell).
there’s a whole market for these pocket sized (and non pocket) emulators. My MM+ w onion os is great for gba games. been grinding out the battle network series and this just lets pick up and go.
I recommend Retro Game Corps the most for recommending these types of systems.
Fresh episodes of X-Files and Star Trek: TNG every week.
Just that whole experience of something on television being a cultural zeitgeist because everyone had to watch it at the exact same time because that was the only time it existed. Sure, you could record it on VHS and watch later, but it wasn’t the same. Even being at home watching alone felt like participating in a social event.
My wife and I are increasingly convinced that we, humanity, peaked in the 90s. We had conquered acid rain. We were removing CFCs. The internet was coming in, so were mobile phones (but only to call and text, so you could stay in touch but escaped the trap of a million cameras around us), the music was so incredibly broad (Brit pop, grunge, spice girls, dance … it was like the world’s biggest buffet), the high street was still doing fine, TV had great shows (Seinfeld, X-files etc) and everyone just seemed a damn sight happier than today since misery-communities hadn’t formed on the internet to celebrate and refine their misery.
It was a simpler time. And all powered by a healthy western economy and the declaration of a (naive) victory in the Cold War.
Peak delusion as well. We basically believe everything on TV. I think the 90s in western countries were just more mild, but not objectively better. Now everything is extreme, both much worse and much better.
That’s what they said in The Matrix, isn’t it? 1999: the peak of human civilization. At the time, the future looked bright, but in the grand scheme of things, it hasn’t played out as we hoped.
It’s awesome that you did that. Would be cool if medicine could fix that for you one day. Did you know there’s loads of walking videos online? Also for vr. And there’s games.
For me it’s holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
Yeah - that’s a good one. Our local store had a Friday night deal: 5 weekly rentals for 10 bucks, or something. We’d go order fish and chips, then go argue over which 5 movies to rent, while our dinner was cooking.
Although I shouldn’t, I miss my shitty old Datsun sometimes. Easy to diagnose problems, simple to get into and fix, with minimal tools required. No tech - just mechanical and electrical.
Nostalgia’s a funny thing. Lots of things I get wistful for, but they’ve been replaced by (arguably) more convenient things:
Having to call your mate’s house at a specific time, because you know he has footy training and won’t be home to answer before that time
Waiting until specific times of night to watch your favourite TV shows or listen to your favourite radio DJs
The massive zip-up carry case for all my cassette tapes, to play in the car
6-way link-up Daytona arcade racing
Loading my computer games from multiple floppy discs (X-Tree Gold macros for the win!)
Then there’s things that I miss, because now I have to adult:
Sleeping in on weekends
Work I don’t have to take home with me
Being able to stay out stupidly late on Friday and Saturday nights
Getting absolutely shitfaced on those nights, without worrying about the hangover
Eating a bag of chips and calling it dinner, because there’s no one else you need to feed
My brother collected these. I think he still has some of them somewhere. Like the original boxes for Diablo and Starcraft.
I collected some too, but I think I eventually got rid of mine. I was into the various Maxis Sim games, so I had tons of the boxes. SimCity, SimTower, SimPark, SimIsle…
The best manual was probably Ultima Online, an MMO. I read and studied the shit out of that thing. Used to bring it to school to learn all the spells and stuff. Also came with a good sized, folded-up map of the world on special paper.
I miss not having social media and news that, at least generally, tried to be actual news and not 'JusT ASkinG QUeStioNs' and disingenuous bullshit. It was a wild ride being on social media almost since its birth, but I think it generally was a huge mistake. Things should have stopped at IRC and UseNet.
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