Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jill_the_Pill | Hacker News Reader

They're not smoking either. Those things are no longer cool badges of maturity, independence, or rebellion. Instead, they're getting piercings and tattoos, identifying as alternative genders, sexting, and claiming more flexible sexual orientations. Alarms the old folks just as effectively.

View on HN

Kids these days, now we can't even store sex in a bool. And they want another float for gender! Back in my day we had one bit for each, and we liked it.

Wasn't it one for both, or is that too far back?

Probably too far back. We had the Kinsey scale in 1948, so that's a 0-7 for gender/sexual identity, and one bit for sex. Fits perfectly in a nibble.

Federal taxes on cigarettes went up 250% to pay for health care/SCHIP in the past 30 years or so. There is a pretty good correlation with smoking rates and cost of cigarettes. http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.82.1.9...

Taxes do work, though demand for tobacco is relatively inelastic: http://www.who.int/tobacco/economics/meetings/dublin_demand_...

Those kids and their damn rock and roll :)

It's just this generation's search for identity and being different from the generation preceding it. For one generation it's edgy outfits, for another it's long hair and rock music, and I'm sure there will be a future one that will shock 'our' generation (idk what your generation is) even more, especially if it's our own kids who a few years ago were still just like us.

Please cut the outdated ignorant bigotry about gender and sexual orientation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com