Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

Meanwhile, human languages are essentially unusable without a fairly extensive vocabulary, and importantly a vocabulary that has to be memorized and available at a moment's notice.

Newspapers are an easier direct comparison, and though I don't have a specific example to show (a selection, say, of front pages from the same day of the month across a span of decades would be useful -- 12 issues a year, enough to show trends, but not so many as to drown them out -- would be a good demonstration), but I've done periodic research and am struck.

There are always gradual changes, but a tipping point toward commercialisation and sheer crassness emerged strongly in the 1990s.

For magazines, the larger problem is that so many simply aren't what they once were, notably leading US news weeklies. It might be better to consider a set of political magazines -- New Republic, National Review, The Economist. Possibly Atlantic, Harpers Weekly, and The New Yorker.

And perhaps Rolling Stone as well.

There's some survivor's bias, yes. But there's also been a palpable shift.

This Rolling Stone article, meanwhile, isn't like that at all. It starts by quoting four quick stanzas of doggerel to briefly set the tone, and then it's right into the meat of its subject matter. Four sentences in, you know exactly what it's talking about, and if the subject matter interests you at all, you're engaged. It's written with a respect for the value of its audience's time that is nowhere evident in the modern longform style.

If I had to put the difference briefly, I'd put it like this: the Rolling Stone article is an example of genuine craftsmanship in nonfiction prose. It has a point to make, and it does so, in a way that's interesting and enjoyable without overstaying its welcome. Conversely, the Atlantic style, in which modern longform is conventionally done, is an example of performative prose-stylistry for its own sake. It screams "Look at me! I'm a writer! Look at the way I paint pictures with words!"

Maybe you enjoy that sort of thing. If so, you're welcome. But saying "look at me, I'm amazing" is not the job of journalism, and it's hardly a surprise that people get impatient with journalists who behave as if saying "look at me, I'm amazing" was not only part of their job, but the meat of it.

I’m of the opinion that much of the change in our culture was driven by a concerted pushback on the part of the “straights” to reassert the primacy of their worldview. The threat felt by those in power by the rise of the civil rights, anti-war and nascent environmentalist movement was a direct threat to business as usual. So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan, we have adopted a worldview that for decades has told us that happiness and satisfaction comes only through the pursuit of financial success and conventional career paths.

The peace-love-dope crowd were a reaction to our defense of South Vietnam. Once North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace and successfully invaded South Vietnam, there was no need anymore to react — we weren't defending anyone at that point. I imagine that there might also have been some embarrassed reactions to the boat people, the re-education camps and the mass murder which followed the invasion — after all those years of hailing Ho Chi Minh as the George Washington of Vietnam and pretending that the Viet Cong were freedom fighters, it was probably a bit embarrassing to see that they were just your normal run-of-the-mill dictator and his thugs.

Also, I think a lot of the peace-love-dope crowd just grew up and got jobs.

"Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first crewed flight in 1968" - $25.4 billion (1973)

"The Space Launch System (SLS) is a US super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle, which has been under development since its announcement in 2011. It is the primary launch vehicle of NASA's deep space exploration plans,[12][13] including the planned crewed lunar flights of the Artemis program and a possible follow-on human mission to Mars.[14][15][16] SLS replaces the Constellation program's Ares V launch vehicle of 2005, which never left the development phase." - For fiscal years 2011 through 2018, the SLS program had expended funding totaling $13.999 billion in nominal dollars.

In 7 years Apollo had crewed flight. In 7 years SLS isn't even off the ground, and that is after the previous project never finished.

So, how do we gain public support for funding these missions? Honestly, while 'war' may be an answer its not a good one.

And probably git too, especially as it's very useful and almost forces the casual user to appreciate the poetry of its data structures.

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Is that the guy who ragequit and deleted all his tutorials/guides?