Mementos Mori | Hacker News Reader

Mementos Mori

thebaffler.com

42 pointshoffmannesque23 comments

Nostalgia aside, there is one item that is at risk of disappearing within a decade or two for which society will be much worse off: that is cash. I mean physical money that is accepted by almost everybody, available to everybody, anonymous, and not tied to some corporation like every other payment system. Cash disappearing would be like freedom of speech disappearing. Many people would not notice but I think society would lose a lot of liberty.

Well, I suppose cryptocurrencies in theory could replace the role of cash but they are immensely far away from being "accepted by almost everybody".

Not to bonk the subject too firmly on the nose but some ashtrays have been reborn as "vide poche."

The Baffler has been a source of excellent weirdness in my life since 89? 90? Good folks.

Things that are disappearing now

Doorbells

Random Personal phonecalls

Friends dropping by unannounced.

Kids roaming free for most of the day.

Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.

> Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.

This is not a global thing though. While they replaced sand with woods chips or "smarter" materials that make it less painful to fall, the playground in my town are definitely more interesting that the one I got to play with growing up. They tend to rely less on pure strength and more on agility which is definitely better in my opinion.

I agree. Here in Toronto (Canada) we try to build the kinds of playground toys that children enjoy. They even have a pseudo rock climbing feature (It's PVC instead of rock) at the townhouse complex across the road from me. It has a few twists and turns, too. Not just a wall.

They might even get hurt a little sometimes, but kids find life boring without some sort of risk factor. Thankfully they're bouncier than us older folks.

Irony here, that "safe" rubber appears to be more harmful than woodchips. I'd much rather deal with occasional meltdowns over slivers than a broken bone.

https://www.playgroundprofessionals.com/surfaces/rubber/its-...

Ah, yes, in the USA. I don't mind safer things to land on, but each generation over the last 20 years is less fun/scary. Slides were shorter, nothing to climb to give any hint of accomplishment, nothing to cause even the slightest fear.

Seems like the age of entertain kids in play structure dropped from 12 to 3 during the last 20 years.

Same in the US. I think parent is maybe not a parent. :)

> Friends dropping by unannounced.

This still seems to be a thing in contemporary TV shows.

Yes! Let’s document: -time away from the internet(slow thinking) -stick shifts -food optimized for taste and not size or look(US view here) - so many more

Nostalgia (it's present, but it's not socially allowed or considered chic)

In the music world it seems nostalgia and faux-nostalgia are almost everpresent, unfortunately.

I'm quite fine with ashtrays disappearing.

I doubt they have actually disappeared at all. Marijuana legalization spreading throughout the world has surely brought them back again.

Lately news has said there's been a backlash against vaping as well.

So this particular item maybe sits on the fence.

Definitely knocked down a few pegs. Can you imagine a bunch of kids making ashtrays at Summer camp for their parents?

I learned how to make corn cob pipes as a kid, supposedly as a gift for dad or grandad. That's the wonky side effect of living in a town that grows and exports tobacco. It always seemed sexist because when was the last time you knew a woman who would smoke one of those?

The same thing: imagine teaching kids how to make corn cob pipes nowadays! It's just not going to happen.

The plural of “memento mori” is “memento mori.”

It's a weird situation for a weird verb. Memento is an imperative form meaning "remember/be mindful". The plural form would be "mementote mori", but that makes no sense here at all, so I agree it would have been better to leave it alone as a fixed Latin expression grafted onto English.

Originally I thought the title was trying to be clever (expected something about breath mints, perhaps).

Nice to see The Baffler still kicking around, though!

Edit: the more I think of it, the more I think it's okay -- it is just a play on the phrase and our borrowed noun "momento". Objects that have died in relevance in some way, rather than things that remind us of our mortality directly. Surely the use of Latin in English is not too far from once ubiquitous and now largely forgotten ashtrays.

I think you're right with your edit. Its about memory of lost things, not our selves.

Well, I'm right on the Latin grammar, too, but that's an irrelevancy (lol -- I'm a particular kind of fool, if not full-stack). In fact, I think the deeper idea of the essay really is about our own historicity seen through the ephemera of the things that populate our own lives.

If you're writing at a desk, look about you -- what do you see? How much of that would be recognizable in 1, 2, 5 generations (about a century) hence? How much would be intelligible, but quaint (or benighted)? Ultimately the little essay is about ourselves, our own mortality: it is about us as ephemera.

It's a pun: mementos + memento mori

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