The teenager who lives like it's the 1940s
bbc.com
bbc.com
Not having to take over is the best part of it.
Traffic, of course, approaches the bridge at 40+mph. Semi-regularly there's a police officer pulling people over and ticketing them.
I've begun entering the right lane, whenever possible, and setting my cruise control to a hard limit of 25mph. (Setting a soft limit of 25mph does nothing, as you coast up to 40 down that hill.)
When two lanes are open on the bridge, about 80% of the time when I reach the bottom of the hill at 25mph... I immediately have to slow, and sometimes stop, as the traffic on the bridge is slower. If there was a good bit of traffic with me, approximately 6 cars will have passed me on the hill, and be stopped ahead of me waiting for the bridge to clear.
If there is only one lane, the usual traffic pattern is that some people merge left as early as possible, and others will begin passing in the right lane, usually aiming to pass as much of the line of traffic as possible before merging. This typically leads to stop and go traffic, because as the left lane slows down approaching the bridge they lose any space for a zipper merge, and must come to a complete stop for the detectors to merge in at the last minute.
If I set my cruise to 25 -- the speed limit -- in the right lane, then after a few moments there aren't typically people zipping down the right lane ahead or behind me, and the merge typically happens at about 25-30 mph behind me as people pass me, and there's typically not any merging at 0 mph at the last minute.
About 80% of the time, by the time I get to the bottom of the hill, there's no one left in the left lane, everyone having passed me and zipped away, and I can merge without difficulty.
The failure mode here is that if traffic is significantly backed up in the left lane, either I have to zip past them at 25mph and merge at the last minute, being the asshole, or I merge earlier, into the slow-moving traffic, and abandon my traffic-shaping experiments.
We noticed that while commuting between two cities over the German Autobahn (A2). I could go 100 km/h and be in sync with the semis, or could go 120 km/h because at that time there are too many cars to go faster.
Going slower was almost two liters gas less per day but increased travel time by only 5-10 minutes.
But I do see the same effect going a mere 4 mph[1] over the speed limit.
1. I arrived at 4 mph over, because this was the usual answer when I've asked several police officers "How much over the speed limit to I have to drive for you to pull me over?". Their answer nearly always was "Up to 4 mph and you're okay."
So, you can be speeding, and yet still driving slower than the traffic around you, and you can be given two tickets -- one for speeding, and one for obstructing traffic.
Of the two, obstructing traffic is the bigger fine.
As others have pointed out. If not in a rush, driving slightly under the speed limit is very relaxing.
At night I could part the red sea with it (people would just move out of my way if I was going like I was in a hurry) though.
His photo reminded me of the film "Harold and Maude", if anyone here has seen it.
Once I'm retired, I would like to digitize my own grandfathers prisoner of war diary, including that episode where they ate a dog so they didn't die from starvation, but it turned out to be the camp commanders dog, so that meal had an enormous price tag in terms of consequences. (Just to point out it wasn't all black shiny cars in the 1940s!)
At least that's true of the US.
So wasn't a one-off?
I consider myself to have seen a lot of films, but it took watching There's Something about Mary for me to discover the film!
Monk wasn't widespread popular at the time at all - only in niche jazz circles. It'd be about as exotic as you could hope to maybe hear Billie Holiday in somewhere like Fife.
I thought I was a little odd - nope, I'm just a normal level of odd in comparison.
My vintage west bend percolator makes the best coffee you'll have - it makes maxwell house taste good.
I have 60 year old Zenith radios that work great, and have needed zero parts.
If you have a copper landline from your local telephone company, I'm willing to bet it still supports pulse dialing? Maybe it's 50/50 now?
Press 1 to continue systems require the DTMF tones to be played down the line, either by the phone or any other device held up to it.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37484671
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Xtreme-Technolgoies-XLink-Bluetooth-G...
I'm hoping it continues to work when utility power goes out, but we haven't had a long enough outage to test since I set it up.
Early 2000s
Besides it's absolutely not vinyl VOCs that will get you. Compared with health low hanging fruit, from diet and exercize, to stress, bad sleep, to BS substances in modern industrial food and city air pollution, it's beyond insignificant.
https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...
Another chart is this one but it's hard to parse. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-...
In any case, pre-recorded cassettes were always a pretty small part of the mix.
I know, it's playing them backwards :o
Gross
I don't like the values I see in the 1990s TV shows.
However I love the tech, like CDs:
> CD audio is a little bit nicer tech. They
I love CDs! I even got a CD player in my car!
After trying them, I've found I really don't like vinyles or mechanical keyboards so maybe it's not just every 1990s tech I like, just some of it
And it was about software, not "behavioral surplus data collection pretending to be useful to you."
You win some, you lose some. But I'd take that era back in a moment.
I agree it was mostly better software, at least in terms of respecting users.
I bought my first Linux distro (Mandrake). It was worth it to avoid the huge download on 56k, and the hassle of writing a CD. Plus Mandrake played pretty well written my system thanks to the '3dfx' drivers.
You think the world is better off now that we've traded Family Matters and Step by Step for the likes of Euphoria?
You had a outstanding job market for all professions with tech jobs still around if you chose. No wars(besides smaller conflicts in desert storm(91) and Bosnia(98)). Politicians/politics during that time were very moderate, George HW Bush and Clinton both governed from the right and left center respectively. Housing was extremely affordable and if you worked a half decent job you could expect to buy a house in most markets, My Wife's family bought a house in Redwood city and her Dad was in the trades, and Mom worked in printing. A house in the mid-90's in Palo Alto CA would run about $350-400k.
Music was outstanding in grunge(Nirvana, STP, Peal Jam) and hiphop was in its golden age(Wutang, Biggie, Tupac). For TV such classics like Seinfeld, Friends, and Star trek TNG were around. Movies like great sci fi and action movies - Matrix, T2, Jurassic Park and many many others were coming out all the time.
Having been a teenager during that decade I feel really lucky compared to the following decades and how bad they have turned out. The only downside to the 90's was crime was relatively high compared to today, but almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).
But this idea that we might get peace in Israel with the Oslo accords, that the USSR/Russia would no longer be the big "red scare" enemy, that China would be our friend and we could slowly convince them (and Russia) that freedom and democracy was good for everyone, and The Troubles were finally over. Well ... 1 out of 4 held.
Maybe I was just younger, and sure there were going to be problems and challenges, but everything just seemed so much more ... hopeful.
> almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).
That's probably pushing it a bit too far though; trying being gay in the 90s – depending on where exactly you lived that was hugely harder than today. And you could smoke everywhere – it was just accepted. I remember family birthday parties as a child and I would "flee" upstairs because all the smoke just got too much. All the pubs and restaurants: full with smoke. Trains and buses: people smoked. Unthinkable today – that changed very quickly in the early 00s.
And the state of software ... have you seen real-world code from the 90s? Good lord...
There's probably other things I'm not recalling offhand that really were worse in the 90s.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Speedmaster
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system#Ove...
People wore fedoras to identify them as part of a subculture (Reddit gentlemen).
Most people who weren't part of the subculture pretty quickly figured out that removing their fedora meant people didn't assume they were a part of it, so they took it off.
Same thing with hipster glasses, mullets, dreads, swastikas, list goes on...
Is that where that came from? It sounds right.
I used to wear nice hats regularly including a couple of fedoras, but I had to retire them because of this.
How many times have you met an actual douchebag wearing a fedora? How many times have you heard people saying that all douchebags wear fedoras? I bet the ratio is at least 1:50. It's like how people who insist all vegans are smug outnumber actual smug vegans by a huge margin.
This kid has so much character and will have so many stories and connections as opposed to most average kids of the same age.
This world needs more unabashed individualism like this. It leads humanity to richer culture and more discovery.
Except that a 1938 car is a death trap.
We need to stop coddling and worrying about everything. (I guess we were all raised by helicopter parents and are doubling down?)
In my state practically any self-built car is able to become road-legal. Old cars, rebuilds, kit cars, etc. And it's fine. People are fine.
We're not imposing this choice top-down at a population level. We're not about to have (current accident rate) * (1938 car crash outcome). Someone doing this for fun is bound to be more careful than your average driver.
Aside from (maybe?) driving under the speed limit, no harm no foul. Not mentioned in the article, but I do hope he's OK with modern medicine, like the polio vaccine, and will be willing to eschew his aversion to cell phones if his grandmother has to get in touch with him in some sort of emergency...
I mean you mention anime characters, but there's a big greaser / rockabilly subculture in Japan - grown men dressing like they're from the 50's.
Then there's of course the survivalist / homesteader subculture, people who live off the grid. There's LARPers who - usually only at events - dress up as elves and co. There's medieval re-enactors who have full suits of armor. There's renaissance faire people. There's Dickensians. Furries. Peaky Blinders. K-Pop stans. The list goes on.
This is normal human behaviour. While I also think it's a little strange, it's harmless. Let people have things.
There isn't, though.
There are probably a dozen or so in Tokyo and about the same number in Osaka. Granted, I don't have an exact number but it is super niche. If you ask a random Japanese person the chances of them even being aware of that subculture is very low.
> This is normal human behaviour. While I also think it's a little strange, it's harmless. Let people have things.
No, it's not. Some of your examples are but going all in isn't normal even if we ignore the fact that being part of a subculture kind of isn't normal by definition. If it were normal we wouldn't get an article about it from the BBC, would we? But what I rather mean is, doing that as a dress up thing or LARPing is reasonable. Using some old items or wearing old fashion for their unique appeal is also reasonable. Putting anachronism above all else isn't normal, though. Those Japanese greasers use mobile phones.
Arguably, we don't know how much of what the article describes is tongue in cheek, and perhaps it's mostly a character the guy is playing. But if not, hating to or avoiding to use modern technology because it's not from the era you happen to like (because of your grandpa's POW diaries, another can of worms right there) is quite off.
I'm not saying he shouldn't enjoy what he's doing or "become like the rest if us" but no, really, it's not normal (and maybe that's okay).
People have hobbies, passions, etc.
What criteria are you using to be the judge of what is harmless or not? What Is reasonable and abnormal?
There are also HNers. Count me in the "refuse to use a cellphone" camp.
I want to learn how the hardware and software stacks work, but I don't want to carry one ever.
This article wouldn't be upvoted enough for you to see it if you were
And though he refuses to enter into the spirit of rationing, he is also in the fantasy world where the Germans aren't bombing and threatening to invade, or there are postwar shortages and cities in ruin. Yeah, I supposed it's OK to like the clothing, cars and other tech, but it seems a not much like the actual 1940s in Great Britain.
Just IMAGINE saying that out loud.
My wife has a 1950's Raleigh women's bike we bought ages ago for $50 and it is hands down the most comfortable bike we own.
I own 4 other bikes (a cruiser, an e-cruiser, and two racing bikes) but always grab hers for my errands within ~15 blocks.
Everything about it just feels easy-- it's well balanced, has a great upright sitting position, a super comfy saddle, an easy to use 3-speed hub, big soft tires, and the frame is basically indestructible.
Occasionally something gets out of place or slightly off and I just whack it back into place.
The only thing I'd worry about is him getting too obsessed to the point he has trouble relating with others that are from this generation or are younger than himself especially as the number of people familiar with that generation continue to pass away.
striking a match
I saw a Boy Scout earning his merit badge in fire-building. His first task was to start it with a match, and then he'd move on to striking a flint, or something.
So he was holding the box vertically, and striking down with the match. A moment's thought will tell you the flame will, quite likely, burn your fingers.
Is this some kind of understated British humor?
*Everything* ?? Yikes!
It's curious to me that he's not being raised by his parents. Something tragic must have happened here. Is is running away from his trauma?
(Edited quite a bit: others have brought up the point about getting this conclusion from reading a WW2 POW's diary. I wrote too soon -- the bit about not being raised by parents seems much more salient to me.)
I apologize, because I have since edited my comment. I was writing a bit too fast.
My perspective is that this child read a POW diary from WW2, then let's assume that he saw some great examples of humanity, and then decided that "I'll live like it's the 40s!"
It's strange to me to have this reaction. He claims to be a history buff. Where's the realization that the 40s were an absolutely terrible time if you weren't a straight white Christian man? Did he love that part about it? If he's not thinking of that, then he's really deluding himself with rose colored glasses.
This entire story reeks of untreated childhood trauma to me.
Why is he digging into the past so much? His parents are out of the picture. Thank goodness his grandmother is there to raise him. But we know that growing up without parents is its own specific kind of trauma. (Not that growing up with parents avoids all trauma!)
To me, this is a story about an extremely lonely and isolated child.
Do we always need to go there? Most people conscripted to go die like dogs on the front were straight white men.
Of course the guy is living a romanticized version of the 40s, just like people who role play Vikings at the Renaissance faire, so what? He admits himself that he doesn't ration his food and I'm sure he doesn't lynch his black neighbors either.
If you see a comment that doesn't concern you, why do you feel the need to make it your business?
Life in the 40s and before that were really hard on everyone. There’s literally no need to start talking about straight white males specifically. It says a lot you completely dismissed his point about straight white males being sent to die in wars and tell him it doesn’t concern him and not to make it his business.
Fact: it was much harder in Western societies if you were not white, straight, male, and Christian. This isn't a point for debate. It's not an opinion. You can either accept the fact, as uncomfortable as it is, and move on. Or you can be willfully ignorant to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
> It says a lot you completely dismissed his point about straight white males being sent to die in wars
Logically, this is irrelevant to me pointing out facts about how Western society operated during that time period.
If you want to be educated, you should read more history books to realize that not every solider was straight and white.
> I don’t agree with you either, yet your view is pushed all the time by the slightly provacatively (sic) called blue-haired liberals.
Thanks for the laugh tonight! I didn't realize you believe that the only people who have enough fortitude to accept uncomfortable facts have blue hair! What a great joke.
It may be a fact (I question the "much"), but is it a meaningful fact? Or just a dumb rhetorical device to bully and silence people for perceived crimes made by their ancestors?
1. Was there any country in the 1940s, ANYWHERE in the world, where outsiders/visitors were treated the same as the native majority? And for countries ruled by minorities, was there one where the people in power treated people of other races better than they treated the people of their own race?
2. If white men need to be loudly and constantly reminded of the sins of their ancestors (that every other society is guilty of but no one talks about it), then is it OK if white men loudly and constantly remind you about the accomplishments of their ancestors that the whole world benefits from today? Electricity, vaccines, antibiotics, computers, the Internet, trains, planes, and automobiles, TVs, air conditioning... Can you admit that the world owes all of this to white men? That their advances in medicine and agriculture saved billions of lives?
...or would that be an "uncomfortable truth"?
Whew! There's a lot you need to unpack here. There is no place ruled by "minorities." You might want to take some time to reflect on what your word choice says about how you view other people in the world.
> 1. Was there any country in the 1940s,
This is irrelevant. An answer to this question has no bearing on the fact that I brought up earlier.
> 2. If white men need to be loudly and constantly reminded of the sins of their ancestors (that every other society is guilty of but no one talks about it), then is it OK if white men loudly and constantly remind you about the accomplishments of their ancestors that the whole world benefits from today?
The premise of this is invalid. Why do you incorrectly think that there exists a kind of arithmetic where bad deed in the past + good deed in the past = net good ?
Additionally, why are you taking all of this so personally? Have you personally done any of these "sins of their ancestors" you speak of? No? Then why do you feel any sort of need to defend these sins? I hope you realize that you are not your ancestors.
> It may be a fact (I question the "much"), but is it a meaningful fact?
It's meaningful so that people can realize that there's a choice to be made. Knowing the past empowers people in the present to decide if they want to continue or fight against unjust inertia.
If you choose to be misled about what actually occurred, or are in the unfortunate position where everyone else around you is deluding themselves and thus impart that delusion onto you, then you may find yourself in a position where you don't understand the world.
> Or just a dumb rhetorical device to bully and silence people for perceived crimes made by their ancestors?
Do you feel like you're being silenced? Why?
> Can you admit that the world owes all of this to white men?
You talk about things you believe are solely due to people of a particular race - you say "the world owes all of this to white men" without realizing a couple of key facts. First, due to systematic racism, it was outright impossible for non-white folks in European (and colonies thereof) to be in positions to make any sort of contributions to these things you mention. Same thing applies to women.
This is what people mean when they point out that racial and gender diversity is important. You will never have inventions and discoveries take place by folks that are explicitly excluded from the institutions that gate keep these functions in society.
--
Overall...I fear that you are falling into the trap of believing that there's any genuine, natural validity to the artificial construct that is race. Race does not exist in nature. Ancient Europeans invented the concept of race, around the same time they invented the concept of Capitalism.
In reality, people have different complexions as a result of their exposure to UV light. They inherit genes from people that control the production of melanin in their skin. If you have ancestors that had lots of UV light exposure, then the genes that will be passed down to you will cause your skin to produce more melanin to safely absorb more UV light. That's it.
In your haste to virtue signal with the bingo card you brought from Twitter, you either forgot what the word 'minority' actually means, or forgot that there absolutely were/are countries ruled by groups that were ethnic minorities in that country. For example Rwanda up to the mid 20th century was run by the Tutsis who were only 15% of the population. What am I supposed to use to describe them, if not 'minority'?
>The premise of this is invalid. Why do you incorrectly think that there exists a kind of arithmetic where bad deed in the past + good deed in the past = net good ? Additionally, why are you taking all of this so personally?
Since people like you keep bringing bad deeds from the past, it's only fair that good deeds be brought up too. I personally do not judge anyone by the history of their ancestors. But evidently you do (or you wouldn't be going on about historical racism), so within your worldview, I expect you to be consistent and not a hypocrite. If you bring up the bad, people can bring up the good. Simple as.
I can't take it personally, if only because I'm not white and come from the other side of the world. But I have a sense of justice and I dislike seeing people treated worse than others because of the color of their skin. Which is what I think you're doing with your targetted snipes at white people, which I strongly doubt you do at other ethnicities with the same shortcomings.
>you say "the world owes all of this to white men" without realizing a couple of key facts. First, due to systematic racicm, blah blah, women, excuses excuses
I don't get it, do you agree with that factual statement or not? I see you're giving excuses for why that fact is a fact, but I'd like to see if you still have a foot in reality or not, by seeing you say "yes I agree with that fact, we owe most of our advances to white men" or "I disagree". If you disagree, then please let me know why, so I can flip your argument against you to absolve current white people for whatever original sin you think they're guilty of.
Also, what about in non-European countries? Why didn't any of those countries invent the sort of things that save billions of lives?
>I fear that you are falling into the trap of believing that there's any genuine, natural validity to the artificial construct that is race. Race does not exist in nature
Although I don't treat anyone differently due to their race, there are definitely biological differences between different ethnicities, and anyone who claims there isn't, even if they are so-called distinguished American """scientists""", is simply trying to gaslight me for political correctness' sake. I roundly reject appeal to authority when it comes to anything even slightly infected by American humanities majors, because those professors aren't doing science, they're doing politics and careerism.
Otherwise how do you explain that Olympic sprinting is dominated specifically by Jamaicans and West Africans?
I certainly don't go around talking about white men's accomplishments normally. It's only when I see white people under attack for ancestral sins that I use this counter-argument. Basically you set the tone of the discussion and I counter-punched. If you had acted like a pleasant normal person, and didn't try the woke religion's favorite activity that is dunking on whitey, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
What was the life expectancy of men vs women in the 40s?
Throughout History the only thing that makes life easier or harder is which social class one belongs to. Not sexuality or sex or anything else.
> Throughout History the only thing that makes life easier or harder is which social class one belongs to.
Racism, sexism, and classism intersect. Saying that only one of these 3 social phenomena exist is false. If you're intellectually curious and want to learn more about the world, I encourage you to read up on intersectionality. You can find lots of wonderful resources on this topic, starting with the original work by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
"""
As Mr. Jones put it in his memoir, "Sometime during my sophomore year at Coleman High School, I became a 'character'" -- wearing bow ties and a straw hat to school, smoking a pipe, signing his articles for the school newspaper "T. Collins Jones, Esquire."
"Even now, nearly 70 years later, I can't help but stop and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing," he wrote. "Even more, I wonder at the fact that the other kids -- farmers mostly, and ranchers and 4-H girls -- took it all in their stride."
In 1945, when he enrolled in the drama department at the University of Texas, "for the first time, there were other people actually like me," he wrote. "Here, marvel of marvels, everybody was T. Collins Jones, Esquire."
"""
Perhaps this kid will get to the university and find his tribe.
"The simple life" is a very attractive thought. Few dare to subscribe to it for real like this feller does. Respect.
I hate grappling with advancing a career vs "doing whatever I want." The problem is, whenever I play video games or try to decompress, I feel like I'm forcing myself. This guy has seemingly no qualms about it. For that, I'm jealous.
Most of the mechanical parts have to be made custom from machinists who specialize in collectible cars. Sometimes a part breaks that no one has made in decades so you have to hire someone to locate old drawings or create them from scratch, pick the materials, figure out the QA process, and so on.
Or is it an escape to some "better" time? And if so, escape from what?
When MAGA folks want to live like it's 1950, that's bad, but this is good?
I drive, among other things, a 1930 Willys 8-80D. It's got a non-synchronized three speed, and it's amazing how many people just assume it has to be a clashfest. No, you just learn to double clutch properly, and... actually, even most people who drive manuals these days don't understand enough about the system to make sense of double clutching. :( But on the older transmissions, I double clutch up and down, and life is quiet.
That engine (a 4.0L straight 8) also passes the "nickel test" - I can start the engine, and balance a nickel on edge on the head while it idles.
I learned how to drive a stick in a semi-truck - no synchros there - it makes it hard for me to drive a synchronized one.
Wow. $22K USD inflation-adjusted for a hand-made car in 1938. Cheaper than cars that are made by robots today. You'd think that after 80 years of technological progress and automation, they'd cost less than $1000 by now. What is going on? Surely this makes a strong case that modern poverty is artificial and done on purpose.
And how can a kid barely out of school afford to buy all this stuff? I swear some people are living in a parallel universe.
In addition, the good thing about cars up to the 90s, and perhaps later, is that there are fixable with the manual. There is electrics but no electronics or software.
You may find a love of digging through old stuff at swaps though.
There's a great selection of fine cars with low level of software, but ECU-s started to appear in the 70's and 80's to control various aspects of the cars. I assume you associate software in cars with displays, but by the time they started to appear, there were tons of software already in those ECU-s.
It means that if he maintains ot he will probably be able to sell it at a profit some day.
Having had a 90s car myself I will not bother with the second part of your comment.
Not sure about music but in architecture 'modern' was already in 40s.
But what I heard was Smells Like Teen Spirit.
My son, who is 17, said that they were talking about “the late 1900s” in class the other day and I could almost feel my body turning into dust.
adjective
1. Of or relating to recent times or the present.
"modern history."
2. Characteristic or expressive of recent times or the present; contemporary or up-to-date.
"a modern lifestyle; a modern way of thinking."
I'd call that the #1 distinction.
These days it's the ubiquitous volcano of entertainment : social media, youtube etc.
Back then it was what, bake brownies?
She went dancing a lot. That's how she met my dad.
Don't worry, people won't sit around and be bored.
Build things from wood. Build things from metal.
Learn an instrument. Play music.
Play sports. Ride a bicycle.
Listen to the radio. Listen to an album. Watch television.
Host a party for friends. Play social games. Perform parlor tricks.
Maybe with the 1990s.
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, but we have nowhere near enough information to make such a judgment.
Ok but it's pretty groundless speculation then.
TBH I love tech from the 1990s and before: CGI, terminals, sixels etc and I refuse to carry a cellphone (though it's ok to have one at home, plugged 24/7)
I didn't realize it before, but I now I can see how I embrace being anachronistic :)
It's just that I don't know it. Maybe if I did, I would love it like he does?
Even his teachers were getting in on the sickening brainwashing operation: ""Callum went away on a school trip when he was about 12 and came back with an old-fashioned hat on," she says. "I thought it was funny, and I just asked him, 'Where did you find this?'. "He said 'that's the way I want to dress, that's going to be me'. "Ever since then, that's just been Callum," his mum says."
Humans, without substantial biological modification, do not seem ready for a technology driven quasi-utopia. Keep the biotechnology and pharmacology, keep the industrial robots and keep the private space programs but remove the inexpensive personal computation, omnipresent high-bitrate packet radio networks and with them all of the anti-societal behavior they support.
TL;DR This kid is closer to hyper-sane than brainwashed.
I also contemplated the idea to buy an old car of the era. My grandfather's old cars would have been out of reach of my pocket[1] so I can relate.
I would have however totally incorporated tech into old design, making old radios work with my flac collection and connectable with bluetooth for example, or converting an old peugeot 402 to EV.
Our societies have progressed a lot in a century in many ways. However as far as design and elegance goes, I think even the richest person of the planet tend to look like crap nowadays with the modern outfits.
[1] some selling for literally millions of dollars nowadays at auctions.
Two distinct types of parentification have been identified technically: instrumental parentification and emotional parentification. For instance, instrumental parentification involves the child completing physical tasks for the family, such as looking after a sick relative, paying bills, or providing assistance to younger siblings that would normally be provided by a parent. On the other hand, emotional parentification occurs when a child or adolescent must take on the role of a confidante or mediator for (or between) parents or family members.
I agree by the way if that was the case, even though you have cases like Beckham, Beckham's father was obsessed by football and Manchester United and so became his son, but you could see David loved football with all of his heart (and excelled at it).
> We always watch old films together, he's in love with Ginger Rogers," Anne says.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but UK TV licenses didn't exceed a million until the early 1950's [1], so he's cheating at least a little.
> "I was forced to have a laptop for college, and I hated it."
Past tense. What is/was his major?
On some level I find this positively charming. If I had a time machine, I'd visit the 1940's, too. But I likely wouldn't stay for more than a few weeks at a time. Even Gary Sparrow eventually found it boring. [2]. Hmm, I wonder if he's ever seen "Goodnight Sweetheart"?
> Callum has lived at his gran's house since he was 12, after his grandad, John, suddenly passed away. He's kept her company ever since.
That's also the same year he bought the hat. So this would appear to be a reaction to his grandad's passing? It's not necessarily the reporter's job to play psychoanalyst, but I would have liked more details.
From what I can tell, Kirkcaldy isn't exactly rural, but if his ambition is to run the local animal shelter or local museum, I think he'll do fine. He's just 19 and has plenty of time to decide his life's direction. And should I ever visit Fife and encounter him, I'd be happy to stop for a game of checkers, darts, etc. I was a little kid in the 1970's, before home computers, the internet, ATM's, and cable TV, and could go back and do it again. Tech isn't everything. As I think some have remarked, it may just give him a clearer head.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Sweetheart_(TV_ser...
From watching the video it sounded like this guy was simply interested in cars as a child and took a fancy to older cars.. It's quite understandable that he then decided to fulfil his childhood dream of owning one when he reached adulthood. I know guys who were obsessed with guitars as kids then when they got their first job brought all the guitars they dreamt of. I know did same thing with computers and computer bits when I got my first job. I even know a guy who liked steam trains as a child so after he left college decided since he's always liked trains he'd work on them.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is far more likely to be a kid who grew up simply liking cars so brought a car that he liked as a kid when he got a bit of money as an adult. I suppose it's possible there was something emotionally harmful about how he was raised which caused him to like different things from other kids, but it certainly wasn't obvious from the video... It seemed like he was a loved child and understood he had unique interests. Plus, he seemed happy and socially well adjusted, so good for him.
There's plenty of people that get obsessed over uncommon things that I'm not sure I'd jump to the "parentified" conclusion.
It’s not okay to find this stuff funny. Technology is a fundamental part of society.
I don't believe whether or not someone has adopted a given technology has any kind of clear correlation to their understanding of it or ability to use it were they to elect to. I know plenty of people who are up to date with the latest fads and yet dumb as rocks.
I think the kid will be just fine.
I was kind of wondering how racist this kid is and then I got to this paragraph and expected it to address the elephant in the room:
>However, Callum told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme - via his 1940s Bakelite rotary-dial telephone - that there is one thing from the post-war period he definitely does not do.
but it goes on
>"We don’t ration,” he says. “I like my food too much for that."
oh, okay.
Yeah, I met plenty of guys like you in high school when I started wearing a trenchcoat.
I seem to have come out all right. And now I'm an actual grown-up and nobody cares whether I'm "normal" or a "weirdo" by high school standards.
More seriously, this perfectly parallels the myth around the supposed utility of "fat shaming". People who dislike fat people justify their harassment of fat people by claiming that NOT making fat people uncomfortable will just make them get fatter / make others get fat as well because they would then think being fat is okay. On the other hand actual research shows that fat people are often self-conscious about their weight to begin with and being shamed actually contributes to behaviors like emotional overeating or avoiding physical exercise (e.g. even avoiding walking anywhere because being in public opens you up to negative comments).
The hard truth about hard truths is that they're usually bullshit. Being a dick does not help your victims, it just hurts them. Punishing your child does not help them grow thicker skin, it just makes them emotionally broken. Letting poor people starve does not encourage them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it just makes more of them suffer and die. Ignoring child mortality does not lead to better family planning, it just leads to more dead children.
If the kid wants to be a little 1940s freak, let him be that as long as he doesn't hurt anyone. If there's genuine worries about his guardians manipulating him, that's tangential at best and troubling in its own right, 1940s or not.
My personal philosophy is not only should we let people be wildly different, we should encourage it. It's nice to have different experiments running. I don't trust the average opinion to have arrived at the correct answers for anything. Maybe this kid will figure out something important from his lifestyle, and share it with us.
I similarly like nationalism because it helps preserve distinct cultures, despite having some drawbacks. The more distinct cultures, the better, IMO.
If the main criticism of this kid is "he should be more like everyone else"...I just fundamentally disagree. He should not. I wish more people would make their own choices, and quit trying to achieve what everyone else says they ought to.
That's not what nationalism does, though. In the sense of liberatory and separatist movements (e.g. Catalonian, Scottish, Kurdish), sure, but in the more common sense (e.g. Russian, German, British) it's an oppressive collectivist movement that actually tries to eliminate local cultural diversity by imposing a rigid interpretation of "the national culture" and suppressing any deviation from it. Even in seemingly homogeneous European countries you have language minorities (not just dialects: e.g. Sorbs/Wends are a group native to Germany but culturally distinct and speaking a different language in addition to German, which is imposed as the national language).
I think what you describe sounds more like what Democratic Confederalism strives to do, i.e. form bottom-up self-governing groups via a system of delegation and confederation. This doesn't require a state (which "nationalism" usually implies, often with strong authoritarian undertones in the name of protectionism) and it doesn't require top-down control. Democratic Confederalism is actually best suited for regions that are culturally heterogeneous and would pose difficulties for central governments (e.g. Lebanon, which went out of its way to force a proportional political representation of Christianity and the two major Islamic traditions in order to do justice to its distinct religious-cultural minorities but still ended up with Hezbollah).
Ultimately it's not a lack of "nationalism" that is creating global cultural homogeneity but the commercialization and commodification of culture: Hawaiian religious practices are converted into generic Tiki torches and flower garlands made in China and sold at Walmart, German Karneval and Oktoberfest become beer binges and so on. Local customs are sanitized, decontextualized, synthesized and replicated as a commodity until the original is lost and only the copy remains and has become interchangeable. This is what "cultural appropriation" originally means: creating a no-name knock-off version of someone else's culture and selling it as a commodity, often resulting in the knock-off existing beside the original in direct competition and eliminating it through the power of the market (because a focus group tested sanitized plastic version will easily outcompete the original).