- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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I’m so old that I used to tell this story to people to figure out if they were too young to bother with:
A friend and I were in a cheap restaurant for breakfast after being up all night. Server brings the drinks we ordered, sets them down, goes about her business.
“… Hey! This isn’t orange juice. This is Tang. Who does she think we are, astronauts??”
Hah, your powers of deduction won’t work on me! For I am young, and not even from the same continent as the USA so Tang never existed here!
But I know the link between NASA and Tang because I’m a NERD! MUHAHAHAHA (It wasn’t ever actually Tang that flew but rather a NASA concoction, but boy is it good advertising!)
One particular astronaut was once caught on a hot mic complaining that he was extremely sick and tired of drinking the juice they provided and made them drink in significant quantities during the flight… I’ll leave you to go look the details of what he said and why they insisted they drink so much of it, because I want you to get sucked in to Apollo history too 😈
ngl tang is awesome. mom made a tang pie recipe we saw on tasting history and it was delish
What does this have to do with the topic at hand?
You’re gonna gatekeep shitposting, really?
Hey now, no need to gatekeep gatekeeping!
Are you shitkeeping gateposting again?
What are we, astronauts?
POSTASTRO NAUTKEEPER!
I was told the other day by someone younger than me that saying “okay boomer” is cringe now. The new hot hip fan-didly-tastic slang is “unc status” or “aunt status”, apparently. Means the same thing, but in sleek Gen-Z packaging.
Okay zoomer.
Notably, – yet again – it’s also cribbing/misusing black slang/terminology; disappointing…
Further proof that intergenerational criticism in either direction is dumbass bullshit.
i have respect for my grandparents so i dont call them this but when they bring up stuff i just nod becuase its better to let them ramble than sit there and argue with someone who could have a heart attack.
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But “okay boomer” has just become a bland, flavorless retort that gets said by anyone to anyone for any reason.
It isn’t an expression of frustration at an audience that rejects facts and reason, it is a pithy retort that gets thrown out to say “STFU” to someone in slightly more polite terms.
Like, the root of this isn’t unfair. But as with so much internet lingo, the initial intent has been polluted by online gooners who latch on to a phrase and use it as a barb rather than to convey any particular kind of coherent message.
I mean, not always. It’s still used appropriately. It’s just also used inappropriately as well.
Okay boomer
You walked right into that one ;)
Hey you leave gooners alone. They aren’t hurting anyone. They’re just jerking off.
They are Marxists, they are anarchists, they are agitators, they are looters, and they are people who, in many instances, have absolutely no clue what they are doing.
Ok boomer
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lol no
Dude, peole have been using that on 4chan since 2015 or earlier to tell people that they were out of touch with current affairs or the state of the world. Wasn’t aimed like that.
Making up your own history to throw hate is such a boomer thing to do.
The secret ingredient is lead poisoning. The Baby Boomer generation spent over half their lives sniffing leaded gasoline fumes.
Ding ding ding!
The reason it feels like people from that era are angrier and dumber than they used to be is because they literally are! It’s literal brain damage!
Yeah, turns out that lead in gasoline ain’t so great for the brain. I remember being oddly fascinated the first time I saw the correlation of lead being pulled from gas and violent crime plummeting 30 years later. You can see it in graphs from all across the world and can damn near set your watch to it.
They still do. General aviation still uses 100LL aka low lead
While lead pipes were banned in 1986, millions of lead service lines remain in service across the US to this day…
Lead pipes are less of an issue that it would seem, as the pipes quickly develop a layer of calcium salts on the inside, preventing the water from actually coming into contact with the lead.
By all means, they need replaced. But they’re nowhere near the contributor that leaded gasoline was. That stuff probably fucked up 6 distinct generations. If you lived in a city, you were inhaling lead constantly.
Lead pipes are less of an issue that it would seem, as the pipes quickly develop a layer of calcium salts on the inside, preventing the water from actually coming into contact with the lead.
This right here.
If people remember the lead in drinking water contamination in Flint Michigan, its because they had lead pipes that were well coated with the protective layers and had no trouble with lead in water. Then the newly elected city manager changed water sources to cut costs against the advice of the water engineers in the city. The other source of water was more acidic and stripped out all that protective coating and suddenly there’s huge amounts of lead in the drinking water from the pipes.
Lead gasoline for cars is gone. Lead pipes are still around.
You’re concerned about the big problem that we already solved? Bro, you need to re-prioritize.
Get out of here with your fact-based science, it sounds like you did your own research. We don’t like that. Please comply.
Agreed, fake news. Trump didn’t say this so it isn’t true. Lead never hurt no one. (Ever noticed MAGA’s double negative usage?)
That’s right, water never leaves scale deposits in pipes. Only in hot water tanks and faucets. In between, magic.
Blood concentrations of lead are laughable today compared to when leaded gas was in cars. It’s a decrease of 94%. Yes, we still have a lead problem. No, it is no longer anywhere near as bad as it was.
True, but the safe level of lead is none. This is especially true for children.
The FAA finally approved 100UL (unleaded), so the US is on track to stop using 100LL in most cases within the next 20 years
EPA has tight regulations on washing your plane though, so there’s no problem with lead /s
Disclaimer: It’s better than nothing that the EPA tried to do something, but the government really should have gotten their shit together and approved 100UL decades ago
Shh, don’t say it too loud or Maga will legislate the lead back in.
Hahaha … heh … but seriously, MAGA does want brain damaged voters.
Oh don’t worry about that, they already caused their havoc
Thanks to the FAA’s shoestring budget, they don’t have the funds to just issue an STC to allow existing planes to use it. Each plane owner will have to pay for one to be issued. It costs me $200 to get one issued. It costs that much because the FAA hasn’t had the budget to upgrade their systems, so handling applications takes a lot of labor. They need to manually verify the make and model of aircraft will not be at risk of adverse effects from unleaded gasoline, since safety > all else
It’s a good thing the FAA verifies this, but it shouldn’t be such an inefficient process. The only reason it’s so inefficient is because conservatives have gutted federal agencies for so many years. MAGA will still point to the inefficient process as an example of why they should keep cutting funding, “see how inefficient the FAA is? They don’t deserve our money!”
Gen X kid walked arduous hikes uphill back from school in the La Cañada foothills in San Fernando Valley, id est, the Los Angeles smog bowl from ~1975 to 1985. I may literally have lead poisoning brain damage.
I don’t know how I’d get checked. 58 now.
Curiously, I empathize with kids these days but am also extremely left-wing, and see each generation getting dismissed by the previous one as having it too easy.
I do not dismiss the next generation as having it too easy. Their minimum wage is what mine was when I young. They are basically in a ponzi scheme economy. They are either going to have to endure this distopia or violently overthrow it.
Works both ways Though. I’m hearing over and over from groups that consider themselves victims, having similar sentiment, but shocked when the other group behaves the same way.
Haidt wrote a book about this a few years ago and had a big Atlantic article. Victimhood is the new virtue. Everyone in this ‘victim’ economy is socially competing about who has the biggest/most legitimate grievances.
It’s the en vogue version of social competition…
For a community called “LemmyShitPost” there is an awful lot of gold here.
Lemmy’s shit is someone else’s dinner
🤤
It’s definitely based on where you live… Whether you get a USDA backed loan, etc… I financed my house, 15 yrs ago when rates were between 3 and 6 percent. 2200sqft 3br, 2 bath, with half finished basement on a half acre, and deeded lake access point (Lake Norman) they wanted 120K, but I talked them down to 100K. Since it’s out in the country ( about 15 minutes from the city), it qualified for USDA, which means no closing costs, 30 year FIXED RATE. I pay $650 a month for my mortgage…Only downside is that it was built in 1973, but there are so many houses out here like this, just sitting…
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I just find these reductive generalisations a bit silly and divisive. As if anyone born between arbitrary years x and y is part of some sort of united collective that can reasonably critique everyone born between years v and w.
ok boomer.
Boomer is no longer only referring to a generation, it’s also about the stereotypical mindset that now applies to younger people as well
I guess it’s to be expected. Boomers were raised in pure bliss, spent half their lives relatively stress-free. Everything was easy and cheap. When you live an easy life, you get used to being dumb, uninformed and lazy. The same would have probably happened to all zoomers in the same situation.
Note that this is mostly specific to North America, Western Europe, Japan and maybe a few other countries. Pretty much everywhere else boomers aren’t all that different from zoomers, save for regular intergenerational differences.
Eh, this seems to be looking at things with rose-colored glasses. That generation, in the prime of their youth, had to worry about getting drafted into going halfway around the world to fight a war of empire, for instance.
I guess it’s to be expected. Boomers were raised in pure bliss, spent half their lives relatively stress-free. Everything was easy and cheap. When you live an easy life, you get used to being dumb, uninformed and lazy. The same would have probably happened to all zoomers in the same situation.
I’m not a boomer, but this isn’t quite a fair characterization. Yes, they had cheap college, affordable cars, housing, lots of upward mobility that most of us would love to have today, but they lived through some shit too. Boomers were in their youth when humanity had its closest brush with global nuclear war when the bombers were in the air flying during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They lived everyday with a really good chance the world was going to end in nuclear war. They were the last generation to see a compulsory military draft and many know high school friends that were drafted and died in Vietnam. We think interest rates are bad these days making borrowing expensive. No shit they were having to get mortgages with a minimum of 18% and 19%:
This says nothing about the many racial and sexual discrimination issues that those groups faced making basic life even harder. In Canada it wasn’t until 1964 that a woman could open her own bank account without her husband’s consent. In the USA, redlining preventing people of color from buying homes in better areas denying them untold billions of dollars of generational wealth from real estate appreciation.
Absolutely give the out-of-touch boomers that are dismissive of the problems young people are facing today the shit boomers deserve. They did so much to harvest the benefits of the last century and leave the bill to the younger generations while simultaneously destroying environment for the later generations to thrive the way they did. Just don’t forget that each generation has its problems too and there hasn’t been a generation yet that has been entirely carefree.
In Canada it wasn’t until 1964 that a woman could open her own bank account without her husband’s consent.
My mother would always remind me that in the United States, this was not lifted until 1974.
Just using the interest rate is an unfair comparison. You have to go get median house prices and median incomes as well to make a proper comparison. Just saying the rate was higher at some point is useless if we don’t also compare the prices and incomes because what really matters is affordability. Not saying your whole comment is wrong, just trying to say that this particular part seems to be biased in favor of the Boomers.
Median home price to median household income ratio This ratio is a key indicator of housing affordability. It measures how many years of the median household’s income are needed to purchase the median-priced home. Period Median Household Income Median Home Price Price-to-Income Ratio 1980 ~$21,000 ~$65,000 ~3.1x 2024 ~$85,000 ~$415,000 ~4.9x Comparison of mortgage payments Even with the high interest rates of the 1980s, the lower home values meant a smaller overall loan and a monthly payment that took up a smaller percentage of the median household income. Here is a side-by-side comparison of a hypothetical mortgage for a median-income household in 1980 and 2024: Mortgage metric Early 1980s 2024 Median income $22,000 $85,000 Median house price $47,000 $415,000 20% down payment $11,000 (~50% of annual income) $83,000 (~98% of annual income) Loan amount $36,000 $332,000 Interest rate 13% 7.5% Monthly payment $397 $2,321 Payment as % of gross income
Just using the interest rate is an unfair comparison. You have to go get median house prices and median incomes as well to make a proper comparison. Just saying the rate was higher at some point is useless if we don’t also compare the prices and incomes because what really matters is affordability. Not saying your whole comment is wrong, just trying to say that this particular part seems to be biased in favor of the Boomers.
I’d written a big post already, and diving into all the details and nuance was too much to put in the initial post. You’re right that the interest rate alone isn’t a determining factor, but I’d also disagree that its objectively in favor of Boomers, perhaps subjectively though. Another factor to consider is that in the downpayment requirements. Today we talk about the “best practice” of putting 20% down on a home, but that’s today. The alternative of putting less-than 20% down and using PMI didn’t even exist as a concept until 1971. It grew in popularity later, but in the early days it wasn’t common. Further, with higher interest rates it meant that much lower pay down of the principal was occurring in the first few years of the mortgage because of amortization. It was the beginning of the age of moving more frequently for jobs, which meant less equity build up as each house sale cycle robbed them of that benefit of wealth, arguable the most valuable investment asset of the working class.
Median home price to median household income ratio This ratio is a key indicator of housing affordability
I appreciate you doing and sharing that analysis.
I think we both agree that its difficult to do an absolute comparison on the home buying/owning experience between the Boomer era and today’s Millennials (or GenZ) simply because so many conditions are different. We didn’t talk about Stagflation or unemployment rate in 1982 being 10.8% compared to today’s 4.3%. I pointed out the interest rate being higher because most folks approach new information as “all else being equal” conditions. The audience already knew that housing price was less in the Boomer era, additional it was known that income was higher proportionally to living expenses than today’s Millennials (or GenZ), what I doubted was common knowledge was the sky high interest rates compared to today. Thats what I was communicating.
It’s never worth your time or effort to have a discussion/argument with someone who isn’t going to participate in good faith.
