It's so strange sometimes watching tv shows and movies from the 90's where you see characters smoking indoors in public places.
Like in Seinfeld you will have episodes where Kramer is smoking in offices....and even in the doctor's clinic! There was an episode where Kramer took out a cigar and smoked in a doctor's waiting room. I thought he would immediately get in trouble but none of the other characters cared.
And then you got movies from back then like Jackie Brown (which is a great movie by the way) where you see character's smoking in a mall cafeteria. A mall! A family friendly environment! And it's considered normal!?!?!? Blows my mind.
Smoking on airplanes is the one that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen. And yet there were (relatively) few incidents caused by cigarettes.
I heard that air quality on planes was better back then (maybe someone who was alive then can confirm). Because of smoking they had to ventilate the whole aircraft much better. While these days I feel like they are just starving us for oxygen so as to not have to heat up fresh air.
Old person here. I think it's really hard to convey the extent to which smoke literally permeated everything. It's not just the immediate air quality aspects of it, but there was just a residue on all the surfaces, every cushion and fabric held onto the stuff.
I can recall the week that no-smoking indoors at restaurants/bars passed and it was literally shocking to walk into a place and not have it be hazy. It really felt weird.
Anyway, air quality + quality of life was much worse. Sometimes the future does get better.
Turns out using less engine bleed air is good for fuel economy, so now it's 50% recirculated HEPA filtered (which does nothing for the co2 contents) air.
Lol. I was 14 when I took a long distance international flight on a 747 in 1979. The family was sitting in the “non-smoking section”. I can tell you for a fact that the air quality in that plane was terrible. Possibly because a number of passengers in the non-smoking section still deigned to smoke. Whaddaya do eh?
Or smoking a cigar in an oxygen rich spacecraft cabin, as per the opening scene of the original Planet of the Apes (released in Feb 1968, after the Apollo 1 fire in Jan 1967).
I was recently watching some TV show and there was this one scene in maternity hospital. The doctor(!) was smoking while talking to the main character. Insane for today's standards.
The day they introduced non smoking (late nineties?) a friend of mine found out as the aeroport. He made a big stink, canceled his ticket and booked a new flight for Amsterdam - NYC with the only company still allowing smoking: Aeroflot.
He spent the better part of a day, flying via Moscow.
The next time he had to fly he grudgingly accepted it.
Sometimes even Shaw's unreasonable man has to come to terms with defeat.
Congrats! I quit around the same time cca 2012-2014.
I did not smoke on a plane, but smoking on trains (and many places indoor) was "normal" before like 2010 around my place. I did not like it even as a smoker and rather went out.
But fully echo you that quitting was one of the best decisions of my life.
Not only teflon, but pfas. Overuse of pesticides. The second coming of authoritarianism 80 years after the last time. Not doing enough about climate change. Anthropocene extinction.
plastic will still be everywhere. The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
> social media as news
Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
> teflon
teflon has gotten a lot better since it was introduced. It will stick around.
> fossil fuel cars
will be seen like rotary phones: they will not understand why they are so cumbersome or why so many people had resistance against electric cars. It's like electric lights versus living with only oil/candle lights.
I think a near term would be: "you had to go to a cinema to watch a movie?"
Perhaps overuse of medication. No real proof it works, severe side effects, "misterious" rise in cancer and other dissieases, state sanctioned censorship, billion dolar corruption scandals...
Reminds me of reading my grandparents' old copies of National Geographic from a similar era. The ads were all attractively retro cars or cigarettes. A couple of taglines that stick in the mind are "the thinking man smokes" and "doctors recommend..."!
Ever since quitting years ago I never really recovered. It’s like 35% of my mental focus and clarity evaporated.
All these moments when something had to be figured out suddenly things became easy if you only went for a smoke. Solutions became crystal clear obvious and effortless.
At a price.
Without it is always like a little bit of heavy fog is obscuring everything. That I know could be instantly lifted by this terrible drug.
I even remember my first time what a transcendental clarity it summoned. It was as if some thick veil fell from me in an instant. That’s very, very addicting and just useful.
They didn't have a scientific proof that smoking was bad for you. Just like we don't have the proof that social media is awful for you and that Trump is a cult.
Cigarettes were recognised as the cause of lung cancer in the 1940s and 1950s, with the confluence of studies from epidemiology, animal experiments, cellular pathology and chemical analytics
What seems to me is the ads seem less staged and processed than current ones. They're wilder and not as softened as every media are now.
As for people pointing at lifespans for the healthy part, how much of the change is systemic use of anticoagulants? And of course less tobacco, but I wouldn't rush to say people are in much better shape now.
Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20260514073345/https://tohippo.c...
It's so strange sometimes watching tv shows and movies from the 90's where you see characters smoking indoors in public places.
Like in Seinfeld you will have episodes where Kramer is smoking in offices....and even in the doctor's clinic! There was an episode where Kramer took out a cigar and smoked in a doctor's waiting room. I thought he would immediately get in trouble but none of the other characters cared.
And then you got movies from back then like Jackie Brown (which is a great movie by the way) where you see character's smoking in a mall cafeteria. A mall! A family friendly environment! And it's considered normal!?!?!? Blows my mind.
Smoking on airplanes is the one that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen. And yet there were (relatively) few incidents caused by cigarettes.
I heard that air quality on planes was better back then (maybe someone who was alive then can confirm). Because of smoking they had to ventilate the whole aircraft much better. While these days I feel like they are just starving us for oxygen so as to not have to heat up fresh air.
Old person here. I think it's really hard to convey the extent to which smoke literally permeated everything. It's not just the immediate air quality aspects of it, but there was just a residue on all the surfaces, every cushion and fabric held onto the stuff.
I can recall the week that no-smoking indoors at restaurants/bars passed and it was literally shocking to walk into a place and not have it be hazy. It really felt weird.
Anyway, air quality + quality of life was much worse. Sometimes the future does get better.
Nope, not better quality if you don't like the smell of cigarettes.
Turns out using less engine bleed air is good for fuel economy, so now it's 50% recirculated HEPA filtered (which does nothing for the co2 contents) air.
How does this work for all-electric planes like the 787?
Lol. I was 14 when I took a long distance international flight on a 747 in 1979. The family was sitting in the “non-smoking section”. I can tell you for a fact that the air quality in that plane was terrible. Possibly because a number of passengers in the non-smoking section still deigned to smoke. Whaddaya do eh?
There seems to be a door smoker effect to this day, where smokers are drawn to smoke just inside of the areas you aren't supposed to smoke.
Or smoking a cigar in an oxygen rich spacecraft cabin, as per the opening scene of the original Planet of the Apes (released in Feb 1968, after the Apollo 1 fire in Jan 1967).
You can still smoke indoors in public places in many places in the world
The Sixties where the time!
in the office: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/14040813590...
in university: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/mediaviewer/rm154904524...
in airplanes: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/15032513024...
I was recently watching some TV show and there was this one scene in maternity hospital. The doctor(!) was smoking while talking to the main character. Insane for today's standards.
"You're too young to smoke. You're going to set this whole place on fire."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_XNn1bwOM
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2620/how-do-they-...
I remember transatlantic flights with smoking sections
The day they introduced non smoking (late nineties?) a friend of mine found out as the aeroport. He made a big stink, canceled his ticket and booked a new flight for Amsterdam - NYC with the only company still allowing smoking: Aeroflot.
He spent the better part of a day, flying via Moscow.
The next time he had to fly he grudgingly accepted it.
Sometimes even Shaw's unreasonable man has to come to terms with defeat.
Airplane!, 1980.
Quit smoking 10 years ago. Best thing I ever did. I'm particularly inspired by articles like this:
* https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/what-happens-body-qu...
According to the article I have 5 years to go till my body has completely recovered from the effects of smoking.
Congrats! I quit around the same time cca 2012-2014.
I did not smoke on a plane, but smoking on trains (and many places indoor) was "normal" before like 2010 around my place. I did not like it even as a smoker and rather went out.
But fully echo you that quitting was one of the best decisions of my life.
And there I was wondering where all the bunkum came from that LLMs spit out. This is proof that we don't need AI to write hilariously absurd copy.
what will our grand kids be shocked to read about us and our acceptable 'cigarettes'?
plastic everywhere
social media as news
teflon
fossil fuel cars
sugar/ultra-processed food
Not only teflon, but pfas. Overuse of pesticides. The second coming of authoritarianism 80 years after the last time. Not doing enough about climate change. Anthropocene extinction.
Yeah, Nazis again surprised me and I'm not even a young person.
I figured sure it's a pattern, but it'll take like 150 years or something, nope, here we are in less than 100 years and there are Nazis again.
> plastic everywhere.
plastic will still be everywhere. The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.
> social media as news
Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
> teflon
teflon has gotten a lot better since it was introduced. It will stick around.
> fossil fuel cars
will be seen like rotary phones: they will not understand why they are so cumbersome or why so many people had resistance against electric cars. It's like electric lights versus living with only oil/candle lights.
I think a near term would be: "you had to go to a cinema to watch a movie?"
> Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.
Perhaps. But “social media as news” is definitely going to get a lot worse.
> Teflon ... It will stick around.
Please tell me that was a deliberate choice of words :)
No, it's going to be about either the roll back of nuclear reactors or various social movements.
Meat not as a treat, but as a staple
Huh? As has been the case since our species evolved into homosapiens?
Perhaps overuse of medication. No real proof it works, severe side effects, "misterious" rise in cancer and other dissieases, state sanctioned censorship, billion dolar corruption scandals...
Medication for normal emotions
Covid vaccines to young and healthy individuals
Thanks for reminding me. Hopefully antivaxxers
Reminds me of reading my grandparents' old copies of National Geographic from a similar era. The ads were all attractively retro cars or cigarettes. A couple of taglines that stick in the mind are "the thinking man smokes" and "doctors recommend..."!
Press page-down: scrolls the galleries right. Somebody thought this was a good idea, let alone intuitive.
"Error establishing a database connection", apparently? Groovy.
> Groovy
PHP / Wordpress I think.
Hug of death
Works now!
I miss this awful habit so much.
Ever since quitting years ago I never really recovered. It’s like 35% of my mental focus and clarity evaporated.
All these moments when something had to be figured out suddenly things became easy if you only went for a smoke. Solutions became crystal clear obvious and effortless.
At a price.
Without it is always like a little bit of heavy fog is obscuring everything. That I know could be instantly lifted by this terrible drug.
I even remember my first time what a transcendental clarity it summoned. It was as if some thick veil fell from me in an instant. That’s very, very addicting and just useful.
They didn't have a scientific proof that smoking was bad for you. Just like we don't have the proof that social media is awful for you and that Trump is a cult.
Cigarettes were recognised as the cause of lung cancer in the 1940s and 1950s, with the confluence of studies from epidemiology, animal experiments, cellular pathology and chemical analytics
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87
[dead]
and yet somehow that world seemed more healthy than today's
What seems to me is the ads seem less staged and processed than current ones. They're wilder and not as softened as every media are now.
As for people pointing at lifespans for the healthy part, how much of the change is systemic use of anticoagulants? And of course less tobacco, but I wouldn't rush to say people are in much better shape now.
If you wear your nostalgia glasses it sure does "seem" more healthy. Life expectancy at birth in the 70s was 70.8. Now it's 79.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/data-finder.htm?&subject=Life%2...
“Seemed” is the key word here.
It wasn't. Lifespans were almost a decade shorter.
Is it about how Joe Camel looks like a cock?
Nope!
Someone forgot to code a 5-liner RAM cache.
It's up now!