this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 251 points 1 year ago (14 children)
[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This is the 50s, I think it'd be pretty easy to draw a line from casual racism to white supremacists. A key difference this time is that it's not just Germans led by one insane man, it's instead a bunch of redneck prices and conspiracy theorists.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Before the US got involved in WWII, there was a giant Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There was a lot more than that. There were Nazi sympathizers, and saboteurs, and those who plotted to overthrow the US government. People like Father Charles Coughlin reading Goebbels’ propaganda on the radio to millions of listeners and forming an anti-government militia, and legislators like US Senator Ernest Lundeen working directly with Nazis and reading speeches literally written by them.

Highly recommend Rachel Maddow’s Ultra podcast if you want to say holy shit every few minutes.

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[–] [email protected] 234 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I'm just going to steal the response I read years ago.

"I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers."

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (20 children)

I've started l to realize that actual information worth reading is not available. Like I cant access in depth medical course or text book in engineering. Lots of beginner tutorials marketed as 7 minute abs.

Information is valuable and nobody gives it away for free. We have access to a worlds worth of crappy, unvetted trash information. But the vast majority of the good stuff is still locked away as it always was.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This does make me think. I remember the days where I would turn up at the library to read books. With my phone, I can read and learn but instead I doom scroll.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I combine the two. I doomscroll looking for things to read and learn about, which enhances the doom significantly!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"It arguably made us all a lot dumber..."

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[–] [email protected] 122 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm going to go on a different angle on this one and say that we are much tougher on sexual harassment. I feel like a lot of people from the 1950s who have grown up on pulp sci-fi like Flash Gordon could accept a lot of modern technology and the internet as basically just magic. To be fair is how a lot of modern people also accept it. But I don't think they would be able to process the move towards egalitarianism that we have taken.

That is not to say that modern society is egalitarian only that we have made good strides in achieving that aim.

Edit: Turns out Gordon is from the '70s, but other pulp sci-fi exist so my statement stands.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

Edit: Turns out Gordon is from the '70s, but other pulp sci-fi exist so my statement stands.

Live action Flash Gordon was from the 50s

[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"Yes, they are allowed to be on the same bus as us. No, we don't call them that anymore"

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

"Bus? No we bulldozed hundreds of neighborhoods to build highways so now everyone has to have a car"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depends where they appeared

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That smoking is bad for them. You'd just be banging your head against their socially-acceptable-at-the-time drug addiction.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Person from 2020 magically appearing in 2090 and being told caffeine/excessive sugar is now regulated and ID checked

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Things they considered morally fine (smoking, dropping litter, 40 year olds dating 16 year olds) is morally reprehensible, while things they thought were morally wrong or even outlawed are totally acceptable (homosexually, porn, divorce).

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You just explained a large selection of boomers.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, a lot of them were born in the 1950s.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why the Nazis are back, and in America of all places

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depends a lot on the color of their skin.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

"You're telling me there was a black president and he wasn't assassinated? Sure, buddy! Now let me get back to my sharecropping."

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

We walk around with a little rectangle in our pocket that gives us access to the sum total of human knowledge, but we mostly use it for looking at funny captioned pictures, the same pictures over and over just with different captions.

It's called a phone but no one ever uses it as one.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"You see, the file itself can be copied by anyone, but this one little piece of metadata can never be duplicated. That means you own the file."

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

#3 Why we still haven't got colonies on the moon

#2 Climate change

#1 That fascism is back

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Internet, social media and how we can access absolutely everything from this tiny device

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Plenty of SF writers lived in that era and they predicted the Internet.

For example: I can name the writer and his novel where he predicted AI writing engines.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Most difficult imho would be to explain why we haven't advanced any further. If the person is 50 in 1950 he started with horse carriages and saw development to intercontinental bombers, rockets etc. The landing on moon would astonish him, advances in medical sciences and computing too but he probably would ask: "And what are you using that neat little gadgets for?"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

I'm using this little gadget for all my banking needs, a significant amount of my shopping, to stay instantly connected with friends/family and strangers with common interests all around the world, to almost instantly find information on almost any topic, to watch any of a hundred thousand movies or TV shows instantly on demand, and it's also a telephone.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have to goto the store to buy milk instead of having it delivered fresh

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

My parents still do. The person who delivers it also delivers butter and eggs.

I'm not sure where the butter and eggs and stuff come from but he owns the dairy the milk comes from and he's part of a cooperative that pay for the equipment. According to him it's just not worth selling to the big stores as he makes more money with fewer customers doing it himself.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How easily we can know anything, yet how diligently we fail to learn anything.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That we’ve been to the moon - in there 60s - but haven’t been back or been out further. I think it would just be against all their expectations.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A lack of 'whites only' signs.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That shitty actor from Bedtime for Bonzo becomes president.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

"Ronald Reagan, the actor?!"

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We still work 8 hours/day!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A significant chunk of Americans support Russia over their own country and are actually opposed to the US providing aid to a country being attacked by Russia. I mean, I guess they had the Red Scare, but this is more Americans opposed to Left-leaning politics who support Russia's authoritarianism.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

nature and resources are not infinite. you are responsible for your actions no matter how terribly hard your childhood was. you cant buy a house for a years loan. we are all fucked.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Statistically? Ok, you have to learn Mandarin and there are these things called time zones but you only get one but shouldhave at least 3.

Like 1 out of 4 people at the time were from China.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Ronald Reagan was President for 8 years.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

How after World War 2 we didn't truly learn and still fight wars over racism, nationalism and other reasons that keep us from uniting.

How we managed to ruin the earth to a severe degree in just 50 years or so.

And video games.

And The Flintstones.

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