125 years ago not even the craziest person in the world could jack themselves into a literally nonstop firehose of brainworms
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it boggles my mind that someone could list a bunch of appliances and consider this a knockdown argument that people’s lives are better now than before. you really think life is about having *appliances*?
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i am apparently the resident spoiled sheltered rich kid now so lemme tell ya: my parents made sure i wanted for nothing materially growing up and i would have traded all of it for them actually listening to me instead
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we lived in a very nice house but we didn’t talk to each other at the dinner table. i didn’t care how nice the house was in the slightest *except* when i had friends over, because then it was nice to be able to entertain them with the xbox or whatever
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by far the most important pieces of technology in the house were the ones that let me talk to my friends (phones, computers with internet access), and i used those when it was less convenient than hanging out irl but hanging out irl was much much much better
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*more convenient, welp
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Replying to @s_r_constantin and @QiaochuYuan
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men", completely unironically.
The freedom to be *alone* and the freedom to *choose* your companions are two sides of the same coin, and you can only get that with "atomized" modernity.
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so def relevant here that women have historically (and today) been more responsible for the domestic labor that keeps a household running; from that pov not surprising that women (and their mothers and grandmothers) would be more keenly aware of the value of labor-saving tech
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan @sarah_cone and 2 others
appliances free up so. much. labor.
my grandmother did washing by hand when she was a kid (v poor) and I remember her telling me I should literally thank Jesus for washing machines
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i like this subthread
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Replying to @meekaale @xuenay and @QiaochuYuan
I guess it’s about the whole architecture like how do the appliances and general infrastructure fit into the city, what is the structure of the good life, is the washing machine a center of beauty and a celebration of cleanliness, or why not?
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this is an example of the sort of thing i was trying to gesture at wrt like “what we might’ve lost in modernity”
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was in a mennonite woman's house today and the immense sense of calm and "real life" there was extremely comforting. almost made me feel slightly insane bringing the frantic vibe of electric cyber-life into such a place, wondered if she could sense the residual energy on me.
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really should’ve remembered that this thread existed
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"American individualism lost its soul at that point to the huge pressures of industrial capitalism. Whereas before the war our individualism was tempered by a strong ethic of community service, afterward that changed."
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ah i was looking for this tweet earlier to add to this thread too
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the flip side of it being easier than ever to literally physically survive in the sense of acquiring food and antibiotics is there are probably people alive experiencing unprecedented levels of mental / emotional / spiritual anguish, who in an earlier age would have died by now
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🧐
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for 15 years we made fun of my dad for saying he wants a vacuum for christmas every year, but we finally got him a nice dyson and you know what? he’s walking around, vacuuming all every room, muttering “this is a game changer.” say what you will but the man knows what he wants
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Replying to
I'm moving somewhere with trees or the ocean or both but you can't buy community
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