What’s on your mind?

[LizKat]

This rainstorm outside my window. It's pleasantly spooky.

That's what woke me the other night to a major lightning storm without much thunder to it. Not the lightning (and there wasn't much thunder for some reason) but the heavy rain being dashed against the window intermittently by high and swirling winds. We're lucky we didn't get one of our rare spring tornadoes out of it.

 

[0388631]

Sometimes I can't help but internally judge other parents for what they allow their older kids to wear in public places. Dear god, I've become that parent. Then again, I've always internally judged people on how they dress as that reveals a lot about them.

 

[LizKat]

Sometimes I can't help but internally judge other parents for what they allow their older kids to wear in public places. Dear god, I've become that parent. Then again, I've always internally judged people on how they dress as that reveals a lot about them.

I used to be way more judgmental about how people dressed in various circumstances than I am now.

Back in 1965 I remember boarding a flight to LA from SF, and back then at least San Francisco was a fairly dressy place to begin with. Anyway a woman boarding ahead of me was wearing shorts, some kind of ruffled and casually low cut blouse, a pair of dime store flip flops on her feet, and she had her hair in curlers. Dressed for the breakfast nook, basically, is how I viewed her ensemble.

I was more than taken aback. I was shocked. Personally I was never enthusiastic about getting all dressed up to go anywhere even if I liked leafing through Vogue at the newsstand when I could get away with it, but almost a year in SF had altered how I behaved. So in that time and place I was wearing a suit and stockings, heels, gloves, even a hat. It's how people in San Francisco dressed then, just even going to work, unless they were denizens of the then hippie Haight-Ashbury area.

Obviously I'd never been to LA before. I was shocked practically the whole time I was down there.

 

[0388631]

I used to be way more judgmental about how people dressed in various circumstances than I am now.

Back in 1965 I remember boarding a flight to LA from SF, and back then at least San Francisco was a fairly dressy place to begin with. Anyway a woman boarding ahead of me was wearing shorts, some kind of ruffled and casually low cut blouse, a pair of dime store flip flops on her feet, and she had her hair in curlers. Dressed for the breakfast nook, basically, is how I viewed her ensemble.

I was more than taken aback. I was shocked. Personally I was never enthusiastic about getting all dressed up to go anywhere even if I liked leafing through Vogue at the newsstand when I could get away with it, but almost a year in SF had altered how I behaved. So in that time and place I was wearing a suit and stockings, heels, gloves, even a hat. It's how people in San Francisco dressed then, just even going to work, unless they were denizens of the then hippie Haight-Ashbury area.

Obviously I'd never been to LA before. I was shocked practically the whole time I was down there.

That dates it, but I understand what you mean. When I moved to the US I was taken aback at how casual people dressed. Through time and communication, the younger folks back home also seem to dress in a casual manner. It's the way of life. Though in my adult years the most casual I feel comfortable going to the store in is a button down polo shirt and business casual slacks. I have jeans, but I view jeans as something you wear when walking a trail somewhere way outside where you normally live. Lord knows they're more comfortable and better breathing than those silly nylon based hiking pants. Or sitting around at home.

I rarely visit LA proper, but the state in general tends to be rather forward in dress style. Having said all of this, my initial post was about something more extreme, so to speak. Graphic tees with lewd messages or drug imagery are something I simply don't ponder about. My knee jerk reaction was along the lines of parents letting their child wear clothing that I guess you could call gaudy but also very questionable in its intentions given a certain theme of an event, if you will.


Though your outfit you described, I definitely know that look. Very common for that period. Quite chic, as well. Still a timeless look. I believe it was a man called Couragez who started the trend of sophistication yet stylish in the mid or late 1950s that spread like wildfire in Europe and made its way to the Americas. I find it a little funny today's younger folk enjoy fitted clothing when that's always been the norm and was when I was young myself. No idea how bad fitting clothes ever became a trend.

 

[LizKat]

I rarely visit LA proper, but the state in general tends to be rather forward in dress style. Having said all of this, my initial post was about something more extreme, so to speak. Graphic tees with lewd messages or drug imagery are something I simply don't ponder about. My knee jerk reaction was along the lines of parents letting their child wear clothing that I guess you could call gaudy but also very questionable in its intentions given a certain theme of an event, if you will.

Around here in the early to mid 90s (I was still spending part of my time in NYC but was spending more time telecommuting from up here in the sticks), I noticed that the college kids in the towns suddenly seemed pretty thoughtless about how other people's children might be affected by the way they were dressing, speaking or behaving. Dropping F-bombs in front of five year olds on a Saturday at the supermarket or in the video rental stores, guys grabbing their GF's behinds, stuff like that.

In the mid-80s, that was definitely not happening yet up here, so it didn't go unnoticed later on. And it did tend to exacerbate traditionally already dicey town-gown relationships in the several SUNY college towns in the area.

Today people seem less inclined to admonish strangers about anything really, but for the rest of the 90s it was fairly common here to observe a parent chiding college kids over the example they were setting for the little kids they had in tow while doing their weekend errands. Hah, the not quite idyllic days when people may have thought it took a upstate village to finish raising a nearly grown kid from downstate...

It was around that time the colleges responded by emphasizing community participation events --park and roadside or ditch cleanups, paint-a-fence or porch day for houses of senior citizens etc.-- to try to take some of those rough edges off local impressions of the students. It was also around that time that the sheriff's deputies started some more obvious enforcing of ordinances about open containers of alcohol on the street and rowdy spillover from parties in off campus housing.

But the vulgar or drug-themed tee shirts and the F bombs and the casually sexual familiarity of couples on the street in front of whoever happens to be around have continued. Not only that, now it's common for the local high school kids to behave that way. So... the chiding parents of the 90s may have had a point, but the bad examples were followed anyway I guess. Still, it's in the overall American culture now so maybe not right to blame it on NYC kids who land up here for college.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Years, decades passed in the blink of an eye...
There is much more behind than ahead...
Carpe diem!

 

[0388631]

Around here in the early to mid 90s (I was still spending part of my time in NYC but was spending more time telecommuting from up here in the sticks), I noticed that the college kids in the towns suddenly seemed pretty thoughtless about how other people's children might be affected by the way they were dressing, speaking or behaving. Dropping F-bombs in front of five year olds on a Saturday at the supermarket or in the video rental stores, guys grabbing their GF's behinds, stuff like that.

In the mid-80s, that was definitely not happening yet up here, so it didn't go unnoticed later on. And it did tend to exacerbate traditionally already dicey town-gown relationships in the several SUNY college towns in the area.

Today people seem less inclined to admonish strangers about anything really, but for the rest of the 90s it was fairly common here to observe a parent chiding college kids over the example they were setting for the little kids they had in tow while doing their weekend errands. Hah, the not quite idyllic days when people may have thought it took a upstate village to finish raising a nearly grown kid from downstate...

It was around that time the colleges responded by emphasizing community participation events --park and roadside or ditch cleanups, paint-a-fence or porch day for houses of senior citizens etc.-- to try to take some of those rough edges off local impressions of the students. It was also around that time that the sheriff's deputies started some more obvious enforcing of ordinances about open containers of alcohol on the street and rowdy spillover from parties in off campus housing.

But the vulgar or drug-themed tee shirts and the F bombs and the casually sexual familiarity of couples on the street in front of whoever happens to be around have continued. Not only that, now it's common for the local high school kids to behave that way. So... the chiding parents of the 90s may have had a point, but the bad examples were followed anyway I guess. Still, it's in the overall American culture now so maybe not right to blame it on NYC kids who land up here for college.

I think as live has gotten busier, people care less about what strangers do until it passes a point and then it riles them up. Be it crime or just doing something plain old stupid. That and it's easier to discreetly film someone being a twit in public and posting it than it is to admonish them publicly.

 

[LizKat]

Years, decades passed in the blink of an eye...
There is much more behind than ahead...
Carpe diem!

I was thinking the other day about how different the sense of time is for a ten-year-old kid in the USA whose summer vacation is a few months of a year that itself is a tenth of his whole life. No wonder that some kids can end up bored in the last few weeks of "the sameness of life" before school begins again. Meanwhile a 70 year old can be wondering where the heck the day went after breakfast and how it can possibly be time to serve supper. My gradual transition from being a night owl to an early riser is somehow related to that.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I was thinking the other day about how different the sense of time is for a ten-year-old kid in the USA whose summer vacation is a few months of a year that itself is a tenth of his whole life. No wonder that some kids can end up bored in the last few weeks of "the sameness of life" before school begins again. Meanwhile a 70 year old can be wondering where the heck the day went after breakfast and how it can possibly be time to serve supper. My gradual transition from being a night owl to an early riser is somehow related to that.

I find some days move quicker than others. Usually the weekends!

 

[LizKat]

I think as live has gotten busier, people care less about what strangers do until it passes a point and then it riles them up. Be it crime or just doing something plain old stupid. That and it's easier to discreetly film someone being a twit in public and posting it than it is to admonish them publicly.

It may well be so, but some of the ways in which we "admonish" perfect strangers in that different space of the internet have been adopted by kids themselves and can amount to mass bullying in the blink of an eye.

That of course is not exactly how it used to work when some grandma on a Brooklyn stoop or an East Podunk supermarket parking lot decided to speak up to some thoughtless young adult setting a poor example for younger local kids.

I was thinking about that in reading a piece about Instgram "flop accounts". Those essentially (or probably) began as kids "admonishing" other kids, even if they can be seen migrating now to other and overtly political purposes of adults. And often enough among the kids at least, it's not about behavior so much as about who or how they are, either immutably or in the awkwardness of their navigation from childhood into adulthood. Not to drag this subtopic here towards the terrain of PRSI forum, which is where it surely belongs, but for those who may not know what a "flop account" is, here's an eye opener.

https://www.newstatesman.com/scienc...plore-newest-haven-online-bullying-teens-kids
​

I find some days move quicker than others. Usually the weekends!

So true! Even in retirement that distinction does not go away, at least not yet for me.

As I proceed in decluttering my home, contents of which ended up as the merged and overlapped furnishings of a city and country life while I was working, the average Tuesday seems endless to me: it's the day before the refuse hauler picks up whatever looks better suited to the landfill than charity, yard sale, or prospects of shoving stuff off to family or friends.

The sorting-out is tedious at best, not the adventure I had over-optimistically thought it might be. It's more like "what, another one of these?" versus my imagined "wow, I completely forgot I even had this, what a wonderful surprise!". So Tuesdays have become a series of fifteen minute attacks on the clutter punctuated by ten-minute breaks and trips up or downstairs to find something more interesting to declutter than a bin mostly filled with old notebooks from CCNY about biochemistry labs or whatever.

I can't believe I didn't give the porter another hundred bucks to take about 10 of those bins' worth of crap off my hands when I was packing up my apartment... I must have "run out of time" then, or so I thought. The thing is, now I'm at the age where literally running out of time becomes far more likely. But why do Tuesdays then seem so drawn out as to feel endless?!

So yeah, I love my weekends. In my mind sometimes they run from Wednesday noon to Monday night! But they seem gone in a flash.

 

[chown33]

...
The thing is, now I'm at the age where literally running out of time becomes far more likely. But why do Tuesdays then seem so drawn out as to feel endless?!

So yeah, I love my weekends. In my mind sometimes they run from Wednesday noon to Monday night! But they seem gone in a flash.

It's the well-known Moody Blues Effect. It's similar to relativity's time dilation, but isn't triggered by relatives.

 

[Apple fanboy]

It may well be so, but some of the ways in which we "admonish" perfect strangers in that different space of the internet have been adopted by kids themselves and can amount to mass bullying in the blink of an eye.

That of course is not exactly how it used to work when some grandma on a Brooklyn stoop or an East Podunk supermarket parking lot decided to speak up to some thoughtless young adult setting a poor example for younger local kids.

I was thinking about that in reading a piece about Instgram "flop accounts". Those essentially (or probably) began as kids "admonishing" other kids, even if they can be seen migrating now to other and overtly political purposes of adults. And often enough among the kids at least, it's not about behavior so much as about who or how they are, either immutably or in the awkwardness of their navigation from childhood into adulthood. Not to drag this subtopic here towards the terrain of PRSI forum, which is where it surely belongs, but for those who may not know what a "flop account" is, here's an eye opener.

https://www.newstatesman.com/scienc...plore-newest-haven-online-bullying-teens-kids
​

So true! Even in retirement that distinction does not go away, at least not yet for me.

As I proceed in decluttering my home, contents of which ended up as the merged and overlapped furnishings of a city and country life while I was working, the average Tuesday seems endless to me: it's the day before the refuse hauler picks up whatever looks better suited to the landfill than charity, yard sale, or prospects of shoving stuff off to family or friends.

The sorting-out is tedious at best, not the adventure I had over-optimistically thought it might be. It's more like "what, another one of these?" versus my imagined "wow, I completely forgot I even had this, what a wonderful surprise!". So Tuesdays have become a series of fifteen minute attacks on the clutter punctuated by ten-minute breaks and trips up or downstairs to find something more interesting to declutter than a bin mostly filled with old notebooks from CCNY about biochemistry labs or whatever.

I can't believe I didn't give the porter another hundred bucks to take about 10 of those bins' worth of crap off my hands when I was packing up my apartment... I must have "run out of time" then, or so I thought. The thing is, now I'm at the age where literally running out of time becomes far more likely. But why do Tuesdays then seem so drawn out as to feel endless?!

So yeah, I love my weekends. In my mind sometimes they run from Wednesday noon to Monday night! But they seem gone in a flash.

De-cluttering is an ongoing challenge! No sooner do I get rid and file away one pile of papers, than another appears.

Having just finished dinner, the washing up and loading the dishwasher is on my mind! But I’ll gave a cup of tea first.

 

[Mefisto]

How little some people appreciate the fact that just because you happen to find something (in this case of value, and in a public establishment), it doesn't actually belong to you. Earlier today I noticed that my iPod and headphones had dropped out of my pocket, and thus my day was promptly ruined. Until I actually found out where I had dropped them, that is. The thing is, some dude(tte) had taken my headphones. I don't get it, why not take the iPod as well while you're at it? Obviously there was no need to take either, but it is what it is.

The silver lining is that I finally got an excuse to buy new headphones, but had the old pair not been stolen I would have been able to make do with them for who knows how long. Oh how I loathe thieves.

Other than that spring is what's on my mind. Sun is shining, I don't have to carry a jacket all the time (at least in the daytime) and I can drink my morning coffee on the balcony. Other than the case of the bizarrely selective thief, things are pretty good.

 

[A.Goldberg]

That's what woke me the other night to a major lightning storm without much thunder to it. Not the lightning (and there wasn't much thunder for some reason) but the heavy rain being dashed against the window intermittently by high and swirling winds. We're lucky we didn't get one of our rare spring tornadoes out of it.

I must have had the same storm all the way over here in Boston. Tons of lightening, thunder, and wind. That was pretty crazy. The storm started around 5-6am on Monday.

 

[LizKat]

I must have had the same storm all the way over here in Boston. Tons of lightening, thunder, and wind. That was pretty crazy. The storm started around 5-6am on Monday.
View attachment 832925

Yep. 2:20 am here, big collision of fronts and so the eastbound one was going in circles here for awhile before escaping the mountains and heading on east. We lost power for ten hours.

 

[AngerDanger]

Jony Ive's bio strikes again. I was impelled to buy a coveted item from my childhood: the fifth generation iPod nano.

The first and fifth generation nanos were my favorite iPod designs, and they have the same dimensions. This thing is tiny.



It packed a lot of features that the more expensive iPod touch at the time lacked. It could play music, videos, and display photos like contemporary iPods, but it also had a microphone, a video camera, and an internal speaker.

It was smaller than a credit card and could play music (over a shoddy speaker) without anything else plugged in. It also had an accelerometer for CoverFlow and use as a pedometer (years before the iPhone got the M1 and HealthKit). It even had a radio that can be paused for up to 15 minutes and display station/song information.

 

[LizKat]

Jony Ive's bio strikes again. I was impelled to buy a coveted item from my childhood: the fifth generation iPod nano.

The first and fifth generation nanos were my favorite iPod designs, and they have the same dimensions. This thing is tiny.

I am almost jealous! Never got a 5th gen and have sometimes regretted it mostly because it had a camera with video recording capability, occasionally handy on a device so tiny one can just sling it in a handbag and not begrudge the space... and the 6th and 7th ipod nanos don't have cameras at all. If Apple would unobsolete that 5th gen and tweak it up a little, I'd be on it.

For me, all time fave is probably the 2nd gen nanos and I still use them in my old car with an FM transmitter. Car has just a radio and a cassette player. So the 2G nanos still get used when I'm heading out on errands. They are so sturdy as to seem almost indestructible.

I liked the 6th gen nano for the clip-on convenience --a hybrid shuffle!-- and 7 for the smallness and the radio, but I would have liked even a tinny speaker on the 7, not just BT option plus a 3.5mm plug for wired listening.

Need the wire on the earplugs for the 7th gen's radio antenna, so I understand leaving out the speaker, I suppose. It is a kind of odd duck really. Its NIKE options have appealed to some but data sync was discontinued after iTunes 12.6.x, I believe. I still like it for the radio in a pinch, and carry it around in a handbag because of the so many places I end up where there's no way to get a cell connection on my phone.

I have to say it's a gas watching a movie or music videos on 2.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen of a 7th gen nano. One must be satisfied by sense of the plot, scene change and audio... and not get all wound up over whether those are really sand dunes and camels or perhaps just an army of ants in the background there. So is that is about same size or maybe a tad wider than the 5th gen screen? Neither one would be what to watch something on for the first time if one is into the cinematography.

 

[maxjohnson2]

Google is trying to brainwash the way I spell.

Technically both ways are correct, but I've always been taught to spell it with an o, and it's also more manly, to me anyway.

 

[LizKat]

Google is trying to brainwash the way I spell.

Hah, yep, that stuff is annoying. Reminds me a little of what happened to me at Amazon when I carefully punched in the exact title of a rather obscure book I was looking for. I was amused at how Amazon responded, but still, its damn AI was just winging it. I wrote about it in another post awhile back:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-book-are-you-reading.1080245/page-268#post-27191217

 

[0388631]

Open up Chrome's settings. Type out 'languages' and then use the drop downs to install or import English (United Kingdom). Google and Firefox will default to English (United States).

@maxjohnson2


It also supports English from other locales, such as Australia.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Jony Ive's bio strikes again. I was impelled to buy a coveted item from my childhood: the fifth generation iPod nano.

The first and fifth generation nanos were my favorite iPod designs, and they have the same dimensions. This thing is tiny.

View attachment 833360 View attachment 833359

It packed a lot of features that the more expensive iPod touch at the time lacked. It could play music, videos, and display photos like contemporary iPods, but it also had a microphone, a video camera, and an internal speaker.

It was smaller than a credit card and could play music (over a shoddy speaker) without anything else plugged in. It also had an accelerometer for CoverFlow and use as a pedometer (years before the iPhone got the M1 and HealthKit). It even had a radio that can be paused for up to 15 minutes and display station/song information.

Gorgeous device; my only quibble was that the storage memory was insufficient for my music library, but an exquisite, portable elegant music player.

 

[decafjava]

Switching gears from the discussion of this very nice device which I never had the fortune of owning, and the very nice Easter weekend and lovely picnic. Faced with more noise on the various tech sub-fora here or the PRSI forum, as well as my Twitter account (even Instagram) I finally found a link that expresses my view on all the garbage I am reading:

 

[LizKat]

Switching gears from the discussion of this very nice device which I never had the fortune of owning, and the very nice Easter weekend and lovely picnic. Faced with more noise on the various tech sub-fora here or the PRSI forum, as well as my Twitter account (even Instagram) I finally found a link that expresses my view on all the garbage I am reading:

Finally, a indisputable citation from a source with impeccable reputation.

Thank you, I just shipped it from a throwaway address to three of the most gossip-prone, chain-mail-loving people I've ever dropped off my contacts.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Elections and their aftermath.

 

[0388631]

My my my. Casper the friendly ghost has taken on human form.


Edit: Seriously, @AngerDanger, go outside once in a while. It's good for your skin.