I’m not in BigTech now and would rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever go back. But I’m also not one of these old boomers at 50 who don’t understand why people “grind leetcode” to get into the top paying companies and I recommend they do so.
On that same note, even as late as 2016, I got my house built in the burbs of Atlanta in the good school system for $335K.
That wouldn’t be possible now. I sold it 8 years later for twice the price and moved. But I couldn’t comfortably afford it on what senior enterprise devs still make in Atlanta theses days (I no longer live there and I pivoted slightly from enterprise dev)
It did help me get a job as a mid level “cloud consultant specializing in application development” in AWS Professional Services department. It paid around 10% less than a software engineering (SDE) job (cash + RSUs) and was a “field by design” fully remote job. It was the last category of jobs that were forced to be in an office when not on a client site this year.
There are all sorts of jobs at AWS and GCP like that - solution architects, engagement managers (it helps), pre-sales architects, program managers, etc. Heck you can make more in recruiting or HR at BigTech than you could make as a software developer doing enterprise dev.
I had been gone for a year and half by then. Now I’m doing the same thing, making the same amount (all cash) as a “staff consultant” working full time, remotely at a third party consulting company.
I most likely could work at GCP doing the same thing as a “senior consultant”. But I don’t do BigTech and I definitely don’t do in office jobs.
But the biggie were the veins in my legs. The valves are giving out, my feet are too far from my heart. 15% of my blood isn't getting properly oxygenated.
And then I got that taken care of. A procedure for a thing my father had (he passed 20 years ago)...and I'm really sad he didn't experience it.
Because the treatment made my feel 15 years younger. My balance is better (a factor of the nerves now getting oxygen), my foot and knee stopped hurting....and what gets me is both how much BETTER I feel, but that it was my body WEARING OUT.
Wilfred Brimley (a name that dates me merely by mentioning it) was my age in Cocoon (look it up, kids)...that was where all the old, used up, worn out people found rejuvenation.
I don't feel that old...doubly so now that my circulation has improved.
But you and I both know of 90 year olds that are 'younger' than some 60 year olds.
But there are alternate paths for the blood to flow. If you mangle the larger deep veins, the blood will still circulate out secondary paths. And literally the next day, my foot was pink, and I wasn't winded climbing the stairs, and my legs weren't lead weights by the end of the day.
Shouldn't we be able to replace them with man-made ones as they fail, like already it's possible to do with heart valves[1]?
They used a catheter on me using RF to ablate the vein so it would no longer flow blood. Recovery was quick. (Wear support stockings for a week, you can move around as normal the next day...don't run a marathon or lift weights.)
It was _very_ low impact.
I once had a rough hike at Half Dome that went deep into the early morning hours (a friend, who was an experienced alpine climber, made the horrible decision to bring his girlfriend at the time who had never even been on a hike before but was "in shape," and so they thought it would "be fine" -- it was NOT) and it was a total mess. We make it back to the trailhead around 2AM and a van pulls in. A 95 year old woman got out with her support team, they were starting the hike up so she could catch the sunrise from Half Dome.
> But these days, there’s nothing lovelier than a Saturday morning with a bit of jazz or classical playing, pottering about the kitchen, and then being tucked up in bed before 10pm. Wild.
Play with the dogs. Smoke some weed, a nice meal and play cards with the wife. Don’t need much more.
I dunno, man. "Gray divorce" is rising, and I don't think Sweden is an exception to that.
I lived in a nearby country for a couple of years and very quickly, the culture of Northern Europe pulled me in. People still want to improve themselves and their communities, they work hard at things they value, but don’t seem to be too bothered by small details or things outside of their control. It’s a very healthy culture - something I can’t say about the current state of my country (USA).
The things I want tend to be hard to buy in the first place: autonomy/independence of time, more time with my parents, better skills as a musician, a more kind and patient heart. I think at some point I developed a taste for the long game, the type where there is no limit on improvement.
>> GAME OVER is near and they should hurry up
still lacks the maturity that comes with age. Or take it as a compliment - you are not there yet. Taking this too seriously also diminishes the quality of our brief existence
Not sure about that. You should expect serious health issues to start between 65 and 75. That doesn't mean your good years are behind you. You're in "running out the clock mode" when your mind goes and you physically can't do things like walking without assistance. That's late 90s for the lucky ones.
In my high school text chat of 5 people now in their mid 50s, 1 is a leukemia survivor, 1 has various chronic health conditions associated with PTSD, and 1 is about to have a quadruple bypass.
3 spouses also have serious health challenges, including cancer and organ transplant.
6 out of 10 with major health issues. Mid freaking 50s.
Wondering when my number is going to come up.
The first girl I ever danced with (8th grade, "Beth" by Kiss) died a few years ago of some medical condition. A neighbor who was a few years behind me in school died last year. Had a headache, told his family he was going to lie down, had a stroke there on the couch. Yeah, you start thinking about it.
Isn't a lot of this due to drug overdoses? It's not like people in their 40s are more often starting to drop dead from strokes and heart attacks.
The bad stuff, unless you're lucky, is that people you love keep dying all the fucking time.
I believe they call it "the human condition" ... but then I'm only in my 50s, so I guess we'll see?
Getting old really sneaks up on you. You're having your best years, then you're having some more best years, and then .. suddenly .. you're in the middle of some years that aren't going so great, and well .. things go a bit down-hill from there.
Which is to say don't take your youth for granted. 55 is not 'that' old, but I can count through the decades the souls I've seen come and go, finally. And I know I could soon be among them.
So as I consider how quickly the last 10 years have passed, and how quickly the next 10 years may pass, if at all, I can say this: don't waste your time. Its all you've truly got. Material things come and go and don't mean anything - the people you meet along the way, the wonderful, intelligent and inspiring things you will see - this is what life is providing you.
Don't take it for granted.
Not "kid at heart" in a foolish way like Will Ferrell.
Not "fine wine aged" like Ian McKellen.
I'm just... me
Now I’m more in the camp of “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment”.
Generation pitting is a red herring. Divide and conquer has always been a useful technique to distract from the real causes, usually by those behind them.
The problem is, aging as I have experienced it bears virtually no relation to the aging that Boomers (and the media) insisted we would endure. I look around at my friend group and dating pool and I see people in the prime of their lives: full of energy, not totally stupid anymore, and usually with a decent career figured out. Boomers at that same juncture in their own lives were self-identifying as "over the hill" and obsessing over retirement.
I'd go as far as to say that one the happiest surprises of my life so far has been learning how the aging I was raised to fear is almost entirely a myth. (not to say it was a myth for older generations, who did live and age in a somewhat rougher world)
Let's talk again when you're in your 60s.
> I see people in the prime of their lives: full of energy, not totally stupid anymore, and usually with a decent career figured out
Yes, you're currently at your peak earning years. That starts to change when you get into your 50s and 60s and nobody wants to hire you anymore. Enjoy your life now.
Reminds me of a talk Ian McKellen gave somewhere, where he says that we're always wearing costumes and acting.
I can relate, I've acted when I was younger, to try to fit in, be acceptable, make friends.
A while ago I stopped caring. I have no friends on earth, and I'm fine with it. The few times I tried to connect with people while allowing myself to fully be myself, it never worked.
I wonder if they were still just acting.
It all of: lays bare the "masks" we wear and the "status games" we play in everyday life; explains the importance of dropping certain common "masks" and various status-related hang-ups to achieve a child-like egolessness and vulnerability, in order to access real creativity; and, further, the liberating power and social-connectedness creating effects of playing with and in masks and status-games.
It's also a really short book, which doesn't hurt.
(here "masks" and "status games" are terms Johnstone defines for his purposes, but what you can guess from context is probably close enough to his intended usage for this post)
I somewhat expected to have something similar for “old”. It will of course happen gradually, but I will realize it’s part of what I am suddenly.
1. It's never out of time, for sure. If you want to make a specific change, study the pros/cons and decide whether to do it or not! But you can for sure make the change you want to.
2. Don't fall into the trap of idealizing a life you don't have. The grass is significantly less green than you might think at the other side of the fence.
I don't know this specific case though, and I guess neither do you. If the parent comment wants to come back with some details, I'll reflect on it.
You made an estimate when you had the least amount of information. Now that you have accumulated more information, the most productive course of action is to revise the estimate and work towards to meet that goal.
Not gonna blow condescending garbage your way. Your feeling is not unique but not in the majority, and it’s exhausting to hear the ‘have’ ppl with no actual ability to relate jabber on.
Hope you can find bits of joy where you can make them.
And I said, "Midlife?"
And he replied, "Yeah dude. We're literally in the middle of our life expectancy."
That's when it dawned on me. I had gotten married just the year before. I also became a father at the same age my own father was when I left home for college. The interesting thing is that my timeline matches those in my social-economic cohort. It seems like in that cohort, we are hitting our life stages a lot later than previous generations so there is a discrepancy between our physical age and how it feels to some of us.
And I still think we had kids early with ours in middle school. I can't imagine being half my age with kids.
You don't just suddenly see yourself as an old fogie. You feel the same inside; maybe more responsible, more jaded, more self-assured, less neurotic or insecure, but you're still the same. But that mirror and this slowly aging body, man. It will outpace your change in perception of yourself. I tried growing my hair out during COVID and I realized I resembled Ron Jeremy, which horrified me. Having a kid just accelerated my aging and health plummet. It's rough.
But again, there's still, like, an immutable element of you inside.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: It has been ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR as a technologist to witness the progression of tech over the last 50 years firsthand. And I have a soon-to-be 4 year old kid (and I could frankly be his grandparent) who I will be imparting the age-old wisdom of the 1980's (and a lifetime of tech wisdom) to. =)
You don't really get wiser as you age. Just scarred by experience. It takes me longer to do some of the things I used to do quicker. And I'm also doing things that I wouldn't have been able to do earlier in my life because you learn a lot as you progress through the years. It's a mixed bag.
I actually like what I do professionally. So, I'm not looking forward to retiring. I'm actually kind of dreading having to do that because of physical limitations or being regarded too old by others. I plan to stay active as long as I can. Regardless of financials. What comes after that is basically waiting to die. Nice if you can make that enjoyable and stretch it a bit. But for most people that's not a huge part of their life, or the best. Or what defines them for others when they are gone.
I work on my list of faults every day.
Not to mention, we all have behavior that's fundamentally contradictory to our values. At least, IMO.
I think this idea that you become a fundamentally different person as you age is wrong. Things do change - the physical changes of ageing suck, mentally I'm more at peace than I was when I was younger.
But I'm still basically me. I would love for us to solve the problem of physical decrepitude with aging. Even if we lived no longer.
Part of that management is a commitment to healthy living: daily vigorous exercise, dietary restrictions, and sleep optimization. I was on and off in shape before then, but the motivation to avoid sliding into a very marked decline due to those conditions has resulted in my achieving better health and higher fitness now in my early 40s than I had for most of my 30s (even some of my 20s), and the numbers don't lie.
Ceteris paribus, if I had adopted this lifestyle in my 20s and 30s I'd probably have then outperformed my current self, and I certainly cannot recover as quickly now from overexertion, but that's besides the point. Do we look at people in their 20s with cystic fibrosis or in 30s with multiple sclerosis and say they're doing "better" than the average person in their 40s or 50s optimizing their health?
My body of course is slowing down, to some degree my mind, but I very much feel like a 20 year old at heart and don't imagine that will change. I do at some point probably need to stop living like one, though.
It's. I don't know. Scary? Weird? Sort of like an odd out-of-body in small doses to consider how I feel inside. When I think that I'm still 22, but the room full of people is looking at me for guidance because I'm the wise old person. It's strange. The first time that happened, a young man and his girlfriend had crashed their car into a ditch. No injuries, but the tailpipe was off of the car. We were working to fix it, and I realized halfway through that they were looking to me for guidance. Meanwhile, inside, I was thinking 'when will the adult get here to take care of this'.
Strange thoughts. But I feel like they're probably universal for humans in some fashion.
It certainly can be an odd feeling though when other adults look at you that way, but it comes with the gray hair and wrinkles.
Give them some perspective before I go back to yelling at clouds.
I moved three times two years ago with zero issues.
Also went to the ER with atrial fibrillation a year ago and now have a prostate cancer scare.
Also lost both parents in the last two years.
Age 44 was paradise compared to this.
What I fear is the day when I have no more older relatives. I hope I can be as serene about aging as my grandparents, who are in their 90s and have very few of even their friends left, nevermind relatives.
I've lived through a lot. Had some successes; also had cancer (I'm 8 years out from that and my statistical outlook is excellent).
I like to think of people like Clint Eastwood, still capably directing in his 90's, and Eliot Carter, who was still writing chamber music post-100 that gets performed. 69 is nothing.
I have nothing left to prove to myself. I have worked at 60 person startups all the way to BigTech - no longer there.
I definitely don’t plan to be grinding at 68.
If you feel your mode of expressing yourself is to travel, etc., then that's fantastic too.
LoL. Being in my early 60s I guess I'm feeling like this guy felt when the pizza guy in his anecdote said he felt old and wise at 36.
In my case it's a couple of programming ideas I like to work on, but I guess building/sewing/music-making/etc. might give other people the same sense of purpose.
We are also gym rats. We have friends that join on us our trips when they can. But no one in our cohort has the complete freedom of movement that we have.
The older retired people that have the freedom we have are too (small “c”) conservative and don’t have to deal with us and I am not about to use a filter when I go on vacation or hanging out.
We also have friends where one works remotely. But the other still has to be in an office. We kind of have to live our lives to our own music.
My parents are 80 and 82 and they are independent now. But I realize the day is going to come where we’re going to have to responsibilities for awhile.
It's almost a tautology, but when I remember it, I feel more dignified about my age and more empathetic for others' age anxiety.
I'm in my mid-fourties and until recently, it seemed logical & righteous to place blame at the boomers' feet. Today it seems a lazy and naive, ultimately serving to further atomize/neuter the next generation. I expect my comeuppance is imminent. Oh well.
In response to:
> I’m turning 50 soon
I'd have to reply with:
> “Add a decade, mate, and then we’ll talk…”
I felt young all through my 50s, and was routinely running 12 to 20 miles/week. But things really took a turn, for the elder, in the first 1/2 of my 60s. This is where I currently sit.
I have older friends who say, STFU, you don't know s1it about old until you're at least in your 70s, and in the modern world most people don't start to feel geriatric until well into their 80s.
We almost need a new age designation between traditional "middle-aged" and "old", sort of like the recent addition of "tween-ager".
My cynicism and skepticism are way up. That's mostly because I actually have seen most emerging trends before. Not the actual tech, but the corporate application of whatever shiny new thing is all gaga at the moment.
The most depressing part, is confirmation that it is nearly impossible for new generations to learn from those ahead. This is mostly confirmed by my own behavior in my youth so closely resembling what I observe in current youth.
Don't worry, wealth is like rust, it never sleeps. And the ever ratcheting vise is clamping down on the young. I'm sure it's all because "old people ruined everything!"
All I can say to that is: STFU...
Actually, I could say a lot more, but no one would listen anyway...
I still very much enjoy those things, don't get me wrong; it's just not as OMG as it was in my 20s.
There's also the money factor. Much of my 20s was spent doing more with less. Exchange/Zimbra servers with PCs people threw away. Fighting with kexts at 3am so that I could get Wi-Fi working on OS X Tiger on my old Windows laptop. Waiting 30 minutes for the off-peak N train at 01:00 after drinking too much. That sort of thing.
I can afford comfort now. I pay for Fastmail. I have all of the Apple kit. When I'm doing something late at night in NYC, I take an Uber. That's been the best part of getting old for me.
Despite all of this, I think you're only as old as you feel. Example. This dude entered my powerlifting gym the other day. He was easily in his 80s. He asked me when the next powerlifting meet was.
I didn't know and couldn't help him, but I definitely knew that he is what I want to be when I grow up.
(An aside. One thing I'm really glad I learned recently is how to enjoy pacing drinks.
It takes me an hour to drink a good old fashioned, or even a shot of whiskey with some ice. A heavy bourbon barrel aged stout is an actual two hour session for me.
I was forced into doing this because of GERD, which is more under control now, but being able to really enjoy my drinks without getting drunk or destroying my sleep quality is a great acquired benefit.
Another benefit from doing this is realizing that staying out late is ONLY possible if you're going to drink a lot.
It's harder to drink a lot when you drink slowly, so you ultimately become the "old guy" that ducks at 20:00.
Given that I've done so many late nights out, I'm okay with that trade-off!)
lisper•15h ago
(Actually, and somewhat ironically, I do remember a very specific moment about 20 years ago when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a window on a day when I was not looking my best and thinking, geez, who is that old guy looking back at me? Surely, that's not me.)
mr_toad•15h ago
WalterBright•15h ago
Lammy•15h ago
Relevant Weezer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gkroIXktjgE
ilamont•14h ago
ne0flex•15h ago
WalterBright•15h ago
somenameforme•15h ago
lifestyleguru•13h ago
I never started doing it intentionally but at some point I noticed they are all about self confidence while in reality they have no knowledge or experience. Which can be catastrophic when you entrust them with something important. That's when I started calling them kids.
asveikau•15h ago
I'm younger than you, but recent years as the gen Z kids come up there have been more of these moments accepting that my cohort is increasingly less of the star of the show.
flatline•15h ago
Chronological age: there is no getting past getting older, you will age and it will be increasingly apparent with time.
Grooming and style: you can, nonetheless, choose to date yourself with your clothing and overall presentation, or not. This can be overdone and make you stand out “trying too hard” not to be old. But there’s a world of middle ground.
Physical: a mix of genetics, nutrition, exercise, access to medical care, self care, and luck. Some people slow down much more than others. Some people, like the author, simply choose to, having been relived of the expectation that younger folks be very busy.
Mentality: do you want to look at younger generations as an alien species, or do you want to deal with people as people and acknowledge that while we all have different backgrounds, new perspectives have their own value. I find I can still relate well to people of about any age. At some point mental decline may rob me of that, but I won’t stop while it’s in my control.
Interests: do you mostly enjoy media and activities particular to a time when you were younger, or do you have a penchant for novelty despite your age?
WalterBright•15h ago
I have negative interest in the superhero movies, so there's that. I don't care for the modern style of shifting the colors to blue/orange. Movies from the 70's have a natural look to the colors.
I prefer 1970s music. Autotune is for whippersnappers.
I yell at clouds a lot, too.
readthenotes1•15h ago
Because there's enough clarity to see set errors, everything important is filmed in the dark.
Examples: just about every fight scene since 2018; Castle first season vs last.
One of the reasons why Shogun was so appealing is they did something different.
mrmuagi•14h ago
horacemorace•13h ago
nunez•4h ago
kjkjadksj•14h ago
drewcoo•14h ago
Imagine Wild Strawberries in HD. I think it would seem bleaker. Or Blue Velvet. It would make Blue Velvet creepier. It would also make any Corman film seem classier.
HD didn't ruin cinema. It only ruins beauty.
betterThanTexas•14h ago
layer8•14h ago
rightbyte•13h ago
layer8•12h ago
• “The highest resolution that the expert assessors could discern in the highest performing movie theater was about 875 L/PH.
• “The horizontal resolution averaged over the six multi-burst groups measured on the screens of the six selected movie theaters was about 715 L/PH.”
L/PH = lines per picture height, i.e. vertical resolution
This was for 35 mm film.
Also, well-mastered DVDs with anamorphic widescreen can look astonishingly good on an output device that doesn’t interpolate its lines.
BizarroLand•13h ago
betterThanTexas•13h ago
I interpreted the claim as being under non-ideal conditions (which is fair, frankly—it's well-known that the visual and sound quality is better at the beginning of a run than at the end, and film quality doesn't matter if your local theater doesn't ensure it's preserved as best it can be).
Plus, I saw a film viewing of Sinners this past weekend (quite a fun movie, highly recommend it) and some visual artifacts were very noticeable—it was regular enough I figured there was a slice of the film roll that got damaged somehow.
pantalaimon•13h ago
layer8•12h ago
The point is that even 1080p TV is an improvement in resolution over what you used to see in cinemas with 35 mm prints.
ToValueFunfetti•13h ago
WalterBright•13h ago
House of Dragon was so filmed in the dark, with poor contrast, and color-corrected to be all blue and orange, is almost painful to watch. I have a hard time even seeing what is happening.
alabastervlog•14h ago
The constraints of not being able to color-grade the whole film with a slider or two, of every cut in the edit taking time to do, and of effects that weren't in-camera being relatively expensive, tended to lead to better and more-interesting filmmaking, even in middling films.
I appreciate what the right people can do with modern tools—I enjoy and even love plenty of newer films, and it's undeniably brought some cool stuff within reach of smaller, cheaper productions—but overall I see it as making cinema worse.
"We did it in a computer" being the answer to every "how'd they do that?" isn't movie magic, it's boring as hell. It's why even a film that tries to avoid that to some degree, like the new Dune duology, is in some important respects—though setting aside overall quality of the film on some other dimensions—just less interesting than broadly similar films like Lawrence of Arabia or Star Wars (or even, if I may be so bold, David Lynch's Dune).
I think this sort of opinion is fairly common among film-fans of all ages, due to interest in film making itself as much as output of the process per se. Not sure most movie watchers care, and they may well prefer the newer stuff because of the ultra-fast editing and tuned-to-be-cotton-candy-appealing color schemes and unconstrained video-game camera of fully CGI scenes and all that.
> I prefer 1970s music. Autotune is for whippersnappers.
Hard agree. I can't friggin' believe the heavy-handed autotune in children's media, especially (Daniel Tiger! Fred Rogers would be so unhappy with it). Let's teach them that natural human singing voices, like their own, sound wrong and bad. WTF.
unyttigfjelltol•14h ago
Those movies were real. The stories were made up, scenes were sets, but ... the images are of real people in meat-world locations, standing near other people, speaking things they mostly really spoke, doing things they mostly really did. It's jarring by juxtaposition just how ... fake modern hyperreal CGI appears on screen.
aaronbaugher•14h ago
A couple years ago, some friends got me to go along to one of the Spiderman movies. Early on, there's a big fight scene on a bridge, and heroes and villains are flipping around in the air, falling off towers and things, and I realized it wasn't bothering me at all. None of it had any weight, or whatever it is about heights that usually makes me feel sick even when I know it's fake.
WalterBright•13h ago
lesuorac•14h ago
Like if there's a coffee shop scene you can look out the window and see like a postman deliver mail or a somebody walk a dog. Stuff that isn't between the main characters happens.
The newer trend of blurring everything that isn't a main character is really annoying to me. Real life isn't blurred ...
WalterBright•13h ago
True. I lost all interest in "making of" documentaries due to that.
BizarroLand•13h ago
The practical effects are whimsical but are so close to realistic that it's quite jarring for people who have only seen digital FX, it evokes that wonder of, "how did they do that" when you suddenly realize that it's not perfect but it wasn't done with a computer and you can't clearly identify what isn't perfect about it.
It's charming and it will make you lament the lack of practical special effects in modern movies.
Disney used to be the equivalent of watching a magician perform an amazing stage play live.
Now it's a prerecorded bus stop ad designed to distract you from the burning air and dirty seats until you step onto the next leg of your journey between work and the office.
tass•11h ago
It was the peak era of practical special effects, and hugely expensive to do something that now can be done with only a couple of people and a cheap computer.
WalterBright•13h ago
Anyone who doesn't understand this should listen to a Karen Carpenter song, and compare it with a modern pop singer.
wwweston•13h ago
WalterBright•10h ago
khazhoux•13h ago
Selective memory. Go listen to all the actual Billboard hits from the 70s. Even before autotune, there was no shortage of ways to make terrible music.
WalterBright•13h ago
I have the set of Billboard hits CDs.
> hit as hard
I like a lot of music made since the 70's. But one thing is gone - quality singing.
Retric•13h ago
I can’t make a top 20 movies from the last decade without including crap. There’s several years where I can’t even recommend a single movie.
alabastervlog•13h ago
I watch a lot of movies and can't keep up with the likely-to-be-good ones every year.
There are north of 500 US & Canadian films released per year. Add in foreign (edit: I mean, even more foreign than Canada) cinema, and it's solidly in the four figures. How many movies were you aware of last year? Ten? A couple dozen? Maybe as many as fifty? Drop in the bucket, regardless.
I'm sure there hasn't been a year in the 2000s in which there weren't at least 20 movies released that were worth your time (for those with all but the stingiest and harshest take on "worth my time", and probably also coupled with narrow taste to get the list down under 20).
And I write this as the person who has been perceived as disliking modern movies, from my post a couple steps up this thread! (I don't dislike modern movies! They're just almost-all, for reasons of technology-related changes in production processes, missing certain qualities that I appreciated a bunch in film-era movies)
Retric•10h ago
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
alabastervlog•8h ago
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
Retric•8h ago
I remember describing Ex Machina as the worst movie of the year I actually finished watching, but hey everyone likes different things.
alabastervlog•8h ago
Retric•7h ago
At the other end of the spectrum there’s a ton of movies with child actors where the kids are just vastly less talented, so the film simply demands less of them. It’s just as true of Let the Right One In a low budget foreign film as it is high budget films such as Harry Potter or classics like The Shinning. Characters come to life not through great acting but because all the elements line up so you forget you’re looking at puppets at the puppet show.
IMO, Great movies are all about understanding the limitations of the medium, the audience, characters, budget, script, etc. That’s why the snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was spectacle but didn’t have the emotional impact of a single deer being shot at the beginning of Bambi.
/soapbox
Again not that you’re wrong, but I was thinking about your response for a while.
alabastervlog•6h ago
> That’s why the snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was spectacle but didn’t have the emotional impact of a single deer being shot at the beginning of Bambi.
God, truth, and all the more effective a comparison for me because I happened to re-watch Bambi within the last week.
Marvel movies rarely achieve even that lesser connection, maybe a half-dozen times in the thirty-whatever movies.
alabastervlog•13h ago
I simply find film-craft more interesting and impressive, and the constraints to drive more-fun (and sometimes absolutely brilliant) creative choices, before they were ~all shot and edited digitally. It's not about good or bad, exactly, but about an aspect of older films that's now all but gone in modern ones. I also happen to appreciate silent film, and some things about those that were impressive and fun went away with talkies—it's not that the talkies were necessarily worse in some absolute sense, but some potentially-enjoyable qualities of silents took a back seat once talkies took over. If someone had really been into those aspects of cinema, they might have tended to prefer older silents over newer talkies, without necessarily disliking all talkies. Similar story with film vs. digital.
I happen to like the film-craft side of things enough that, for me, it in general makes film-era movies more appealing. That doesn't mean I don't watch and enjoy three dozen or more digital films per year, but I do lose out on some of that aspect of my enjoyment of film, with those. This is most-pronounced in action and "genre" (e.g. sci fi) movies.
Like, I watch the modern US Godzilla (I happen to think the first one in this US series is pretty good!) and the action's... fine, nothing particularly wrong with it, but I'm marveling at none of it, just zero. I watch 1954 Godzilla, or Return of Godzilla (1984) and sure, the action's mostly less-convincing (though some of those room-collapse shots in the '54 movie...) but it's also far more interesting.
> Even before autotune, there was no shortage of ways to make terrible music.
Did anyone claim there weren't absolute mountains of bad music in any age? Of course there were, most of anything is bad. Disliking autotune and related tech's effects on music (e.g. visual vs. by-ear editing) doesn't mean claiming that music lacking it is necessarily not-bad.
apercu•12h ago
WalterBright•10h ago
There is Greta van Fleet, where the lead singer's voice sounds like Robert Plant's voice, and I could imagine Zep was back in business. Unfortunately, the singer hated being compared with Plant and went off in some loser direction.
Zep is still the greatest band ever.
khazhoux•6h ago
tremon•10h ago
If you have recommendations for good recent drama, I'm interested to hear your suggestions. Let's limit it to interpersonal conflict, by which I mean a movie that follows multiple persons and multiple viewpoints. Think Closer or Dead Poets Society, not Lady Bird or Juno.
alabastervlog•5h ago
nunez•4h ago
WalterBright•10h ago
1. The Blue Max
2. Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
The special effects in them were - they built flying replicas of the airplanes used in the films! Can you imagine that happening today?
Two great and very special movies. Both made in the 1960s.
A special mention for Battle of Britain - they didn't build replicas, but dredged up the last remaining flying Me-109s and Spits and, well, seeing and hearing them fly is glorious.
alabastervlog•9h ago
My other favorite air war movies I've made it to so far are Twelve O'Clock High with its beautiful flying fortresses (they belly landed one of them! For the movie! For real!), extremely well-integrated war footage, and clear action (compare to the muddled, ugly mess that is The Dambusters); and Wings—how, how on Earth did they get such good aerial photography that early? And the miniature work isn't bad, either.
I've somehow heard of neither of your first two mentions, but will be checking them both out soon.
WalterBright•5h ago
I envy you! I wish I could see them again for the first time!
Based on your remarks, I bet you would love "The War Lover", 1963. They used 3 real B-17s for the movie. Very realistic. I know this because my dad flew 32 missions in a B-17, and was assigned by the Air Force to them as a consultant for accuracy for the movie. He made the mission map used in the briefing.
He was also responsible for the "cutting the grass sequence". The director was just going to use models because it was too dangerous, but my dad showed them how to do it safely. The sequence is just terrific. The AF was mad at him for recommending it, but the sequence was very popular with the critics and he was forgiven.
P.S. How to do it safely: do it at dawn when the air is still. Station people at various locations around the flight path in continuous communication with the pilot telling him his altitude. Fly the route again and again, each time slightly lower.
alabastervlog•4h ago
WalterBright•2h ago
https://www.amazon.com/Everything-But-Flak-Martin-Caidin/dp/...
geoka9•7h ago
WalterBright•5h ago
UncleOxidant•14h ago
Yeah, WTF is up with that. It's autotune everywhere now. It was originally intended for some limited uses and it wasn't supposed to be obvious. And now it's obviously everywhere. I suspect it's going to make it easier for AI vocalists to take over.
mtalantikite•14h ago
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/06/t-pain-usher-ruined...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIjXUg1s5gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ck0vJBygo
BizarroLand•13h ago
The hype train does not allow for imperfection, nor does it stop for anything that isn't better than human.
WWLink•13h ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/1bfxj2d/w...
WalterBright•13h ago
ryandrake•13h ago
apercu•11h ago
I jest but let’s not say “musicians” need to be good looking but maybe in most cases “chart topping” musicians.
scarface_74•9h ago
I’m lazy and didn’t feel like doing the work myself.
https://chatgpt.com/share/681bf3ea-c650-8010-988d-173af745c8...
But these results were based on using ChatGPT’s web search and Python tools and you can verify the citations and the Python code yourself.
Stats for the top 20 artists
Median age: 30 Mean: 30.55 Range: 22-29
I did the same analysis for 20 years ago for this week and the median and the range was 29.5 years old and the range was 18 to 35.
The top 10 20 years before that had a median of 26, a mean of 29.5 and a range between 21-37.
Those numbers aren’t quite as accurate because “We are the World” was #2 and you had a lot of groups back then
tremon•10h ago
tremon•11h ago
The music did not get better with age either; that music is now old enough to enter "classics" radio stations, which means those stations now alternate between nostalgia and nausea for me. The only redeeming quality those songs seem to have is that they can get even worse, as judged by recent covers/remakes of earlier failures (really, how barren must your musical taste be choose to cover Liquido by Narcotic?)
That's not to say that nothing good came from that period; it's just that good music from that time was not successful. I had great fun in the 2000s and 2010s discovering the bands and artists that should have been big in the 90s.
I have no problems with the movies nor the cartoons of my youth though, those are still the best cinema ever produced.
WalterBright•10h ago
Get the old used VHS tapes of it from Ebay, not the DVD. The re-releases of it replaced the music and destroyed it.
The Jetsons is fun to watch, as it predicted a lot of the gadgets we actually have today.
nunez•4h ago
scarface_74•14h ago
One thing I admittedly do is stay clean shaven and bald so the gray hair and receding hairline don’t show. But I’ve had the latter since I was in my mid 20s.
I had a (White) former manager tell me years ago that no one can tell how old Black guys are that are clean shaven. I never realized that.
The old joke is that it’s the lotion…
https://youtu.be/RiH-_ZUILk0?si=3I68rm8P35sIy3ke
flatline•13h ago
Viktor Frankl also claimed that staying clean-shaven made you look younger, and attributed it as one factor in his survival of the concentration camps. He used a piece of broken glass to shave.
poulsbohemian•11h ago
scarface_74•9h ago
But when I don’t keep my hair bald. I look more like George Jefferson than George Clooney.
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120725/ent/ent2.html
nunez•4h ago
I didn't like my hair. It didn't grow very long and, because I'm a side sleeper, I would wake up with super compacted hair that was itchy. I also didn't like paying to wait 30 minutes to make small talk with barbers about shit I didn't care about. Mach 3 all the way.
I _have_ to have a lotion routine. Otherwise my skin will turn dry and gray and feel rough and generally horrible.
At the moment, I use Palmer's shea butter body oil while I'm still wet from the shower, then I top it off with Palmer's coconut butter formula. I used to make my own shea butter lotion, but it was a fair amount of work and takes a while to dissolve into my skin.
englishspot•13h ago
for the longest time, I've resisted the zoomers' attempt to bring back 90s/early 00s fashion with oversized shirts and baggy pants, hopelessly clinging to my millennial sensibilities (I like my fitted shirts and skinny jeans, dammit). then one day I just said screw it and bought new oversized shirt and it kinda grew on me.
I'm not going full zuckerberg with the gold chain and whatnot, though.
spacemadness•11h ago
const_cast•2h ago
I'm very pleased that flares and high(er)-rise pants are coming back, kinda. With worse materials, unfortunately. Now if only we can have colors that aren't some variation of gray or blue...
scarface_74•11h ago
I have been into hip hop and rap since the mid 80s. I was a fitness instructor until 2012 right before I turned 40 and had to keep up with modern music of all types depending on the audience.
I’m not one of those that think all new music sucks since I’ve seen the evolution over three decades, I do still recognize the new generation that actually has talent - can flow with the music, have clever turns of phrases, not overproduced, etc. My 22 year old (step)son shares his music playlist with me and pick out songs out of his list and add to mine just so I can relate to him.
nunez•4h ago
I try to stay current with what's charging, even though I don't like mainstream media much. So much music these days trends on social media, which I no longer participate in, but Apple Music does a good job of tracking what's hot.
jtwoodhouse•15h ago
klank•14h ago
criddell•15h ago
Getting junk mail from the AARP made me feel old. Especially when I opened it, saw the free trunk organizer and discounts and thought that's a pretty good deal.
It's weird for me to think that I was born 25 years after WWII and today, 25 years ago was 2000. A year ain't what it used to be.
WalterBright•15h ago
layer8•14h ago
WalterBright•13h ago
korse•13h ago
dowager_dan99•13h ago
drewcoo•14h ago
amanaplanacanal•10h ago
jsqu99•13h ago
dowager_dan99•13h ago
criddell•10h ago
betterThanTexas•13h ago
Not only have I been getting AARP mail since I was 25, but you can actually join at any age. It's worth considering even for the relatively youthful.
cornhole•15h ago
jjtheblunt•15h ago
layer8•14h ago
shadowgovt•14h ago
We've seen too many generations asking that question for me to conclude that there is anything wrong with them. There's just a lot of ways to be human, and they're exploring a different channel than my generation did.
MrDarcy•14h ago
Specifically, the research that went into the book The Anxious Generation.
shadowgovt•14h ago
"O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own."
I'm sure there are different stressors and challenges on young people that I didn't experience at their age, but "what's wrong with" is immediately the wrong framing. It flies in the face of a history of human adaptation to their environment. The notion that the newest batch of challenges is different, fundamentally, from previous ones is the kind of thinking that leads people to hold up THESE ARE THE END TIMES signs in the streets generation after generation for thousands of years.
(Having a couple teenagers in my life: the challenges they experience are special and different from what I experienced, but mine were different from my parents and their parents lived through one or two world wars).
7thaccount•13h ago
When I was a kid I had Saturday morning cartoons, but was bored a lot. Video games existed, but you got bored of those fast and rarely got new ones. We went outside a lot. Kids these days (as well as adults) have access to 24/7 dopamine hits. That doesn't mean we're in the end times, but I don't think humans were meant to live in our own curated digital bubbles. People are now less used to socializing in person and it seems to be causing exacerbated feelings of loneliness and depression.
Of course my father complained whenever I wasn't hard at work, but the difference seems to be the magnitude of the modern problem. At times I think humanity is rapidly evolving into something else and the physical bodies we have can't keep up. I can't imagine the next thousand years of progress.
shadowgovt•13h ago
What I'll be surprised by is if kids can survive the black death and the second World War and not a smartphone in their pocket.
hiatus•13h ago
7thaccount•13h ago
korse•13h ago
It is entirely possible that without equivalent biological change, the attack upon the human spirit by various forms of media will become critical and at some point the kids really will not be alright.
MrDarcy•11h ago
shadowgovt•10h ago
MrDarcy•4h ago
dowager_dan99•13h ago
The delta isn't so different, but there are lots of things where I feel an inflection from "improving" to "flat or declining" and that is extremely noticeable. To me that's what aging is, and it happens FAST.
potato3732842•9h ago
That pretty much describes my 30th birthday. It's the "end of an era" aspect of it that makes it hit harder than any one before or since.