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This photo was taken at noon in Pittsburgh in 1944, at the height of steel production. Men who worked in offices wore white shirts to work, and they would routinely take one or two extras in because the collar would be black by mid-day.

Some places here still use firewood ovens to heat, and in the winter streets smelled like campfires! Now a lot have gas heating instead

Hole in the ozone layer is almost gone

The cancer research trust research for drugs that will extend cancer patients lives. They collaborate with drug companies like Roche and Astrazeneca who want to make allot of money for a long time from their meds. The charity has hundreds of expensive staff to please. Let's hope "cures" are true.

On Balkan Airways, smoking was all along the left (or right?) of the cabin. Rather than 4 rows at the back. Also, no lockers, just a netted shelf.

What?? Equivalent of free soda now I guess.

From my experience, most who complain about their lives sucking or getting worse on social media are people who are online 24/7 and refuse to get their shit together, while they blame the world for their problems. Thankfully I have moved on from that, and my life changed for the better. XD

I can listen to a whole album on YouTube with the only interruption being, 'Are you still listening".

Isnt it fantastic

So happy for you both.

Accessibility options for nonverbal children, accommodations for children who need specific help, and resources from research to help the adults in children’s lives to understand them better. There is stuff that didn’t exist when I was in school. Some of it is life changing.

thank you Ralph Nader

A combination of better roads, safer cars and medical treatment. And some legislation. Introduction of random breath testing in NSW cut the road toll in half in its first year.

Unfortunately in the USA it’s going back up thanks to SUV’s

Partly car design, partly road design and partly tackling drink driving. Sadly drug driving is taking place more often, nearly every serious accident seems to involve cannabis, cocaine or ketamine in the driver's bloodstream

Where do you live? There were 39,000 traffic fatalities in the US in 2024. cdan.dot.gov/tsftables/Fa...

Typically things become less expensive per user as it scales up.

I disagree with this one. Gotta drive cross-country with a paper map. It's fun. 🗾

Air quality etc post smoking ban.

I’m sorry. A great resource that should be funded.

Horrifying. I don’t think that has happened in the US. Far more of a community resource.

Good on you for making the world better. Libraries are such a gift.

The reintroduction of beavers in the UK. They are better at flood mitigation than the people.

When I was a kid in the 90s, chicken pox was just a thing that pretty much every kid got at some point. My younger siblings got the chicken pox vaccine in the 2000s. I got shingles (when the virus reemerges: it sucks) in my twenties and I'm very glad my siblings won't have to worry about that!

When I was a kid we went to Knicks games at Madison Square Garden (late 60’s) and by the end there was a literal cloud of smoke hovering at the ceiling.

Flying in a plane was the worst

I still remember a debate that I had about smoking sections in restaurants: the other person absurdly insisted that they worked and that smoke didn’t simply drift everywhere. (This was when state and local governments were starting to ban smoking in lots of new places.)

And if you sat in a plane's non-smoking section you were 'protected' from the smoke by a curtain!

Also information is so much more easily and widely accessible to virtually anyone

TVs have got incredibly better value. A $300 aldi TV is the quality of a $10k TV from two decades ago

Esim and smartphone translation of foreign languages has made travel much more accessible.

Used to go out to clubs and pubs and come back absolutely stinking of cigarette smoke it was stuck in your pores

My mum uses similar ingredients, but pressure cooked, so it all had the consistency of mush. She's still alive and I try to avoid going for lunch when visiting my parents.

Cassettes might have lost some sound quality, but they were hella convenient.

Women in the sciences in the 80s, almost nonexistent. I know I quit.

It's still good for the environment for a different reason, to reduce light pollution! Especially outside or at the outskirts of a city

As a southerner, can I talk about how wonderful a light bulb with minimal waste heat is - especially in August.

😆

Ask me again after “it” happens.

Traffic still stinks, but the Texas Turnaround is the eighth commuting wonder.

This is a great answer. I cannot imagine going back to paper maps, printing or actually listening to someone explain how to get somewhere.

Brussels sprouts

I’m pretty sure being a D-bag isn’t a mental illness, that’s just how Mr. president is.

^

Zippers used to suck. They'd rust and separate, they'd fall apart at the slightest interference. Zippers now are self-healing, tolerant of huge stresses, and stronger than the seams that hold them in. Big advances in zipper technology.

The social changes since the ADA have been incredible

The "send away to school" is a terrible choice for families to have to make for their Deaf child. The flip side is also terrible - the Deaf child isolated from similar peers and adults who understand deafness. A no-win situation. I hope your sister is doing well and thriving today.

Good one.

Granted, GSA was fairly "uncool," and I know way more people who've come out since than people who were out then, but it's kind of wild to think about how those kids who were out were a little safer than just a few years previously. I remember my friend telling me about his thong in the library lol

Fifty years ago my car broke down. I had to walk two miles in subzero weather carrying my two-year-old to get help. And I was five months pregnant at the time. We ended up fine. But people died back then because nobody had a cell phone for emergencies.

Nothing that brings joy is small my friend.

I spent a couple of months in Pasadena in the summer of 1983, and I'd been there several days before I discovered there was a huge mountain range just a few miles outside of town. It was invisible most days.

That's amazing. I didn't know that

The Bay is on a STEEP decline now, after only a decade of DJT fascism. Ospreys are the indicator species; their chicks are starving b/c of lack of food. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Whale numbers have recovered as well williamdrumm.com/blog/ocean-w...

Right. Thought of the Bay first from the MD side of things, but PA has got to pick up the slack: www.cbf.org/the-history-...

The Delaware and the Hudson both form ice in the winter, again!

The Cuyahoga river never catches fire anymore.

I have a feeling that may come back back 🙁

so all that fearmongering that i grew up with about how we're "past the point of return" and the planet would look like uranus before the end of my lifespan was total bullshit?

It's unfortunate this victory doesn't get more exposure. People respond to wins, but there's enough issues that those sounding the alarm moved to the next fight immediately. We need to say " Look! It worked! We can save the planet working together. Let's keep going!"

*give up

the four things humanity has managed to functionally eradicate through international co-operation: - the ozone hole - the organ trade - smallpox - acid rain this gives me a bit of hope

PFAS still suck. I'm swimming in them (from a completely different source than refrigerants). I did hear once about someone working on a replacement that was neither GHG nor PFAS, but dunno the status of that today.

I was around in the seventies, and there's very little that hasn't gotten better. World starvation, road safety, cancer survival, aids survival, food safety, crime, a whole lot of dictatorships gone democracies...

I got out of Japan. The most racist and sexist culture I've ever lived in.

Since 2008, heightened oxygen-18 levels due to above-ground nuclear explosions were far enough in the past that the radioactivity of newly produced steel is low enough to be suitable for all but the most sensitive testing equipment.

batteries

From my memory, the average person couldn't figure out how to set the time on their VCR, let alone set up a recording. The VCR was primarily used for playing movies from rental store.

I remember pre-VCRs. If you missed Happy Days, bad luck! Hope you're not on vacation when they rerun it in the summer!

And related, access to fruit. I might not know what a jackfruit is but I can buy one if I want.

Thanks!

What an awful tragedy. How guilty the moms must have felt and it wasn’t their fault!

Maggie T too!

The Nobel Prize Committee would like a mulligan for the 1973 Peace Prize. Oof.

Philips TV Hondenhok-Doghouse©Beeld en Geluid

Cars run better & last longer, even the American made ones.

Generally, public safety

Now we just need them more repairable and we're sorted

I was just talking to hubs that no one says "need to get the car tuned up" anymore. I can still hear my dad saying that.

Weed. Bigly.