A few years ago, I started a sentence in my class with “When I was born”. A student instantly chimed in and said “What in the 19’s?” And I thought in my head, of course you idiot, everybody is born in the 19’s. It still haunts me.
The scary part is that this comic is 15 years old.
Updated hover text: “I’m teaching every 22-year-old relative to say this, and every 28-year-old to do the same thing with Toy Story. Also, Pokemon hit the US two and a half decades ago and kids born after Aladdin came out will turn 32 next year.”
I mean, tbf that was admittedly last millennium.
Over a quarter century ago!
God I feel old.
TBF, the veracity of the information is relatively field dependent. Structural engineering? Yeah, probably still as relevant as the day it was published… Quantum computing or astrobiology theory? Far more likely to be superseded or debunked.
I want to see AI papers compared to today, we basically tore the guts out of everything, I don’t even think most of Minsky is applicable anymore (perceptrons particularly have been replaced with vector meshes from word2vec).
Statistical modeling and machine learning theory goes back several decades. I’m not sure LLM’s even use new algorithms. They may just apply various techniques that improve the performance and accuracy of pre-existing algorithms.
You dont have google in the future?
I have a backpack that’s over a quarter of a century old. Which I got new, and have been using actively for that time. Great fucking backpack.
Omg. You just made me realize MY backpack is a quarter of a century old. Just out of curiosity, is it a jansport? I wonder if they still “make 'em like they used to” or if they’ve fallen prey to enshittification like everything else…
It’s a Hedgren, a Belgian brand, but my mom got it for me in the '90s here in Finland. She said she had asked for something which wouldn’t need replacing the following year.
Cost like 500 marks then, which would be roughly 140€ in 2024, accounting for inflation.
So all in all pretty good value. Like a fiver per year. Well, discounting some small repairs I had done on it in the recent years, as there was finally a bit of wear, so I got ahead of it and patched it. I also changed the straps some years ago, when the backpack was like 25. (Now it’s ~30, I don’t recall the exact year I got it.)
I checked out Hedgren store, but no idea if their products are quality anymore either, what with the late stage capitalism and all.
edit 90’s -> '90s
in the ’90s* here in Finland
I can see this is important to you from your username. I’ll edit the comment.
😍
I have a Jansport that’s about that old from the college days. It’s held up pretty well I must say. No idea about newer ones.
When I was in college, I would have thought it crazy to be using a backpack older than I was.
Not yet, it won’t be over a quarter century ago for 2 more years.
Hold up,
2024-1994=30 years
Since a century is 100 years, 1/4 would be 100/4=25 years
How did you get 32 years equals a quarter century?
Oh, I was going by when the last millennium ended, not when the reference was from. That makes sense.
My dad told me recently, when he started practicing medicine the old people with heart failures he was treating were often born in the late 1800s, but now those are all dead, and the people he’s treating are more likely to have a birth years that are around 1940-1950. Which is also starting to become uncomfortably close to his own, 1960.
A given person’s definition of “old” is usually about 15 years older than they are. My boss is 65 and calls 70 year olds “young”.
When I started using dating apps I found 24 year olds too old. I still have that impression memorized but it’s wild.
Welp, I don’t know when from the memory is, but I do vividly remember thinking about how damn old those 14/15 year old 9th graders are. Could be 1st grade.
Basically as if the life ended at 20, and they were soon to retire.
Oh yeah. There were these 2 older neighbours 2 grades above me in primary school who once protected me from bullying in school. They were practically adults in my head, but actually I was 6-7 and they were 8-9.
I remember fearing high school kids. I wasn’t even sure how old they were, just that high school was a jungle and any kid who went to high school was dangerous.
Somehow it really ended…
Used to be a rule of thumb that the lower limit for dating was half your age + 7. Dunno if that’s still a thing.
Cause as you get older, you realize that a lot of the hype about people being “old” is manufactured. I’m closing in on 30 and I’m squarely in a zone I thought was “old” when I was 18. But I feel like I still have my whole life ahead of me. And despite a lot of fear mongering, I still feel healthy and ready for anything.
And although I definitely feel like 45 is pretty old, I know that when my parents were that age they were scoffing and telling me “45 is not that old”. I’m sure when I’m 60 I’ll be looking at retirement and think about how it’s actually not too bad to be 60 and it’s the 80 year olds that are really old.
around 30 is the first time I felt like an adult. a person of my own. gave me great confidence to realize hey, I’m 30, I don’t have to deal with bullshit anymore. it’s a huge weight off my shoulders.
i mean my parents are 50 at this point and they don’t feel that old, they’re starting to get grey hairs but other than that? meh
we live in an era where people are still working and feeling fairly energetic at 70, it’s kind of insane to think about
I think 60 is the point when you realize you are actually starting to get old. You begin to realize that you really can’t do the things you used to do. And the things you still do - you do slower and for not as long. Your hair is grey or starts falling out quite noticeably. Your body actually hurts just getting up in the morning. You go to bed earlier. Maybe you fall down because your balance wasn’t as good anymore. Possibly a friend or peer dies from a heat attack. A Grandchild or two happens. AARP, (American Association of Retired People), starts sending you letters.
You are now truly and officially old.
Being 30 myself all I can say is: you poor fool
With one parent who turned 80 this year and the second in their late 70s, I’ve realized there’s a difference between “elderly” and “old.” A lot of people equate the two. I think “old” always started in one’s 70s to me, even as a kid. “Elderly,” however, is not based on a number but on a physical state of being.
My dad is elderly. He’s frail and struggling to move around much. It’s hard to watch and it’s been going on and worsening for a few years now. My mom, despite being only 3 years younger, is not at all elderly. She has more energy and vivacity than many people over 20 years her junior (hell I’m in my 30s and she can do loops around me, but I got the chronic illness genes that she didn’t have). Technically, she’s old. But no one who knows her would think of her as “elderly.”
i honestly feel like a lot of people just have this idea of “old = elderly” so ingrained in their minds that when they reach 50 they simply give up, they’re supposed to be getting elderly so they can’t try to stay active any longer.
Yeah sure, everybody has different definitions and all but calling 70 year olds as young is straight up lunatic.
I would of freaked him out. I had a heart attack when I was 36.
You always have folks who just wanna show off 😊
Pro Tip for GenXer’s: There is a point in life when you need to pick a Doctor that you like enough to die on. That will be the doctor that will take you through the last years of your life. And treat all those little miserable ailments like high blood pressure or urinary issues. Long term medical care, while it’s often something that might not kill you outright, It will demand a lot of monitoring and medication to treat.
I’m Gen-X, 51, and this doesn’t sting too much…so like whatever. I do feel for Millenials and the elder Gen-Z though.
Imagine being Gen-Z out to buy some beer, you pull out your ID, the cashier barely glances at it and runs your credit card. You smugly say, “I guess you don’t really check ID since you didn’t really look at the date.” The cashier responds, “I did. I saw the nineteen.” Ooooff.
it’s an odd feeling to be gatekept from beer by someone who’s younger than the stretch marks & grey hairs on my body and; yet; it makes me feel good to be carded nonetheless somehow.
it’s an odd feeling to be gatekept from beer by someone who’s younger than the stretch marks & grey hairs on my body…
*slow clap*
Amazing. One of the best sentences I have read all year.I managed to go all of 22-28 never once being carded for anything.
When I hit 30 I started getting carded for things I’d never been carded for before, even the milk bar I’d bought smokes at for 10 years, same guy and his son running it, suddenly started carding me.
That’s how I learned the ID that I’d been carrying around for 10-11 years since getting my photo ID in highschool was functionally useless, because hardly anywhere would accept it as legal ID despite it being legal ID.
I had to keep the website for the government list of ID boolmarkef so I could show doubtful cashiers that my ID was indeed federally accepted, legal and valid ID.
I went to try and get a different type of ID last year which is how it found out that despite being born in my country to a citizen of my country, and having my birth recorded and receiving my birth certificate. Somehow I’m not actually a citizen of my own country and I can’t get a passport…so I’m trying to navigate that system but that’s extra fun and confusing because I have neurodevelopmental issues and no one to help me understand what I need to to do.
I just want to be able to buy alcohol as a person in their 30s, without having to jump through impossible hoops to prove that I’m not not 17.
I’ve got smile lines and the beginnings of crows feet, I am weathered! Why am it getting carded now
are you me? lol
i’m likewise seeking a passport and the bureaucratic maze inspires oddly conflicting emotions.
I’ve got smile lines and the beginnings of crows feet, I am weathered! Why am it getting carded now
i’ve learned recently that i wear tank tops revealing enough that the perpetual double nip slip got me kicked out of a grocery store; so i know that it’s impossible to not see my iron grey hirsute upper body in addition to the copious weight loss induced and age defining face wrinkles that make me unrecognizable on the identification that they use to card me with.
One day, there will only be a handful of people from the 19 hundreds left
The oldest person who ever lived so far made it to 122, so by 2123 they’ll almost certainly all be gone.
That’s a verifiable old age people have lived to. Seeing how medicine and our understanding is constantly evolving, you don’t think it even possible that someone would live even as long to 123?
This is no science, if even pop-sci, but: the first person to live as long as they want may have already been born is an idea that’s been floated around. The remarkable thing is that while people have believed in living forever, well, forever, this is the first time in history that it’s actually possible. Not perhaps even probably, but definitely possible that medicine will develop so far.
That article is bunk clickbait.
Here is an article from a better source saying the opposite.
It’s pop-science, which I explicitly mentioned.
I’ve read the study your article is based on. It doesn’t really state it in the way your article does in the title.
We found that, since 1990, improvements overall in life expectancy have decelerated. Our analysis also revealed that resistance to improvements in life expectancy increased while lifespan inequality declined and mortality compression occurred. Our analysis suggests that survival to age 100 years is unlikely to exceed 15% for females and 5% for males, altogether suggesting that, unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension is implausible in this century
Here you’ll have to note that societal issues like income inequality have increased massively. Expected lifespan is still continuing to grow, despite the growth having slowed some. Medical technology and the growth of technology and novel medical technologies keep growing at an ever growing rate, really. Well, the speed of growth of technology in general is exponential. Perhaps it’s not in the area of medicine, because there might be diminishing returns.
My point is that I’m definitely not arguing that someone from the 1900’s will be alive in 2123, I’m just saying that for the first time in history, entertaining the idea that it might be possible for a person who has already been born to live practically as long as they want isn’t totally ridiculous. That’s all.
It’s most definitely an argument that actual scientists on the subject will debate over, and have differing opinions. Remember that like in the 70’s, a few people in the lead in computer engineering made comments like “there’s never going to be a time in history where people would want personal computers. where would you put it anyway, you’d have to have a whole room” or the like.
The increase in average lifespan in the modern era has come almost entirely from a reduction of people dying during child birth and childhood. The life expectancy for people who’ve already reached adulthood (and for women, who’ve stopped having children) hasn’t really changed much since prehistory. Maybe we are “on the cusp” of that changing, but it hasn’t actually done so yet.
Maybe we are “on the cusp”
No, yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying for a few comments now. That maybe it is so. I’m not saying it is so. I’m saying it’s a possibility.
Like I don’t believe I can read minds, but if I asked you to think of a number between one and ten and just guessed, I’d still have ~10% hitrate if we did it long enough. Perhaps even more.
Had you been a doctor in the 1920’s and talked about people some day perhaps living forever, you’d have been ridiculed in any decent science circles. Now it’s a novel thought that might even become reality. Might
The life expectancy for people who’ve already reached adulthood (and for women, who’ve stopped having children) hasn’t really changed much since prehistory.
You’re referring to the “two score ten” and yeah, if you reached adulthood, you’d probably make it well into your fifties, with high probability that you’d actually manage to around 70.
My dad made it to 70. Insanely bad living habits. Like genuinely can’t remember when he ever did a single thing like taking a walk or eating moderately or not drinking and smoking while doing that all. His mom (my grandmother) is now 93. She too has lived an exceedingly sedentary life and is obese.
If someone actually lives healthily, cares for themselves and has access to healthcare, 70 is extremely low for a life-expectancy. More like 100 for people who are now 30-40, and that’s just a guess because I used to drive a taxi and would see a lot of very healthy 90-year olds. Like not even health-nut healthy, just “do my own chores and don’t smoke and drink only rarely”.
I think the biggest problem is solving things like dementia more than keeping people physically alive.
I imagine a more realistic compromise here would be to assume that when my gen is at the very end of it’s life, it’s gonna be closer to 130-150 years. Am I being overly optimistic? Probably. Can we know before we get there? Not really. Is there any point in arguing what will happen? No, I don’t think so. Were I doing that? I was not. Was I pointing out that it’s not totally insane to suggest that one perhaps remote possibility is that we might actually develop crazy medicine. However we’d also need radical social reform to get that to everyone prolly but still.
Please forgive me if I have misunderstood you.
I am not sure what relevance ‘pop-science’ has unless pop science means non science.
I get that you are saying ‘maybe, possibly, not completely ridiculous to think’, etc., however until it has been demonstrated to be a possibility, the idea that a human might live until 150 is just about as preposterous as the articles’ postulation of the potential for physical immortality.
Something which is evidenced to be not possible does not suddenly become ‘possible’ just because one can imagine it.
“Popularised” “popular”.
Sort of like how tabloids aren’t news.
It’s just really low quality sciences journalism, so it often distorts facts and whatnot, but there usually is some article making some point.
Just as there is with your article. They’re essentially reporting on what they’re opinion of the implications of rhe study is.
the idea that a human might live until 150 is just about as preposterous as the articles’ postulation of the potential for physical immortality.
No it isn’t. Show a single study saying that.
You can’t, because scientists don’t make sweeping conclusions about futures that haven’t happened.
Something which is evidenced to be not possible
Again, you’re pulling this out of your arse, because you feel like emphasising a thing online. Not good, man.
Do you know how proving negatives even works?
What your originally said is basically a claim that human medicine, society and thus life expectancy will have literally zero advancement in a century, and only supporting it with an article about a study which says that the rate of increase for life expectancy is slowing down. That still means there is an increase in life expectancy. That means that most probably, in 2125, someone from the 1900s will be alive.
You know, because you took the longest life of today and then added 100 years.
It would be preposterous to think there will be no increase or advancement for a hundreds years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_life_span
It has been proposed that no fixed theoretical limit to human longevity is apparent today. Studies in the biodemography of human longevity indicate a late-life mortality deceleration law: that death rates level off at advanced ages to a late-life mortality plateau. That is, there is no fixed upper limit to human longevity, or fixed maximal human lifespan.
Wikipedia has really fucked it up on this one — given his certain you are that science is certain that there is a fixed human maximum life span… unless… unless… I was correct in assuming that you were talking out of your arse? Yes. That would explain it.
That’s a long and boring response.
The evidence that no one can live past 123 is that no one has ever lived past 123. We have a sample size of billions on that statistic.
Some low quality science journal says that ‘maybe we could live forever, or like, 150 or something’ and I say ‘cool story bro’.
I can imagine that it might be true, but that does not make it possible.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
People like you are why Iemmy is almost as bad as Reddit… talking in circles, saying nothing.
I’m going to start saying that when asked about my birth year. “The late 1900s”
God damn it… Just reading this feels like a gut punch!
“Before the dawn of the millennium, when the Earth was young.”
In the before before times…
Before the before times (given that the before times are 2019 and earlier
Ah that’s what you wrote
Better than the mid 1900’s.
Mid 80s for me, fuck, im old
I come from a time when our telephones were teathered to the wall and had no screens or apps at all. Later on, there were machines that would answer the phone and let someone record a message if no one was home.
If you wanted to watch something that wasn’t a movie or recording, you had to pick one of the options someone else had picked, and if you missed the time, you just missed it until someone decided it was time to play it again (at a different specific time you could miss).
And if you did record something, you’d have to seek through the recording to find the start of it.
Movie rentals involved going to a physical store and grabbing physical media with the content on it. If too many people wanted to rent it at a time, there just wouldn’t be enough and the later ones would have to pick something else to watch. Just going to one of these rental places was a borderline magical experience full of wonder and possibility. Oh and it was considered very rude if you rented a movie but didn’t seek it back to the beginning for the next person (which you’d have to physically return to the place with the physical media or you’d get charged late fees).
And even though everyone’s name, address, and phone number were published in regional “phone books”, the closest thing to phone scams you’d (normally) see were prank phone calls, which were done for laughs rather than profit (albeit sometimes maliciously).
Christians actually cared about being good people rather than thinking they can somehow be victims of an apocalypse they are trying to make happen and teleport to heaven because they’ve said the required amount of hail Marys and took advantage of the “just confess the horrible shit before it die and you’re forgiven” loophole (and probably not thinking about what happens if the rapture ends up happening too quickly for them to confess their latest batch of sins). Actually, the crazy ones might have been around then, too, they just weren’t so fucking loud back then.
That second millennium was something else, I tell you what. You third millennium kids won’t ever understand.
This is just intentionally phrased poorly to create a rise out of people. It’s like referring to water as “dihydrogen monoxide”.
I put this on an unlabeled squirt bottle once at work. It was wrong to do because technically it’s an OSHA violation for being improperly labeled because it was just in sharpie and not a standard label. But it was night shift I was bored and the bottle was already unlabeled so it was already out of compliance. Why not write on it?
A week or so later I heard people talking about this squirt bottle that said dihydrogen monoxide. Two safety guys were there so I didn’t take credit for my shenanigans based on the reception not being great.
I said I think it’s just water, but the chemical name. Ya know? Nope, they didn’t get it. The kind of doubled down and started talking about things in that link because they “researched the name” and it was actually harmful.
It was a strange experience.
How so? I would certainly call something from 1894 to be from the "late 1800s’ or late 19th century. I mean, we’re a quarter of the way through this century, at some point it turns into history.
Because people don’t use that terminology when referring to a time period within a majority of living people’s lifetime.
Sure they do. I’m sure the century cutoff helps too.
If someone one would refer to the 1920s as “the early 1900s” cause it’s over 100 years ago it follows logically to call other parts of the 1900s the mid and late period.
Just because people can doesn’t mean people do. We have terminology for the time periods through the 1900s that have been in use for so long that people just don’t use that type of terminology. Particularly because it paints it in a misleading light, as if it were ancient history. People typically just refer to those periods as “the 80s” or “the 90s”.
Referring to those time periods with terminology we use for ancient history when we have far more frequently used terminology is a deliberate choice to make the time periods feel like ancient history. (Barring language barriers, of course)
It feels like you’re just trying to be contrarian. If you honestly believe it’s commonly used to refer to something so recent, then please provide evidence of people using that to refer to the 90s often. Otherwise you’re just relying on “I can imagine it, so it must be true”.
This may be a “loanword” from the student’s native language. In Swedish, they use “1900-talet” (1900s) instead of “twentieth century”
late 1800s*
Thank’s. Its good to know how to use proper apostrophe’s.
Your whale come
When most of your life occurred in the 20th century, it looks a lot different.
Because you still had to watch things from poor quality VHS tapes on CRT monitors. Of course it looked different.
The deadliest chemical
To use a quote from the later part of the 1900s:
Time keeps on slippin’ into the future.
To use another from the very late 1900s
The years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’
Definitely one of the songs of the very late 1900s.
The years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’
and they don’t stop comin’
and they don’t stop comin’
Grandpa, your record is skipping again
I need to fry up an eagle 🦅
I mean, sure, fair, it IS late 1900’s, but…
late 1900s*
Reading that just broke my hip.
I regularly say “from the 20th century” when I want to emphasize the age, the irrelevance, of my lack of knowledge of something.
I don’t know crap about cars, so sometimes, someone would ask me about an old one or something and I’d say “not sure, mid-20th century I think”.
It’s a funny way to talk about it and it almost masks the fact I just tried to get away with a 25-year window.
Although in a more rude manner I’ll also say I don’t care about some 20th century movie or something.
You should check out which movies came out in 1999.
Oh yeah, definitely very old stuff, huh.
It seems awkward to me to refer to the previous century that way until you’re at least halfway through the next century. Even then, that’s pushing it. Basically I think that way of referring to an era implies you’re over, or at least fairly close to, 100 years away from it.
Students are often awkward
Not to mention they could be on the spectrum. I could see a buddy of mine phrasing this question in this exact manner
Early 2000’s doesn’t sound odd at all though.
Because that’s referring the 2000’s decade. In terms of centuries, I would say we are still in the early 2000’s and that does feel odd to say.
I rather meant how it sounds. It’s in the “hundreds”.
Two thousands.
Twenty hundreds.“Early twenty hundreds” does kind of make it sound like we live in 2224 instead while “early two thousands” sounds like 2002.
I could have written it better.Well you also wouldn’t say ten hundreds for the 1000’s. I think it’s just a quirk of the being the first century in a millennia.
Early second millennium CE
the 2000s* decade
early 2000s*
Early 2000s*
I mean if your life started in 2005 and you didnt live through any of the 20th century, calling it the late 1900s seems totally reasonablr. You werent there when people were living through the “90s”, to you its just another bygone era that people speak about in waya you’ll never be able to relate to.
From the last millennium
I feel old and I wasn’t even born on the 1900s
1800’s?
Early 2000s
I fEeL oLd AnD wAs OnLy BoRn In ThE eArLy 2000’s
ThE eArLy 2000s*
Looks at time. Oh wow, that was only 24 years ago HaHa!
Ah, just at the turn of the century.
1800s*?
No. I am purposely implying ownership.
Get off my lawn, young’n.
WELL YOU’RE NOT
It does depend what we’re talking about. The geology of Himalaya or computer technology? One of these things didn’t change much in the last forty years.
Thete are som good stuff from before 1990s comcerning computers.
No CS undergrad really needs to learn anything post 1999.
Nor should they, it’s all dark magic. These rocks don’t want to compute, what we do to them to force it isn’t right.
CS students don’t learn about computing history?
