What’s sad about this preserved bit of 1996 from the WSJ is that it’s interface is much more usable, the design much better, and it is of course much faster than nearly anything built now. It doesn’t attempt to load enormous javascript frameworks, doesn’t have menus that fly out and disappear randomly, and just in general presents the data in a discoverable, readable format. (And there were much better designs than this around at the time.)

Yes, it looks a little strange, as at that time the standard screen size was 1024×768 with many people still having 800×600 screens. It is optimized for a small-resolution screen (in pixel terms) and for dial-up.

That makes it better, though, not worse. Having to load 10MB+ of a javascript framework only benefits the designers who have to code less to get features most people don’t notice or care about, not users.

I miss the old internet. The new, “improved” one is terrible in comparison — even if you don’t take all the data-stealing and info-peddling into account.

Sometimes — ok, all the time — I wonder what the fuck is wrong with Kevin Drum.

That said, this chart probably understates Newark’s income growth anyway. It includes only ordinary wage income, not income from dividends or interest or capital gains or Social Security or any other government transfers. Nor does it include noncash income like Medicaid or CHIP. If you add in all those things, the life of the average Newark resident hasn’t gotten 50 percent better since 1975, it’s gotten more like 100 percent better.

Why is it so very difficult for Boomers to understand that even if (and Drum’s data is extremely flawed, but we’ll leave that for now) your income on paper goes up by a good bit, that if the essentials of life also vastly increase in price, then the income “increase” is just spreadsheet fuckery?

Drum, check this out.

In 1940, the median home value in the U.S. was $2,938. By 2000, it had risen to $119,600 and today it’s just over $200,000. Even adjusted for inflation, the median home price in 1940 would only have been $30,600 in 2000 dollars.

Yes, the quality has improved somewhat and also the size has increased, but that all means less than nothing when you can’t afford anything that exists in the market.

What about college expenses, though? Not the below increases are after inflation is already accounted for.

Education costs have risen at an alarming rate as well. College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing 2017” report examines changes in tuition rates over time, showing how much more the class of 2018 is expected to pay than their parents did.

It’s a lot.

Students at public four-year institutions paid an average of $3,190 in tuition for the 1987-1988 school year, with prices adjusted to reflect 2017 dollars. Thirty years later, that average has risen to $9,970 for the 2017-2018 school year. That’s a 213 percent increase.

If you go back even further, it’s far more. Drum went to college nearly free in the 1970s, as did many people of his cohort.

What about health care? Oh, look, same story.

On a per capita basis, health spending has increased nearly 29-fold over the last four decades, from $355 per person in 1970 to $10,348 in 2016. In constant 2016 Dollars, the increase was almost 6-fold from $1,762 In 1970 to $10,348 in 2016.

What about child care costs? It’s more difficult to find time series data here, but this seems pretty typical.

After their mortgage — which is about 20 percent of their combined take-home pay — child care is the family’s biggest expense. In fact, the cost of their youngest child’s day care alone — $660 a month — is more than half the family’s monthly mortgage payment.

In other words, all the important parts of life have gotten vastly more expensive, while the non-necessities (bigger TVs) have also gotten vastly cheaper. And Drum wonders why people feel downtrodden and despair of the future.

Not so hard to comprehend when you look at anything relevant for a single second, instead of living in Drum’s fantasia.

Mobile and people’s obsession with using terrible devices has really screwed up the internet. It’s not the only thing that has exacerbated the decline, but it’s certainly a major factor.

It’s been shocking to me that people will choose “convenience” over nearly any other factor: ease of use, security, informational capacity, readability — none of those seem to matter.

I hate mobile and wish it would die.

Here’s the first ten on today’s playlist:

Yes, so true.

Everyone I’ve ever talked to who has been poor and is not anymore has the same story of the moment they realized they weren’t poor anymore: grocery shopping.

— Erynn Brook (@ErynnBrook) May 15, 2018

When I got out on my own, at first I still shopped like I was poor — like my family did when I was a kid. We literally used free bowls and plates that came out of dog food bags (some kind of promotion) when I was young — and they were better than what we had been using. We were that kind of poor, especially when I was 11 and younger.

Then I joined the army, made a good bit of money in the stock market, and one day in the grocery store realized: I don’t have to look at the prices any more. If I want the damn thing, I’m buying it.

That was indeed a huge moment. That was more life-changing than many other supposedly (from a societal perspective) larger changes in my life, that being able to slough off thinking like the poor person I was no longer.

A TECH MAN: Lol look at u dweebs reading Foucault. That's nonsense gibberish. Get a job losers. Learn 2 code

*five years later*

TECH MAN: *ripping hair out* it's…. it's almost like…. the technological and political and social are… somehow related

— sarah jeong 🐱 (@sarahjeong) May 1, 2018

Ha, yes. I once heard someone at work say, “I wish people didn’t bring their politics into tech. That’s not why I got into this field.” People in tech are often just shockingly clueless.

This has been going around.

What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I

— Cloe Feldman (@CloeCouture) May 15, 2018

I hear both at the same time. Not sure how anyone can hear anything else, but they obviously do. I suspect my perception is partially because I used to spend long, long hours (before the internet) decoding nearly incomprehensible song lyrics of obscure 90s bands.

The sounds of “Yanny” and “Laurel” are overlaid at different pitches, like many songs’ vocal tracks. I also have wide attention, so these sorts of things rarely have the intended effect.