Young people have no idea what it used to smell like. For a decade everything reeked of smoke and hairspray.
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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Everywhere you went felt like a bowling alley.
Everything you touched had a thin sticky layer of cigarette smoke gunk on it. Hell I remember doctors casually smoking in examination rooms.
You could taste it in the air
Galadriel: Feel it in the water
I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes.
This is so real. Like everyone had a broom on their heads. It was full on capybara hair.
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now that you mention it, cheese burgers taste different than they used to because of this most likely.
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Kids these days don't even know about the hole in the ozone later.
It's kinda our last big environmental win.
There's been some conservation wins that I know of. Okaloosa Darter fish came off of endangered status, and eventually off of threatened The Red Cockaded Woodpecker was elevated from endangered to threatened a few years ago.
Controlled burns in the US long leaf pine forests have also lead to a return of the quail population.
Just trying to sprinkle a little good news out there.
I can add to that: the cormorant population in my country, Denmark, used to be endangered and now they are fucking everywhere. We also used to almost have the stork go extinct. For many years we had like 6 breeding pairs left. Now we have 26!
And we brought back beavers. Our otter population is growing too and we have wolves now, which sadly, is a controversial subject. A lot of lobbyist in the farming community (farmers are basically the closest we get to the marfia here) are trying to convince the population that wolves don't belong in Denmark and should be eradicated. People fall for it because they are scared for their kids. Meanwhile I'm over here like: 🫠 you guys are aware that the only reason they've started coming closer to cities is because some of you retarded fucks are feeding them and also, farmers are killing our nature so there's less food for wildlife in the countryside. That's why wolves are moving closer to cities.
I still have great hopes for our wolf population. Our newly elected government is planning on cracking down hard on farming after 40 years of these assholes fuckign around and destroying my country with their poisons and pigshit and penicillin abuses etc etc. Finally, someone is gonna hold these psychos accountable. I am very excited for our wildlife because we still have time to save it. But if we don't do something now, I fear that within the next 10 to 20 years, our natural ecosystems will be erased. It is insane to have grown up in a time where we used to have a much healthier nature and gradually I have seen species disappear completely. Species that used to be everywhere.
But there are still many passionate people who are fighting to preserve and save nature and they are having way more wins in recent years than they have had for decades. So yay!
American Bison, too. The repopulation of American bison (often mistakenly called buffalo) is one of the most successful repopulation efforts in history. The reason you’re able to order buffalo (again, not actually buffalo) burgers at your local hipster burger joint is because American bison is no longer endangered. The population has come from less than 1000 total bison (all privately owned by a handful of conservationists) to over 400k today.
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iirc ~1/4 of the worlds energy production is renewable. More than 90% of all new electricity capacity worldwide came from renewable sources in 2024. Doomers want you to believe it can't happen again while we are in the very decade that is likely to change the world. Public policy doesn't even matter at this point, renewable energy is cheaper, so nearly all new investments are in renewables.
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The thing is it kinda isn't. The ozone layer still needs about 20 years to get back to 1960 levels and the number of problematic states for this increasing again
Yeah, last. Not latest, last.
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I just told my kid about how we fixed acid rain through regulation just this morning
Well it's understandable, the concept of being able to actually cooperate and do something about the environment on a world scale instead of just blindly pretending it's not a thing until it kills us all is a bit hard to believe for younger generations for obvious reasons.
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Trump wants to bring it back.
We managed to dial things back a bit, so that became a smaller problem.
We used to see regular news reports of actual rivers on fire. Things are still way too bad, but we forcefully throttled some things as we saw how quickly the damage was compounding.
Women’s hair doesn’t defy gravity without lots of help.
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I remember the beehive hairdos. True monuments to structural engineering that would make any architect spiral into a pit of inadequacy.
I just think they're neat.
How old are you? Cause this is Brigitte Bardot in her thirties at most. We're talking about 1960's.
For a good while now I just felt old. But not today. Today I feel fucking old.
Two weeks ago I had an MRI to see if I need knee surgery. Tomorrow I get to talk to Ortho about my impending knee surgery-- A lateral tear of the meniscus in the cleft with some degeneration of the joint. I'm sick of walking with a cane and wearing a knee brace.
Saturday I drove 360 some miles to get an MRI to see if I have prostate cancer. No results yet, but I have my suspicions based on my PSAs. The question is: Is it the slow cancer or the fast cancer?
Thursday I need to drive another 100 miles to talk to another doctor about what is now a very minor issue.
So yeah, I'm mother fucking old today.......
***Oh, and yes I remember Bardot vividly from my youth. And a host of others you may or not remember. From Marilyn Monroe to Jane Russel to Maureen O'Hara.
Nowadays when women want those hairstyles they just wear wigs. So much easier.
I have family members who work in costume design for TV and film. So many people wear wigs. Men, women, animals.
Animals wear wigs?
I do remember people complaining that the new hairspray didn't have any hold.
I also remember punks resorting to egg whites and Elmer's, but I can't say that I know that's related.
I also remember punks resorting to egg whites and Elmer’s
Punks actually just did that anyway, even back when the good hairspray was still plentiful. Everyone just had their own "best" method that they swore by: egg whites, school glue, Knox gelatin, I even knew a couple of gutter punks who put their mohawks up with spray paint. I used to use an extra thick hair gel that you could only find in places where they sold hair care products for black people. I think most people probably preferred the hairdryer and AquaNet method though. It was cheap, relatively easy, and it worked.
My secret was simple: hairblower with the cheapest maximum hold spray.
I would start at the base of my scalp and spray some hairspray and then with a comb, raise a spot of hair at a time while blowing hot hair on that spot.
In less than 5 mins, my mohawk was ready and strong.
When I wanted to go the extra mile, I would then cover the mohawk in hair gel and blow dry it just like I did with hairspray. My mohawk would stay straight for a few days and it was quite easy to wash. Good times
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Work amount.
This. I'm a hairdresser and people just do not have the time it takes to create or sit for these elaborate hairstyles any longer. Also, hygiene habits have changed. Most people shower, not bathe, and women would keep these hairstyles for one to two weeks before washing them out and redoing. Most women won't go one day without washing their hair now.
I dont even really remember women actually wearing their hair like this, and I’m old as fuck.
yeah these look like 1+ hour styles that most people are only going to bother with for special occasions, unless they're an actor with a staff stylist and/or filthy rich
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