On his 1938 Austin Cambridge which can barely hit 50mph
"It's great to drive, there's always a clear road ahead but behind a sea of traffic."
I was expecting to hate the kid, but he has me in stitches.
I drive like this all the time, keeping out of the "fast" lane on the highway with the cruise set at 3mph under the limit. Enya CD playing and life's good.
I've been doing some experiments on a bridge on ramp near me. Leaving the bridge, going up hill, the speed limit is 40mph. Approaching the bridge, going downhill, the speed limit is 25mph. There are two lanes, but the bridge only has three total lanes so at different points during the day the right lane of the approach closes and you merge left before using the right most lane of the bridge.
Traffic, of course, approaches the bridge at 40+mph. Semi-regularly there's a police officer pulling people over and ticketing them.
I've begun entering the right lane, whenever possible, and setting my cruise control to a hard limit of 25mph. (Setting a soft limit of 25mph does nothing, as you coast up to 40 down that hill.)
When two lanes are open on the bridge, about 80% of the time when I reach the bottom of the hill at 25mph... I immediately have to slow, and sometimes stop, as the traffic on the bridge is slower. If there was a good bit of traffic with me, approximately 6 cars will have passed me on the hill, and be stopped ahead of me waiting for the bridge to clear.
If there is only one lane, the usual traffic pattern is that some people merge left as early as possible, and others will begin passing in the right lane, usually aiming to pass as much of the line of traffic as possible before merging. This typically leads to stop and go traffic, because as the left lane slows down approaching the bridge they lose any space for a zipper merge, and must come to a complete stop for the detectors to merge in at the last minute.
If I set my cruise to 25 -- the speed limit -- in the right lane, then after a few moments there aren't typically people zipping down the right lane ahead or behind me, and the merge typically happens at about 25-30 mph behind me as people pass me, and there's typically not any merging at 0 mph at the last minute.
About 80% of the time, by the time I get to the bottom of the hill, there's no one left in the left lane, everyone having passed me and zipped away, and I can merge without difficulty.
The failure mode here is that if traffic is significantly backed up in the left lane, either I have to zip past them at 25mph and merge at the last minute, being the asshole, or I merge earlier, into the slow-moving traffic, and abandon my traffic-shaping experiments.
Yep ... Energy required scales (at least [1]) quadratically with speed, but time to target only linearly.
We noticed that while commuting between two cities over the German Autobahn (A2). I could go 100 km/h and be in sync with the semis, or could go 120 km/h because at that time there are too many cars to go faster.
Going slower was almost two liters gas less per day but increased travel time by only 5-10 minutes.
In the western US, going 3 mph under the speed limit would be considered a mortal sin.
But I do see the same effect going a mere 4 mph[1] over the speed limit.
1. I arrived at 4 mph over, because this was the usual answer when I've asked several police officers "How much over the speed limit to I have to drive for you to pull me over?". Their answer nearly always was "Up to 4 mph and you're okay."
4 over the speed limit is definitely the safe zone in California, although having an 11-99 license plate frame still gets you more leeway. I remember when the frames allowed you to get out of driving 90mph.... Good times.
Hum that seems low. Does it depend on the actual speed limit? Going 4mph over when the SL is 30 yeah I get being pulled over, but on a highway where the limit is 65? I think you can easily push to 70/75.
I always heard it put as (for highway driving) "9 you're fine, 10 you're mine". I do a lot of highway driving and the cruise is always set to 9 over, never had a problem. I just slow up at the speed traps but usually they probably see my first speed before I slow up
My wife rigidly hews to the "10% over the speed limit" standard on the highway. So 6.5 mph over in a 65mph speed limit zone, etc. Never been caught for this. Of course she accumulates an entourage of people crawling up her tailpipe before speeding by rudely, even when she's in the slow lane. Because America.
In Texas, you can get stopped for obstructing traffic, regardless of what speed you're driving.
So, you can be speeding, and yet still driving slower than the traffic around you, and you can be given two tickets -- one for speeding, and one for obstructing traffic.
Of the two, obstructing traffic is the bigger fine.
Yeah, the impression I get from the article is that he is self-aware enough to understand he is a bit unusual but confident enough to own it, which I can respect.
Sensitive people on the internet have trained the population to gild jokes too much so that even the most dull headed can be involved. This young man knows the best humor is found when the target isn't entirely certain if you are serious or not.
One of my former cars had a distinctly police car outline for the time and location that I owned it. When I drove speed limit I noticed a the same effect, especially certain lighting conditions like if I was driving into a sunset. It's a worse situation because some (or many) people are literally afraid to pass what they think is a police car.
As others have pointed out. If not in a rush, driving slightly under the speed limit is very relaxing.
I drove an actual old police car bought at auction which included a spotlight. The problem was more people in front of me slowing down to the speed limit or a little slower, which was annoying.
I think in the UK there wasn't too much beating up of Germans. My parents / grandparents were Germans in the UK during that period. We mostly just dropped bombs on the ones of the other side of the channel.
Everything about this is wonderful. I do as much of my writing on a mechanical typewriter as I can, I use a rotary phone, and listen to vinyl records. This kid takes it to a whole new level and I'm so happy to see someone passionate about being a luddite in the new generation
The VoIP gateways we were installing a few years ago still supported pulse dialing on the FXS lines. Those gateways supported all sorts of archaic and arcane POTS features. All the classic feature codes (like *69) had support. I think it could be set up to emulate a DMS-100 or a 5Ess as well.
If you have a copper landline from your local telephone company, I'm willing to bet it still supports pulse dialing? Maybe it's 50/50 now?
I have a functioning rotary phone connected to POTS. I do live in the sticks though. Only issue is automated systems that ask me to dial 1 for foo, 2 for bar, etc. But a lot of those now actually also take voice.
No, the dialing on a rotary phone is done by quickly closing and opening the circuit (this means you can tap out numbers by hand on the switch that detects you hanging up the handset).
Press 1 to continue systems require the DTMF tones to be played down the line, either by the phone or any other device held up to it.
I commented [0] on this a while back, there are hybrid adapters that bridge Bluetooth to old handsets. I have an older version of this [1] and a few different phones I've successfully used with it. YMMV
Yes, last year, I setup a real CenturyLink POTS line for my MIL in a condo near me, and tested my rotary phone on the line, and it works fine. That phone won't dial with my VoIP ATAs, even though they say they work with pulse dialing though.
I'm hoping it continues to work when utility power goes out, but we haven't had a long enough outage to test since I set it up.
Yeah, Seinfeld is my go to mental reference for the perfect time period... and I'm not even a huge fan of the show, having only watched bits and pieces
Eh, I think the early days of broadband and wireless routers were it for me. Being able to have multiple devices in the house use an Internet connection was great for school work and such....but before you had the internet in your pocket at all times via a smartphone.
About CDs being "nicer tech", even quite a few people growing up in the CD era disagree with that. Vinyl is more tactile, has bigger album covers, demands more focus in the music (like how it takes more effort to skip). CDs are like an awkward in-between phase between vinyl and downloads/streaming.
Besides it's absolutely not vinyl VOCs that will get you. Compared with health low hanging fruit, from diet and exercize, to stress, bad sleep, to BS substances in modern industrial food and city air pollution, it's beyond insignificant.
As someone who has spanned eras, I don't really disagree. I embraced CDs because they were a lot more practical in many ways, but we did lose something in the process--physicality, album art, etc. The same is true with photography or writing for that matter. Ultimately I've always pretty much embraced the new but I understand why someone wouldn't--especially if forced to live through it.
I don't think that's generally true. As someone who was in college during the vinyl era, although I created mix tapes and taped vinyl that others owned, I never did a lot of purchasing of pre-recorded cassettes and I think my behavior was pretty common. Certainly, the "record stores" of the era carried far more vinyl than cassettes.
Fair, but didn't that change once CD players showed up in cars? Some people were certainly buying up loads of tapes (but they did wear out, so some repeats?)
The thing I remember most about the tech is how unreliable it was. Windows 3.1 through to me were terrible compared to what we have now. Also we had to pay for tools like compilers.
Yeah, but on the flip side, you bought software and then used it. You didn't have a subscription to use XYZ on the following terms for the following time periods, unless otherwise changed.
And it was about software, not "behavioral surplus data collection pretending to be useful to you."
You win some, you lose some. But I'd take that era back in a moment.
There's gotta be more one-time-purchase software for sale now than there was in the 1990s.
I agree it was mostly better software, at least in terms of respecting users.
I bought my first Linux distro (Mandrake). It was worth it to avoid the huge download on 56k, and the hassle of writing a CD. Plus Mandrake played pretty well written my system thanks to the '3dfx' drivers.
The 90's were such an amazing decade, maybe one of the most perfect in the past 100 years(at least for the US).
You had a outstanding job market for all professions with tech jobs still around if you chose. No wars(besides smaller conflicts in desert storm(91) and Bosnia(98)). Politicians/politics during that time were very moderate, George HW Bush and Clinton both governed from the right and left center respectively. Housing was extremely affordable and if you worked a half decent job you could expect to buy a house in most markets, My Wife's family bought a house in Redwood city and her Dad was in the trades, and Mom worked in printing. A house in the mid-90's in Palo Alto CA would run about $350-400k.
Music was outstanding in grunge(Nirvana, STP, Peal Jam) and hiphop was in its golden age(Wutang, Biggie, Tupac). For TV such classics like Seinfeld, Friends, and Star trek TNG were around. Movies like great sci fi and action movies - Matrix, T2, Jurassic Park and many many others were coming out all the time.
Having been a teenager during that decade I feel really lucky compared to the following decades and how bad they have turned out. The only downside to the 90's was crime was relatively high compared to today, but almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).
What I mostly miss from the 90s is a kind of optimism. Stuff like TV shows and music is pretty banal IMHO, and there's still plenty of good stuff around today (and there was plenty of bad stuff in the 90s too – we just don't remember it as clearly).
But this idea that we might get peace in Israel with the Oslo accords, that the USSR/Russia would no longer be the big "red scare" enemy, that China would be our friend and we could slowly convince them (and Russia) that freedom and democracy was good for everyone, and The Troubles were finally over. Well ... 1 out of 4 held.
Maybe I was just younger, and sure there were going to be problems and challenges, but everything just seemed so much more ... hopeful.
> almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).
That's probably pushing it a bit too far though; trying being gay in the 90s – depending on where exactly you lived that was hugely harder than today. And you could smoke everywhere – it was just accepted. I remember family birthday parties as a child and I would "flee" upstairs because all the smoke just got too much. All the pubs and restaurants: full with smoke. Trains and buses: people smoked. Unthinkable today – that changed very quickly in the early 00s.
And the state of software ... have you seen real-world code from the 90s? Good lord...
There's probably other things I'm not recalling offhand that really were worse in the 90s.
It does feel like putting tech into everything was novel (Cars becoming iPads with 4 wheels) and at some point the scales tipped into mechanical things with the least tech in them are novel (Mechanical watches[1], manual transmissions, typewriters, developing film, INS[2]).
Old doesn't necessarily equal expensive. In terms of actual drivable cars from that era, collectors would put a real premium on cars eligible for the Mille Miglia.
Owning a car like that is so expensive they have little resale value. The upholstery should be relatively easy to restore but the older a car gets, the harder it is to find other spare parts from junkers.
Most of the mechanical parts have to be made custom from machinists who specialize in collectible cars. Sometimes a part breaks that no one has made in decades so you have to hire someone to locate old drawings or create them from scratch, pick the materials, figure out the QA process, and so on.
> He says he has friends of all ages, although he admits he shares more in common with people much older than him.
The only thing I'd worry about is him getting too obsessed to the point he has trouble relating with others that are from this generation or are younger than himself especially as the number of people familiar with that generation continue to pass away.
On the other hand if he goes into history or restoring vintage things then he could make name for himself by helping others to be able to appreciate vintage things.
I like him in the same way that I like Daria. Cynical enough of modern living that he rejects it as much as he can, with the wealth that he has... but I just hope it doesn't turn him into a snob who turns his nose up at anything mainstream, alienating him from his friends and peers for the sake of his principles. Daria needlessly suffered for her elitism. He seems far more approachable though, I will give him that.
Seeing the ENIAC and EDSAC in operation, meeting Von Neumann and Turing would have been appealing, but that's about it. And those things were accessible to only a select few privileged individuals.
He's from Fife. Doubt any of those made it there at the time, or probably since
Monk wasn't widespread popular at the time at all - only in niche jazz circles. It'd be about as exotic as you could hope to maybe hear Billie Holiday in somewhere like Fife.
It was a really jarring moment when I forgot my phone a couple weeks ago. I listened to FM radio for the first time in years. The oldies station. The one my mom listened to all the time that played a mix of Big Band, Doo-wop, and some 60s rock.
I work with people half my age now. Some of them have bigger titles than me. And they couldn't tell you what an AT command or a segmented memory address is. I am practically the crypt keeper.
I drive, among other things, a 1930 Willys 8-80D. It's got a non-synchronized three speed, and it's amazing how many people just assume it has to be a clashfest. No, you just learn to double clutch properly, and... actually, even most people who drive manuals these days don't understand enough about the system to make sense of double clutching. :( But on the older transmissions, I double clutch up and down, and life is quiet.
That engine (a 4.0L straight 8) also passes the "nickel test" - I can start the engine, and balance a nickel on edge on the head while it idles.
I feel sad for how he will simply fail to adopt to new technology and be as utterly helpless at 30 as boomers are now. They can barely do a Google search.
It’s not okay to find this stuff funny. Technology is a fundamental part of society.
Personally speaking I've never purchased/owned/used a cell phone and yet I feel I have more familiarity with the underlying technologies than probably 95% of cell phone users today.
I don't believe whether or not someone has adopted a given technology has any kind of clear correlation to their understanding of it or ability to use it were they to elect to. I know plenty of people who are up to date with the latest fads and yet dumb as rocks.
Am I alone in thinking this is a little strange? If my teenager decided to live their life in a comic book costume, or cosplaying and pretending to be an anime character, I would say they are too attached. There are YouTubers like "ReportoftheWeek" who like to dress in an older style, but choosing to not learn to use a cellphone and bypassing understanding modern technology seems to be going too far.
That is very interesting to me. I never understood why people hate so much that neckbeards mix a fedora with t-shirt and jeans. Does anybody get mad at Jensen (from Nvidia) for wearing a biker leather jacket without being a biker?
People wore fedoras to identify them as part of a subculture (Reddit gentlemen).
Most people who weren't part of the subculture pretty quickly figured out that removing their fedora meant people didn't assume they were a part of it, so they took it off.
Same thing with hipster glasses, mullets, dreads, swastikas, list goes on...
Except for the swastikas, everything you mentioned is just more lazy stereotyping.
How many times have you met an actual douchebag wearing a fedora? How many times have you heard people saying that all douchebags wear fedoras? I bet the ratio is at least 1:50. It's like how people who insist all vegans are smug outnumber actual smug vegans by a huge margin.
I think some of it is just the poor aesthetic combination of fedora with a t-shirt and jeans. The fedora feels like an attempt to be stylish without going the full effort to coordinate the look. It’s a lack of self-awareness that probably comes across as the wearer saying “I am now stylish because of this hat” where that clearly isn’t true to an observer.
We need to stop coddling and worrying about everything. (I guess we were all raised by helicopter parents and are doubling down?)
In my state practically any self-built car is able to become road-legal. Old cars, rebuilds, kit cars, etc. And it's fine. People are fine.
We're not imposing this choice top-down at a population level. We're not about to have (current accident rate) * (1938 car crash outcome). Someone doing this for fun is bound to be more careful than your average driver.
As his father I would be worried about his dating prospects, but if he had that already sorted out, cool! Lots of easy birthday presents to choose from :D
I think it's a little strange, sure, but if I'm being honest with myself, I'm a little strange too. As a famous cat once said, we're all mad here.
Aside from (maybe?) driving under the speed limit, no harm no foul. Not mentioned in the article, but I do hope he's OK with modern medicine, like the polio vaccine, and will be willing to eschew his aversion to cell phones if his grandmother has to get in touch with him in some sort of emergency...
In the 1950s, there were British "Teds" who affected the clothing of the Edwardian days forty years before. Some of them, I guess, were thugs. But deliberate anachronism isn't entirely new.
I'm not convinced, if anything, teenagers of today seem to have less of anything unique going on (note that this may just be perspective, I'm not up to date on teenagers), whereas back when you'd have a number of subcultures.
I mean you mention anime characters, but there's a big greaser / rockabilly subculture in Japan - grown men dressing like they're from the 50's.
Then there's of course the survivalist / homesteader subculture, people who live off the grid. There's LARPers who - usually only at events - dress up as elves and co. There's medieval re-enactors who have full suits of armor. There's renaissance faire people. There's Dickensians. Furries. Peaky Blinders. K-Pop stans. The list goes on.
This is normal human behaviour. While I also think it's a little strange, it's harmless. Let people have things.
> I mean you mention anime characters, but there's a big greaser / rockabilly subculture in Japan.
There isn't, though.
There are probably a dozen or so in Tokyo and about the same number in Osaka. Granted, I don't have an exact number but it is super niche. If you ask a random Japanese person the chances of them even being aware of that subculture is very low.
> This is normal human behaviour. While I also think it's a little strange, it's harmless. Let people have things.
No, it's not. Some of your examples are but going all in isn't normal
even if we ignore the fact that being part of a subculture kind of isn't normal by definition. If it were normal we wouldn't get an article about it from the BBC, would we? But what I rather mean is, doing that as a dress up thing or LARPing is reasonable. Using some old items or wearing old fashion for their unique appeal is also reasonable. Putting anachronism above all else isn't normal, though. Those Japanese greasers use mobile phones.
Arguably, we don't know how much of what the article describes is tongue in cheek, and perhaps it's mostly a character the guy is playing. But if not, hating to or avoiding to use modern technology because it's not from the era you happen to like (because of your grandpa's POW diaries, another can of worms right there) is quite off.
I'm not saying he shouldn't enjoy what he's doing or "become like the rest if us" but no, really, it's not normal (and maybe that's okay).
I do remember having a Blackberry and my IT Manager at the time thought it was crazy to have to reply to emails after work. So I guess there is quite a bit of freedom lost
My wife has a 1950's Raleigh women's bike we bought ages ago for $50 and it is hands down the most comfortable bike we own.
I own 4 other bikes (a cruiser, an e-cruiser, and two racing bikes) but always grab hers for my errands within ~15 blocks.
Everything about it just feels easy-- it's well balanced, has a great upright sitting position, a super comfy saddle, an easy to use 3-speed hub, big soft tires, and the frame is basically indestructible.
Occasionally something gets out of place or slightly off and I just whack it back into place.
I had to look it up, but yup, that looks the "default" bike model from the Netherlands; you can still get newly made ones, although I'm not convinced the build quality will be the same, the manufacturers will be cutting costs left right and center. That said, if you get them from known brands like Batavus they'll be grand.
This seems to be a growing trend among the sub-millenial generations. Kids have always loved to rebel since the dawn of time. How better to do it at this point than to disconnect? The world will be a better place for it. They might even develop true subcultures again.
When I see this I worry that he's become codependent or "parentified" by his grandmother and is becoming the kind of man who would have been her father or her peer when she was younger. Not sure we should be celebrating this when it's impacting his ability to function in modern society. It's probably not a coincidence that the boy "beyond obsessed" with the 40s has been raised solely by his grandmother.
Pretty big jump to make from the article. There have always been people around who embrace anachronism, and teens who find unusual ways to differentiate themselves.
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, but we have nowhere near enough information to make such a judgment.
> There have always been people around who embrace anachronism,
TBH I love tech from the 1990s and before: CGI, terminals, sixels etc and I refuse to carry a cellphone (though it's ok to have one at home, plugged 24/7)
I didn't realize it before, but I now I can see how I embrace being anachronistic :)
Also, both could be true. It doesn't have to be this binary situation where he either was or wasn't "parentified." Isn't everyone a product of their experiences? Seems another reasonable is that of course he was influenced by his upbringing. AND he had fpund something with which he identifies and takes joy. May it cause him grief over time? Maybe, bit the same thing could be said for lots of things adolescents do.
Well, I went through this and didn't even see it as abuse/neglect until I was 35 and trying to figure out why I couldn't form relationships with others.
It gets worse, it seems even his great grandfather was participating in the abuse from beyond the grave. From the article: "When I was younger, I looked at my great grandad's prisoner-of-war diaries and I just love everything about the period."
Even his teachers were getting in on the sickening brainwashing operation: ""Callum went away on a school trip when he was about 12 and came back with an old-fashioned hat on," she says.
"I thought it was funny, and I just asked him, 'Where did you find this?'.
"He said 'that's the way I want to dress, that's going to be me'.
"Ever since then, that's just been Callum," his mum says."
I don't think it is, but you havent really given me anything to present a counter argument against... i just dont think there is any abuse for me to minimize, if it wasnt clear from the sarcasm oozing off my previous comment
I think the real unpopular opinion here is that our current brand of technological progress may be a net negative to society.
Humans, without substantial biological modification, do not seem ready for a technology driven quasi-utopia. Keep the biotechnology and pharmacology, keep the industrial robots and keep the private space programs but remove the inexpensive personal computation, omnipresent high-bitrate packet radio networks and with them all of the anti-societal behavior they support.
TL;DR This kid is closer to hyper-sane than brainwashed.
I wasn't raised by my grand parents, only visited them 5 to 6 weekend a year, but I was fascinated by their art deco furniture, bakelite door knobs, their old fridge from the mid 1940's and the old faucets in the bathroom and I loved seeing pics of their outfits back in the days.
I also contemplated the idea to buy an old car of the era. My grandfather's old cars would have been out of reach of my pocket[1] so I can relate.
I would have however totally incorporated tech into old design, making old radios work with my flac collection and connectable with bluetooth for example, or converting an old peugeot 402 to EV.
Our societies have progressed a lot in a century in many ways. However as far as design and elegance goes, I think even the richest person of the planet tend to look like crap nowadays with the modern outfits.
[1] some selling for literally millions of dollars nowadays at auctions.
Parentification or parent–child role reversal is the process of role reversal whereby a child or adolescent is obliged to act as a parent to their own parent or sibling.
Two distinct types of parentification have been identified technically: instrumental parentification and emotional parentification. For instance, instrumental parentification involves the child completing physical tasks for the family, such as looking after a sick relative, paying bills, or providing assistance to younger siblings that would normally be provided by a parent. On the other hand, emotional parentification occurs when a child or adolescent must take on the role of a confidante or mediator for (or between) parents or family members.
I've had similar feelings as that essay. If you ask me, it doesn't have anything to do with my point. Also, it's good to make sure kids who exhibit strange behavior are not adapting and contorting themselves to fit unhealthy relationships. There are plenty of perfectly healthy ways to be weird or abnormal. Being too defensive about that is a great way to be neglectful.
Doesn't seem like grandma is a luddite, TFA says she has a cell phone while he refuses. I just wonder what kind of job he's going to have? These days even guys in the trades are usually carrying a cell and a tablet and using them pretty regularly throughout the day.
I agree by the way if that was the case, even though you have cases like Beckham, Beckham's father was obsessed by football and Manchester United and so became his son, but you could see David loved football with all of his heart (and excelled at it).
Not sure I'd go that far but do wish the story had a few more details. Did the reporter talk to his friend/girlfriend, or to any of his peers? Lots of people own vintage cars. Lots of people collect something. Some people own vintage clothes. Even if he intersects the three, that doesn't mean he's a complete Luddite.
> We always watch old films together, he's in love with Ginger Rogers," Anne says.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but UK TV licenses didn't exceed a million until the early 1950's [1], so he's cheating at least a little.
> "I was forced to have a laptop for college, and I hated it."
Past tense. What is/was his major?
On some level I find this positively charming. If I had a time machine, I'd visit the 1940's, too. But I likely wouldn't stay for more than a few weeks at a time. Even Gary Sparrow eventually found it boring. [2]. Hmm, I wonder if he's ever seen "Goodnight Sweetheart"?
> Callum has lived at his gran's house since he was 12, after his grandad, John, suddenly passed away. He's kept her company ever since.
That's also the same year he bought the hat. So this would appear to be a reaction to his grandad's passing? It's not necessarily the reporter's job to play psychoanalyst, but I would have liked more details.
From what I can tell, Kirkcaldy isn't exactly rural, but if his ambition is to run the local animal shelter or local museum, I think he'll do fine. He's just 19 and has plenty of time to decide his life's direction. And should I ever visit Fife and encounter him, I'd be happy to stop for a game of checkers, darts, etc. I was a little kid in the 1970's, before home computers, the internet, ATM's, and cable TV, and could go back and do it again. Tech isn't everything. As I think some have remarked, it may just give him a clearer head.
Yeah I thought that. When I first saw it I thought "weird, silly kid" and then when I learned he lived with his grandmother I got the ick and realised there was a much deeper problem.
Ohh common... This is completely unnecessary speculation. People are quirky in all kinds of ways for all kinds of reasons. Me and my girlfriend brought a century home, but neither of us were raised by grandparents, we both just like history and feel happy when there's history around us... Lots of people are unique interests they pursue as adults.
From watching the video it sounded like this guy was simply interested in cars as a child and took a fancy to older cars.. It's quite understandable that he then decided to fulfil his childhood dream of owning one when he reached adulthood. I know guys who were obsessed with guitars as kids then when they got their first job brought all the guitars they dreamt of. I know did same thing with computers and computer bits when I got my first job. I even know a guy who liked steam trains as a child so after he left college decided since he's always liked trains he'd work on them.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is far more likely to be a kid who grew up simply liking cars so brought a car that he liked as a kid when he got a bit of money as an adult. I suppose it's possible there was something emotionally harmful about how he was raised which caused him to like different things from other kids, but it certainly wasn't obvious from the video... It seemed like he was a loved child and understood he had unique interests. Plus, he seemed happy and socially well adjusted, so good for him.
It seems obvious to me when he outright mentions loving his great-grandfather's diaries and that the obsession didn't start until he moved in with his grandmother. But yes, it's speculation. I would rather ask a lot of questions before showering a kid with positive attention for something that might have been an adaptation to an unhealthy relationship.
I'm not sure about the bit of him falling in love with the 40s after reading a...prisoner of war diary? Doesn't seem very uplifting.
And though he refuses to enter into the spirit of rationing, he is also in the fantasy world where the Germans aren't bombing and threatening to invade, or there are postwar shortages and cities in ruin. Yeah, I supposed it's OK to like the clothing, cars and other tech, but it seems a not much like the actual 1940s in Great Britain.
That’s how it’s supposed to be? Like you said, real 1940s Britain wasn’t very uplifting. The fact that he’s not imitating all of it is how you know he’s still sane :)
What a charming individualist young lad! Great contrapunctus to all these TikTok wannabe "'subscribe my channel' influencer" losers that lack any personal style, acting merely as advertising and exhibition space (their room and their body).
His photo reminded me of the film "Harold and Maude", if anyone here has seen it.
Once I'm retired, I would like to digitize my own grandfathers prisoner of war diary, including that episode where they ate a dog so they didn't die from starvation, but it turned out to be the camp commanders dog, so that meal had an enormous price tag in terms of consequences. (Just to point out it wasn't all black shiny cars in the 1940s!)
I presume you mean the 1890s... In the 1990s it was rare for a house to have 0 screens. It was much more common to have several - a couple of TVs, a computer, maybe the kids would have a gameboy.
I read a book years ago about a British soldiers in an Italian POW camp. They caught and ate the German commandant's poodle. Tasted like lamb apparently. The commandant was never sure what happened to it. IIRC.
£7,000 for that car is not an expense, it's an investment.
In addition, the good thing about cars up to the 90s, and perhaps later, is that there are fixable with the manual. There is electrics but no electronics or software.
Meh, at least for really popular models there's a host of aftermarket spare parts, and in a pinch you can fabricate or repair most of it yourself - the vehicles were designed to accomodate DIY and "in the field" repairs, as there simply was no such thing as a nationwide network of brand-contracted repair shops.
Once you get into the 40s or older, it can be pretty hard, particularly if you want to stay stock. It is significantly easier to have things fabricated than later tech (or learn to do it yourself).
You may find a love of digging through old stuff at swaps though.
It's a great place to live where you can save 7k with part time jobs beside high school.
There's a great selection of fine cars with low level of software, but ECU-s started to appear in the 70's and 80's to control various aspects of the cars. I assume you associate software in cars with displays, but by the time they started to appear, there were tons of software already in those ECU-s.
(Don't take this comment too seriously, it's mostly tongue in cheek)
I was kind of wondering how racist this kid is and then I got to this paragraph and expected it to address the elephant in the room:
>However, Callum told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme - via his 1940s Bakelite rotary-dial telephone - that there is one thing from the post-war period he definitely does not do.
but it goes on
>"We don’t ration,” he says. “I like my food too much for that."
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] threadNot having to take over is the best part of it.
Traffic, of course, approaches the bridge at 40+mph. Semi-regularly there's a police officer pulling people over and ticketing them.
I've begun entering the right lane, whenever possible, and setting my cruise control to a hard limit of 25mph. (Setting a soft limit of 25mph does nothing, as you coast up to 40 down that hill.)
When two lanes are open on the bridge, about 80% of the time when I reach the bottom of the hill at 25mph... I immediately have to slow, and sometimes stop, as the traffic on the bridge is slower. If there was a good bit of traffic with me, approximately 6 cars will have passed me on the hill, and be stopped ahead of me waiting for the bridge to clear.
If there is only one lane, the usual traffic pattern is that some people merge left as early as possible, and others will begin passing in the right lane, usually aiming to pass as much of the line of traffic as possible before merging. This typically leads to stop and go traffic, because as the left lane slows down approaching the bridge they lose any space for a zipper merge, and must come to a complete stop for the detectors to merge in at the last minute.
If I set my cruise to 25 -- the speed limit -- in the right lane, then after a few moments there aren't typically people zipping down the right lane ahead or behind me, and the merge typically happens at about 25-30 mph behind me as people pass me, and there's typically not any merging at 0 mph at the last minute.
About 80% of the time, by the time I get to the bottom of the hill, there's no one left in the left lane, everyone having passed me and zipped away, and I can merge without difficulty.
The failure mode here is that if traffic is significantly backed up in the left lane, either I have to zip past them at 25mph and merge at the last minute, being the asshole, or I merge earlier, into the slow-moving traffic, and abandon my traffic-shaping experiments.
We noticed that while commuting between two cities over the German Autobahn (A2). I could go 100 km/h and be in sync with the semis, or could go 120 km/h because at that time there are too many cars to go faster.
Going slower was almost two liters gas less per day but increased travel time by only 5-10 minutes.
But I do see the same effect going a mere 4 mph[1] over the speed limit.
1. I arrived at 4 mph over, because this was the usual answer when I've asked several police officers "How much over the speed limit to I have to drive for you to pull me over?". Their answer nearly always was "Up to 4 mph and you're okay."
So, you can be speeding, and yet still driving slower than the traffic around you, and you can be given two tickets -- one for speeding, and one for obstructing traffic.
Of the two, obstructing traffic is the bigger fine.
As others have pointed out. If not in a rush, driving slightly under the speed limit is very relaxing.
At night I could part the red sea with it (people would just move out of my way if I was going like I was in a hurry) though.
I thought I was a little odd - nope, I'm just a normal level of odd in comparison.
My vintage west bend percolator makes the best coffee you'll have - it makes maxwell house taste good.
I have 60 year old Zenith radios that work great, and have needed zero parts.
If you have a copper landline from your local telephone company, I'm willing to bet it still supports pulse dialing? Maybe it's 50/50 now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
Press 1 to continue systems require the DTMF tones to be played down the line, either by the phone or any other device held up to it.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37484671
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Xtreme-Technolgoies-XLink-Bluetooth-G...
I'm hoping it continues to work when utility power goes out, but we haven't had a long enough outage to test since I set it up.
Early 2000s
Besides it's absolutely not vinyl VOCs that will get you. Compared with health low hanging fruit, from diet and exercize, to stress, bad sleep, to BS substances in modern industrial food and city air pollution, it's beyond insignificant.
https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...
Another chart is this one but it's hard to parse. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-...
In any case, pre-recorded cassettes were always a pretty small part of the mix.
I know, it's playing them backwards :o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTpK87Eqzbs&t=10s
Gross
I don't like the values I see in the 1990s TV shows.
However I love the tech, like CDs:
> CD audio is a little bit nicer tech. They
I love CDs! I even got a CD player in my car!
After trying them, I've found I really don't like vinyles or mechanical keyboards so maybe it's not just every 1990s tech I like, just some of it
And it was about software, not "behavioral surplus data collection pretending to be useful to you."
You win some, you lose some. But I'd take that era back in a moment.
I agree it was mostly better software, at least in terms of respecting users.
I bought my first Linux distro (Mandrake). It was worth it to avoid the huge download on 56k, and the hassle of writing a CD. Plus Mandrake played pretty well written my system thanks to the '3dfx' drivers.
You think the world is better off now that we've traded Family Matters and Step by Step for the likes of Euphoria?
You had a outstanding job market for all professions with tech jobs still around if you chose. No wars(besides smaller conflicts in desert storm(91) and Bosnia(98)). Politicians/politics during that time were very moderate, George HW Bush and Clinton both governed from the right and left center respectively. Housing was extremely affordable and if you worked a half decent job you could expect to buy a house in most markets, My Wife's family bought a house in Redwood city and her Dad was in the trades, and Mom worked in printing. A house in the mid-90's in Palo Alto CA would run about $350-400k.
Music was outstanding in grunge(Nirvana, STP, Peal Jam) and hiphop was in its golden age(Wutang, Biggie, Tupac). For TV such classics like Seinfeld, Friends, and Star trek TNG were around. Movies like great sci fi and action movies - Matrix, T2, Jurassic Park and many many others were coming out all the time.
Having been a teenager during that decade I feel really lucky compared to the following decades and how bad they have turned out. The only downside to the 90's was crime was relatively high compared to today, but almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).
But this idea that we might get peace in Israel with the Oslo accords, that the USSR/Russia would no longer be the big "red scare" enemy, that China would be our friend and we could slowly convince them (and Russia) that freedom and democracy was good for everyone, and The Troubles were finally over. Well ... 1 out of 4 held.
Maybe I was just younger, and sure there were going to be problems and challenges, but everything just seemed so much more ... hopeful.
> almost every aspect of life was superior unless you miss social media and glued to a phone(I don't).
That's probably pushing it a bit too far though; trying being gay in the 90s – depending on where exactly you lived that was hugely harder than today. And you could smoke everywhere – it was just accepted. I remember family birthday parties as a child and I would "flee" upstairs because all the smoke just got too much. All the pubs and restaurants: full with smoke. Trains and buses: people smoked. Unthinkable today – that changed very quickly in the early 00s.
And the state of software ... have you seen real-world code from the 90s? Good lord...
There's probably other things I'm not recalling offhand that really were worse in the 90s.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Speedmaster
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system#Ove...
Most of the mechanical parts have to be made custom from machinists who specialize in collectible cars. Sometimes a part breaks that no one has made in decades so you have to hire someone to locate old drawings or create them from scratch, pick the materials, figure out the QA process, and so on.
The only thing I'd worry about is him getting too obsessed to the point he has trouble relating with others that are from this generation or are younger than himself especially as the number of people familiar with that generation continue to pass away.
Monk wasn't widespread popular at the time at all - only in niche jazz circles. It'd be about as exotic as you could hope to maybe hear Billie Holiday in somewhere like Fife.
Not sure about music but in architecture 'modern' was already in 40s.
But what I heard was Smells Like Teen Spirit.
My son, who is 17, said that they were talking about “the late 1900s” in class the other day and I could almost feel my body turning into dust.
adjective
1. Of or relating to recent times or the present.
"modern history."
2. Characteristic or expressive of recent times or the present; contemporary or up-to-date.
"a modern lifestyle; a modern way of thinking."
I drive, among other things, a 1930 Willys 8-80D. It's got a non-synchronized three speed, and it's amazing how many people just assume it has to be a clashfest. No, you just learn to double clutch properly, and... actually, even most people who drive manuals these days don't understand enough about the system to make sense of double clutching. :( But on the older transmissions, I double clutch up and down, and life is quiet.
That engine (a 4.0L straight 8) also passes the "nickel test" - I can start the engine, and balance a nickel on edge on the head while it idles.
I learned how to drive a stick in a semi-truck - no synchros there - it makes it hard for me to drive a synchronized one.
It’s not okay to find this stuff funny. Technology is a fundamental part of society.
I don't believe whether or not someone has adopted a given technology has any kind of clear correlation to their understanding of it or ability to use it were they to elect to. I know plenty of people who are up to date with the latest fads and yet dumb as rocks.
I think the kid will be just fine.
People wore fedoras to identify them as part of a subculture (Reddit gentlemen).
Most people who weren't part of the subculture pretty quickly figured out that removing their fedora meant people didn't assume they were a part of it, so they took it off.
Same thing with hipster glasses, mullets, dreads, swastikas, list goes on...
Is that where that came from? It sounds right.
I used to wear nice hats regularly including a couple of fedoras, but I had to retire them because of this.
How many times have you met an actual douchebag wearing a fedora? How many times have you heard people saying that all douchebags wear fedoras? I bet the ratio is at least 1:50. It's like how people who insist all vegans are smug outnumber actual smug vegans by a huge margin.
This kid has so much character and will have so many stories and connections as opposed to most average kids of the same age.
This world needs more unabashed individualism like this. It leads humanity to richer culture and more discovery.
Except that a 1938 car is a death trap.
We need to stop coddling and worrying about everything. (I guess we were all raised by helicopter parents and are doubling down?)
In my state practically any self-built car is able to become road-legal. Old cars, rebuilds, kit cars, etc. And it's fine. People are fine.
We're not imposing this choice top-down at a population level. We're not about to have (current accident rate) * (1938 car crash outcome). Someone doing this for fun is bound to be more careful than your average driver.
Aside from (maybe?) driving under the speed limit, no harm no foul. Not mentioned in the article, but I do hope he's OK with modern medicine, like the polio vaccine, and will be willing to eschew his aversion to cell phones if his grandmother has to get in touch with him in some sort of emergency...
I mean you mention anime characters, but there's a big greaser / rockabilly subculture in Japan - grown men dressing like they're from the 50's.
Then there's of course the survivalist / homesteader subculture, people who live off the grid. There's LARPers who - usually only at events - dress up as elves and co. There's medieval re-enactors who have full suits of armor. There's renaissance faire people. There's Dickensians. Furries. Peaky Blinders. K-Pop stans. The list goes on.
This is normal human behaviour. While I also think it's a little strange, it's harmless. Let people have things.
There isn't, though.
There are probably a dozen or so in Tokyo and about the same number in Osaka. Granted, I don't have an exact number but it is super niche. If you ask a random Japanese person the chances of them even being aware of that subculture is very low.
> This is normal human behaviour. While I also think it's a little strange, it's harmless. Let people have things.
No, it's not. Some of your examples are but going all in isn't normal even if we ignore the fact that being part of a subculture kind of isn't normal by definition. If it were normal we wouldn't get an article about it from the BBC, would we? But what I rather mean is, doing that as a dress up thing or LARPing is reasonable. Using some old items or wearing old fashion for their unique appeal is also reasonable. Putting anachronism above all else isn't normal, though. Those Japanese greasers use mobile phones.
Arguably, we don't know how much of what the article describes is tongue in cheek, and perhaps it's mostly a character the guy is playing. But if not, hating to or avoiding to use modern technology because it's not from the era you happen to like (because of your grandpa's POW diaries, another can of worms right there) is quite off.
I'm not saying he shouldn't enjoy what he's doing or "become like the rest if us" but no, really, it's not normal (and maybe that's okay).
People have hobbies, passions, etc.
What criteria are you using to be the judge of what is harmless or not? What Is reasonable and abnormal?
There are also HNers. Count me in the "refuse to use a cellphone" camp.
I want to learn how the hardware and software stacks work, but I don't want to carry one ever.
This article wouldn't be upvoted enough for you to see it if you were
Just IMAGINE saying that out loud.
My wife has a 1950's Raleigh women's bike we bought ages ago for $50 and it is hands down the most comfortable bike we own.
I own 4 other bikes (a cruiser, an e-cruiser, and two racing bikes) but always grab hers for my errands within ~15 blocks.
Everything about it just feels easy-- it's well balanced, has a great upright sitting position, a super comfy saddle, an easy to use 3-speed hub, big soft tires, and the frame is basically indestructible.
Occasionally something gets out of place or slightly off and I just whack it back into place.
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, but we have nowhere near enough information to make such a judgment.
Ok but it's pretty groundless speculation then.
TBH I love tech from the 1990s and before: CGI, terminals, sixels etc and I refuse to carry a cellphone (though it's ok to have one at home, plugged 24/7)
I didn't realize it before, but I now I can see how I embrace being anachronistic :)
It's just that I don't know it. Maybe if I did, I would love it like he does?
Even his teachers were getting in on the sickening brainwashing operation: ""Callum went away on a school trip when he was about 12 and came back with an old-fashioned hat on," she says. "I thought it was funny, and I just asked him, 'Where did you find this?'. "He said 'that's the way I want to dress, that's going to be me'. "Ever since then, that's just been Callum," his mum says."
Humans, without substantial biological modification, do not seem ready for a technology driven quasi-utopia. Keep the biotechnology and pharmacology, keep the industrial robots and keep the private space programs but remove the inexpensive personal computation, omnipresent high-bitrate packet radio networks and with them all of the anti-societal behavior they support.
TL;DR This kid is closer to hyper-sane than brainwashed.
I also contemplated the idea to buy an old car of the era. My grandfather's old cars would have been out of reach of my pocket[1] so I can relate.
I would have however totally incorporated tech into old design, making old radios work with my flac collection and connectable with bluetooth for example, or converting an old peugeot 402 to EV.
Our societies have progressed a lot in a century in many ways. However as far as design and elegance goes, I think even the richest person of the planet tend to look like crap nowadays with the modern outfits.
[1] some selling for literally millions of dollars nowadays at auctions.
Two distinct types of parentification have been identified technically: instrumental parentification and emotional parentification. For instance, instrumental parentification involves the child completing physical tasks for the family, such as looking after a sick relative, paying bills, or providing assistance to younger siblings that would normally be provided by a parent. On the other hand, emotional parentification occurs when a child or adolescent must take on the role of a confidante or mediator for (or between) parents or family members.
I agree by the way if that was the case, even though you have cases like Beckham, Beckham's father was obsessed by football and Manchester United and so became his son, but you could see David loved football with all of his heart (and excelled at it).
> We always watch old films together, he's in love with Ginger Rogers," Anne says.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but UK TV licenses didn't exceed a million until the early 1950's [1], so he's cheating at least a little.
> "I was forced to have a laptop for college, and I hated it."
Past tense. What is/was his major?
On some level I find this positively charming. If I had a time machine, I'd visit the 1940's, too. But I likely wouldn't stay for more than a few weeks at a time. Even Gary Sparrow eventually found it boring. [2]. Hmm, I wonder if he's ever seen "Goodnight Sweetheart"?
> Callum has lived at his gran's house since he was 12, after his grandad, John, suddenly passed away. He's kept her company ever since.
That's also the same year he bought the hat. So this would appear to be a reaction to his grandad's passing? It's not necessarily the reporter's job to play psychoanalyst, but I would have liked more details.
From what I can tell, Kirkcaldy isn't exactly rural, but if his ambition is to run the local animal shelter or local museum, I think he'll do fine. He's just 19 and has plenty of time to decide his life's direction. And should I ever visit Fife and encounter him, I'd be happy to stop for a game of checkers, darts, etc. I was a little kid in the 1970's, before home computers, the internet, ATM's, and cable TV, and could go back and do it again. Tech isn't everything. As I think some have remarked, it may just give him a clearer head.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Sweetheart_(TV_ser...
From watching the video it sounded like this guy was simply interested in cars as a child and took a fancy to older cars.. It's quite understandable that he then decided to fulfil his childhood dream of owning one when he reached adulthood. I know guys who were obsessed with guitars as kids then when they got their first job brought all the guitars they dreamt of. I know did same thing with computers and computer bits when I got my first job. I even know a guy who liked steam trains as a child so after he left college decided since he's always liked trains he'd work on them.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is far more likely to be a kid who grew up simply liking cars so brought a car that he liked as a kid when he got a bit of money as an adult. I suppose it's possible there was something emotionally harmful about how he was raised which caused him to like different things from other kids, but it certainly wasn't obvious from the video... It seemed like he was a loved child and understood he had unique interests. Plus, he seemed happy and socially well adjusted, so good for him.
There's plenty of people that get obsessed over uncommon things that I'm not sure I'd jump to the "parentified" conclusion.
And though he refuses to enter into the spirit of rationing, he is also in the fantasy world where the Germans aren't bombing and threatening to invade, or there are postwar shortages and cities in ruin. Yeah, I supposed it's OK to like the clothing, cars and other tech, but it seems a not much like the actual 1940s in Great Britain.
His photo reminded me of the film "Harold and Maude", if anyone here has seen it.
Once I'm retired, I would like to digitize my own grandfathers prisoner of war diary, including that episode where they ate a dog so they didn't die from starvation, but it turned out to be the camp commanders dog, so that meal had an enormous price tag in terms of consequences. (Just to point out it wasn't all black shiny cars in the 1940s!)
At least that's true of the US.
So wasn't a one-off?
I consider myself to have seen a lot of films, but it took watching There's Something about Mary for me to discover the film!
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=n7qd7UrR5ic
In addition, the good thing about cars up to the 90s, and perhaps later, is that there are fixable with the manual. There is electrics but no electronics or software.
You may find a love of digging through old stuff at swaps though.
There's a great selection of fine cars with low level of software, but ECU-s started to appear in the 70's and 80's to control various aspects of the cars. I assume you associate software in cars with displays, but by the time they started to appear, there were tons of software already in those ECU-s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_control_unit
It means that if he maintains ot he will probably be able to sell it at a profit some day.
Having had a 90s car myself I will not bother with the second part of your comment.
I was kind of wondering how racist this kid is and then I got to this paragraph and expected it to address the elephant in the room:
>However, Callum told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme - via his 1940s Bakelite rotary-dial telephone - that there is one thing from the post-war period he definitely does not do.
but it goes on
>"We don’t ration,” he says. “I like my food too much for that."
oh, okay.