The Decade is Ending

[Saur]

I'm less thrilled that here it is, 2020. Where are the flying cars, the orbital hotels, the Lunar settlements? Where are the expeditions to Mars and the outer planets?

OK, so we got the Star Trek-like computer tablets and communicators. I can veg on my couch, read almost anything I desire, watch almost any movie ever made. I can videochat with a nephew-in-law in one of the Sandboxes, something I can set up with a verbal command to the tablet.

But it seems as though humanity, on the whole, is dropping IQ points.

flynn effect says iq is on the rise

woodley effect shows general intelligence is on the decline

[Cookie Monster]

Isn't 2021 the end of the decade or I am wrong about that detail?

https://www.farmersalmanac.com/new-d...or-2021-100900

[Stephanie B]

Isn't 2021 the end of the decade or I am wrong about that detail?

https://www.farmersalmanac.com/new-d...or-2021-100900

I suppose, but nobody celebrated the new millennium on 1/1/2001

[Totem Polar]

Hadn't occurred to before your thread. I guess no in that case. Weird cause I'm a frustrated philosopher and sentimental to boot.Then again, got a lot of irons in the fire.

This.

I'm less thrilled that here it is, 2020. Where are the flying cars, the orbital hotels, the Lunar settlements?

We don’t have those things because the folks smart enough to produce them all realize that the flying cars would be driven by the same texters/stoners/uninsured idiots you see on your daily commutes; the orbital hotels would be staffed and maintained by the same people you see at the Holiday Inn; the lunar settlements would be planned, contracted, built, and managed by the same people building our planned communities now, out of Chinese building materials.

No, all is as it should be. We can have our ipads and instapots and Marvel Universe sequels with too much CGI. It’s all we can handle, and barely, at that.

[JohnO]

I haven't quite recovered from Y2K.

You prompted me to remember what is still under the kitchen sink.

[Joe in PNG]

On a positive note, The Far Side is now officially online.

[OlongJohnson]

Everything is amazing and wonderful, and many of the basic hard goods on which life depends are almost impossible to acquire, in a level of quality as to be useable, at any price. And I'm not just talking about revolvers here.

I'll go shake my fist at a cloud now.

[Rex G]

Depending upon how one counts, I guess, but I thought the decade truly ends at the end of 2020, not the beginning. A baby is not one year old, until a year has been completed.

Well, anyway, I do not really think in terms of decades having a definitive start and end date, or of any specific ten-year period having any personal significance. I became a mostly-legal adult at 18, a fully-legal adult at 21, and then tended to think my life in terms of before or after significantly devastating local hurricanes. Alicia hit in 1983, when I was 22, just before I became a police officer. Ike hit in 2008, when I was 46, almost 47, after which nobody ever again guessed I was significantly younger than my actual age, or asked me “Where do you get all of your energy?” Harvey hit in 2017, when I was 55, almost 56, after which I no longer felt middle-aged, but truly old, with less energy than my father had in his seventies.

[MistWolf]

I suppose, but nobody celebrated the new millennium on 1/1/2001

I did.

[Darth_Uno]

I grew up in a strict fundie home. Not cult-level weird, just strict. I moved out in 2000, when I was 19. Despite being almost 20 years ago, it’s still a monumental event in my mind, and the divider between two eras of my life.

So a calendar date doesn’t make me pause for reflection. But pushing 40 does. Not that 40 is super special either, but it’s a good point to gauge where you were, are, and want to be.