It feels important to clarify I want to clarify that most of the times I've heard Ray say "wuckles", it hasn't sounded like it had an exclamation mark. It's not a shout. It's not an big or emotional expression. It's closer to the energy level of someone saying "huh" or "lol" or "wowzers" than the energy level of someone saying "fuck" or bursting into laughter or shouting at someone on the road.
1If this was basically an oversight that went viral to ultimately billions of people that's hilarious.
Maybe this is a general gestalt, but I'm curious if you have specifics that you're thinking of when you say this.
I think it would be appropriate to include a link to that site in the prior comment. I would go check it out!
Maybe some people need this advice. But most people read dramatically too few books, and in particular too few books from before the 21st century.
What books from before the 20th century should most people read?
I'm claiming that if the problem is about filtering being hard, in particular, one should be able to munchkin effective filtering methods.
I'm skeptical that that's a good description of the problem though.
This seems surprising. Did servants not know that they had better-for-them options before WWI? What caused that ignorance and how was it stable?
I love this kind of economic analysis of cultural trends and I'd eagerly consume more of this kind.
I didn't realize that the reason why house servants largely disappeared in the first half of the 20th century was because household appliances were partial substitutes for them! But that makes perfect sense!
Why are dance halls niche these days? There are many factors, but the single biggest one is recorded music. It used to be that all music was live. Live music was a coordination point where everyone could form new social connections. And once you're there you might as well dance.
This explanation doesn't ring true to me?
The claim as I understand it:
Music, when it couldn't be recorded, was expensive to produce, and so usually produced and consumed as a club good? The cost of the music creation was amortized[1] over everyone coming to a social event about it, which had the happy side effect of causing there to be social events of this type at all (which had positive externalities on dating).
But when the price of music falls, it becomes much easier for people to purchase music on their own instead of purchasing it collectively as a club good. As a consequence, there's a much weaker incentive to go to dance halls (since apparently a big chunk of the value was getting to listen to music). So people do that less, and the dance hall scene becomes niche.
Is that right?
This story seems possible, at least. But it seems a little fishy to me that, if dance halls were as awesome for dating as you suggest that a big chunk of the value was getting to listen to music. I'm not clear on why you can't keep doing the "teenagers go dancing" thing, just with recorded music instead of live music.
- ^
Is that the right word? Can you amortize over many people enjoying a good at once instead of over time?
Slightly sharper and more energetic than that, but close.