The Onion has always been very political with a liberal slant. I have some of their print collections from the early 2000s and they're similar to today's Onion with maybe a little more edge.
There seems to be a split in my area with small businesses, mostly along generational lines.
The ones run by younger people are very credit-card-first, love not dealing with cash, etc. They usually have one of those Stripe iPad things. If you do pay with cash, they'll get a bit flustered because it breaks their flow.
The ones run by older people are either cash-only or try hard to disincentivize customers from using credit cards, sometimes with signs guilting customers about how much money card companies take from businesses.
It really feels like a generational thing depending on what people are used to. The older shop owners remember when cards were a lot more rare, and they've seen their swipe fee expenditure go up over the years. While the younger owners have only ever lived in a credit card oriented world and just bake the swipe fees into their prices from the beginning.
This is what happened in my childhood home. We lived within a couple miles of a mid-sized airport. We could always hear the planes to some extent, but over time they expanded their cargo operations, which typically fly at night. They also added a new flight path that went directly over our house, so it became common for 747s to fly 2000 feet above us every 15-20 minutes through the night. I was fortunate to be a heavy sleeper.
Chips, along with cereal, are an interesting case where the normal price is crazy high but then they go on sale for a fraction of that with extreme frequency.
There's a store near me that has had a particular $5 chip brand on sale for $2 for well over a year. For cereal, I just go to the cereal aisle and take my pick from the substantial range of cereals that are 50% off at any given time. You're only paying full price if you're picky and insist on one specific item, which to be fair maybe a lot of people are like that.
I'm sure the sales are loss leaders to get people in the store, but I have to wonder if the people who pay $5 are to some extent subsidizing the people who buy them for $2. Most other categories of goods don't seem to go on sale with such frequency or with such deep discounts.
And, if I'm reading the details correctly, it seems like it's going to push developers toward charging recurring subscription fees for their games. If I install a game 20 times in the span of a decade, the devs are being charged over the long term while I only paid once.
As a younger person who strongly prefers black text on white backgrounds, I talked to some of my friends who use dark mode and discovered that they almost exclusively use their screens in dark rooms. Scrolling through their phone in bed with the lights off, for example. And younger PC gamers typically leave their room light off when they're on their computer.
The constant "light mode hurts my eyes!" never made sense to me until I tried using my computer in a completely dark room. So I think the trend over the past decade isn't really dark mode itself, it's more people using screens in dark rooms.
The enrollment numbers are probably for majors, i.e. enrollment count of 5 for the French program means there are 5 students majoring in French. The vast majority of students taking French classes would be taking them for general education requirements (or whatever WVU calls that), or due to other degree programs requiring a language class, or as electives.
At my alma mater, the Philosophy department had something like 10 majors, but the whole department was kept afloat by the Nursing College's requirement for their students to take an ethics class. The philosophy professors would teach a few high-level philosophy courses to tiny classes, and then several massive ethics seminars with hundreds of nursing students.
Yup. The same goes for mathematics programs around the world -- a relatively small number of Math majors, but the departments are kept afloat by teaching calculus courses to everyone going into other science and engineering programs.
I've been on here for a decade. Back in the day, HN really gave off a sense that most users were aspiring entrepreneurs, with a lot more discussion about YC, et al.
I'm American, but I know someone who seems to fit the definition of hikikomori (not just NEET), and it's been interesting to talk with him over the years.
He lives just down the road from me, but we haven't met in person since high school. We only chat over Discord. Any attempt to meet up somewhere, even if he initially seems semi-receptive, is shot down with an excuse. He lives in his childhood bedroom in his parents' house, where he plays video games 12+ hours a day and sleeps the rest of the time. As far as I can tell, he leaves the house when his parents drag him along on trips, but otherwise has no connection to the outside world. His parents are lower-middle class, so this is a huge strain on them and I get the impression that there's some tension going on as he approaches 30.
We started off having a lot in common - I struggled to find a job out of high school, but I put effort into finding one and after several years I have a decent career path. He was shocked when I mentioned that I'd started a job, and he assumed that my parents had forced me to get one. I thought it was really interesting that his mind went there first.
When I lightly approach the topic of employment, it's 50/50 whether he offers an excuse for not having a job (usually depression and/or anxiety) or just says he thinks having a job would suck. It's like he simultaneously believes he's not capable of holding down a job, and also that he just prefers playing video games all day over working. And when I think about the types of jobs that would hire a guy in his late 20s who's never had a job before (grocery store bagger? fast food?), it's a bit understandable.
I think hikikomorism, or at least our Western version of it, comes from an inability to approach some of the leaps of early adulthood. Getting your first job, moving out, going to college, etc. all involve going out of your comfort zone and diving into something unfamiliar and scary, and it seems like these people are absolutely terrified of leaving their comfort zones.
The guy I know definitely wants out, but it just seems insurmountable to him.
I knew one of these guys. A friend, though not one I knew well.
Mostly just a failure to launch situation. He ran into some road blocks, moved in with a (our mutual) friend, and stumbled a few times in life. Smart guy, genuine, but after he got fired for a 2nd time he just kinda gave up.
Couldn't get him out of the house except to get smokes or taco bell. He neglected his appearance and got uncomfortable around people.
He was going to go into the Air Force but ran into issues there and eventually killed himself. Still haunts me, cuz at times he expressed an interest hanging out more and I always thought about reaching out, but didn't...
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