Pessimists Archive

The moon landing was only universally popular once it became a nostalgic symbol of the 'good old days.'

Americans writers mass-panicked about AI causing a job apocalypse for new graduates. There's just one problem: There WAS no job apocalypse. The data was cherry-picked. noahpinion.blog/p/stop-pretend…

"so impressed with the pernicious influence of the novel that he advocates legislation to prevent the sale of works of fiction to women and children." (1902)

Opposition to the moon mission is a *great* example how we memory hole pessimism in ways that distorts our understanding of history and progress buff.ly/1q248ce

I was barely 2 when JFK announced his moonshot plan, but I never knew until now how little support it had at the time (and how big a role the Soviets played in the programme’s continuation). Great post from @pessimistsarc: buff.ly/1q248ce

Thanks to my late uncle, I fell in love with computers and games early. After communism collapsed, he co-founded the first PC shop in Lublin — and that’s how I got to mess with an IBM XT and 360kB floppies. One day, on one of those floppies, I found a mysterious folder: XXX. I…

1994 floppy disk porn panic

The @nytimes deemed space travel impossible in 1920 - something it would issue a correction for in 1969 as Apollo 11 approached the moon:

One of the most interesting retcons of modern US history. Since the '90s or so, the moon landing has come to represent a bygone era of American can-do optimism. But the Apollo Project never polled well, and even JFK was losing interest before he died.

put a bit differently: the moon landing seems to have been a story of govt bureaucracy doing a big hard thing well, despite public indifference/disapproval ... not a story of bygone optimism among voters about the importance of great big extraterrestrial science projects

Nostalgia forgets pessimism: It forgets the moon mission was unpopular It forgets novel reading was frowned upon It forgets the walkman was anti-social It forgets the bicycle 'corrupted' women After all, why would anyone have thought the good old days were bad?

The moon mission was only universally popular once it became a nostalgic symbol of the 'good old days.' newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/most-america…

“Dr. Meyers expressed doubt as to the benefits of modern inventions. He blamed the radio for causing the death of eight persons listening in on the Dempsey-Tunney fight reports...” - York News-Times York, Nebraska • Mon, Sep 26, 1927

There was a medieval moral panic about pointy shoes. "Fashionable pointy-toed shoes called poulaines were alleged to promote sexual deviancy and, as a resulting sanction from God, were blamed for bringing about the plague." In 1362 Pope Urban V tried to ban them... via @BBC…