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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
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20 Jun, 30 tweets, 13 min read
1/Just for fun, here's a thread comparing retrofuturist art from the mid 20th century with the reality today!

Some sources of art:

1. gizmodo.com/42-visions-for…

2. pinterest.com/pin/4752705669…
2/Robot warehouses
3/Distance learning
4/Wristwatch TV
5/Global remote job search
6/Driverless car
7/Electronic home library
8/Robot waiter
9/Electric car
10/Voice controlled cash register
11/Universal video surveillance
12/Non-invasive radiation surgery
13/Robotic farms
14/Tissue culture meat
15/Office of the future with mini-fridge and computers
16/Fancy downtowns with outdoor dining
17/Beach vacation with strange vehicles
18/Restaurants with self-ordering
19/Home of the future with tasteless glass-bottom pool and iPad
20/Flash Gordon rocket ship
21/Roomba
22/Face shield masks
23/Riding mower with cab
24/Super-fast futuristic train
25/Giant vegetables
26/Excessively large TVs
27/Modern social relations
28/Spending way too much time in the bathroom
29/Elon Musk and Grimes
30/Stay tuned for more!

(end)

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
21 Jun
When people ask me what would be the best country for young Americans to live abroad in for 2 years, my answer is, unironically, China.
Some reasons for this:

1. It would help Americans understand China better, and vice versa, thus promoting understanding between the two countries

2. It would teach Americans the difference between $20,000 per capita GDP and $60,000 per capita GDP
Also, it would inspire young Americans to think about growth, and about manufacturing.

The biggest downside would be the air pollution. But China has made substantial progress on cleaning it up, and will probably continue to make progress.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
20 Jun
Have you ever heard of the Moro Crater Massacre?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bat…
You can read Mark Twain's comments on the massacre here. (Scroll down to "Monday, March 12, 1906")

gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/02005…
People ask me: "Noah, where did you learn about all these historical atrocities?"

High, school, folks. AP U.S. History.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
20 Jun
I've always felt that I owed a lot to the book Ender's Game. It was an incredibly uncomfortable read, but it taught me that being a smart kid didn't make me better than the people around me or give me license to screw other people over.
Interestingly it did not give me the idea of being a blogger, since I thought no one would listen to a real blogger 😂
When I was young I told people I didn't like Ender's Game. Then when I got older and realized the value of reading well-written things that made me uncomfortable, I realized I *did* like it.
Read 5 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
19 Jun
It occurs to me: Do we Millennials have a triumphalist fantasy of our own generation? What story do we tell ourselves about how we saved the world?
I guess one problem is that we didn't really *do* much that could be construed as saving the world, even with creative storytelling. We mortgaged our financial future to buy overpriced houses from Boomers, worked for Gen Xers, and encouraged Zoomers to go protest.
The most important and consequential Millennial so far is probably Mark Zuckerberg.
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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
18 Jun
The College Apocalypse is real.
Here are the numbers from 2020

Undergrad enrollment isn't bouncing back yet

npr.org/2021/06/10/100…
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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
17 Jun
This is pretty scary.

foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…
I mean, we can argue back and forth all day about whether the U.S. would go to war with China if all China did was invade Taiwan.

But it's 100% certain that if China launched preemptive strikes on U.S. military forces, we WOULD go to war.
I mean, if China preemptively attacks American forces, it's not even about Taiwan anymore. Taiwan is then a sideshow. At that point it's World War 3.
Read 4 tweets

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