Path: ...!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Joy Beeson Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom Subject: Things I never thought would disappear Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 18:54:10 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 55 Message-ID: <95lggjdsbkjgknic0e49dodeemhq3je3qc@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2024 00:54:13 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9b729fd297c96346aa603e4b8650e184"; logging-data="3512987"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18iv9p8BXovfgG4wzY4CsNx9z3JAbDMZwc=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:HAJ25+tgv2Urm7BIicREJ6PIDtY= X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 3.2/32.830 Bytes: 2342 Things I never thought would disappear: Stockings shaped to the leg wool socks unbleached muslin plain cream canned tomatoes (You can get what we used to call "salad tomatoes", but not tomatoes that are simply canned.) There's not even a retronym for petroleum jelly, which has been replaced by white petroleum jelly (What's now called "white petroleum jelly" didn't even exist, at least not where laymen could see it.) Paperback books the size and shape of paperback books Newspapers. Replaced by press-release papers that are fading fast. Old newspapers as a cheap, ubiquitous, and inexhaustable resource for every purpose. Definitive stamps that allowed one to mail a letter without affixing an opinion. I didn't even know that plain, ordinary not-special stamps *had* a name. Road maps. Street signs are at risk of heading for the endangered list. I got very lost after one was rotated ninety degrees and nobody bothered to twist it back. User manuals. Nowadays, the time to go obsolete is about half the time it takes to write a halfway-decent manual. The World Wide Web. Nodes are still around, but one can't crawl from one to another to another. Mattresses that it's possible to tuck a sheet under. Beds that one can sit on. Carpet samples -- Joy Beeson joy beeson at centurylink dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/