It still smells of automotive exhaust. So they might have idea after all.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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And plane and train.
Smoking rates were around 40% up through the 1970s. If you didn't smoke, you almost certainly got it second hand. Which implies that up through the smoking bans of the 1990s, everyone (except maybe some farmers and other outdoorsy types) were on a psychoactive drug 24/7 at least a little.
I mean sure, nicotine is technically a psychoactive drug. But so is caffeine and theobromine, so should we stop giving kids chocolate? Ban all coffee shops? Honestly not sure what your point is here. Everything is drugs, at least a little.
That basically is my point. It's eye opening for people who don't think about drugs that way.
Ah okay i misunderstood. Regardless there were far more harmful things influencing everyone in the 70s than nicotine, like the thousands of toxic additives and carcinogens in secondhand smoke, or the lead in the paint and the gasoline.
The difference is, the rest of them are not being force fed to those who don't want it.
Cigarette smoke is literally poisoning the lifeline of humans ^[and everything that interacts with the atmosphere, including my computer. How many times have I had to get gunk off of the dust filters and fans and I tend to seal my room a lot more than the normal person].
Friends and I love to dance to live music, and back in the day this was often in a local bar, where people were drinking and smoking. It was policy to remove our clothing outside to let it 'air out' rather than bring that smoke smell into the house. Of course we were all dancing HARD, in a smoke filled rooms. I wondered if I was in training to be a fire fighter, or what?
It used to be a constant conversation when we would go out to eat. My dad would say, “I think someone is smoking in this section!”
We visited friends in Serbia in summer. It took me back to this smoking world I had long forgotten. Inside smoking and non smoking tables in crowded cafes side by side. And the craziest part was the indoor playgrounds for kids with cafes adjacent or part of it where you could also smoke (and buy hard liquor). But you know what, my kid could play for less than 1,5€ an hour on a rainy day, even when I lived in Munich there were like 2 indoor playgrounds in a 50 km radius and they cost a fortune. They had them everywhere for dirt cheap. So, I'll happily get off my high horse.
Look at pictures of people in their 30s back in the 70s, and compare them to people in their 30s today. It's a massive difference, I hypothesize that it's the leaded gasoline and secondhand smoke that makes it although I'm not aware of any science to back that up.
It's still this way in the place where I live 😖
I hate nicotine so fucking much
They apparently found a cure for cancer.
But not for brain rot
I wonder if our current world has a specific smell that people from the 80s would notice
Cannabis. At least most major cities in Europe/North America I find it really common now to openly smell cannabis all hours of the day. Combination of the strains being MUCH stronger and legalization. Even just 20 years back, of course in the Haight in SF or certain parts of NYC you'd smell it, or outside clubs/bars at night. But today I walk through Downtown SF at 830am and smell it every other block. Was in the design district in NYC a few weeks back and same deal.
There's more methane in the atmosphere now. It probably smells like a fart.
~~Methane needs 5-16PPM [PDF] to be detectable with human smell. Atmospheric Methane is at about 2ppm. So the vast majority of people would not notice a difference. ~~
nvm see below
methane doesn't have an odor, you linked to the data sheet of trichlorofluoromethane, a completely different molecule
The gas in your house is artificially made stinky so that people would notice leaks and blow their house up, which happened a lot back when the stinky chemicals weren't added and it was odorless
I'm hoping car exhaust takes that role.
I'm old enough to remember the same things on airplanes.
I remember when I was a teenager working in restaurants during high school I’d come home and shower afterwards. when I’d wash my hair it’d reek of cigarette smoke because I’d spent the last 5-9 hours standing in a giant plume of it.
I picked up smoking in college, I wonder if that was a factor. Thankfully I quit, eventually
You used to be able to light the rivers on fire too but Nixon helped ruin that.