Ordinary abundance

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard.

A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

I really loved this, thanks for sharing

For the last year I've been on well water for the first time in my life. High iron, manganese and iron bacteria - safe, but tasted eggy and ruined shower heads, dishwashers, clothes, washing machine, kettles...

I just finished installing a whole-house filter & softener system and everyone is delighted. I told my kids that once a month we're going to serve untreated well-water with dinner, so we stay grateful for it.

This is an interesting premise, and I would like to read the article, but the weird scrolling makes that almost impossible; the pictures overlay the text to such an extent that I can only read a couple of lines at a time. I wish there were some browser feature that would force sites to use normal scrolling.

the future is a nice place to be, if our bikes still had pedals we couldn't hang them at the wall after commuting

I think about this stuff a lot. It's crazy how I, like, water plants with clean water that's literally on tap. Warm showers on-demand are a daily miracle.

Immediate illumination for why people don't quite feel like royalty despite all this would be achieved by replacing the aesthetic of this presentation with mis-matched uncomfortable and ugly furniture picked up off the side of the road, in a cheap split-level or ratty single wide with carpet that should have been replaced a decade ago and fucked-up window blinds et c., a kitchen table piled with a mess of homework and a pile of 20 medical bills and "EOB" letters and crap generated by a single brief visit to a hospital some of which are almost certainly in error and will take hours on the phone to correct, and so on. The presentation is upper-middle-class and comfy as hell. It's an aesthetic that my family is only slowly and haltingly and with much bargain-hunting (even Ikea is kinda spendy, IMO) struggling toward even with top-10% (for the US, let alone globally!) household income, and will never quite achieve because reality doesn't look like that. I know it's not the main point of the site, but the way they've elected to illustrate this notion is interesting in that it suggests a critique of, or elaboration on, the actual main point.

Like, I'm scrolling through this and my thoughts are on how expensive this environment is. I don't have my spices in cute well-sealing matching jars that look nice on a shelf... because that shit's expensive. Mine are mostly stale... because non-stale spices are expensive and take effort and education to track down. Hell some of mine are probably contaminated with heavy metals and I don't know it. Behind all of this is price-anxiety and ambient stress.

The core idea is sound and worth highlighting, but the reality of "so much is available extremely cheap in nearly unlimited quantity and variety! Isn't that fantastically amazing!" is exhausted parents doom-scrolling the Netflix catalog for an hour before going to bed having watched nothing, as they stress about whether their kids' dental appointment tomorrow is going to turn up anything so expensive they have to defer it and scrimp and save to pay for it.

I can’t imagine ever affording such a nice apartment.

Another good article on this topic for those who enjoyed: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/we-live-like-roy...

All true but a reminder that basic health care, natural foods and a safe environment are out of reach for too many. We have definitely improved on the distribution of foods and even safe environments, but there are insitutional blockages that would go a long way.

Sometimes I think that the truly wealthy and powerful are convinced suffering is necessary lest we devolve into universe 25