World War 2 vastly overshadows all other conflicts. Something like 3.7% of the global population died. Some individual countries lost more than 10% of their populations. No other conflict, or group of regional conflicts, comes anywhere close.
I wish the graph in the link had an option to normalize by population. I bet a graph of war deaths as a percent of global population would look very peaceful over the past 50 years.
Since becoming a parent my nightmares all involve my kids being harmed: crashing their bicycles, getting hit by cars, falling and hitting their heads, etc. It's awful.
Say out loud to yourself, "What the hell is this?" or, "Why did they do it this way?" once in a while. Everyone around will think you know exactly what you're doing.
Before the internet, there really was only 1 viewpoint and 1 viewpoint only on the news.
Absolutely, though it went beyond the news. Culture in general was much more monolithic. You could start a conversation with any random person about the previous evening's episode of Gunsmoke or MASH or Cheers and there was a very good chance they had watched it. It's hard to overstate how much more diverse culture has become in the Internet era, for better and for worse.
Yep, I dialed directly into a modem on the far end and used a terminal emulator to navigate the service. A local office supply store had a cork board by the door where people could post events or sell used stuff, and a few BBSs had their info posted there.
The BBS I used actually partnered with the office supply store to sell credits. I would go to the customer service counter and buy a piece of paper with an access code that I could then redeem for hours on the server. That's how the BBS paid for their hardware and phone lines.
In the '90s I occasionally dialed into a local BBS. Simple as it was, it felt like a glimpse of the future. Universities and businesses had network connections, even if it was only a LAN, but home computers at that point were typically standalone devices that you used by yourself. The idea of interacting with other far-away people from my house was so incredibly cool.
For that bolt, I'd say give it 5 ugga-duggas and call it good.