I’ve seen them up in northern Alaska. They were extremely bright, almost entirely green, and their motion resembled curtains waving in a light breeze.
The farther north, the more color you register, of course. For us in middle Nebraska, an hour from the Kansas border, it looks like fog, but then your brain starts registering the quick movement and swirls, and the eerie “spotlight straight up into space” effect. Then your peripheral vision registers the color.
I certainly don’t regret the “partying” chapter of my life, sure when you look back at it a lot of money was blown and generally the aspect of partying is overrated once the chapter is over. Because that is what it was supposed to be— a CHAPTER. Going out and getting bombed several times a week, or even MONTH, feels more like work than fun now. For one— booze just beats the living shit out of you once you approach middle age. You simply cannot sleep four hours a night while going nuts five teams a week once you’re older. I couldn’t do that now if I wanted to. And two— adulthood has more responsibilities. You have to BE somewhere tomorrow. You have a FAMILY at home. You have things to LOSE from being stupid. Not worth it.
For they most part yeah, they are greyish to slightly greenish pillars of light. During the super intense storm we had in May even in our somewhat light polluted area you could clearly see pink and green and the dancing of them.
I’ll be 40 in two months. I was just telling my younger brother, who’s still partying every night with friends in his early thirties, that I’ve come to the realization I wasted my thirties partying. That I am disappointed in myself for not moving on to larger life goals, home ownership, wife, kids, etc. He has no gravity in life and refuses to do anything about it. He and I are in similar situations I think. Both of us have unresolved anxiety and depression issues that just lead to avoiding big life decisions. He’s just worse off as he refuses to seek treatment for anything or lift a finger to do anything about it. The thing is, and I think goes to wider societal issues and changing norms, is modern life lets you avoid gravity if you want. You can live in an apartment and play video games your whole life. You can forego kids and just travel with your spouse as DINKs. Putting together a career and family is hard fucking work in the face of much easier less stressful options. Young men seem to be dropping out of this at a higher pace. Less likely to have, maintain, or search for full time work. Less likely to be in a relationship or even seek them out. Why put yourself out there when Black Ops 6 is coming out in a few weeks? Seems like the ability to tolerate any amount of stress has dropped off a cliff in the past couple of decades.
I mean I get it, the great irony of more online interaction is that it led to more people shutting themselves off from the world in favor of virtual ones. There are people that spend all day on Twitter bitching about politics. All day long, just getting into pissing matches over minutae that never matters. God help us if we ever invent real holodecks. It would probably be the last thing we ever invent. My first roommate in college would complain that he never meets any girls. He spent all his free time playing World of Warcraft, eating takeout and looking like shit. He eventually just failed out. Now it's even worse because you can have a parasocial relationship with an OnlyFans cam whore.
Since the 70's, marriage rates have dropped 60% or something like that? In the 80s, there was a comedian that did the joke "half of marriages end in divorce . . . but, hey, the other half end in death!" Was it Dennis Miller? Or, maybe somebody obscure? I can't remember. Anyway, I think people have started looking at some of that data and just aren't getting married as much. It doesn't mean you can't have children, but it's less likely. People are waiting longer, when they do get married, and then, they're like, hey I kinda like the DINK lifestyle. Birthrates are down globally, not just in the U.S. Just interesting trends. 1918 seems like SOOOO long ago. But, I was born closer to 1918 than my birthday is to today. The advancements have impacted culture and health and lifestyle, and I think I have more in common with 1918ers than I will to 2068ers.
I think a big part is men don't rely as much on women for domestic stability and women don't rely on men as much for financial stability. If women are making their own money, why spend time finding a guy to be a breadwinner? If men can cook, clean, do laundry, or just not give a shit as much if those things are done why find a woman to do them. And with that, standards for dating go up quite a bit. If i can do domestic chores, she needs to bring more to the table. And if she earns good money, I need to bring more to the table too. It's not the most endearing thought, but how many of our grandfathers (or generations past that) married our grandmothers because they could cook, clean, whatever? And they sure as shit weren't going to do that any of that. A stat like this made its rounds on Twitter/Facebook/Reddit whatever and someone pointed out that it wasn't until something like 1974 when a women could open her own bank account. Might be a good reason why so many women got married and/or stayed in terrible marriages.
That's so crazy. I think women could open their own in the 60s, but it required the signature of their husbands, lol. There used to be some decent tax breaks by being married, too? I think the benefit of combining the standard deduction still applies, if only one spouse is going to work, but I don't think it really matters if both work full time. Certainly not my area of expertise, though.