Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Not all heroes wear capes.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Consistently wrong since 2002

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Anachronisms (Open Thread)

Anachronisms (Open Thread)

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We saw this inoperable pay phone during our recent travels:

image

It’s rare enough to see one these days, so I sent a photo to the kiddo with an explanatory note.

The phone was attached to the most god-awful dive we’ve visited in a while. Never again.

What anachronisms have you noticed in your world? Open thread!

ETA: The fucking picture is sideways for some reason! Not sure why, but I can’t fix it. FYWP!

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    does Mitt Romney count as an anachronism?

    Donald J. Trump ‏@ realDonaldTrump 32m32 minutes ago
    When Mitt Romney asked me for my endorsement last time around, he was so awkward and goofy that we all should have known he could not win!

  6. 6.

    Jager

    I sopped in a dive bar in New Hampshire with a couple of pals of mine. After a couple of beers, I needed to use the facility, written in Magic Marker over the urinal was “I FCKED YOUR MOTHER!” underneath, in nice, neat block printing was “Dad, please go home you’re drunk.”

    BTW, The dump’s pay phone was on the wall right by the stage, so if the band was playing it was impossible to use during a set or to pretend you were somewhere other than a dive bar. And it was one of those call anywhere in the US for 25 cents a minute phones.

  7. 7.

    hamletta

    I’m experiencing the opposite: All the King’s Men. Only half paying attention, but every so often I catch a bit and Williemania sounds like Trump Nation.

    Some things never change.

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Nina Totenberg ‏@ NinaTotenberg 3h3 hours ago
    #SCOTUS sources say Cruz asked to sit w Scalia clerks @ funeral. They said no. Then GOP leadership said no bc he wasn’t 1 of them either.

  15. 15.

    Ruemara

    pardon my rant, but I rather have to. I’ve been waiting for my diagnostic results all day & no one is getting back to me. You’d think that if you’re dealing with something with the potential to bounce through your veins and give you a not so nice day, you could convince a hospital & a medical group to speed up a notch AND FUCKING CALL YOU! If anything goes wrong because of these backwoods idiots, I authorize any legal eagles here to sue on behalf of my estate and donate any cash to the Balloon Juice foundation for pets & lost mustard.
    No one can even tell me if they remembered to talk to each other. Nit. Fucking. Wits.

  16. 16.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @raven:
    Written on the stall door at Ramstien AB c1970
    I’m so short I walked out of here without opening this door

  19. 19.

    Splitting Image

    Anachronisms?

    Well, I fired up the old Amiga for a few games of Lemmings and Populous II. Does that count?

  21. 21.

    TaMara (BHF)

    BTW, in some states (Colorado is one) gas stations have to have access to a phone in case of fire emergency. So if the station isn’t open 24/7 with phone access, there will be a payphone.

  22. 22.

    Ruemara

    Oddly, since I’m experiencing human failings all around, the anachronism is… Humans. If I come back, it’s as an advanced nanoparticulate lifeforms. Which is close enough to our coalition of cells with delusions of grandeur.

  23. 23.

    Mustang Bobby

    @raven: Runner machine? You mean “rubber”?

    Spotted in a men’s room in a theatre in Santa Fe: “My mother made me a homosexual” followed by “If I supply the yarn, can she make me one, too?”

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Must be a mainland thing.

    Pay phones readily found here.

    Although re-learning how to use the newfangled fancy-schmancy ones which accept credit cards and offer who knows what other features is another thing. Especially in some locations because the bright tropical sun washes out the digital instruction screen.

    Sort of repeated from below:

    There is a (very) remote possibility it could come down to Dubie vs. Blunt in the Missouri senatorial election.

  26. 26.

    divF

    If you need me I’ll be at Frozen Tundra 6-9290.

    This was part of the running gag in Play It Again, Sam, in which Tony Roberts’ character kept calling in to his office to leave phone numbers where he could be reached. If you are below a certain age, you have no idea why he would be doing such a thing (doesn’t he have a cell phone?).

    Not to mention the use of an exchange name.

  27. 27.

    Nate Dawg

    Just asked my husband how long before the Republican establishment starts legitimizing Trump and getting on board.

    He said “about now”. Sure enough, we get home and see endorsements, VP talk for Rubio, strategiests saying RNC figures will start endorsing soon.

    Wow. Can you imagine if Rosie O’Donnell had run as a Democrat, and then said the most ridiculously left-wing things in a crass manner, and then won a few primaries and the DNC caved and got on board? This is surreal.

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    @TaMara (BHF): Not at all — thank you! I suspect it’s a FYWP issue with iThangs. I’ve never had that issue on my PC laptop, but it occasionally crops up on phone or tablet.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    What anachronisms have you noticed in your world?

    Functioning government.

    TV news.

    Meat space presidential candidates.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @raven

    A favorite, spotted in an obscure rest room at college:

    “Nietzsche is pietzsche.”

    (Obscure because it was on a top floor accessible by only 6 long flights of stairs. All else that was on the entire floor was the suite of rooms used by the college radio station, some storage rooms, several abandoned offices, a long obsolete, disused several thousand gallon cast iron water tank and blocked off stairs leading to the structurally unsound and unsafe attic room under the dome of the building.)

  36. 36.

    Mike in NC

    Have encountered gas stations in several rural towns in VA and NC — just in the last few years — where the pumps are so old they cannot accept credit or debit cards. Only cash payments to Snuffy Smith are acceptable.

  37. 37.

    Isobel

    So many anachronisms here in northern Ghana. The biggest one that comes to mind is paper everything – hospital rosters, police blotters, visa registrations. There isn’t reliable electricity, so everything must be done by hand. I’m currently working on a population census for a local village, all completely by hand.

    It really makes you realize how amazing computers are.

  38. 38.

    Joel

    Used to live across the street from a payphone. Was still there as of 2014, and people still used it.

    Does the airport count as an anachronism? Because until very recently, Pittsburgh Airport was pretty damned dated. Love the fiberglass statue of Franco Harris, though.

  39. 39.

    Calouste

    @lamh36: My answer to that, without reading the article, is that if the electorate has the choice between two candidates who run away from the current President, they will always pick the one who runs away the farthest and the fastest. Once you set the narrative that the current party in power is not good (enough), you give the voters an easy excuse to vote against them.

  43. 43.

    PurpleGirl

    Not sure if this counts but at Elmhurst Hospital Center there are signs proclaiming “Just in Time” Windows 7. Really? I know large organizations often do not change the OS right away to a new one (Hell, I’m still using Win XP at home) but “Just in Time” Windows 7.

    ETA: Betty, the picture okay to me, the phone is in the correct orientation.

  44. 44.

    Poopyman

    I look around at work and realize I’m the anachronism. Still 40 months away. I don’t know if I can hold out that long….

    Not an anachronism: Bumper sticker on a big duallie pick-em-up:

    I’m so gay I can’t even drive straight

    That someone would put that on their vehicle in not-urban Maryland and not get keyed is beyond me, but here (finally!) we are.

  46. 46.

    RSA

    What anachronisms have you noticed in your world?

    My smart phone has a “Call” icon shaped like a handset that appeared as early as the 1930s, and the “Voicemail” icon looks like either the innards of a cassette or a reel-to-reel recording machine. Some anachronisms may never die out.

  47. 47.

    Eric U.

    I just realized I have been wearing my computer glasses all evening. Working right now, but my real glasses are at work. Oh well, it’s nice having laser sharp vision for a while, although I might start getting a headache soon.

  51. 51.

    Mike in NC

    Sometimes in our travels we also pass ancient motels where the signs still advertise “air conditioning” and “color TV”.

  54. 54.

    satby

    No anachronisms. I thought I was having an asthma flare up last night after sorting and clearing out a lot of old papers and stuff, so I took my prednisone and hit the inhalers hard. Turns out, I caught a cold which is now running wild because the prednisone dialed back my immune response.

    Blizzard continuing until tomorrow afternoon here, so schools may be off again. Indiana schools all started closing by noon today. And by Saturday, we’re expecting highs back in the 50s. Climate change is weird.

  55. 55.

    ? Martin

    @lamh36:

    I’m sorry, but this reads like complete BS to me

    Yep. Trumps unfavorables are very high, and those tend to not go down.

    That said, I wonder why McConnell hasn’t told Obama that if Trump is the nominee for the bench that he’ll get a hearing immediately.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    An anachronism by necessity that sticks in the mind was entering the booking office in London to arrange and purchase tickets for an airline flight.

    All the business was transacted by candlelight.

    (Rolling blackouts of the mid-70s during the U.K. coal miner strike.)

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruemara:

    Ugh. And, of course, if you flip out on them, they just get all snotty, so all you can do is grit your teeth and keep insisting they do their goddamned job.

    I still can’t figure out why certain people went into nursing without realizing it’s a customer service job, but those people exist and make it harder for the truly dedicated ones to do their jobs.

  60. 60.

    Ohio Mom

    @Ruemara: Waiting for medical test results is the worst. If they are going to dilly-dally like that, they ought to give you some Ativan for the wait. Could you sic your primary care doc on them?

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @satby:

    My brother in law is flying into the leading edge of that blizzard on his way home to Chicago today. Meanwhile, it’s 80 degrees here in sunny Los Angeles. He was a little reluctant to get on the plane today.

  71. 71.

    raven

    I have a 50 Cal Double Barrel Purdey Rifle that was bought by “Captain Lowry” in 1860! My research leads me to believe he took it with him to New Zealand in 1861.

  77. 77.

    Pete Downunder

    How about qwerty keyboards? They’re everywhere and come from a time of mechanical typewriters to slow typists down to avoid jamming.

  80. 80.

    Eric S.

    @divF: I was rewatching season 1 of the Sopranos and chuckled at the characters going to pay phones to make anonymous calls.

    Similarly, in Godfather I they learn where the meet up is when the corrupt police chief leaves the restaurant phone number with his precinct.

  81. 81.

    Gravenstone

    @Mike in NC: We actually have a station in a town near here that has the old mechanical pumps, with the reset levers that cover the handle rests when the pump is use. I hadn’t seen any of those in the better part of 30 years.

  83. 83.

    PurpleGirl

    @Ruemara: Gee, I had a sonogram of both legs done and as the operator was doing the exam he was explaining to me what was showing on the screen. At the end he was able to tell me that my veins didn’t show any clots. Yes, they sent a formal report to the doctor who ordered the test but the operator was able to explain things to me as he did the tests.

    I hope you hear from the medical people sooner rather than later and that the news is good.

  84. 84.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    One friend, who owns multiple swords (upwards of a dozen), has a T-shaped contraption in the back yard.

    He hangs leftover spaghetti from the crosspiece and practices his sword strokes to cut it into smaller pieces for the birds to come and eat.

    Another friend is very active in the SCA and makes his own chain mail.

  85. 85.

    Gravenstone

    The pay phone at a dive bar reminds me of when we were growing up. Our phone was ###-5090 (still is,actually). The payphone outside a little dive bar in a nearby town within the same exchange was ###-9050. Made for some occasionally hilarious/awkward calls coming in.

  87. 87.

    Glidwrith

    @Ruemara: I have had a nurse tell me that a patient didn’t call THEM to get test results. This was in reference to someone testing diabetic with a glucose reading over 400. And the nurse just shrugged off calling her.

    Deep breaths – we are here for you.

  90. 90.

    Roger Moore

    @Pete Downunder:

    How about qwerty keyboards? They’re everywhere and come from a time of mechanical typewriters to slow typists down to avoid jamming.

    This has been pretty conclusively debunked. The thing about keys jamming is actually that they designed the keyboard so that common successive letters were on opposite sides of the keyboard, which actually speeds things up because it’s faster to alternate hands. The main evidence about the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard was a badly designed study that was run by Dvorak himself. Better designed, more recent studies don’t find much difference.

  91. 91.

    NotMax

    @Eric S.

    Back in the day, a hint furtively passed around for those traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike was to stop at each rest area and check under the shelf of each pay phone, as supposedly that was where packets of cash were often taped for pick-up by mobsters.

  92. 92.

    satby

    @Mnemosyne: Hope he gets in! I heard it was worse southeast than up by O’Hare. It’s worse in Indiana than here, part of the highway (80/94 I think) was shut down for a bit, so I heard. Not a day for travel around here, for sure.

  95. 95.

    Gravenstone

    @NotMax: Doesn’t seem like one would be too “lucky” to actually find such a cache. I doubt the mob had much of a sense of humour about monies going missing.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    @Gravenstone

    One time, an acquaintance moved and had to apply for a new phone number. The following conversation ensued:

    Me: By the way, did you get your phone installed?
    Her: Yes, finally.
    Me: What’s the number?
    Her: Nothing.

    Turns out the number she was assigned was xxx-0000.

  98. 98.

    01jack

    Anachronism?

    I have some of those sideways quarters we used to need for the pay phones.

    Actually, though, I sometimes come across quarters that had once been painted red, though the paint is mostly worn off now. Bars that had coin jukeboxes used to use painted quarters as house freebies that the bartender could give out. The vending machine company would know to separate the painted ones out from their
    take.

  100. 100.

    Roger Moore

    @NotMax:
    Hmm. When I told my father my phone number (xxx-1536), he said it would be easy to remember because it’s a nice round number- in hexadecimal (0x600). The funny thing is that I had chosen it from the list they gave me for that exact reason. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  102. 102.

    MomSense

    My son is anachronistic. I thought he was playing a Lightnin Hopkins record, but he was playing something improvised. It was really good and it’s a shame more people can’t enjoy it.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Completely anecdotal, but apparently some of my work friend’s Black in-laws in Mississippi are saying they like Trump. I do not get it. However, I’m not sure they said they would actually *vote* for the guy, much less vote for him over the Democrat.

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    @schrodinger’s cat

    Have a key wind pocket watch from the 1880s.

    Also a stack of sheepskin land grants and manumission contracts and such, some dating back to the mid 1600s (with the royal seal) that really ought to do something with one of these days.

    Among other things kicking around the abode which are more than 100 years old.

  109. 109.

    Feathers

    @divF: I remember the long ago times when I interned on Capitol Hill. People in the office had to sign out to where they were going so they could be reached in an emergency. There were certain places which were in fact pseudonyms for the local bars. The only one I still remember is that a meeting at “The Labor Department” meant that someone could, in fact, be reached at The Irish Times. Tell the kids now that people didn’t have cell phones, you would just start calling bars if the boss was looking for them, and you felt kind.

  110. 110.

    Technocrat

    What anachronisms have you noticed in your world?

    None in my house, which is oddly depressing since I’m in my 50’s. We have some antiques, but that’s not the same.

  113. 113.

    Cmm

    I have several stock photo catalogs from the early to mid 2000s, just before it became practical to have online portfolios and then things like shutter stock.

    I worked a hit and run wreck where the driver took out a pole that had the wires that were providing service to the pay phone kiosk on the other side of the street. The wire was attached well enough that the crash yanked the whole kiosk out of the ground. This is right by a huge apartment complex with mostly poor residents. While we were out there, at least 5 people wandered by and said some variation of “goddammit that was the only working pay phone left around here!” Which made me remember that in my early days as a patrol officer (all the way back in 2004-2005) one of the nuisance calls we got dispatched to a lot were 911 hang ups from pay phones. And then I realised how few of those calls we’d gotten in the last few years. Hadn’t even noticed. Kinda like how I looked up one day and realised that the ads for long distance services and phone cards that had been inescapable in the 90s had completely disappeared.

    Oh that’s another anachronism–while cleaning out an old storage area at work I found an old AOL disk–speaking of things ubiquitous in the 90s…

  114. 114.

    E

    I live in a smallish rural town. Right on Main Street is a working pay phone IN A WORKING BOOTH, WITH A DOOR ON IT, but best of all is the sign on the phone that says, “Local Calls Free.” All true.

    Oh P.S. it’s right next to the public drinking fountain, another thing you see less often these days.

  115. 115.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    Ha! My father had a reel-to-reel copy of that on Okinawa in ’67 or ’68. Not sure how well it holds up after all these years, but it’s interesting as a historical artifact.

  121. 121.

    AxelFoley

    @Calouste:

    @lamh36: My answer to that, without reading the article, is that if the electorate has the choice between two candidates who run away from the current President, they will always pick the one who runs away the farthest and the fastest. Once you set the narrative that the current party in power is not good (enough), you give the voters an easy excuse to vote against them.

    And that’s exactly what Sanders is doing. In that way, he’s no different than the GOP.

  122. 122.

    Big Picture Pathologist

    @Baud:

    The advantage to cassettes is that if you are prone to breaking out in dance that you don’t have to worry about a record needle jumping.

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