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The 20’s again...

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17,199
Location
New York City
Eben Byers' bones were dug up forty years after his death and they were still glowing. You can't say that Radithor was mislabled!

There's a very signficant book from 1932 called "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs," by consumer activists Arthur Kallet and Frederick Schlink, in which many of these quack products of the twenties are exposed to the spotlight of scientific rigor -- Radithor is in there, along with such horrors as Kormelu, a thallium-based depilatory that caused not just unwanted hair to fall out, but all the rest of it as well -- and would induce paralysis and/or cancer to boot.

I remember reading this article when it came out in the WSJ in 1990, this is the best on-line copy I could find so far:

"The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off". Wall Street Journal.

http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-radium-water-worked-fine-until-his.html
 
Messages
10,936
Location
My mother's basement
Quackery, while perhaps (and only perhaps) less deadly than it was going back nearly a full century, is still very much with us. Mass media is just loaded with ads for concoctions that in most cases have salubrious effects on nothing other than their promoters’ balance sheets.
 

Tiki Tom

My Mail is Forwarded Here
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3,395
Location
Oahu, North Polynesia
Just as we are talking about the lack of penicillin in the 1920s, in the 2120s they will be saying “can you believe the 2020s? They still did not have a cure for cancer, fusion energy had not been perfected yet, people had to work five day weeks, the world was so polluted back then and ...no one had yet experienced the supreme peace of being integrated into the intellectual and moral artificial intelligence cooperative!”
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
Re: Planning for the next roaring twenties.

How to throw a 1920’s New Year’s Eve party:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/10404483/How-to-throw-a-1920s-cocktail-party.html
  • Send out black and white, art deco party invitations;
  • Invitation should include a one-page list of common 1920s slang phrases.
  • Have a nondescript entrance to your “speakeasy”;
  • Entrance requires a secret password;
  • Encourage guests to dress like an extra in The Great Gatsby: flappers, gangsters, tycoons, and newsboys. Hats, spats, plus fours, dresses with fringe.
  • Have a silent movie playing in the background;
  • Engage a dance-instructor to teach everyone to dance The Charleston;
  • Here’s the sound-track for your party: https://open.spotify.com/album/0vO7F7XD2FawRZNAJp9y29
  • Champagne and period cocktails.
That Spotify sound track has an awful lot of ‘thirties stuff on it. I guess it’s like the “Gay Nineties” nostalgia craze of Geandma’s day, which musically covered the period from 1870 to 1919.
 

Tiki Tom

My Mail is Forwarded Here
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3,395
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Oahu, North Polynesia
Quoted from the article linked below:

Could we see a repeat of the roaring twenties, as the 1920s were known -- years of prosperity, technological innovation and such social developments as women winning the right to vote?

Possibly. But there's unease, along with all the euphoria. The current economic cycle is already the longest in U.S. history and a recession looks inevitable in the new decade -- which also will mark 100 years since the Wall Street crash of 1929….

"In the 2020s it seems inevitable that a world of helicopter money awaits," Deutsche Bank predicts.

That would entail central banks or governments providing citizens with large amounts of money, as though it was being dropped from helicopters, a strategy rejected even by the unorthodox policymakers of the 2010s.

Another radical option under discussion is modern monetary theory, when governments create and spend as much money as needed, so long as inflation stays low.

http://news.trust.org/item/20191227093756-u0bly

What is your “crystal ball” prediction for the 2020s???
 

Turnip

My Mail is Forwarded Here
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3,350
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Europe
1920´s Town Boots and Jarrow Marchers; Cordovan, Leather and Dainite soled.

full
 

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