"Yeah Wait, Where DID That Go?"

[TTL News 308]

Recently on r/askreddit this question was posed: "What eventually disappeared and no one noticed?" The responses are interesting. Here's a few examples:

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Kinda surprised I haven't seen this one yet, but Ronald McDonald. You remember the old clown everywhere in and around McDonald's commercials and stores? Gone. Phased out when that "clown scare" prank trend was going around.

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The foil wrapper on chocolate bars.

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Fireflies aka *lightning bugs. I live rural and I used to see hundreds on a warm summer night. Now I get excited if I see just one. I mentioned it to other people who live in the same area as I do and they were just like "Huh. Yeah. You're right!"

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Toys in cereal boxes

Do you have anything to add to this?

[Chris 2,162]

The thing about Monarch butterflies is definitely one of those " I never noticed" thing until I read it somewhere last year. Then I was like, "Wow, they really aren't as prevalent." The fireflies I have noticed previously. 

[Hal 341]

I’m almost positive the absence of the Monarch is due to the Milkweed plant no longer being found in abundance . Sure , a few patches here and there but nowhere near enough to support a good population. In general most people feel Milkweed is just that a worthless weed but far from it . But as a result of roadside and lawn spraying and lack of field edges and hedgerows where it prefers to grow well … so goes the Monarch Butterfly .  

[KarenK 383]

I have wanted to put a butterfly garden in up here since we bought the property.  I have all the perennials picked out after doing a lot of googling on it.  Just need to decide where to put it.

My aunt put all butterfly attracting plants in front of her house when she got it.  Zinnias, milkweed and others.  It's freaking amazing.  Last time I went down to see her I was just surrounded by butterflies just standing her front yard.

[Chris 2,162]

I was thinking this morning, on a local level it seems like Totem Taxi just sort of disappeared/ was replaced and no one really noticed. You don't see those crusty old yellow cabs anymore, do ya?

Also, I can't remember the last time I saw a nun. Where are they hiding?

Michelob and Michelob Light used to be popular. Then all the sudden, *poof* those distinctive gold and silver bottles were seemingly gone. 

And I know we've talked about it before, but the "noon whistle" the local fire departments used to sound every day. 

[Hal 341]

Actually I just take all these little missing things as all a part of changes as I get older but yeah now I’m seeing things going by the wayside now that you bring them up . 

[Chris 2,162]

You know I was thinking on the way home this morning, another thing that used to be really common in homes was aquariums. Especially in the early 80's I seem to remember a lot of people having them. There were multiple fish stores around. Then they just sort of disappeared. 

[Chris 2,162]

Another one of these topics came up on Reddit recently, and something that someone mentioned disappearing was white dog poop. And I thought, "OMG, they're right, you don't see that anymore," LOL!

And apparently there is a good reason for it:

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According to Treehugger, the culprit behind the white dog waste of the past was a surplus in calcium. Dog food used to contain an overabundance of meat and bone meal, both of which are high in the mineral. Whatever the dog couldn't process ended up in its feces, and as the wet matter dried out in the sun, the hard calcium stuck around. This led to crumbly, mummified turds littering our sidewalks and green spaces.

Today, commercial pet food brands are less likely to rely on bone meal for cheap filler. They've added more fiber to their products and lowered the calcium content. The result is healthier, more-naturally looking waste from the general dog population.

 

SOURCE

[Zapp Brannigan 137]

I've noticed the lack of fireflies. I have seen maybe 1 or 2 this year so far and that's it.

[MsKreed 1,181]

After what seemed like decades of not having them around, we actually took note a few years back that we were suddenly seeing fireflies in noticeable numbers.

 

There’s a lot of goldenrod in the outlying fields here, so I think they like it.

[Chris 2,162]

Like the monarch butterfly, fireflies are in danger: 

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More than 170 species of Lampyridae, or light-emitting beetles, light up North America's nights. Worldwide, there are more than 2,000 types – many that have been around for millions of years. 

But some species are threatened with extinction.

Habitat loss, overuse of pesticides, climate change and increased light pollution threaten some fireflies. Yet, these hazards have varying effects on species depending on their genetics and environments.

Several firefly species are at risk, according to the Xerces Society and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened species. The IUCN looked at 128 species and determined 11% were threatened with extinction, and 2% are near threatened.

 

Read the rest here.

I certainly don't see as many as I used to. 

[Ann 264]

1 hour ago, Zapp Brannigan said:

I've noticed the lack of fireflies. I have seen maybe 1 or 2 this year so far and that's it.

I haven’t seen that many either.  Our back yard used to be full of them.  We don’t use any pesticides or harmful stuff so I wonder why.

[KarenK 383]

1 hour ago, Zapp Brannigan said:

I've noticed the lack of fireflies. I have seen maybe 1 or 2 this year so far and that's it.

Most definitely a lot less fireflies.  I'm seeing them but only here and there in random areas.  Thought with all the humidity we would have a ton of them.

My bats have not come back yet either.  I see one, sometimes two of them darting around but there used to be bats all over the place in the past.   I was told by a gal from Cornell that was at our woodfest last year that the bats caught a fungus and it killed them off. She thought they would be back in a few years.

[TTL News 308]

Here's a couple more from Reddit:

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The cents symbol. I didn’t even realize until now that everyone started using $0.69 as a default.

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The fear of quicksand, and the immanent death that went with it.

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Saturday Morning Cartoons

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Handwritten letters quietly disappeared in the era of instant messaging and emails.

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I miss going to message boards and online forums that had an active enough community to be useful. Everything now has to have a f--king Facebook group attached that you may or may not even be approved to join up with, and when/if you do get in, often times most of the discussion is just empty platitudes like “good picture!” or “I remember those days!” , etc.

And this one got a lot of mentions:

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Dead bugs splattered on the windshield. 

 

[Chris 2,162]

5 minutes ago, Elmira Telegram said:

I miss going to message boards and online forums

oof..

[KarenK 383]

5 hours ago, Elmira Telegram said:

The cents symbol. I didn’t even realize until now that everyone started using $0.69 as a default.

If you noticed on the calendar I sent you, I sell use the cents symbol

[Chris 2,162]

I didn’t notice. I’ll have to look. 

[Chris 2,162]

For some reason I was thinking of K-Tel records ads this morning. Weird. 

 

[MsKreed 1,181]

 

On 1/4/2024 at 4:01 PM, KarenK said:

If you noticed on the calendar I sent you, I sell use the cents symbol

I only recently found it on my phone keyboard, by navigating to the "more symbols" icon.  Still don't know how to get it on the "qwerty" keyboard on my laptop. When they rearranged other symbols, they didn't find a new home for it.

 

21 minutes ago, Chris said:

For some reason I was thinking of K-Tel records ads this morning. Weird. 

I get a channel on Sling called Buzzr that runs old game shows. I only catch a few that I liked “back in the day”. A lot are ones I never cared for and don’t tune into.....but I’ve seen ads that, during certain time blocks, they apparently play the original vintage commercials along with the show.

I bet some of those ads would be more entertaining than the lot of the actual shows.

[Chris 2,162]

5 minutes ago, MsKreed said:

I bet some of those ads would be more entertaining than the lot of the actual shows.

Some nights we will pull up blocks of old commercials on Youtube and watch them when there's nothing else on. It is really entertaining.