Have you every (finally) noticed that something has changed in the world, but it escaped your attention for a long time? I just figured out one:
Shoelaces. Shoelaces don’t break anymore. Years ago I remember having to change shoelaces on my shoes. I can’t remember having to do that in a LONG time. Shoelaces don’t seem to break anymore.
What about you?
J.
It’s just that shoes don’t last long enough to out last a pair of laces anymore.
Mine do.
I’ve bought like half a dozen pairs of shoelaces for my otherwise durable goretex work shoes. I wish they would stop breaking. 
Not only don’t they break, but the aglets don’t disintegrate anymore either. Remember trying to get the frayed, spit covered end of the lace in the eyelet?
As was pointed out on this very board at some time or other, you don’t see white dog shit anymore. I mean, due to litter laws and such, we’re luckily seeing less altogether, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a pile of white, rocky looking dog poo.
Nail polish bottles don’t seem to become permanently sealed after one use. I don’t know if the formula has changed or I’ve just gotten stronger / man hands, but it was a regular occurrence to literally not be able to get the top of and end up throwing the bottle away.
When I was a small kid back in the 70’s I remember piles of old dog poop in the yard would look like white ash. One day a few years ago I was out in my yard cleaning up after my dogs when I realized that I hadn’t seen white poop like that in years. I asked around and found out that dog food used to use a lot of cheap filler, such as bone meal, which was the cause for the white ashy look.
I believe that’s because dog food is better quality nowadays. It used to have ground-up bone in it, which caused the white colour.
Shoelaces used to be made of natural materials that experienced heavy wear from friction. Then they started making them out of nylon, which had flaws and wasn’t that much stronger. Now they’re made of high quality nylon and other synthetics that don’t even generate that much friction: they don’t wear out so fast, but they don’t stay tied, either.
Nail polish used to contain high percentages of powerful solvents that were highly toxic. As highly volatile solvents were phased out in consumer products, so were their very strong and difficult-to-dissolve resins.
Actually, any high-calcium diet will produce white feces in dogs - it’s not just cheap filler or bone meal.
I completely missed the new “Thread Games” forum until someone mentioned it in a thread.
Backed up toilets don’t overflow. The bowls are bigger relative to the tank. When they’re backed up, they get real full, but you don’t have turds spilling onto the floor like you used to.
Crap–I did not see that either. Is that how they took care of “The Game Room” pollution?
I break shoelaces often if they are cheap laces. Kevlar ones are nice.
Cars start even in really cold weather just about as instantly as they do any other time. I am not that old but it was a real crap-shoot trying to get many older cars to start even 25 years or longer ago if it was even remotely cold or sometimes even just raining. You had to crank it a few times, hope that your battery held up until it finally started and then you had to let it warm up for several minutes before you could drive it. I even knew how to inject WD-40 or starting fluid (do any young people even know what that is?) straight into the carburetor for really hard starts.
I would be pissed today if I turned the key in my Toyota SUV with over 100K miles on it even when it is well below 0F and it didn’t start on the 1st try. You don’t even have to let it warm up either. The engine computers combined with synthetic oil make it so that you can just hop right in and drive off.
Clothes don’t bleed colors in the washer either like they used to unless they are really poor quality. You used to have to separate wash very carefully because even a single darker color mixed in with lighter garments could stain the whole load with a permanent hue (more than a few people ended up with an unintended number of pink clothes for example). I still separate colors by lights and darks in general but I haven’t found it strictly necessary in a long time. You can throw almost anything that isn’t completely new and cheap into the mix and come out with clothes that are still their original color.
And thank God for that!
I just noticed the Thread Games earlier today - thank you mods for setting it up and getting that glurge out of the other forums.
Laundry detergent gets clothes clean now.
I can’t remember the last time I had a flat tire.
I agree with the “cars start in cold weather” point made earlier.
I can’t remember the last time I heard a car alarm going off, unlike the noise pollution in previous decades.
bowls are the same size with low flow tanks.
Huh. Me either, now that you mention it. Do people not buy noisy alarms anymore? Do today’s alarms have a lower false positive rate? Not that I miss hearing them, but now I’m really curious where they went.
(Of course, I did also move out of a densely populated area to a less populated area some years ago, so that could account for a lot of the decline in nuisance alarms I hear.)
The TV reception doesn’t crap out whenever the weather is bad.
This was many years ago but somehow the concept of Seedless Watermelon had eluded me. I had no idea such a thing existed. Then one day someone served me seedless watermelon. It felt like what a time traveler who steps 100 years into the future must feel like: like I was in a whole new world and anything was possible. It was a good feeling and then my brain cut in and said, “Dude, calm down. It’s just watermelon.”
The hanging of curtains. Gone are the hoops and clips and strings and gathery things. Now you’ve got bloody great holes in the curtains themselves to thread through the curtain rods.