August 13, 2026
Hot showers, cold takes, class war
Ordinary Abundance
We live like old-time royalty, and the comments are having a full-on crisis
TLDR: The article argues that everyday comforts like electric light, clean water, music, and photos would have seemed magical to people in the past. Commenters agreed—but turned it into a bigger debate about inequality, ugly reality versus cozy aesthetics, and who actually gets to enjoy this so-called abundance.
This piece is basically a love letter to the boring miracles of modern life: instant music, electric light, clean water, photos, books, glasses, fast messages, even the ability to make tea at 9 p.m. without contracting cholera. The article lines up old quotes from people losing their minds over inventions we now treat like background wallpaper, and the community reaction was half awe, half existential spiral. One commenter summed up the mood perfectly: hot showers, air conditioning, and instant long-distance messages are absurd luxuries that have become so normal we barely notice them.
But this wasn’t just a cozy gratitude fest. The comments immediately swerved into class drama and reality checks. One person said the article’s dreamy apartment vibe only works because it looks nice; swap in ugly secondhand furniture and suddenly nobody feels like a king. Another pushed harder, arguing that modern abundance means little when health care, healthy food, and safe surroundings are still out of reach for many people. And then came the devastating mic drop: “I can’t imagine ever affording such a nice apartment.” Oof.
There were also some deliciously internet-side jokes, like marveling that we casually water plants with clean drinking water and pretending the real issue is that abundance has terrible interior design branding. Even the “helpful link guy” showed up with bonus reading, because no online discussion is complete without that one person dropping a related article. The overall verdict? Yes, modern life is miraculous — but the comments are loudly asking for whom, exactly.
Key Points
- •The article argues that many ordinary features of modern life were historically rare, expensive, or unavailable.
- •It uses historical quotations to document contemporary reactions to technologies including recorded music, electric lighting, photography, spectacles, telegraphy, printing, and urban water systems.
- •Before these technologies spread, people often had limited access to music, reliable light, accurate portraits, books, clear vision aids, fast communication, and clean water.
- •The article contrasts present-day domestic routines with earlier material conditions such as smoky indoor lighting, hand-copied books, contaminated wells, and slow message delivery.
- •It also uses pineapple as an example of a food once so costly in eighteenth-century Britain that some hosts rented it for display rather than consumption.