Perhaps this can help -- Saoirse Ronan's musical bit on Saturday Night Live back in 2017 explaining to us Yanks how to pronounce her name. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xCr...
YouTube video by Saturday Night Live
Bottom Line: The person remembering the 80s as no seat belts and really giant cars make sense (ok, somewhat) especially if you remember lack of "click it or ticket" laws and all the old-timey pre-'68 cars on the road. On the note, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac... 390hp V8 baby!!
[3/3] 3) And, speaking of pre-'68 cars, some of the sedans were OMG-magnificently-large. Indeed, the reason I bring up (1-3) above is my family had a hand-me-down 1966 Pontiac Executive. That magnificent beast, along with riding seat-belt-less in it & its seat belt retrofit, are fond memories. 🥰
[2/~2~, no, 3 now] (Point 1 continued) ...adults actually *wear* the seatbelts that federal law had mandated back in 1968 be included on all *new* cars. 2) As such, it's not 'til the mid-80s (and depending on state, even the early-90s) that pre-'68 cars needed seat belts retrofitted to them...
[1/2] To all the people going "I'm pretty sure seat belts had long been standard in cars by the 1980s" and "what's this about huge cars, look at SUVs and the largest pickup trucks now", well that's basically true, BUT... 1) It wasn't until 1984 that NY became the 1st state to mandate all adults...
Very funny, but remember folks! Tons of stuff notably *less egregious* than what Justice Thomas does is also worthy of a stern talking-to by any remotely ethics enforcing HR department! Let's not "define deviancy down"!!
P.S. But, yes, as a potential aid to one's imagination in answering "Jeez, how much ore did poor Dickensian blokes with pick axes mine and put in those hoppers on rails and laborously push around, etc?", it's legit to say: "Well, it's like the top 3 inches of all the soil in the UK."
[2/2] ... 1 kg/L (or 1000 kg / m^3), see for example www.google.com/search?clien... So, you ain't going to find 1.3 kg of coal in1 litre of UK soil chosen uniformly at random. Of course, a "coal seam" is a vein of rock & soil underground *specially identified* to be coal-rich, and not average.
[1/2] I hate to be "that guy" -- especially since maybe the following order-of-magnitude-fails-sanity-check error is meant comedically -- but one can't take "coal seam density" of 1.3kg / L to be indicative of the amount of coal in an *average liter* of UK soil. Indeed, loose topsoil is only...
… the world’s tiniest violin (woot! nanomechanical resonators!! … but I digress) and then look at it vibrate. But yeah, I don’t expect sympathy for it. 🙄