Everyone talks about the cake mix and its quality, but I'm much more amazed that for all the "for Americans 500 years is a lot" jokes I find myself much more anecdotal things that seem to be more easily preserved on a time span of 50 to 200 years, for example being able to even buy the same cake mix as just 50 years ago.

Maybe it's all going back to World War II and stuff here in Germany changing too much, but from all the stories from my parents and their childhood after the war, I don't see a lot of this. (Not saying it's good or bad, I have some recipes but they're all in the "100g of flour" style). Or Genealogy. I didn't put in a huge amount of effort but my experience is that tracking your ancestors for more than a couple generations is not as popular in my working class circles.