Swallowing gum.
Electing a convicted felon President of the United States.
That one cuts deep. It’s really weird too because if you asked your parents they would say america would never elect a felon. Then they went on to elect a felon.
I sometimes think about trying to reach out to order folks to better understand their views but they I remember the absolute garbage brain rot they believe.
US conservatives calling Russia the good guys and electing a convicted felon as president.
And literal nazis marching in the streets
Child me is just dying to have the dancing and gaming skills I have!
Child me wishes he had the basic communication skills and treatments for his mental illness.
A computer program winning a Go tournament.
In chess, human grandmasters routinely beat the best computers, but changing that was simply a matter of faster processors and larger memory, problems solvable by the application of sufficient quantities of money. In principle the game was already solved, and within a few decades, would be solved in practice as well.
Go was considered a much harder problem. Programs of similar complexity to a decent chess program couldn’t even look at a finished game between go pros and reliably say who won, let alone get there itself. Well, guess what?
Teleportation
It was proven on a micro scale by Jeff Kimble’s team at CalTech (?) in the late 90s I think
I’m not sure quantum entanglement is indicative of teleportation but don’t know much about it. Would be cool to learn more.
Considering how many asterisks you need to add there, I wouldn’t say teleportation is “inevitable”.
A battery powered table saw.
Absolutely not a thing in the 1980’s, in stock now at your local Lowe’s.
That one does blow me away - I’ve had a cordless drill for years, but a tablesaw??? - when I realized they even existed I couldn’t believe it.
The first battery powered drills were pretty horrible. Batteries have come a long way
I mean, when you think about it, it’s just a battery-powered circular saw flipped upside-down. Not too crazy to consider like that.
Battery powered circular saws were also science fiction the day I was born.
Go watch early seasons of The New Yankee Workshop and look for the cordless power drill he uses in the first couple of seasons. It’s got this gigantic permanently attached battery hanging out of the hand grip (the hand grip is like a foot long) and it can just barely turn a wood screw.
By the time I was in high school tiny, underpowered circ saws were available that ran on drill batteries. These things had like 5 inch ultrathin blades. Now look at it.
Protein folding
The fall of America.
Well that was just hubris.
Not to steal the other comment but yeah a swiss army knife of a device that pays for things, browses the internet without running up the phone bill (and I can browse AND talk on the phone at the same time), has games and music, is a flashlight, etc.
But most importantly a name change. I thought it was impossible or extremely hard but it wasn’t. Just write, pay $65, pay $12, send the documents to wherever, and that’s it.
Was changing your name not possible back then, or were you just not aware that it’s possible?
Yeah or that it was extremely complicated, and that no one in my life would respect my new name. Which, the latter, I was right about. I cut all ties I had (except family since I’m stuck with them currently) before changing my name, and eventually I will cut ties with family and receive mail in my name.
Out of curiosity, is it a gender change name or just a same gender name change? Still can’t figure out why someone wouldn’t respect either.
I didn’t change my gender, only the name. Many people are so transphobic that a cis person changing their name is just as “bad” as transitioning, and the rest think a cis person’s life is perfect so they only change their name for attention and to be oppressed. I changed my name because it was ugly and othering and it only reminds me of childhood. I legitimately felt like I was stuck in someone else’s body and could never get out and be myself.
“Work from home” for so many jobs.
Which is only possible because of this magic technology to let you see and talk in near real time to anyone, anywhere. Used to be that if your sibling / parent / other family member wasn’t in town, you couldn’t see them in real time at any time, usually just a single / couple times a year at holidays.
Sure calling was a thing, but it’s just different when you can see someone.
Working from my bedroom in the US while seeing and speaking to a fellow developer living in Pakistan is really quite awesome.
A cure for AIDS
I’m out of the loop, is that a thing? Best I know is that it’s highly manageable with treatment, not cured.
5th person confirmed cured of HIV. Stem cell transplant, apparently. Happened in Düsseldorf if your .de means anything.
Fascinating!
Nah, my .de means nothing, it was just an arbitrary choice of instance for me.
In my pocket I carry a library of Alexandria, an infinite Walk-man, a camera and a camcorder with effectively infinite film, a personal navigator… You get the idea, the list goes on. 80s me would have thought this was impossible, even if I am a bit disappointed about the flying car and hoverboard situation.
… a calculator, an electronic translator, an alarm clock, a video games console, an infinite DVD player, a spirit level, a personal weather forecaster, …
oh and I also think it can make telephone calls
I was laughed at on the playground when I got the idea for wireless charging back in the 90s.
Nikola Tesla was working on proof of concept from 1900 until JP Morgan pulled project funding in 1917.
Nuclear War.
I though leaders were cool headed and rational, that they would never destroy the world.
Then I learned about Cuban Missile Crisis with Vasily Arkhipov, and the radar false alarm invident with Stanislav Petrov, amongst many more “close call” incidents. Our world almost died.
Like: If the many-worlds theory is true, there are probably some universes where WW3 happend and most of life is dead. Probably every 9 out of 10 universes, we died. We are alive because of luck. (I mean, we exist tk be able to perceive a dead universe anyways).
But that also means, that can happen again.
The “Doomsday Clock” is a prediction by scientists of existential risk to humanity, and these scientists are predicting an even more tense doomsday risk than ever before, even more so than the height of the Cold War.
(I actually had a dream/nightmare of see a nuke go off outside my window. Maybe its a vision of another timeline, or the future… 🤷♂️)
I’ve been having them too, or rather continuations of the exact same dream.
It always starts with this weird reddish purple sky, glowing in the North as the nuclear Holocaust begins. My partner and I try to run and bug out, getting two of our bags and most of our supplies, but we’re caught in gridlock. In my desperation, my vehicle gets hamstrung by a broken fence post as I try to reroute offroad around traffic.
Each week it continues and we get a little farther but… it’s bleak.
Mine was that: I was on my phone, my phone goes blackscreen, then I look up, lights flicker a bit and turn off, I look at my laptop, and it also dies 2 second later after flickering, then I look outside my window, a huge mushroom cloud, then I wake up. And I woke up with like panic and heartrate so fast…
Honestly, maybe my brain is trying to tell me to write a story about nukes.
You should check out the book “Recursion” by Black Crouch. Probably won’t help with your nightmares though
Sometimes when I hear a plane fly over head I pause and wonder if this is the end. Or if things get too quiet I wonder if I am about to be swept away in the fallout of huge explosion.
Lol, I sometimes have network issues, then I wonder if russia (I live in the US, for context) has their putin raging for some reason and decided to nuke us for the lols. I mean, network disruptions are the first thing that comes to mind. Then I check the news, reddit, make sure I didn’t miss any emergency alerts, then I realize its just a normal internet issue.
Sometimes I hear emergency sirens for no reason for an extended period of time, and I wonder if theres been some sort of attack, whether a terrorist bombing, or a nuke exploding in a nearby city, I google it, oh its just some police chase. Idk why I’m always overreacting.
