Owning my own home. Most of us are just going to be renting for the rest of our lives.
I had a job at the time that let me WFH maybe once every 2-3 weeks and I thought it was crazy generous lol.
Now I’m home virtually every day.
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
Avoiding nuclear war long enough to destroy the world with our normal economic activity.
The fall of America.
Well that was just hubris.
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.
Protein folding
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.
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.
“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.
The mortality of my parents. My mind is often stuck in the future of what ifs; but this is an inevitable event that will come sooner or later and it terrifies me. I do my best to cherish the time I’m fortunate to have with them while channeling energy into my own kids. I know it’s the natural cycle of things, but still… Life is hard man.
watching the decline is hard. I thought my dad would live forever. He’s been gone just over a year. My mom probably won’t be around much longer either. Let them tell you as many boring stories as they can.
I’m sorry, friend. Hope you’re doing well.
Yeah I honestly love the stories. Heard them all a thousand times, of course, but they never get old — especially knowing…
Anyways I can weather a lot of pain, but when it comes to my loved ones I’m a wreck.
I know that feeling and you’re not alone. It’s terrifying and I don’t know how others handle it or if everyone just keeps quiet about it or live in ignorance about that fact. Also doesn’t help that I don’t believe in an afterlive.
Everyone grieves in their own way. My mom died when I was 36. My dad died this year. It was really rough for a while when my mom died, it made my alcoholism worse, which lead to me losing my job, which made my alcoholism worse. I had horrible nightmares that I woke up screaming from for about six months. Eventually, with the help of my wife, I put my life back together.
I wasn’t close with my dad, he left when I was young. Pretty much feel the same since he died.
When it happens just do what feels natural. Your loved ones will understand. If you have kids try to explain it to them once you get a good grasp on it yourself. There aren’t any answers at the bottom of a thousand bottles of vodka though, I can promise you that much.
I’m atheist as well. My mom was a severely mentally ill alcoholic and she’s genuinely better off dead. If there was a hell, my dad would be in it, so I’m glad there isn’t. I think it’s more comforting, not less.
I appreciate your thoughtful and honest comment. Yeah, I don’t know… I’m really close with both my parents. That certainly makes it worse. We’ve been through a lot of shit. My parents separated once in my teens, then fully completed the divorce under COVID under my house with my wife and our first kid. Was a nightmare that made covid orders of magnitude worse — but we got through it. I got my dad out of his suicidal/homicidal mania; I got my mom clean off alcohol with the help of my sister and wife… They’ve both still got a lot of flaws, but at least now my parents are at least on speaking terms for the sake of their grand-kids and us. In some ways, despite all the turmoil of the world, I know these are going to be some of the better years where I can enjoy their company and see the nostalgia in their eyes as they spend time with my kids. We grew up religious but my whole family shifted toward agnosticism over the years, so yeah, I don’t expect much after death but it’s hopeful thought despite my better judgement I suppose…
Going to Mars.
Swallowing gum.
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.
WW3
I’ve realised, over time, that we got to be species number 1 through near statistically impossible odds that is only achievable by being the most brutally effective in the game of evolution.
And millions of years of nature doesn’t just go away when you’re declared the winner. It is in our nature to dominate through all means possible, else we wouldn’t be here. It’s not so much that we want war, we need it; our nature is founded on it. When there is nothing left on the planet to defeat, we turn on ourselves to scratch the itch.
The catch is the other half of our nature is focused on domination of the species. We protect each other for the greater good as much as we kill for the greater good. That’s our human nature; that’s how we got here. So after a war we feel awful and promise to never do it again, but then the itch of being number 1 reappears and there’s nothing else to scratch it with because we conquered everything else.
Our known history affirms that the end-game of evolution is a never ending cycle of masturbating to awful shit, feeling ashamed, and just doing it again once the shame is overridden by the urge. “Never again” we say, every fucking time.
Edit: That’s why I also love the self-proclaimed “lefties” camp always misappropriating the philosophical Paradox of Tolerance on here—like it’s not misappropriately used by the other camps. Ironically all just proving the paradox true. Camp vs camp. Tribe vs tribe. The itches and scratches, Oblivious to human nature doing as it does best. To progress is to win by all means possible. This is our way.
True. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to break the cycle. Although we are heading towards another great conflict, we are currently in an era with less hunger, more education, and less poverty throughout the world than ever before. We clearly did something right. Let’s try to do even better in the future. Lets evolve, step by step, cause that Is was are good at!
Oh, yeah. We definitely keep trying to break the cycle, else we’ll all be extinguished at some point. It won’t be broken in the near future, but over many generations of each doing their part, it will eventually evolve into something better; the old perks of the species no longer relevant or needed, eventually evolved out.
Whether or not we can survive ourselves in the meantime is a whole new hurdle in our path.
Directly measuring gravity waves, the first measurement using LIGO was back in 2016 and they’ve observed almost a hundred so far. The observations are being used to create newer generations of gravity wave detectors.
