A list of every science fiction film which accurately predicted a future innovation that came to be a real thing in the actual non-fictional world

Jumping into a warm pot of water to join the frog mid-boil

With the games of the XXXII Olympiad merely a week or so away many people are coming down with a nasty case of OLYMPICS FEVER. Symptoms include an insatiable desire to watch live sports — but specifically only events which you don’t fully grasp and only watch once every four years. At a time with record heat waves, floods, and a global pandemic in play at the same time, this year’s OLYMPIC FEVER could be one of the worst in generations.

Here are some tips if any of your loved ones start exhibiting signs. First, make sure you have access to an appropriate cable or broadband subscription to watch the games. For US viewers, this probably means you have some way to watch NBC directly, or friggin PEACOCK, apparently. Second, if you have any old gym mats, yoga mats, thick blankets, etc - lay these out all over your living room floors. Younger viewers are particularly susceptible to the gymnastics events and will just straight up launch themselves into the floor if left unattended for a moment. Third, it’s a well known fact that all top shelf athletes drink Michelob ULTRA with every meal; so stock up if you want to show solidarity with your team.

I feel like I heard this idea somewhere and am now stealing it, so don’t give me credit for this, but here’s what the Olympics should be — just build a really stellar world class facility for the Olympics in Greece itself. Every Olympics is held there from now on. No one else ever bids on Olympics or builds new stadiums that are then either torn apart or never used again. We can get a lot of bribery done during the construction of the Greece facilities, and avoid the future bribery that would occur during future bidding and construction in other cities. In non-olympic years you can use these facilities for training or other world championships. Greece and it’s neighbors get like a perpetual tourism bump from this, but that’s because they invented the Olympics so we give them this as an award.

Separately, I’d like to see more laying of olive wreaths on people’s heads in circumstances outside of athletic victories. Let’s say you’re having your annual review with your boss and they tell you you’ve done a nice job and not only are you getting a 5% pay increase and a “Senior” in your title, but you’re getting a one-time bonus of $10k and you’re also getting an olive wreath placed on your head by YOUR BOSS’S BOSS! Man that would be a nice morning, huh?

Things were going fine until the seal broke

Due to the circumstances of my professional past, my social media circles have become more or less full of people talking about things like building software correctly, managing software developers correctly, investing in businesses, selling businesses, being a venture capitalist, how to build a great team, how to measure a SaaS business, etc. This is all good and well, but I struggle to enjoy it as “content”. It’s fine, and there are certainly better or worse ways to do this stuff … but I sort of know the arguments and sides of arguments and it’s become utterly exhausting to consume content where the actually-correct position of “well, it depends” never gets uttered and instead you get passionate attacks on strawman’d positions instead.

Anyway, what I have come to find utterly enjoyable is finding a person with a passion about a thing that I don’t know about and which seems sort of boring and like you can’t possible have a strong opinion about … and just listen to them go. Last week we had our pool pump replaced. The old one was sort of dying and was very loud and was a single speed pump; the new one is a quieter more efficient variable speed pump. Prior to having a guy install the pump, I thought those were the only facts I needed to know … but boy was I wrong. He spend maybe 15 minutes on my doorstep just passionately regaling me with facts about this new pump. Keep in mind that he was not selling this to me — I’d already bought it and he’d already installed it. It was a hot day and by all measures he should have been hopping back into his pool guy van and leaving my house - but instead he just went on and on about this pool pump. Very satisfying.