this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] neuromorph@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago (11 children)

The chariot lasting as high tech for 3800 years has some part to do with the dark ages.....

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 211 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (34 children)

And fifty years later we still mope around in low earth orbit. Progress has slowed down a lot since the billionaires took over.

[–] StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 101 points 1 day ago (21 children)

Fifty years later we have reached mars with drones and created space probes to expand our knowledge of space.

[–] floo@retrolemmy.com 98 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Actually, we first landed on Mars with the Viking series of probes in 1976. Then there was a whole lot of time where we didn’t do anything before we started again with Mars in the late 90s.

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[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

One of the Wright brothers managed to live to see the end of WWII. Imagine the weird janky flying machine you and your dead brother designed in a bicycle shop in Dayton is being used to decimate Europe while boats full of the things are redefining naval warfare across the whole of the pacific before one drops a weapon so powerful that it becomes the basis of mutually assured destruction

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[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 62 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It’s easy to see why people thought we would be a lot more futuristic by now.

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

i have a little tablet in my pocket that gives me access to the sum total of all human knowledge and can contact anyone else more or less anywhere on/around the planet for instant voice communication.

We can take organs out of dead people and put them in living people and have them survive.

I can be anywhere on the planet within 48 hours

We have cars that can drive themselves

We have robots being controlled live(ish) on mars

We have planes that can stay airbourne indefinately

And there's many more examples

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago

Gene editing we did NOT see coming this soon.

[–] ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Phones can also video call, lead you to just about anywhere you want to go on the planet, and store millions of pictures/videos/writings of a person's personal history. Unprecedented.

[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 15 points 1 day ago

Yup, i was in three completely unfamiliar cities in the last month that speak languages i do not speak.

I was never lost once, i was able to learn how to take public transport, and i was able to effectively communicate with people who do not speak english

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[–] Klear@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It’s just the future sucks

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I always thought those scifi stories where companies basically rule everything were overblown, but you just see it changing to that in real time.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 9 points 23 hours ago

MFW I’m in a technology singularity racing full bore toward its conclusion.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Just a nitpick, the fastest transportation for thousands of years were boats.

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 4 points 19 hours ago

It's actually falling

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[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 45 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Forget the moon. We're all within a few generations of the first people who had access to indoor toilets on a mass scale.

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 1 day ago (5 children)

India basically introduced toilets in a single generation.

According to this article, in 1993, 70.3% of the Indian population did not have access to toilets. By 2021, the number dropped to 17.8%. So literally more than half the population of India got access to toilets within 30 years.

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[–] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And only 30 years after that, we're surfing the interwebz, sailing down the data highway at the speed of light. I'm running out of metaphors to chain together...

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

And just 20 years later we have destroyed the concept of truth. What a time to be alive.

[–] girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Do you mean the actual philosophy of truth or do you just mean that we currently have a cult of personality spewing lies and people en masse accept it as truth?

Because I've heard arguments for both.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago

I've thought from time to time about how being able to see significant societal change in a person's lifetime is a very recent phenomenon. For many thousands of years, things stayed pretty much the same from birth to death unless you happened to live though a significant event. It's neat that I've gotten to witness change in a way that one would have to time travel to experience in the past, but monkey's paw, the change isn't always good...

[–] Bo7a@lemmy.ca 67 points 1 day ago (18 children)

And since then - We have found ways to make all travel worse for comfort, more expensive, and more necessary.

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And destroyers.

Just a few months into its reign, the US regime intends to ruin decades of progress in science and space exploration:

On May 30, 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced a plan to cancel no less than 41 space missions — including spacecraft already paid for, launched, and making discoveries — as part of a devastating 47% cut to the agency’s science program. If enacted, this plan would decimate NASA. It would fire a third of the agency’s staff, waste billions of taxpayer dollars, and turn off spacecraft that have been journeying through the Solar System for decades.

Shutting down a working, completely functional mission like New Horizons, in particular, that may just be on the cusp of a huge discovery - it has seen signs of a new, second "ring" to the Kuiper Belt - is the ultimate repudiation of the American self-image as explorers of the frontier. And all of this at a time when the Chinese are just about catching up to "the West" in space science prowess.

As a kid, I never understood what the Romans were trying to say with their Janus myth. Turns out that Orange Janus is simply the god of endings.

[–] simsalabim@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (4 children)

And now we have self-driving cars that are able to kill people without human intervention 👍

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[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The Brooklyn Bridge and the battle of Little Bighorn happened the same year. And there were Native Americans who fought in the battle that were still alive to see man walk on the moon. So in the span of one lifetime we went from Custard’s last stand, to one giant leap for all mankind.

[–] loweffortname@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Good point, but it's "Custer", not " Custard".

Although I kinda like the idea of a trembling, gelatious shape being the asshole that led the charge at Little Bighorn...

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[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

In 1861 Russia abolished serfdom.

In 1961 Gagarin reached space.

It's just barely implausible a person born a serf could have seen their descendant explore space.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Say what you will about the USSR (and I certainly will) but they did develop and industrialize incredibly quickly.

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[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Now picture it without fossil fuels giving us a 100:1 EROEI

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Feels like we're going backwards now with like anti-vax stuff. A lot of tech seems to be getting worse for users, too, like IoT gadgets that stop working for remote reasons

[–] truxnell@aussie.zone 35 points 1 day ago

We create tech these days to extract maximum value from the populace, not so much to make lives better

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 40 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Orville Wright (of the Wright brothers) also only died 21 year prior and was able to fly on a jet before his death.

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