Agreed. These are genuinely difficult problems that aren’t going to get solved by our current crop of silicon valley “geniuses”.

CRISPR is the closest we get It might be the honorary winner since it was wasn’t fully exploited until the 21st century, even though it was cloned and being used in the 90s.

We had a 3d printer in the 90s at my Uni. It built layers with laser cut paper lol. It was the cheapest version available and it lived in the engineering department for rapid prototyping. This link says they were invented in 1981, metal sintering was added in 1988 and fused filament in 1989. https://ultimaker.com/learn/the-complete-history-of-3d-printing

You’re not wrong. But there are counter examples. I was going to use the example of the jet engine in my last answer as a true paradigm shifting development that had immediate impact. And in the mid-century period too! Or the first powered flight occurred in the first decade of the 20th century and had an immediate impact. The transistor and solid state electronics would be another example.

So let me flip it around and say we’ve had a quarter century without a major technological breakthrough. There’s been progress, but it feels incremental. I spent a night with a physicist a few years ago who was arguing that progress is slowing because we are still relying on the exploitation of Newtonian physics. There are a few technologies that have made the leap to nuclear physics. But we’ve had the basics of quantum physics for a century now and haven’t been able to exploit it in a useful fashion.

OLEDs were built in 1987 I saw my first VR demonstration in the 90s (and it wasn’t cutting edge then). I saw my first AR demonstration then as well as part of an undergraduate engineering fair. And so on. I just looked up maglev trains - in commercial use since 1984.

I don’t disagree that there hasn’t been refinements, improvements, or commercialization of technology, but there hasn’t been a technological leap or invention that I can think of in the 21st century.

I’m genuinely not sure that anything has been invented in the 21st century.

Detachable penis if you’ve never heard the song.

But we had Dick Nixon, Dick Cavett, and Dick van Dyke during that period.And lots more. So I don’t think that’s it.

Penis.

Cauda

Penis is derived from the Latin for “tail”. As penis came to mean schlong over time, Latin switched to cauda. Dick only became a euphemism for the fuckstick in the 1980s. Why? I have no idea. But other proper names are/have been used including “Peter”, “Johnson”, and “John Thomas” that I can think of off the top of my head.

Thurman Merman.

You mean it isn’t dead yet? Huh.

Which add-on?

William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts

It’s an interlocutory appeal. It’s not like she has a choice in the matter.

That line appeared in “To Live and Die in LA” in exactly the same circumstances two years before “Lethal Weapon”. TLaDLA also had the first wrong way car chase that’s now a staple of every action movie. It’s funny how it was so influential in the industry but has so little lingering cultural impact.

I didn’t in the end. It was mostly because I don’t want undocumented interactions. I have a hard enough time getting them to use office hours.

I envy you. My partner and I are DINKs. There has never been a tax break aimed at our demographic. lol.

I want to normalize the use of statasstics for ass-pulled statistics.

Just wait. 45 year old me was cringe. And 35 year old me? How did that guy even have friends.