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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

I mean, the biggest failure of prediction is that women seem to laugh at salad rather than champagne.

It always seems as if we're just 50 - 100 years from "the future".

Lost in Space takes place in 1997 when we were about to colonize space. Or as we know it, 21 years ago.

The original Blade Runner takes place next year. When we'll have space colonies and humanoid androids to work them.

And according to Star Trek, we've weathered the Eugenics War and have 31 years before World War III and the post-atomic horror. But in just 45 years, Zefram Cochrane will invent the warp drive.

Not to mention the countless flying cars we'll have as we go eat all of our meals in pill form.

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The 80s Transformers movie takes place in “It is the year 2005”

The Flight of the Conchords' song "The Humans are Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY starts with "It is the distant future, the year 2000". It was released in 2008. I mean, yeah it's a piss-take, but there was always this big thing about the year 2000 being the distant future when robots would be ruling the Earth.

2000 seemed sort of like an event horizon, back in the day, until we shot past it. "Strange Days" was a film made in 1994-95, set in 1999, and yet somehow 1999 was still the far future, full of cyberpunk stuff.

Or metal gear solid.

"It was the distant future, 2005..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAioZzuhOQg

I'm very curious to know why you were downvoted

It may have been the comment about women laughing at salad instead of champagne, which sounds vaguely sexist....well, I do not comprehend its intent but I suspect it is some cultural reference of which I am not aware, and not actually sexist. The rest of the comment is interesting so I upvoted.

I'd venture to say you are right:

GP:"the women sipping from glasses of champagne and laughing"

OP:"[instead] women seem to laugh at salad rather than champagne."

i.e. in actual modern life the ultimate debonaire lifestyle, as depicted by the likes of instagram, doesn't focus on smiling over exclusive alcohol as much as it does on smiling over exotic salads.

Kind of, "women laughing at salad" is a very odd (possibly unintentional) category of stock photography. https://www.thehairpin.com/2011/01/women-laughing-alone-with...

So when he mentioned women sipping champagne and laughing, it brought the image to my mind.

"Women laughing alone with salad" is a meme. If you look through magazines targeted at women, they're full of images of a woman holding a salad in one hand and a fork in the other and laughing at something the viewer has to guess at. There's an entire blog devoted to it[0].

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/women-laughing-alone-with-sal...

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