🔮 They called the future

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Happy Friday, {{first_name | friend}}. Somewhere between Olympic glory and county fair shenanigans, America decided competitive hot dog eating deserved a championship. Long story short, we committed. Every Fourth of July, Coney Island becomes the Super Bowl of hot dogs, with legends like Joey Chestnut treating lunch like a full-contact sport. 

In 10 minutes, are you a two-dog person? Three if feeling ambitious? Rookie numbers. 

🌭 What’s the official record for hot dogs and buns eaten in 10 minutes? A) 31, B) 53, C) 76 or D) 150? Keep reading, the answer’s waiting at the end, ketchup and all.

📻 This weekend on my national radio show: A man has a heart attack behind the wheel, calls his son a whole state away, and the son reroutes his dad’s Tesla to the ER from his phone. Doctors say it saved his life. That story and more, airing all weekend on 510+ stations across the USA. Find yours with our super-duper station locator map, or catch me on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. I’m wherever you are. Just like that Tesla, I’ll always steer you right. — Kim

⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 2.5 minutes

It’s a long holiday weekend, and I’m doing something a little different. I’m queuing up the movies that called it: the ones that predicted the digital world we’re all living in. AI assistants, video calls, screens on everything. Hollywood saw it coming decades ago. 

Grab the popcorn, and watch along with me. These flicks were ahead of their time. Talk about spoiler alerts.

Let’s start with the spooky one. When Steven Spielberg made Minority Report (released in 2002), he didn’t guess at the future. He hired it. He locked 15 futurists in a Santa Monica hotel for three days and had them dream up the year 2054. The result? 

Touchless gesture screens, ads that scan your eyes and call you by name, facial recognition, predictive policing. Nearly all of it is here. One of those futurists, Jaron Lanier, later helped build the Microsoft Kinect, the very gesture tech the movie imagined.

That film’s not alone.

In 1989, Back to the Future Part II laughed about hoverboards but nailed flat-screen wall TVs, video calls, wearable tech, smart homes and drones. 2001: A Space Odyssey gave us a talking AI and a video phone call back in 1968, when a single computer filled a room. 

The Net warned us about identity theft back in 1995. Now we call that a Tuesday.

The sharpest movies didn’t predict gadgets. They predicted us. 

The Truman Show, in 1998, saw reality TV, livestreamed lives and influencer culture coming before YouTube even existed. Psychiatrists later named a real condition after it, the Truman Show delusion.

Pixar’s 2008 hit WALL-E imagined humans so glued to floating screens they couldn’t see the world around them. Look up from your phone and tell me that one missed. 

Gattaca, from 1997, pictured designer babies and DNA-based hiring, and gene editing and embryo screening are inching us right toward that vision. 

And Idiocracy painted a future drowning in ads and shrinking attention spans. Funny in 2006. A little close to home now.

That’s the trick of great science fiction. It isn’t really about the future. It’s a mirror held up to today, tilted just enough to show where we’re headed. These nine saw what was coming decades early, with no crystal ball. Some of them didn’t even have Wi-Fi.

So next movie night, skip the wizards. Watch one of these, and see how much they got right. Then tell me the one I missed.

🤣 A man brought his dog to the movies. The dog laughed at the funny parts and cried at the sad parts. Amazed, I asked the owner how. He said, “I’m surprised, too. He hated the book.” 

📩 Send this to someone who needs a movie night idea and loves a good “they totally called it” moment. Use the links below. That’s why they exist.

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🚀 Elon’s pocket rocket: The WSJ says in an exclusive that SpaceX recently showed investors an AI phone prototype: a slimmer-than-iPhone (paywall link) black rectangle with a Snapdragon chip, its own operating system and xAI baked in. Musk called the report “utterly false.” If the device is real, Apple, Samsung and maybe OpenAI just got dragged into a pocket-size billionaire knife fight. How would SpaceX celebrate a launch party for a phone? Easy, my friend. They would simply planet, of course.

🔭 Planet peeping season: Get ready to open your space Zillow. Astronomers may have found the closest decent real estate listing outside our solar system. They announced a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a star 25 light-years away, sitting in the Goldilocks zone where surface temperatures could allow liquid water. That doesn’t mean aliens are waving from the porch. But the next generation of telescopes has a juicy nearby target, and that matters for faster answers about whether anyone else is truly out there. 

🤖 Slop meets boss: Please, for the sake of your career, stop dishing out AI slop like it’s macaroni noodle art you’re proud of. Some companies are restricting or banning it because the productivity miracle turned into security risk, bigger vendor bills and paste-and-pray emails from a polite auto-complete. One CEO threatened to “fire the next person” sending unedited AI junk. Another declared a full-on company-wide ban. I get it. AI’s incredible, but learn to use it right. That’s why I write SplashofAI.com. It’s free and bursting at the seams with stuff that directly translates into the workplace. 

🖱️ Gemini grabs mouse: I tested one of these computer-using AI tools and immediately perked up. Google’s new Gemini 3.5 Flash update adds computer use, meaning the AI can see your screen, click around and handle chores like filling out forms on your computer. Handy, yes. But it still feels like handing your spare house key to an intern you met Tuesday. Start with low-stakes tasks, watch every click and please don’t let it improvise near your bank login.

No more punching in ticker symbols one by one. Google Finance’s new AI feature builds your entire portfolio from a screenshot or sentence. Plus, scammers convinced a woman to ship them $55,000 hidden in pants. How? Pretending to be a Federal Reserve officer.

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⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Fireworks will tempt you to zoom in. Please don’t. Digital zoom can make shots look shaky and pixelated. Keep your phone on 1x, set your camera to the highest resolution and hold steady before you snap. Crop it later when you’re not doing your best impression of a tripod.

📸 Speaking of photos: With all the action going on, the last thing you need is your phone hitting “storage full.” 😒 Clear some space before tomorrow. On iPhone, open Settings > General > iPhone Storage. On Android, go to Settings > Device Care > Storage. Delete downloads, duplicate pics and apps you forgot existed.

🎧 My dog walk is also my book club: Thirty minutes outside, earbuds in, and I finish more books in a month than most do in a year. Raycon Everyday Earbuds stay locked in, no matter my pace, they sound rich without the tinny hollow feeling of cheaper earbuds and cost half what AirPods run. Get 20% off site-wide now.*

📍 Turn this on before you split up: Big crowds make it way too easy to lose kids, parents or that uncle who “just went to the car.” Before you leave, have everyone open Google Maps (iOS) > profile picture > Location sharing > Share location. Choose one hour or until the event ends. Panic prevented.

🗺️ Don’t get stranded: When everyone’s phone is fighting for signal, your map can flake right when you need to get home. Open Google Maps > profile picture > Offline maps. Select your area and tap Download. You can search for nearby places and navigate if your signal disappears. Actual night saver.

🎆 Find the fireworks: Still figuring out where to celebrate tomorrow? Check the America250 calendar online. Pick your State, filter for This Weekend events nearby and you’ll see fireworks, parades, concerts and some drone shows. It also lists the address, time and whether it’s free to attend. Less guessing, more ooh-ahh.

For almost 60 years, Disneyland guests on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride have sailed past cannon fire, skeletons and enough suspicious gold to trigger a federal audit. 

Fun facts: The original skeletons were real ones from UCLA’s medical school, and the attraction spawned a movie franchise that grossed over $4.5 billion. 

Now the 1967 classic has added a cursed pirate animatronic. He looks incredible. Bad curse, great refresh rate.

Check it out here. Turns out dead men do tell tales. In 4K.

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What you learned today: Hollywood predicted our digital lives, in some films even before Wi-Fi existed, a Tesla app turned a son into a lifesaver from a state away, and your phone needs storage cleared before the fireworks start tomorrow. Not bad for one email. Tomorrow, I’ll show you where your subscription money is really going. Bring your bank statement and a little righteous anger. And find out how hundreds of glowing drones can crowd the sky without turning into a very expensive sparkle crash.

🌭 The answer: C) 76 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. I don’t even know how that’s possible. Joey Chestnut set the official record in Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4, 2021, and nobody else has come close since. 

That’s a hot dog and bun roughly every eight seconds without stopping. Add it up, and you’re staring at more than 20,000 calories, about 10 days of normal eating, inhaled in the time it takes to watch the first act of a sitcom. 

The crazy part? He’s gone bigger. At a 2024 Netflix event, he downed 83, though that feat wasn’t official. He’s claimed the famous Mustard Belt 17 times. The human stomach is a mysterious and slightly terrifying place.

What did the champion hot dog say at the finish line? “Honestly, I’m just glad to be on a roll.”

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, BIBURY, @the.dis via Instagram

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