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What are your predictions for 2025?
Since we're nearing a new year, and I found the thread last year interesting, let's have a new roll at it shall we?
Since we're nearing a new year, and I found the thread last year interesting, let's have a new roll at it shall we?
I predict things will simultaneously be better and worse than people imagine (brave take I know). The political landscape in the US is going to be very frustrating and dangerous, but I think it will galvanize a lot of people to start working on trying to make a difference at a local level which is where the biggest changes happen first.
I also predict we're going to see several more high profile "assassination" attempts. We had several in 2024 already, with a couple on Trump and more threats towards other politicians, and obviously with the recent CEO killing. The social climate feels like its at nearly an all time high for turmoil (maybe slightly less bad than it was in 2020) but without a pandemic to insulate things I think it could boil over more aggressively than we've seen before.
I think we'll probably also see some pretty heavy market crashes in AI, realestate, maybe even healthcare given some of the upcoming bills that are being proffered to congress right now. The markets have been floating ever higher on ridiculous speculatives for more than 4 years now, and everyone and their brother has already predicted 10 crashes already so I know its a bit rich to hear the 11th one is coming, but I honestly have no idea how things can continue to grow with all of the things that are happening in this country right now. With rumors of inflation ramping up again, threats of insane tariffs on the horizon, and the overall destruction of the buying power for 70% of the country; it seems like its only a matter of time until something snaps.
In less doom-ish news I think that we'll probably see some big growth for renewable energies with the production new types of solar panels and batteries being scaled up to become economical. We may see the breakup of Google's monopoly and Meta may finally take a hit with some of these new social media laws coming into effect. Housing costs will probably stagnate or even reduce which is desperately needed for a huge population, wage growth for the bottom 50% of the country will probably continue to increase and we may see more unionization happening.
In this vain, I tend to agree. Maybe (wishful thinking incoming) there’ll even be weather-related disaster causing turmoil and a critical mass of people to realize that we needed to eliminate climate change as a global threat to humanity like, 30 years ago.
If that were true, Florida would be more blue.
Those people have been getting wrecked for years and it gets worse every year and they still don't see it.
I woukd very much like to see an AI market crash. Mostly because I am completely, utterly, entirely sick of seeing news about it. People are trying to make it happen SO desperately it's become entirely pathetic to me.
I understand that it's a valuable tool for certain tasks. It could seriously destroy the job markets for a lot of jobs whose output is honestly not that valuable in the first place. But those are also largely bullshit jobs that tend to drive up prices for related goods and make the job holders miserable, so... mixed bag. If we could have a serious, mature conversation about UBI and guaranteed basic quality of living -- mediocre housing, basic healthcare, mediocre food -- I would be a lot more hopeful, because otherwise when those bullshit jobs go away a lot of people's livelihoods will be destroyed.
Anyway, there is SO much that tech companies can improve with current products. Accessibility. Recyclability, repairability, and longevity. Affordability. Respect for personal privacy. Better UI and UX. User friendliness. And more variety of form factors and user choice. But instead everyone is trying to overhaul absolutely everything to shoehorn AI into even the silliest use cases. And often doing even more damage and neglecting the base product in the process. It would be really nice if we could admit the shortcomings and move on.
A real estate market crash would also be welcome, both for my own selfish house buying aspirations and for the good of literally everyone except for housing speculators. Lower property taxes and prices benefit everyone except those who have selfishly profited from the homelessness of others.
In terms of my own predictions, I can't predict anything related to politics because the president-elect of the USA is some kind of masochistic human roulette wheel. However, his past administration was really big on not regulating industries and allowing consolidation (as long as the right people were paid off). So my hot take for 2025 is that we're going to see Big Tech move from AI to ramming self-driving tech (that I staunchly believe is NOT READY AT ALL for generalised use) across as much of the USA as possible. This could be a benefit for safety in some cases compared to modern ride sharing, but will have absolutely devastating knock-on effects on employment, public transportation funding, and eventually the car industry in general. But most of those are a long way down the road. For now, we'll mostly just see big lawsuit settlements for the people self-driving cars murder.
For me, it's not even the shortcomings. Those will be ironed out to some extent, other than the inherent shortcomings that can't be solved. It's the ethics and lack of regulation that bother me. We need to prioritize humans in all of this, in terms of jobs, exploitation, authenticity, transparency, intellectual property, and the unique value humans provide. I fear all that is getting lost in the mad race to shoehorn AI into everything, and it's only what the capitalists want. I don't think the average person wants AI all that much. Not until our personal wealth is no longer under threat. Right now we are being promised how much work it can take off our hands, but that's mostly of value to those who want to cut costs and increase profits.
But we aren't being given a choice. The AI push is completely profit-driven by big tech and corps looking to cut costs. We need regulation asap.
(For context, the lawsuit over Blurred Lines radicalized me into an intellectual property abolitionist long before the current AI bubble)
What gets included as AI is so broad as to make arguing for or against this point meaningless. There’s “the algorithm”, nefarious black boxes to recommend prison sentences, generative AI, self-driving models, etc…
Each of those is a separate discussion with different public consensus. Even generative AI needs to be split into image diffusion models, music, and transformer-based text generation. Perhaps the current state of generative AI is the reality mirror to the ancap utopia of personal pocket McNukes. A boon to low-budget projects and a danger when in the hands of any group wishing to make money.
You said everything I wanted to but with more precision. AI has made it abundantly clear just how many careers have been makework for as long as I’ve been alive. Like high-frequency trading, they can scrape pennies off the ground to be worth their salary, but not an efficient or worthwhile allocation of resources for society as a while.
Also, a reduction in land value causing a property tax crunch ought to be a rude wakeup for local governments and school systems to kick the addiction to real estate bubbles.
I thought so too but I recently took a look at my area and just in the last 6 months there's been a ton of houses sold and all are still double or triple what they were maybe 5-7 years ago. Not as high as the peak about a year ago, but still ridiculously high. And these were the ones that actually sold, not just the ones listed for sale. So I think they might come down a bit but unfortunately I don't see these high prices going anywhere soon given how many houses are still selling.
My rule of thumb for a real-estate market crash goes like this: if you hypothetical market crash event happened, would you be unwilling to buy a house? Because if you still are willing, then so is everyone else and there isn't a market crash.
I think a market crash for housing is quite possible, it'd just require some de/reregulation around zoning and such - if proper dense housing with narrow streets (was legalized and) occurred on a large scale and people recognized how much cheaper it is, then they'd start being unwilling to buy suburbs and the price would drop dramatically, and speculators would freak out too and then the market would start to bottom out. I don't expect that to actually happen, but it's possible and I really hope it does.
What confuses me is the castle-in-the-air speculative nature of housing. Unlike pretty much every other good, whose price is mostly determined as a function of how much money it takes to create the thing, housing (and rent, which oddly is quite distinct) has a price determined by... whatever everyone else is paying?
That's fine IMO for stocks. Maybe even commodities like gold. But that sounds to me like a fundamental problem with housing in our world. Surely we'd all be better off if housing was treated more like, ... well, I was about to say 'ground beef' or 'eggs' or 'toilet paper' but all of those have become financialised in the past few years as well. I guess I want housing to be more like the cost of a cup of coffee: driven down close to the theoreticsl cost of manufacture, but with a profit margin to make it worth selling. You wouldn't buy a $10 cup of drip coffee unless it wss truly worthwhile because you can either make it yourself or buy a cheaper cup down the street. A $1-$2 cup still has a healthy 10x margin over base costs, and perhaps a 10% margin if you account for the storefront and cost of employees.
I was thinking commercial real estate, but rural areas are also experiencing pretty heavy price cuts in my area.
I’ve assumed for a few years that if Trump got reelected that we would see 1960s level protests and government overreaction to them. I’m sure that Trump and the people around him are hoping for violent protests and things to get out of control and excuses for martial law and all that. I also think that they are both evil and stupid in equal measure and this will backfire on them in ways they don’t expect. I’m hoping that Trump just fucks up very quickly and loses some of his cult support, but that has been impenetrable for years.
I think there is a slight chance of a military coup if Trump tries to order the military to crack down on Americans.
The best possible outcome of trumps presidency is a recession (or depression ) that happens within 2 years and that he can’t blame it on Biden. Also that voting still matters by then and the people who sat home wake up and vote for their best interests.
He managed to blame Covid and inflation on Biden, he'll blame anything bad that happens on Biden too and his followers will believe it.
Question is if it’ll matter to the base who caused it if he can’t fix it. It feels a bit like it could be a “reverse” of e.g. Biden’s immensely ambitious infrastructure investments going unnoticed.
Idk, to me it seems like these people don’t even experience the same reality that I do. It seems like Trump could just tell them the economy is fine and that he did fix it and theyll believe him.
First, taking a look at my older comment from last year is interesting... I'd say I'm right on China, Europe and Africa, not really on Ukraine-Russia(mostly incorrect if you ask me). Latin-America in particular wrong, especially with Venezuela and Guyana. Which I'm really, really happy about. Argentina is still a bit too early to tell though. Anyway, to roll into the new year. Which is going to be far more difficult.
The middle east
It's going to be impossible to talk about 2025 without mentioning Syria, Israel and Palestine. While not in last year predictions thread, in other threads I talked about how a 'belt of conflicts' was slowly coming into being, from West-Africa towards the middle east, with a risk of causing a domino effect.
The people of Syria and Israel will very much determine how much this will remain a risk. I'm cautiously optimistic on Syria, I get the impression that all factions are so tired of conflict that they'll compromise on a constitution and new government. Well, apart from ISIS. I doubt they'll resurge, the speed of the fall of Assad made it difficult for them to revive.
Israel, I'm pessimistic about. I do think the conflict in Gaza will end. Which will then cause the internal political questions to revive, and warcrimes in Gaza will most likely become a topic. Just like how the view of the way in Iraq changed in the US after it was over, something similar may happen in Israel - even if the two conflicts are very different in nature.
The fact that a military base in Israel was stormed when one soldier was indicted for rape is not to be taken lightly. While external threats may prevent it, I wouldn't rule out a civil war in Israel in 2025 or 2026, even if the chance is small. Such a war would be devastating for the region.
United States
Then we go on to the next wild card, Trump. I do think he'll impose tariffs on another nation/union impulsively. I'm not sure whether Canada or the EU is more likely, though he may go for the UK if he gets that it would affect the US the least. He'll also put pressure on Ukraine to accept a ceasefire/peace deal against their favour - but how it will look like is difficult to tell with Trump due to his unpredictability.
Speaking of, it's also going to be a question of how long he'll live. He's old and unhealthy. I wouldn't be surprised if he dies sometime during his second term.
Ninja edit: also, people are probably going to be disappointed by Trump quickly. Prices won't just go down immediately, and wages can remain stuck. Judging by the reactions of the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO, this may cause more violence towards the rich.
Europe
The far right will keep making gains domestically among the EU member states but not successfully implement everything they want. They'll continue to stumble and it'll affect the unity of the EU. Some parties may mellow down, whereas others will double down. The EU commission will push through effort to re-industrialize, especially if Trump actually invokes tariffs. Also, Syrian refugees returning will cause some interesting dillema's. Some doctors in Germany for example are Syrian and may return, causing shortages in some sectors. This will somewhat hurt the far right but most likely just cause infighting. It'll sow the seeds for further fracturing in the far right but I doubt the trend of them rising will capsize immediately.
Africa
Sudan will continue to bleed, the world will keep watching, and it may cause the largest famine in this century. There is also a nasty trend of auxiliary mines, and PMCs/local militias getting gold from exploiting local communities, in particular in countries bordering southern Sahara. Drone-based warfare will make this more prelevant as it makes logistics of this new form of warfare more suitable for said PMCs/local militias.
Not all is bad though, some developed countries such as Botswana and Kenya may continue to grow and grow and become success stories. Paired with the above, we may see Southern Africa becoming a region of success in contrast to the center.
Russia-Ukraine
There is a good chance that Ukraine will have to sue for unfavourable peace. That said, Russia is... well, fucked. Inflation and interest rate will continue to increase. I'm expecting companies to fall due to higher cost and shortage of manpower. This will affect other companies in the supply line of Russia's economy, causing a bit of a feedback loop. The low unemployment will, paradoxically, cause this feedback loop to start slow.
I'm not sure if 'hyperstagflation' is a correct way to describe it but I'd say that that's what Russia is heading for. With how many young people want to leave this'll stick around. But I don't know how it'll end, as I don't think we've had a situation like that occurring as of yet.
China
Same as last year, most likely. They'll keep stagnating, and desperately try to keep the real estate market afloat. If it really comes to a crash in the later they'll be really fucked, but I'm more expecting them to drag through mud economically.
Latin-America
Well, I say Latin-America but I only have something to say about Argentina. I'm expecting more strikes and revolt as their macroeconomic numbers will keep getting good, but the poor getting worse. We may see a start of a trend in Argentina that, even if the economy is doing okay in the raw numbers, it can still lead to people being unhappy.
Thank you for such a global response. You raised some issues there that I didn't even know were happening.
Very interesting thoughts about China and Russia, I definitely didn't realise their economic situations were this dire. But couldn't you make the same argument about overheated markets and potential stagflation in the USA and possibly the EU? Is there something specific that makes you think it could all reach a tipping point soon, or just a gut instinct about sustainability?
So to start with, I think the situation in the US, EU, China and Russia aren't exactly comparable. There are always parallels of course. You talk about groups of people and why they do what they do. Humans are humans no matter what. Also, I am just a human making guesses based on what I know and how I feel things will go. I'm actually surprised I got a decent amount right of 2024. Humans are very unpredictable and just look at the past few weeks. South Korea, Syria and Romania were highly unlikely events but they happened. In the end, when you have hundreds of unlikely events a few of them happening is very likely.
Predicting the future is difficult because, well, unlikely events can cause mad chain reactions. The events leading to world war 1 were pretty unlikely, even though a conflict was likely. The way it did changed the world together. To the current situations together though...
Let's start with China and Russia. China has very low inflation, and even had deflation. This isn't because the people were getting richer causing their currency to become more worth, but because people were spending less. The reasons for this are very different from say, the Eurozone pre-COVID era.
Many people have two or three apartments there for various reasons, but status is one of them. Local governments rent the property(remember things are officially still communist and quite often you don't really own land, you just rent it for very long) to get funding. To simplify things a lot, this makes sure that local governments can pay for things like welfare. This is how you get things like empty appartement blocks with crumbling concrete that no one really lives in.
China works rather differently to the point I'm hesitant to go more in depth because with cultural and lingual differences, I'm bound to say something too oversimplified to do it justice. But long story short, the real estate market has the reverse problem of many western countries. Demographics is a major issue - especially when real estate and construction is a huge part of their economic model. There are also big problems with their water distribution and quality. China has major challenges like any other country.
That said I don't think China will just collapse. Also, we shouldn't wish for it despite what many people think. The humanitarian catastrophe and its effects on the world economy alone would not be pretty. I think China will go through something we may call the Great Stagnation in the future. I don't think they'll really have stagflation under those circumstances.
Now, let's go to Russia.
Russia also has a demographics crisis. But contrary to the one-child policy, this one is more complicated. Stalins industrialization plans, the famines from that, World War 2, the breakup of the Soviet Union, COVID. And now Ukraine. Ukraine was a huge miscalculation: It's not just the raw number of deaths and causalities. It's also the highly educated people leaving Russia. Unemployment is really low, inflation is high and interest rates are high. All of these three are different from China. In fact, pretty much the opposite. And while low unemployment sounds great, the context shows that you can't just take a few numbers or graphs and draw conclusions from it if you miss the big picture.
People are leaving Russia after already having low birth rates, deaths, when corruption is rampant, and their economy is overheating. At what point can companies still afford the salaries of their employees if they need to provide higher salaries over and over. With interest rates that high, who is crazy enough to take a loan to start a company? Well, if the war ends there will be a lot more men open for work. But... for what? Prices are bound to keep increasing for a while. Mortgages are also going to keep increasing. Then there is another thing: Russia is massively land-based. It costs a lot to maintain infrastructure on land. With higher labour costs and sanctions hampering stuff like electronics, that increases costs for internal supply chains too.
In the current situation, can you see this slowing down? I can't at least. Especially when young people keep wanting to leave Russia. You don't need many to leave in this situation either. All the issues I've outlined are enough to cause positive correlations with each other. Even if you ignore corruption.
Then we go to the EU.
Here you have a union, that's neither a confederacy or a federation, a blob of political soft power. No one likes the way it is, no one has an alternative. Though cooperation is absolutely essential for everyone. This makes solid actions difficult for the EU. There is also the austerity measures the top in the EU loves, though the recent debate in Germany may spark different mindsets. We also have to see how France goes. The EU is incredibly diverse and different in each member states. The issues in Spain, the Netherlands, Latvia etc. are all very different. But... the competitiveness of our economy is in strain. Rules differ a lot among member states, which hurts companies to kinda grow pan-European and investors are more wary of risks. It almost feels like the smaller German states squabbling amongst each other before the birth of Germany in a way. I do think stagflation is a risk but inflation and prices differ among member states. Demographics is also complicated, varies per country. Though in netto migration has offsetted it. We'll have to see what the future brings on that with the far right, the Syrian civil war maybe(hopefully) ending.
Though no one in the EU wants our industry to nosedive further. Especially with relations with the US souring.
Now, the US.
The US is still a really strong economy. Production, trade, services, it does it all. But look at the end result of the UHC CEO shooting. Why Trump won the election, and so on. Economic growth is one thing, but what if the people don't benefit from it? To an extend this is also the case in the EU but the situation doesn't look sustainable to me as an outsider. I find it difficult to predict the next year though. Trump is a wild card, the US is very individualistic. Social media is also a major catalyst for change, both in the good and the bad.
So to summarize. All of these four nations/unions/federations/whatever are all different. They have different problems, different solutions, and I don't think they are all that comparable. Some of what I say is probably going to be far off the mark because humans are complicated, and nations even more so. It is an interesting time to be alive, which is rather unfortunate for us.
Here's one on a much smaller scale than everyone else's predictions: I expect Reddit to finally break old reddit in a way that convinces me to finally quit the site. They won't officially deprecate old reddit, but they will change something on shreddit that breaks a critical function of old reddit, and they will never bother to fix it or provide an official workaround. In 2024, they even removed the ability to log in via old reddit, redirecting you through shreddit instead. So I feel like the writing is on the wall.
I would not be surprised by this. In fact, I'm astonished it hasn't happened yet!
But I honestly just won't care much. All of my old favourite subs have atrophied significantly since the API changes. The most thoughtful users have left. The best mods have given up. Obvious spam and AI posts are way up. Memes, low-effort 'DAE <popular_thought>', and obvious karma-farming reposts now run amok in subs I used to love for high-quality text posts. The few that have escaped that fate are now a veritable ghost town. The only subs that still have engagement seem to be local geographic subreddits, but those have devolved into a NextDoor clone, with all of the racism and culture warring you'd expect there.
My only remaining use case is old posts about tech and tech workarounds. Some content essentially only lives in this form. But it's growing out of date with each passing day, and tech moves fast enough that someday soon it'll be worth very little.
It is all a bit sad though. Where have my people gone? Tildes is great, of course, but so many niche communities around hobbies and fanbases have essentially evaporated. Maybe they're on Discord? Regardless, I'm not about to invest in platforms vulnerable to enshittification. At least my engagement with the real world is up.
Am I the only person who hasn't seen this stuff happen? I avoided large subreddits in the past, so maybe that's why, but I haven't seen much change in the subreddits I'm subscribed to.
Anyway, I think the reason they haven't broken old reddit is because they just don't care. There are so many people not using it that actively breaking it requires a waste of resources.
Would you mind providing a list of your top 5 subs, or a similar semi-anonymous list? Personal fav subreddits I've seen collapse:
Some of them have been more obvious and catastrophic failures than others. Some have been (allegedly) due to modding, some have happened organically. Most of these still seem pretty active, but if you've been around for a long time, the low-effort meme posts and reposts become obvious and there isn't much to draw you back in.
This might also just be a symptom of my own mental state in life: back in the day, I used to learn a lot from these subreddits. But subreddits for hobbies don't really mature with you, so after a while it's easy to 'level up' and stop learning as much from those subs. As I've gotten older, and the core demographic of these subs stays the same age, it's increasingly frustrating to stop learning and realise that I'm the one who has to increasingly do the teaching. Or, my interests grow more and more niche, to a point where eventually I don't align with the average commenter on the sub anymore because I disagree with the hivemind too often.
r/askhistorians is still in good shape.
r/coins (only because when you're the sort of person that's into coins... shill posts are obvious)
r/datahoarder was always small, remains small, users left but still pretty good
r/wholesomememes actually cleaned house a couple months ago and removed all the bot posts, and for a couple days there were no posts at all because it turned out every single post was a bot post. That was fun to witness.
I have a few subs that I visit, but only one real one I visit everyday. It's a competitive gaming sub reddit with a strong grassroots community, and it has not noticeably changed whatsoever.
I think the subs that have a sorta grounding narrative seem to be doing okay. Stuff that has predictable repeating events, like a sports season, where there is an expectation for a specific type of post seem to be self regulating in a way that directionless subs are not.
I can't join subreddits any more on old reddit. They removed the join button.
Which subreddit(s) are giving you that problem? I am still able to join and leave subreddits normally.
All of them, I haven’t found one that still has the join button for me.
I am on Firefox
On mobile? I have the same problem. Works fine on desktop.
No on desktop. Its the firefox that comes on linux distros maybe that makes a difference?
afaik not all linux distros have the same version either, so that may not narrow it down enough either (I'll have to check if it works on my linux desktop later).
I'm on Tumbleweed with Firefox and here the 'Join'-Button on old.reddit is still at the same place on the sidebar where it always was. Do you maybe use an extension that changes the layout? Stylus or something similar?
Intel is going to shut down, sell off, or otherwise stop their dedicated GPU efforts (Arc).
Ubisoft is going to be acquired.
Apple is going to buy Kagi.
The Elder Scrolls VI is going to get another trailer...
It's going to release after the next Fallout game...
That Fallout game won't be made by Bethesda.
Avowed will be a successful launch for Obsidian and all the reviews will say it's a better Skyrim. It won't beat Skyrim's 48-hour sales though, and poor mod support will relegate it to obscurity in a few years.
Oh please no. I'm not doubting your prediction here, it's likely that Kagi will get offers, especially as its user base grows (and we have to remember that Kagi relies on word-of-mouth instead of advertising and seems to be doing pretty well at it), and Apple is not only likely to be one of the companies throwing money around but is also one that is likely to be accepted.
As someone who escaped Apple's ecosystem when their OG iPod touch finally gave up and has since avoided any of their products, every purchase by Apple has led to that particular product dying. They might live on in spirit, with their headline features integrated into Apple's services, but it's never the same. And has been proven in the past, support for other platforms vanishes not long after being bought.
We need more independent and differentiated services, not more consolidation. That smaller and specific focus on experiences is what makes services like Kagi and places like Tildes good to use. I really don't want to lose that to an acquisition.
This is the fate of too many games. There is so much consolidation, with so many games running on so few engines that I'd have expected we'd start seeing platform-based tooling that allows for easier modding of any games running on the big engines. Instead games seem to be harder to mod instead.
Is the vain of engine specific mod tools, unreal engine and unity both have pretty good tools allowing asset/data dumps and pretty good ways to load your own assets and code. It's not as plug and play as people expect with standard mod support but it really opens the gate for someone with a little programming knowledge to make an actual mod API.
I've actually been trying to do this with the game Supraland for the past week and made surprisingly good progress with loading external assets and hooking game events into my own blueprints without needing to rebuild the entire game project. It still has a few quirks specific to that game I need to figure out, but I wouldn't have even been able to start without the aforementioned tools.
Intel is so cooked I think its betting the farm on Arc to do something
In fairness, the early press buzz on the B580 has it touted as the killer budget option. Hopefully this will translate into enough sales to keep the Arc momentum going. It's been great having a much needed third player in the dGPU space, and, anecdotally, the A770 has certainly been fitting the bill for my own needs.
I hope Intel doesn't cancel Arc. I'd like to see another viable player in the GPU space.
You really think Bethesda will let someone else make Fallout? I highly doubt that would happen again.
Unless you're referring to fan projects like Fallout London, as I know there's several more on the Horizon, though who knows what ends up actually releasing or not.
Didn't they do exactly that with New Vegas?
Yeah and it turned out poorly for them so they locked down the IP. That's why there was never any other third party Fallout games
What about Exodus? Releasing next year or not?
Nah, 2026 for sure.
But uh, what is Exodus again?
I was so excited for ES6 for so long. I remember talking about it back in 2020 with some good friends with so much excitement!
But at some point MSFT made it clear that they were making ES a platform exclusive, and the series has been dead to me since. Honestly, Windows has only gotten worse and even less likely of a buy for me since then.
Has that situation changed? Would be happy to play it on my Mac or PS4 Pro, but I'm guessing even if they did support PS they'd make it a 5 (Pro?) exclusive.
Next year the bill for the climate comes due. What this specifically means for storms and droughts and temperature swings is impossible to predict but the days of having the climate catastrophe “ahead of us” are now over.
Hiking my favorite woods in the Sierra of California this last year I finally gained a bitter acceptance that they should burn. The poor forests are so unhealthy. What isn’t terminally overgrown is diseased and dying, with an informal count of up to 20% of trees in many places already dead.
No more time for nostalgia or attempts to rescue the past. We are now in survival mode.
Ugh - the most depressingly cataclysmic thing that we all read about, nod at, at then go about our day.
Whoever hired a bunch of chimps run this planet should be fired.
My prediction is that the "What are your predictions for 2026?" post will get a bunch of pessimistic predictions that turn out wrong.
Trump lies, loots (profits off the presidency) and breaks impeachable laws. 95% probability.
Trump is not held accountable (relatively subdued press coverage, no impeachment). 80%.
Europe steps up when Trump stops support of Ukraine. 50%
Trump's initiates tariffs. 33%
USA Inflation goes up. 33%
USA Recession occurs. 33%
Trump initiates a war. 25%
Drone tech is used as a weapon to spread fear in USA. 15% probability.
(Very USA/Trump centric. Sorry)
Hmm, some quickfire assumptions/predictions:
Trump assassination attempt
#2Correction: #3 thanks to @Monte_KristoUkraine war will end (Putin steps down as president after some turmoil)
Israel/Palestinian war will escalate further into surrounding region
VR is gaining some marketshare in the gaming space (I reckon Steam's new headset will play a big role)
Sony is leaving the smartphone market
Cowless cheese gains traction
California gets hit by biggest forest fires yet
New temperature records during the summer for nearly every part of the world
CO2 levels globally rise 10ppm in one year for the first time
I'll chuck in a new global pandemic for good measure.
Attempt #3. This was number 2. There was much less theatrics compared to the first one.
You're right! forgot about that. Vigilante attacks I feel are coming more when the wealth gap is increasing.
I sure hope so, he seems like the type to go down swinging. 😟
How'd I miss this?! Thanks, didn't realize they had a fancy new VR set in the works. 😀
Sony sells smartphones? I'm thinking that leaving the market would be wise.
Cowless dairy in general I hope. It's already out there and it seems like an easy one to scale up. It'd be nice to see a few more breakthroughs with lab grown meat too. Are there lab-grown eggs (with yolk) yet?
Eggs are tricky so we most likely won't see those any time soon, haven't heard any work being done on it either.
I am dangerously close to tears, gazing wistfully over at my XZ1 Compact, the last truly great phone, in the corner. But you're not wrong.
For less serious stuff, I predict that Kendrick Lamar will continue his public, one sided ass beating of Drake in ways beyond the stuff that was already announced to be happening. (Super Bowl and playing in Toronto on Father's Day)
Drake should find a genie or angel and wish he was never born. I hear Christmas Eve is a great time to do that, so he better act fast!
Given today's news, my take on the Canadian year ahead is that we'll have an election following the resignation of Justin Trudeau (I'm calling it for January) and that Donald Trump will continue to tease us to see what we're made of.
Agreed, although the January resignation is only because they are breaking for the holidays today, and Justin and Telford need to line up their next gig before announcing his departure, otherwise it would be sooner.
More specifically, I predict the Conservatives will win a landslide majority victory relegating both the Liberals and the NDP to a tier similar to the Bloc and the Greens will chuckle. Pierre Poilievre will enjoy a tumultuous three day victory lap before the press and the bitter Liberals begins to slice and dice him for not instantly fixing the deficit, providing cheap homes and cutting immigration to a couple of families from the Philippines every year.
Trump's gonna bluster and moan about tariffs, but at the end of the day, we'll agree to spend a bit more on defense (read: give American arms makers money) and post a couple more cops at the border and the tariffs won't amount to much. But it doesnt help that we currently have a dishevelled government so hopefully nothing happens til we have a new gov installed.
2025 is going to be an interesting year in Canada.
Trudeau getting voted out is an easy prediction.
The question is whether Peepee will get a minority or majority.
I also predict that we'll have a bad wildfire season again. And again and again and again.
In Alberta, that hurts extra
Social media will continue to fragment. The former twitter userbase will finish dividing itself between Bluesky and X along the conservative/progressive divide. Mastodon will remain but out of the mainstream. Tiktok's misinformation will continue getting it into trouble and if Instagram reels and Youtube shorts don't poach that market another company will launch to try and fill that niche. At least one of the "AI friend" apps will grow to prominence and take some of the doomscroller demographic. Discord will remain strong despite further enshittification pissing off its user base. In totality, more social engagement online will shift to siloed platforms like Whatsapp and Discord, but we will find out later that every word of private conversation has been taken to train AIs the entire time.
From a previous thread:
The Ministry of Time will win a hugo despite being terrible and John Wiswell will be snubbed despite being amazing
I predict democracy in Belarus.
BRICS will keep tearing a hole in the USA and it will probably escalate. I'm glad I am alive to see the USA fall.
How do you think that will look like?