(This blog essay is overdue because I'm still waiting for new prescription glasses and writing while cross-eyed with text zoomed to 250% is tedious. They should be here later this week. Meanwhile ...)

Back in January 2022 I wrote an essay revisiting my predictions for 2017. My review of 2017's stab in the dark began, "it spanned three blog posts and ended happily in a nuclear barbecue to put us all out of our misery: start here, continue with this, and finale: and the Rabid Nazi Raccoons shall inherit the Earth."

I'll actually stand by those 2017 predictions, which were weirdly not that far off the mark although Queen Elizabeth II outlasted my prediction by several years.

But my 2022 predictions?

Oh boy.

Look, for an amateur futurologist writing in January of 2022 it was arguably forgivable to miss the US electorate being so boneheadedly stupid that they'd re-elect the most corrupt president in their nation's history, at the head of a Gish gallop of barkingly ignorant and destructive cranks and conspiracy theorists determined to tear down the republic and destroy its vital institutions, all in the name of returning the social order (per the Project 2025 plan) to the 50s--the 1850s, that is, not the 1950s. With 20/20 hindsight, what I missed was the now-obvious wave of media ownership consolidation, including corporate social media such as X, Meta, and Google, in the hands of a narrow class of billionaire oligarchs. I also missed the complacent incompetence of the Biden administration with respect to organizing their succession plans--it was obvious that by 2024 he'd be vulnerable to campaign ratfucking on grounds of his age, and his anointed successor was guilty of being (a) too female and (b) non-white, rendering her unacceptable to a large chunk of the voters.

But, even if you forgive my failure to recognize the catastrophic collapse of the US as a credible hegemonic superpower over the past 3-4 years, I can only hang my head in shame over my failure to anticipate the Ukraine war, which broke out six weeks after that blog essay. Let alone to anticipate a revolution in military affairs as profound as that brought about of the first world war.

Similiarly, I have no excuse for not recognizing that an Israel with politics dominated by Benjamin Netanyahu would go Full Nazi sooner rather than later, as the genocide in Gaza and the program to build a Greater Israel in Lebanon demonstrate. I mean, I grew up going to synagogue and have visited Israel more than once! I should have seen the signs, they were all there as far back as the 1980s. Mea culpa. (And fuck those guys.)

While I correctly recognized the EV transport revolution, I missed the concurrent solar power and grid-scale battery revolution, now very visibly in train and arguably more important than the arrival of cheap electric cars and cheaper e-bikes. I didn't notice the global supply chain crisis of 2021-2023, even then gathering pace, although it didn't impact consumer prices for a few more months.

Possibly my worst miss is that I completely discounted the profound social impact of LLMs (or so-called "AI"), not simply as a massive technology sector investment bubble and happy hunting ground for snake oil salesmen and grifters, but as a corrosive influence on population-level critical thinking. I should have seen it coming--I read Joseph Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason back in the 1980s--but I didn't recognize just how unable to see past the ELIZA illusion most people would prove to be.

Nor did I expect the transhumanists, extropians, and the rest of the hairball of beliefs now congealing into the syncretistic techno-religion of TESCREAL to have seized control of trillions of dollars of private equity and not only be arguing about the Singularity but to be squabbling over who gets to run it (with a side-order of racism and eugenics on top, because every flavour of crank batshittery is so much better with a side-order of fascism and concentration camps).

So I'm sticking a flag in the ground here and admitting: I am officially a shit futurologist.

Back in 2022, and before that, in 2017 and even in 2007, I espoused a general rule of thumb about predicting the future, that:

Looking 10 years ahead, about 70% of the people, buildings, cars, and culture is already here today. Another 20-25% is not present yet but is predictable -- buildings under construction, software and hardware and drugs in development, children today who will be adults in a decade. And finally, there's about a 5-10% element that comes from the "who ordered that" dimension

2022 forced me to update the ratio to:

20% of 10-year-hence developments utterly unpredictable, leaving us with 55-60% in the "here today" and 20-25% in the "not here yet, but clearly on the horizon" baskets

Anyway, it's now 2026, and I officially give up.

The Stross Ratio for predicting events ten years hence is now 60/10/30. That is: 60% of the people, buildings, and culture are here today. 10% is predictably on the drawing boards, and a whopping 30% is utterly unpredictable.

Airborne Hantavirus pandemic or global Measles pandemic, who the fuck knows what we're going to get--given that the US FDA is run by a crank who doesn't believe in the germ theory of disease and seems to be trying to spike vaccine development globally?

A shutdown of global semiconductor fabrication caused by a worldwide helium shortage, and a global fertilizer shortage causing famine and food price spikes, due to a senile sundowning autocrat starting a war with Iran without any clear exit strategy?

Who ordered any of this?

I'm reasonably confident that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be over by this time in 2030--quite likely by this time in 2027, due to the collapse of the Russian domestic economy. I'm also reasonably confident that the US war on Iran will be over by this time in 2030, if only because Trump will most likely be dead or in palliative care (possibly following his removal in a soft coup via Article 25 of the US constitution, due to his very obvious current illness and decline). (Note that Trump's insistence on "running for a third term" is very probably a serious sign that the electoral process in the USA is no longer fully functional, under the aegis of the supreme court he appointed, as long as he survives. His successor may not be able to sustain his ability to ignore the law: if they can, then, well, the US Republic is over: it had a good run, from 1776 to 2026.) The AI bubble will have burst long before May 2027--the semiconductor pinch caused by the aforementioned helium supply crisis will cripple Nvidia's ability to manufacture chipsets for data centers, and the US DCs are all being built to run on diesel/kerosene burning gas turbine power plants anyway, the price of which has skyrocketed due to the gulf war.

I expect us to be well into Great Depression 2.0 by this time in 2030.

There will be some grounds for hope. The global energy transition to renewables will, by that point, be a done deal. It also means China will have replaced the USA as the global energy superpower--not because they dominate the transport routes for energy but because they manufacture 80% of the planet's EVs and PV panels and batteries. But that's a tenuous hold on superpowerdom. If the Chinese government throws its weight around in the 21st century the way the USA did in the 20th, it will rapidly find first-tier rivals building up their own manufacturing capability: meanwhile, PV/battery is inherently easier to distribute that large, centralized grid based power supplies, and the dronification of warfare means (at least in the near term) that rapid mechanized wars of maneuver are a non-starter: the "fog of war" is on the way out, replaced by highly precise targeting of advancing assets and the robotization of the front line.

In space, I'm pretty sure we will see a Kessler Syndrome event if the idiotic rush towards putting data centers in orbit goes anywhere. But I think it's not going to happen--SpaceX is inextricably tied to the current tech bubble, and when it pops Elon Musk is going to wish he had a bunker to hide in.

The main casualty of this decade is the ideological credibility of capitalism as a social organizational principle.

Enshittification, also known as platform decay, per wiki, is "a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to both users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders." Systematic capture of the US government and the global system of trade by capitalists has resulted in the creation of a framework optimized for enshittification all round, and the result is the enshittification of everything--all the infrastructure of the capitalist world is decaying and on fire as the post-privatization owners loot it.

This is the Marx-predicted crisis of capitalism, and it's been in progress since the collapse of the USSR in 1991 removed the main ideological standard-bearer for opposition. It accelerated in 2008 with the global financial crisis, and again in 2020 when the pandemic provided top cover for the hyaenas to go on a looting spree. They've stripped the corpse of actually-existing social democracies everywhere to the bone, and now they're cannibalizing their own body politic. Disaster capitalism has finally come home to roost, and it won't end until the global financial system collapses. Meanwhile, the generation born in the 21st century has no time for their shit. We are moving into a political state weirdly reminiscent of the period between 1905 and the 1930s. If we're lucky we're going to get New Deal 2.0 and a brisk round of socialism: if we're unlucky, it's going to be guillotine time all over again.

PS: do not expect to see me visiting the USA any time soon. Millions of people applying for a US visa are now required to make all of their social media accounts publicly visible -- or risk having their applications delayed or denied outright. The directive, which covers more than a dozen nonimmigrant visa categories, has been rolling out in phases since June 2025 and expanded significantly as of 30 March 2026. This policy is impossible to implement without feeding all those social media profiles to an LLM in search of a verdict, and they'll obviously be screening applicants for ideological compatibility. And if it's rolling out to visa applicants now, the automated program will inevitably be applied to I-94W (visa waiver) travelers shortly thereafter. My social media profile is that of a pro-LGBT pro-Green hard left troublemaker, so ... nope, not going there: I am absolutely not interested in touring the concentration camps of El Salvador!

Sociologists have long argued that human relationships are sustained less by intensity and more by regularity. Simply encountering the same people repeatedly builds closeness over time. Youth offers this naturally. Adulthood dismantles it completely. Especially in urban life.

– From the article The quiet grief of adult friendship

This is one of the many reasons why we are building CreativeMornings/Clubs.

It’s Star Wars day, and while I haven’t time for my Let Me Show You How Star Wars Actually Operates Via PBTA Moves, let’s try something else. There’s a lot you can learn about how to make your characters better by actually watching Star Wars.

I spent a few years writing Star Wars comics for Disney, which led to me studying them intently with adult eyes. The film which grew with rewatching was actually A New Hope – just this fairy tale, and a deeply strangely structured one. For all it being Patient Zero of The Heroes Journey in Hollywood, its lead doesn’t turn up until twenty minutes into it. That doesn’t turn up in the How To Write a Screenplay guides.A tight look at New Hope reveals stuff people forget (and whose absence is why some later stuff doesn’t land) but also a whole bunch which can make you make your writing (and playing) better.

This is transferable to games, as much of what makes Star Wars work is in the cast’s acting, not the dialogue per se. Not what they say, but how they say it. We have all these lines that have become part of pop culture, quoted until they’re worn thin. Actually look at Star Wars, and see these are performed with fear in the heart and sweat in the eyes. Folks look panicked. They are committed to it, absolutely. This is a long way from the action-as-videogame-cutscene that’s trapped the genre’s heart in Carbonite.

Anyone can make jokes about Storm Troopers’ accuracy. Easy. What you should notice is that there’s no point in the movie where the characters don’t run away the second they’re outnumbered, or treat the threat with the upmost sincerity. It’s not until Jedi we discover what happens if they stand and fight, and can ‘t run away – and the answer is “They get captured.”

And then there’s Han Solo.

Han Solo is the archetypal Han Solo in fiction. Generations of role-players have tried to play knock offs. Generations have shat the bed, as in their Love of the Effect of Han Solo On The Screen have failed to grasp how the magic trick worked.

It’s not just Han, of course. It could be Wolverine. Or any cynical loner who refuses to play by the rules, is clearly cooler than anyone else in the story, and really doesn’t want to be involved.

You know the sort.

What we’re talking about here is one of the classic gaming complaints of those in the trad space. As in, someone grinding the game to a halt with a “my character wouldn’t be involved in this adventure.”

Now, I’ve found myself reading D&D Reddit, and… oh, let’s embed the post.

There’s a whole lot of stuff, and a mixture of good advice, terrible advice, and a whole world of clashing play styles.

But, were I to paraphrase the hardline advice that pops up when someone asks what to do about a player whose character doesn’t want to go on the adventure, it’s something like…

Just let the party go ahead, and tell the reluctant player that their character has gone off and done their own thing and is now out the game. If you want to carry on playing, roll up a character who wants to be involved in the game.

At which point I am gritting my teeth and trying to avoid barging in the walls of the Internet like the Kool guy going on about This Is Why Buy In is important.

But even that’s not helpful if someone wants to play Han Solo, because Han Solo – almost by definition! – doesn’t want to go on this mission, really. Are we really saying that you can’t pick this clearly popular archetype? After all, Han Solo has to be dragged backwards through the movie to be involved, and everyone loves him.

This is the moment everyone is thinking of.

But the important thing to remember is…

Now, if you are looking with naïve eyes, you may think “this means that it’s the party’s job to convince the reticent character they want to be part of this game.”

This would be missing the key fact that Han Solo is a fucking idiot.

Imagine if Star Wars was an actual TTRPG. A classic Han Solo-esque player would have told Luke to sling their hook. It’s clearly a threadbare suggestion, and incredibly risky, and it all hangs on the say-so of this fucking farm boy they just picked up who’s already lost their old dude.

But the player of Han Solo in the film? Oh no. They’re all in. This half-arsed suggestion is all he needs. What they’ve done is used their character trait to create a scene which lets another player shine, and then buy into their answer completely. Rather than using it as a blockage, they’ve used it as a springboard. Rather than worrying about being cool, they have let the other player be cool. Which makes them cooler.

The fundamental mistake that a wannabe Han Solo player makes is thinking that it’s other players’ job to convince them they should play – when it’s in fact, by choosing to play an awkward character, it’s your job to work out why you remain in the game and go along with what’s happening.

It’s interesting that we’re used to thinking about Player Skill intersecting with the character class in terms of efficiently using the skills the class is based around… but we’re less likely to think about the character type in the same way. I think they’re actually identical.

If you’re playing a Han Solo finding ways to stay in the party is your problem in exactly the same way that working out how to throw a fireball and not kill your entire party is your problem as a wizard. If you didn’t want it to be your problem, you shouldn’t have picked the fucking class.

We love Han Solo for many reasons – but above all, we love Han Solo because he remains in the movie, on screen, and doesn’t leave at the forty minute mark, never to be seen again.

Because the one thing Han Solo never was, is boring.

On Mastodon, Hendrik Weimer posted 5 most boosted Fediverse posts of 2025. The numbers look kind of low, but the author explains the methodology below.

At any rate, two of the 5 posts have to do with our trust in software.

Number 1 from Max Leibman:

No, I do not want to install your app.
No, I do not want that app to run on startup.
No, I do not want that app shortcut on my desktop.
No, I do not want to subscribe to your newsletter.
No, I do not want your site to send me notifications.
No, I do not want to tell you about my recent experience.
No, I do not want to sign up for an account.
No, I do not want to sign up using a different service and let the two of you know about each other.
No, I do not want to sign in for a more personalized experience.
No, I do not want to allow you to read my contacts.
No, I do not want you to scan my content.
No, I do not want you to track me.
No, I do not want to click “Later” or “Not now” when what I mean is NO.

Number 5 from JA Westenberg:

RSS never tracked you.
Email never throttled you.
Blogs never begged for dopamine.
The old web wasn’t perfect.
But it was yours.

If code is free, why aren’t all apps native?

The state of coding agents can be summed up by this fact

Claude spent $20k on an agent swarm implementing (kinda) a C-compiler in Rust, but desktop Claude is an Electron app.

If you’re unfamiliar, Electron is a coding framework for building desktop applications using web tech, specifically HTML, CSS, and JS. What’s great about Electron is it allows you to build one desktop app that supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. Plus it lets developers use existing web app code to get started. It’s great for teams big and small. Many apps you probably use every day are built with Electron: Slack, Discord, VS Code, Teams, Notion, and more.

There are downsides though. Electron apps are bloated; each runs its own Chromium engine. The minimum app size is usually a couple hundred megabytes. They are often laggy or unresponsive. They don’t integrate well with OS features.

(These last two issues can be addressed by smart development and OS-specific code, but they rarely are. The benefits of Electron (one codebase, many platforms, it’s just web!) don’t incentivize optimizations outside of HTML/JS/CSS land.)

But these downsides are dramatically outweighed by the ability to build and maintain one app, shipping it everywhere.

But now we have coding agents! And one thing coding agents are proving to be pretty good at is cross-platform, cross-language implementations given a well-defined spec and test suite.

On the surface, this ability should render Electron’s benefits obsolete! Rather than write one web app and ship it to each platform, we should write one spec and test suite and use coding agents to ship native code to each platform. If this ability is real and adopted, users get snappy, performant, native apps from small, focused teams serving a broad market.

But we’re still leaning on Electron. Even Anthropic, one of the leaders in AI coding tools, who keeps publishing flashy agentic coding achievements, still uses Electron in the Claude desktop app. And it’s slow, buggy, and bloated app.

So why are we still using Electron and not embracing the agent-powered, spec driven development future?

For one thing, coding agents are really good at the first 90% of dev. But that last bit – nailing down all the edge cases and continuing support once it meets the real world – remains hard, tedious, and requires plenty of agent hand-holding.

Anthropic’s Rust-base C compiler slammed into this wall, after screaming through the bulk of the tests:

The resulting compiler has nearly reached the limits of Opus’s abilities. I tried (hard!) to fix several of the above limitations but wasn’t fully successful. New features and bugfixes frequently broke existing functionality.

The resulting compiler is impressive, given the time it took to deliver it and the number of people who worked on it, but it is largely unusable. That last mile is hard.

And this gets even worse once a program meets the real world. Messy, unexpected scenarios stack up and development never really ends. Agents make it easier, sure, but hard product decisions become challenged and require human decisions.

Further, with 3 different apps produced (Mac, Windows, and Linux) the surface area for bugs and support increases 3-fold. Sure, there are local quirks with Electron apps, but most of it is mitigated by the common wrapper. Not so with native!

A good test suite and spec could enable the Claude team to ship a Claude desktop app native to each platform. But the resulting overhead of that last 10% of dev and the increased support and maintenance burden will remain.

For now, Electron still makes sense. Coding agents are amazing. But the last mile of dev and the support surface area remains a real concern.