Geopolitics:

• Cuisine bridges cultures.
• A new cold war and another space race has begun. China mocked officially and is overtaking US in scientific research.
• Eurosclerosis. + | Is the Ukraine crisis the West’s fault? Maybe + or maybe not. +
• The new military branch: Hacking armies. +

Democracy & free speech:

• Democracy is declining. + Is globalization merging democracy and autocracy?
• Censorship and mass surveillance like financial deplatforming + and chat control + spreaded to democracies. The war on disinformation is a war on dissent +, «data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium». Resistance: «right to encryption» and ban on biometric mass surveillance. +
• The forgotten majorities and its rage. In the end, the most intolerant wins.
• Tech corporations may become «independent nations». + | New corporate tyranny + and the rise of the «Liberaltarian».
• In the West: Cancel culture + is official. + | Objectivity in journalism became a matter of opinion. Resistance: Online freedom of speech bill.
• In the East, China allows some government criticism but silences collective expression like Wikipedia and Russians paint opposition name on snow to get snow removed.
• Trading free speech for cash on universities or by suppressing posts by poor or «ugly» people. | Bad reviews can put you in jail and more than 2000 journalists were killed since 1992.
• Alternative paths: Lottocracy. | Giving up right to vote to get student loans erased. | Fund for future generations. | Nationalizations. | Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery.
• Futurology: Algocracy. + | Microchip implants with vaccine passport + or tickets.

Economy & business:

• Capitalism 2.0. is surveillance capitalism, restrictions on free trade + and universal basic income.
• Economic (ir)rationality: 40% of foreign investment is aimed at tax dodging. | Empty homes. | Bonuses on eve of bankruptcy. | Shrinkflation. + | Tesla makes more money trading bitcoin than selling cars. +
• Geoarbitrage: The power of money depends on where you live.
• Demonetization: Cost of living. | Independently poor. | Software is no longer sold, is adopted. +
• Eventually, everything will be a subscription even high end cars.
• The Not-Com bubble is popping. | Two worlds. + | All companies are technology companies now. +
• Edgecases: $7.5b undo button. | Bringing back old features. + | Crowdfunding to minimize risk. +

Inequality:

• Private land has become increasingly concentrated.
• Decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top. | Tech workers and university graduate students plan to unionize.
• Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. Poor kids need summer jobs but only rich kids get them. Anyway, regional inequality is ahead of personal inequity as a cause of revolt.
• Parents are more worried about their sons than their daughters. Young women are out earning young men. + | A prenup is the latest must-have for tech startup founders.
• Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination + and for black CEOs humiliation is a part of doing business.

Demography:

• Life expectancy growth: prisons are a haven for the elderly and the corporatization of nursing homes.
• Immigrants: Sending asylum-seekers far away. + | Aging Japan prefers automation. | The Great Replacement.
• Ideology: Neutral gender marker available on US passports. + | New visa allows most Hong Kong residents to migrate to UK. +

Society & parenting:

• The «attention economy» corrupts science. + | Are elites displacing experts? +
• No one fails anymore: everybody «pivots». | How the self-esteem craze took over America. | Addiction to outrage. +
• Social media is a role-playing game: Proof of X. + | Parasocial relationships. + | «Influencer» is the most desired occupation among youngsters. | Young female influencer is actually a mature man. + | Instagram village. | Flattery-driven open-source. +
• A skewed spectrum: Teens who refuse to use social media. vs. Teens so addicted to cellphones they’re going to detox centers. | Why no one answers their phone anymore.
• Male shaming: Social perfectionism kills. | Hikikomori and incels. | Porno bans, sex doll brothel and AI girlfriend. Collateral damage: Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men. | Boyfriend role-play.
• Children spend less time outside than prison inmates and it took just 4 generations. Hints: promoting playgrounds a little more dangerous and agency. +
• Dystopia: Teaching kids how to be famous and sending more foster kids to prison than college. +
• Edgecases: Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce + and kids can be surprisingly mean to robots.

Work, education & skills:

• Remote work is becoming the norm. When you’re a «digital nomad» the world is your office. | Asynchronous communication is the real reason remote workers are more productive. Dark side.
• Focus and monetizing your knowledge has become more valuable than intelligence. Gig economy is West discovering servants. | Big cities no longer deliver for low-skill workers.
• On college: Elite over-production. + | Investing tuition costs nets a higher return. | American students head to Germany for free college.
• On didactics: Remote learning didn’t work. | Hyperinflation means the end of grades. | «Woke» math. + | Computer game on school reading list. | New classes on AI, mindfulness and how not to be duped by the news.
• Skills mismatch: High-paying trade jobs sit empty, while high school grads line up for university. | Hand skills: doctors of sewing needed. | A CEO who can write. Hiring anyone who applied or when hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling. Vs. Resumes looking like Instagram or Tinder and the factory floors full of college-educated workers. | Web design work is drying up.
• Jobs are at risk as self-driving trucks become viable. Fortunately most people would rather lose their job to a robot.
• Futurology: Four-day week means «I don’t waste holidays on chores» and robots controlled by paralyzed people.

Health:

• The global fertility rate is falling and sperm quality declined on dogs also. | Death rates rising for all americans.
• Inflammation seems to underlie all sickness and fasting seems to regenerate the immune system.
• On viruses: COVID-19 coronavirus is here forever. + | Mobility Index. | mRNA COVID-19 vaccines herald a new era for vaccinology. | Promising vaccines for HIV + and malaria. + | Ebola is now curable.
• On eyes: Regaining sight after a decade of blindness with artificial cornea implantation. + | Myopia correcting «smart glasses». +
• On teeth: Instead of filling cavities, dentists may soon regenerate them.
• On spine: Walking again thanks to 3D printed spinal implant.
• On blood: Young blood rejuvenates old tissues and microplastics found for first time. + | Lab-grown blood is near. +
• On kidneys: Pig kidney has been successfully transplanted. + | Bioartificial kidney. +
• The human genome is finally complete. +
• Transgender and gender-diverse individuals with elevated rates of autism.
• Edgecases: Mosquitoes kill more than 700,000 people every year. | Ditching daylight saving time. | Unnecessary medical care is harming patients and the case for showering less.

Sports:

• Two-hour marathon barrier breaked.
• Soccer is not a sport anymore. +

Media:

• Media as food. +
• The internet of creation disappeared. Now we have the internet of surveillance and control. | Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor. | SEO is gentrifying the internet.
• Click farms booming in China. | We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. | Netflix saves kids from up to 400 hours of commercials a year.
• The great race to rule streaming TV.
• Superstars are losing market share in streaming. | Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986.
• Amazon is winning at publishing.
• The most used languages on the internet. +
• Edgecases: Slow Television or confort TV. | The lonely work of moderating a web community.

Culture, beliefs & ethics:

• Aesthetics: Has the world become less colourful? + | Normie Minimalism and Farmhouse Chic took over contemporary design. | Aging parents with lots of stuff and children who don’t want it.
• Faiths: Communism, sharing economy + and vegetarianism. | First temple to Norse gods since Viking age and statue in honor of bitcoin creator. +
• Dystopia: Eco-anxiety + and getting vasectomies to save the world. + | Japan’s police hunt for things to do. | Hedonism, sex and fear – why the Weimar republic is in vogue. | The escape room games industry and loot boxes.
• Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts + and most violence is motivated by moral sentiments. | Are all world leaders psychopathic? +
• Law & ethics: Web scraping is legal + | Should I block ads? | An autopilot killed two people. Is the driver guilty? + Apparently not. + | Human-monkey chimera embryos created in lab. +

Tourism:

• Travel democratization: Too many people want to travel and it is silently changing the world. Resistance: 90-day minimum stay + in Airbnbs outside resort areas.
• No one wants to be a tourist: The anti-tour. | Seaside’s appeal. | Chernobyl’s «stalker» subculture. + | Pandemic walks. + | Randomized living. | Crowdfunded wandering. + | Voluntourism + | Begpacking. | Lifestyle business tourism.
• Coming back? Night trains and canteens.

Retail:

• Democratising lazyness. + | Amazon hires 427,000 people in 10 months. | Shopping sucks now.
• Physical shops: return to rural but are now staff-free. + | Only the fanciest shoppings are expanding. | Are the hyper-specialist shops the future of retail?

Reduce, reuse & recycle:

• The end of «plastic age»: Phasing-out of lightweight plastic bags. End consumer plastics also.
• Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water.
• 91% of plastic isn’t recycled. | Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic. | Most plastic recycling is dumped in landfills. Hints: Recycling waste plastic into strong cheap bricks. +
• «Right to repair»: EU introduce rules for appliances and Apple announces self service repair. + | Repair is as important as innovation. | 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity.
• Edgecases: People are recycling too much garbage and it’s threatening the industry. | The war on food waste is a waste of time. | No one wants your used clothes anymore.

Energy:

• Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels? Renewables became cheap very fast.
• The photonic age +: Solar has a better return on investment than oil and battery costs have plunged. + | Supercomputer can now run on light. + | The new «gold rush» for green lithium.
• Nuclear power: Environmentalists are learning to love it. | Mini-nuclear plants. | Largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly. | Major breakthrough in nuclear fusion. +
• Edgecases: Brewery burns iron.

Ecology & climate:

• Climate change is water change. Water crisis make it a commodity.
• Desertification combat: 350 million trees in one day and using wastewater. Anyone can make a difference. Anyway our planet is greener than 20 years ago. Trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances. Plant life is expanding also.
• On biodiversity: insect and bird populations are declining but conservation efforts made wild mammals + to comeback. Bugs are evolving to eat plastic + and Chernobyl black frogs + reveal evolution in action.
• CO2 in the atmosphere is beating records: The real price of buying cheap clothes. It emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The same with cement. Thankfully the dream of carbon air capture is becoming reality. +
• Environmental taxes are becoming a norm but electric cars are starting to be taxed too.
• Greta Thunberg.

Farming:

• Is organic agriculture better for the environment? | True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises.
• «War on meat» is official: How to lower the price of plant-based meat? + | The promise and perils of insect farming. + | Lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time.
• Farming drives toward «precision agriculture» +: floating farm. | Urban rooftops. | Vertical farm out-produces flat farm. | «Planting» solar panels as water supplies dry up.

Urbanism & construction:

• The city of the future may have way less parking once cars are not yet optimized. Hints: E-bikes and fare free public transport could be the electric revolution cities need.
• The suburb of the future brings a tiny house trend but there are still too many too big houses. The allure of small towns for big city freelancers.
• In a world of digital nomads, many will be homeless: Living on pennies with a million-dollar view embracing van life. + | Dorm living for professionals.
• Construction: Printing a tiny house in 24 hours or a two-story house is already possible. Is 3d printing the future of construction? | The smart home still sucks. +
• Edgecases: Wooden skyscrapers or village on top of a mall.
• Futurology: Crypto cities. + | Movable housing + for scalable cities.

Transports:

• The age of car electrification: Corporations are embracing it and Europeans are leading. | Pickup trucks.
• Private space exploration started: Two humans into orbit and contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon. +
• Eco-friendly long travels: Electric flight. | 1000km/h maglev trains. | Longest undersea rail tunnel.
• Edgecases: Affordable personal flying vehicle + and submarine + are in production. | Energy storage on auto bodies. | Electrified wingsuit. | Flight by light or windowless. | Klimaticket. +

Drones, robotics & AI:

• Drone revolution: Autonomous drone navigates through the forest at 40 km/h. + and may fly for days. | 20-pound load delivery becomes a reality. | Drones can seed a forest, 100k trees a day or kill weeds and invasive nautical flora. They can even rescue swimmers and lost hikers, map slums for land titling or be used as sheep dogs.
• The dark side: Drones armed with explosives +, tracking cars and people + and scaning faces and license plates.
• Robots: Boston Dynamics is finally selling. | Hydrogel interfaces + for merging humans and machines.
• Self-driving vehicles: Autonomous trucks are real but boats seem more solvable. +
• Machine learning: AI research was stagnant + and used to be useless for business but it changed, + 2023 is already marked by a major breakthrough. + | Who knew the first AI battles would be fought by artists? + | AI can beat Poker professionals.

Tools:

• Computers: Your phone vs Supercomputers. + | ARM got so successful without the public noticing. | Apple M1 means Intel’s disruption is now complete. Hints: Using a Raspberry Pi or a iPad Pro as a main computer.
• Analogic resistance: Replacing touchscreen controls with mechanical ones. | Hardware pedal for improved text editing.
• Timeless tools: lego, paper and spreadsheets. +
• Edgecases: Super App + | Computer files are going extinct. | Privacy tools. | Transistors are civilization’s invisible infrastructure. +

Blockchain:

• Is getting mainstream +: Crypto index funds. | First government to offer full blockchain regulation.
• The quest for use cases: Web3. + | Bitcoin is a hyperobject + or even the singularity + | NFTs are the new conceptual art. + | A good use case for blockchains is reward points.
• Elephant in the room: Heating homes by mining crypto currencies. + | The Crypto-Chernobyl. +
• A leverage for dreams: Traveling the world. | Crypto leaders are obsessed with life extension. +