I feel like it’s a rubber band that’s been stretched with potential energy, except that it’s the potential for innovation in the space industry. We’ve got so many converging technologies that will snowball and lead to new self-reinforcing industry. Think of how valuable a 3D-printed cloned organ would be that could only be grown in micro gravity. Inflatable space habitats will definitely be a thing. Automation and self-multiplying robots will be a thing on the moon.

Sure, but if we don’t need all the land we’re currently using for parking, we can build a lot of new infill mixed-use housing that’s built of fast growth biomass materials (compressed laminated timber, bamboo, pine, hemp) that are all sequestering carbon while lowering the average person’s carbon footprint. Figure out mass adoption of plant, fermented, or lab-grown protein, and we’re well on our way to tackling climate change.

I figure this buys us enough time to get to orbital solar-based energy with panels made largely from materials mined on the moon.

You know what else would offset 8,000 cars? Short-range, low speed, autonomous minibuses that move people on demand from their homes to multi-mobility nodes. These nodes would then be connected together by premium mass transit, whether Bus Rapid Transit, Light Rail, heavy rail, or MAGLEV. That, and 15 minute cities where most people don’t have to travel that far for daily needs. We need the mesh network of new innovative mobility to bridge the gap to hub-and-spoke traditional mass transit.

But, if programs like ChatGPT help people, how will the for-profit healthcare industrial complex in America continue to rake in money to send to Big Pharma and the insurance companies?

Perhaps $3M has been spent over the decades trying to fix my now estranged older sister between rehab, therapy, hospital stays, and law enforcement. That doesn’t even include the destruction she has caused to society and people’s lives. All it did was help turn her into a psychopath that’s able to keep on going harming people and being insane on social media. She’s too far gone now to be taken seriously, but my lived experience very much disagrees with “trust the professionals” and to just keep feeding the beast with more money.

What’s wrong is our lifestyles, our food, our addiction to technology that’s fucking with our minds with their algorithms. It’s like the commercials when I was a kid after you ate your sugary cereal and watched your favorite cartoons that were really infomercials for the toys, only to then sit all day playing Nintendo getting fat. It’s that times 100 these days. They’ll put kids on drugs for anything. We’re being chemically handcuffed just to get us to comply with the system.

What we need is sunshine, our hands in the dirt growing plants, real fruits and vegetables, walkable communities, and above all a lot more of our lives outdoors not looking at screens.

Show me a doctor in America who will prescribe that for a teenager before Adderall.

This is similar to the plot of my favorite Asimov novels:

“The main plot-line is a project by those who inhabit a parallel universe (the para-Universe) with different physical laws from this one. By exchanging matter from their universe—para-Universe—with our universe, they seek to exploit the differences in physical laws. The exchange of matter provides an alternative source of energy to maintain their universe. However, the exchange will likely result in the collapse of the Earth's Sun into a supernova, and possibly even turning a large part of the Milky Way into a quasar. There is hope among those in the para-Universe that the energy explosion does happen in our universe.”

The main plot-line is a project by those who inhabit a parallel universe (the para-Universe) with different physical laws from this one. By exchanging matter from their universe—para-Universe—with our universe, they seek to exploit the differences in physical laws. The exchange of matter provides an alternative source of energy to maintain their universe. However, the exchange will likely result in the collapse of the Earth's Sun into a supernova, and possibly even turning a large part of the Milky Way into a quasar. There is hope among those in the para-Universe that the energy explosion does happen in our universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves?wprov=sfti1

This was a really good listen:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greymatter/id1089013200

The deployment of low-speed shared autonomous minibuses, robotaxis, delivery/vending bots, and micromobility scooters and bikes that drive themselves back to charge points could greatly reduce the need for parking spaces in car-dependent areas.

This could free up large tracks of land currently devoted to parking and make it possible to repurpose it for other uses, such as affordable housing, parks, and retail. The reduced need for parking could also make it more feasible to build compact, walkable, and sustainable neighborhoods, which could help to reduce the environmental impact of urban areas. Furthermore, the increased use of shared autonomous vehicles could also reduce the number of cars on the road and decrease traffic congestion, leading to better air quality and shorter commute times.

People would walk more. Enjoy the outside more playing immersive video games with augmented reality glasses. Society is healthier and has more time to be creative. Progress speeds up even faster because we’re all working on what we really love and offering our unique problem solving contributions to the world.

And then, yeah, I agree with the other comment, AI politicians. We’re probably already there with capital flows from AI helping hedge funds and ETFs.

>Global renewables deployment continues to outpace predictions. The conversation around this will feature more talk of grid upgrading and grid storage, rather than just solar and wind power generation.

WIth regard to robo-taxis, the industry will respond by releasing all the data and video from accidents. This has two strategic benefits: full transparency between the major companies boxes out new startups who can’t meet the high enough minimum bar, it gaslights the people hit by robo-taxis with the cold facts that the AV was probably done wrong by the other human(s) involved in the accident. Maybe insurance pays out 10x what it would normally but because it happens 100x less often it's win/win all around?

Thinking about all the flight delays Southwest Airlines is experiencing right now, imagine it was 1-2 years from now and Waymo is the big hero sending a fleet of autonomous vehicles and commuter buses to replace the shorter plane flights adding slack to the system. https://www.the-sun.com/motors/6978910/crash-riddled-driverless-start-up/

I work in public transit in the DC region. It will be a banner year for autonomous vehicles as they begin to meet the real world and scale.

The present paradigm of individual car ownership is dying. Regular people are broke, car dealerships are continuing their markups above MSRP because they can, interest rates are terrible, used vehicles are too hard to fix because of supply chain problems, and the pump is primed for disruption on an S-curve adoption rate.

Given: "Construction on Amazon's HQ2 is currently underway, with Phase 1 expected to be completed in 2023. As of 2022, HQ2 hires have surpassed 5,000 and Amazon leases nearly 1,000,000 SF of existing office space in the Crystal City area of National Landing."

Prediction: Amazon announces that their Zoox autonomous vehicle division will begin testing in Arlington and Alexandria. It starts with Prime grocery delivery from their two Fresh stores in Crystal City and Potomac Yard. Their gig workers ride with the groceries to make deliveries. They negotiate with WMATA to leverage the MetroWay to expediently move up and down the otherwise congested corridor. From there, they move up to first-last mile transport of passengers replicating what Waymo has already achieved in the Bay Area. Amazon will then also launch Zoox grocery delivery and robotaxi service in Washington DC, which is the real prize to winning hearts and minds in terms of global significance.

From there, how I envision this happening ideally over the next 5-20 years is almost all bus routes become like BRT (bus rapid transit), but more flexible in terms of how supply matches demand. There will be traffic signal priority for high-passenger volume vehicles on every arterial corridor as part of the BRT treatments. Transit agencies will have the same number of buses, if not more. They'll all be zero-emission buses as they are quickly becoming cheaper to operate.

The heavy-duty buses will focus on running high-quality productive services. Local routes are free (or freemium with incentives to ride and check-in via app). And, what we're doing now for just coverage and off-peak span is serviced by rideshare (increasingly in fleet-managed electric vans like VW's MOIA, AVs with remote piloting over 5G in areas with well-mapped operational design domains, walking and ped upgrades, and abundant micromobility (possibly with semi-automated rebalancing, which keeps them from being sidewalk obstructions). AVs with grocery delivery and mobile vending will continue to deploy helping normalize the technology with the public.

Also, heavy rail will become incrementally better returning to automated train control and great shuttle services during planned track work. Underperforming office space will convert to housing as we adjust to the post-pandemic new normal of working like 2-3 days a week in the office.

If cargo is going further than the range of electric trucks, it should be on a train or a giant ass ship (possibly with supplemental wind power).