“Here’s the problem with forecasts: some of them are right, and some of them are wrong, and by the time we find out which is which, it’s too late. This leads to what we might call the forecasting paradox: the test of a useful forecast is not whether it turns out to be accurate, but whether it turns out to prompt some sort of useful action in advance. Accuracy may help, but then again it may not. Forewarned is not necessarily forearmed.” The truth about the forecasting paradox. *
People: The scary Zizians. Pandemic and labyrinths. Tiny house in a silo (and the art of managing silos). Permaweird. FBI and WFH. Glass brain (and vesuvius). Retooling shop classes. The day the muse died.
Tech: Chile blackout. Research gets hit in the US. Feedback frames. Reading data from DNA. EUV links pulsars to chips.
How many drones can a single person pilot. EU and RISCV (used in Orange V).
Crypto strategic reserves?Business: Corporate foresight. Technofossils. KPMG payday (and linkedin thoughts (FR / UK)). Does UK need abundance.
Security: Apple and five eyes. DOGE and Privacy. DOGE and Big4s.
Tech: X37-B.
Planet: Secret giant river islands. Congo illness.
AI: Training journalism models. Research on superbugs. Designing weird chips. AI, PMs and Engineers.
Beneath the Buzz
The drone swarm hovered above the city like an army of hyperactive bees, each lightweight unit buzzing silently in formation. Clara, the controller, sipped her lukewarm coffee, her eyes darting between the screens displaying their intricate patterns. *“Good morning,”* she murmured as if they could respond, though she sometimes fancied that the whir of rotors was their own version of small talk. Thanks to a DARPA study, she’d learned that one human could efficiently oversee over a hundred of these mechanical minions without completely losing her marbles; a mere 3% of the time, she operated in a state of delightful chaos, like a librarian attempting to assist patrons during a tornado.
Down below, the human world was less organized than her buzzing assistants. Recent headlines screamed about a mysterious illness that had emerged in Congo—“an outbreak stronger than a fast-food container's grip on morality,” Clara joked bitterly to herself. The thought of zoonotic diseases had once been abstract, but the reality of microbial horrors was catching up faster than society’s attempt to cycle through synthetic clothing. An alarming spike in such cases had many experts scratching their heads, worried about a future where fast food might be the only thing recognizable in the technofossils left behind.
Meanwhile, in her quiet corner of the techy ecosystem, there was chatter about AI rewriting the rules of chip design, turning engineers into mere spectators. Clara pondered whether she, too, might find her job snatched away by some soulless algorithm optimized for human inefficiencies. After all, the average pay for KPMG partners had risen sharply, but at what cost? The winds of change seemed unfriendly to middle-class earners like her, desperate for a break from exorbitant housing costs. She could almost hear her dreams being sold off to the highest bidder.
With a sigh, she refocused on her screens. It was funny, really; these drones were designed to solve logistical problems, yet they offered no true pathways away from a market that incentivized layoffs in the face of record profits. Sure, profits were trending up, but the "people problem" remained, like a stubborn grain of sand in one's shoe—uncomfortable but mostly ignored.
Oh, and the news on cryptocurrency? Rumors of taxpayer dollars being funneled into digital coins had become a kind of online soap opera. “Exactly what we need,” she muttered dryly. “Taxpayers buying a slice of financial pie that doesn't even exist in the physical realm!” She half-expected her drone swarm to start issuing their own financial news.
As she simultaneously monitored a drone's learning algorithm, Clara couldn’t help but trace a metaphorical map of her own life’s bifurcations. This way leads to economic ruin, but the other way leads to… well, potentially just as many problems but perhaps with a side of adventure? The notion made her chuckle. How easy it would be to get lost in increasingly absurd fates, like being swept away by a river bifurcation—stuck between choices, hoping for the best.
Just then, an alert flashed across her screen: “Drone swarm encountering a problem.”
“Great,” she murmured, foreshadowing an afternoon of operational firefighting. Somehow, managing robots seemed far less exhausting than contemplating her place between a collapsing economy, burgeoning technology, and attention-grabbing diseases. But she’d manage. After all, she could still sort the chaos of life as if she were organizing a library. With a caffeinated sigh, she reset her posture for the task ahead—a mix of acceptance and absurdity beckoning her forward like a beacon in the swirling storm of tomorrow.