site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1499 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 12, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What are some of your predictions for the five years, and why do you think you're going to be right?

Hard mode engaged

  1. No politics
  2. No war
  3. No AI
  4. No immigration

I'm confident that low waisted jeans are going to make a raging comeback in the next couple of years. Not only is the cyclical nature of fashion heading in that direction, but the prevalence of GLP-1 products and will negate the unspoken reason that high-waisted mom jeans got popular.

Oh fashion, interesting! I don't think we are returning to heroin chic. It takes a ridiculously low weight to look good in those jeans and think of the horror Ariana Grande got for her weight loss, not praise. I think the ethnic thickness trend of the 2010s (kardashian) has had a permanent adjustment upward (although you are right that GLP has shaved off the plus size can be hot trend, which I doubt many people believed anyway, they were just trying to be "inclusive").

I think the body standard is going to stick at Sidney Sweeney / Sabrina Carpenter for a while. But then I'm a blonde so that could be a self serving prediction. (Not that I follow jeans fashion anyway, I am never giving up skinny jeans for when I care and have boxy (expensive) jeggings.) I in general think that gen-z will be sad they spent their hottest years in beige boxes.

As per my recent post a big 2008-type crash, possibly conveniently timed for an election, and this possibly leading to my long-predicted downfall of Elon, and tech-libertarianism.

I think we're going to see the end of suburbia as currently understood as a result of widespread availability of self-driving cars. The built form of suburbia is dominated by parking, and self-driving cars mostly remove the need for car parking near destinations - either your robotaxi drives off and finds another fare, or your privately owned robocar valet parks itself somewhere where the marginal cost of a parking space is negligible.

Assuming that cities can charge enough for road space that we avoid permanent gridlock, city life gets better with affordable taxis and the no-longer needed car parks either turned into human parks or built on. And actual rural living gets better if you don't need to drive yourself on minor roads in the dark. But I don't see who will want to live in the kind of place with a massive sunk investment in what is basically sheds on the edge of parking lots.

People still want 1k+ square feet per person, space from their neighbors, pleasant controlled outdoors, and distance from riffraff.

Suburbanites are literally happier than city people and changing the transportation equation isn't going to touch that.

As the world is becoming increasingly fragmented and less globalized, we are currently witnessing the end of tech companies with world-spanning monopolies. It just doesn't make sense to give another country that much leverage over you. Instead, every major economic power will have their own OS provider, their own equivalent to word, their own email hosting service and so on.

I can imagine a big backlash against vaping, with legislation designed to make it harder for children to get their hands on them and heavy taxes on disposable vapes.

I can too, but it's a bit sad to me. My grandma quit nicotine with vapes by tapering down the nicotine over time. To me, it seems like it's on the whole less bad for your health, less bad for your wallet, and can be used for productive ends like quitting nicotine.

Not that I don't believe your account, but I'm curious if anyone's done a proper longitudinal study on the efficacy of vapes as a means of weaning oneself off tobacco. I've known more than one person who bought a vape for this explicit purpose, but after a few pints would inevitably get a craving and buy a box of fags. They'd just doubled up their nicotine intake.

I despise the environmental impact of disposable vapes, there's something profoundly unsightly about seeing discarded chunks of bright plastic on the side of the road. I particularly hate the way they design them to look like toys with rounded corners and bright eye-catching colours, a transparent and shameless effort to make them appeal to children. (Under EU law, cigarettes must be sold in plain standardised cartons using a colour scheme selected by graphic designers as the ugliest in the visual spectrum: by rights, this legislation ought to apply to vapes as well.) That goes double for vape shops themselves, which are invariably garish eyesores rightly derided as one of the most aesthetically displeasing aspects of the modern Yookay. And while Irish people have successfully internalised the idea that it's impolite to smoke cigarettes indoors unless given the express permission of the owner or resident, a lot of people seem to think that this basic common courtesy doesn't apply to vapes. I do not want my flat smelling like candyfloss any more than I want it smelling like John Player, thank you very much.

Not that I don't believe your account, but I'm curious if anyone's done a proper longitudinal study on the efficacy of vapes as a means of weaning oneself off tobacco.

Doesn't seem like it would be too different this way from patches/lozenges, which I expect have been studied properly given that they are medical-type items?

I'm confident that low waisted jeans are going to make a raging comeback in the next couple of years.

They've been back since at least 2024.

I live out in the middle of nowhere. I assume it'll take a year or two to make it out this far.

The alcohol industry contracts hard, and fast. GLP-1s suppress alcohol cravings as a side effect, Gen Z was already drinking way less.

The college closure wave becomes a rout. Births fell off a cliff starting in 2008, which means the enrollment cliff arrived roughly last year and gets worse every year through 2031.

Young men keep flowing into high-demand, traditional churches while everything squishy keeps dying.

Physical media stages a real comeback beyond vinyl.

Physical media stages a real comeback beyond vinyl.

How do you think this will work in practice? Will we see renewed interest in Blu-ray or DVD players?

My 20something daughter and her friends are into cameras. Primarily digital but she's got some of them interested in film. They find dvd and cd players interesting, often from a nostalgia perspective.

Not media consumption, but they're also quite interested in tactile hobbies. Building things using arduinos, fiber crafts, wood working. I need to pull out the scroll saw and do a comparison vs a laser cutter for amusement value.

Five years- so I'm pushing to 2032 on this one(we are, already halfway through 2026). By the end of 2032 I predict- Confirmed breeding populations of the black and white tegu in Alabama. New world screw worm is now a continuing problem in south Texas. The NFL tries ad experimentum to add a non-US based team. Sika deer begin to expand around the Chesapeake proper. Oil production in northern south America comes online, stabilizing US gas prices for decades. Lionfish consumption goes mainstream.

I hope the lionfish one comes true, they're delicious and I wish I could get them cheap.

Going mainstream might increase the price.

I suppose in that the whole market might shift up through demand, though it's hard to imagine Walmart selling something for more than Whole Foods (the only place I find lionfish now) does today.

Isn't each lionfish only about a pound or two? Hard to imagine it would be economical for meat.

Is lionfish any good? Cleaning them seems like such a pain in the ass that I've never tried.

I'm confident that low waisted jeans are going to make a raging comeback in the next couple of years.

You're about six years too late on this prediction.

Video game industry will continue shift toward mobile and freemium. Movie studios will make deals with short-form video apps for the rights to “micro movies”. Vanilla WoW will remain the best mmorpg of all time. Someone will begin combining porn, lootboxes, short-form video (on the corner of the screen like a minimap) and flavored vapes into one singular video game product (they use Amazon Prime to mail you flavored carts relevant to your video game progression within 24hrs), a Gesamtkunstwerk of vice. Schools will try to teach language in schools not with phonics, but with ebonics, using rap-a-along content.

Movie studios will make deals with short-form video apps for the rights to “micro movies”.

Article: The Vertical Revolution: How Microdramas Became a Multi-Billion-Dollar Global Phenomenon

I believe Red Letter Media discussed Quibi in one of its videos. I don't remember which specific video it was, but see also Vertical: An Immersive Theatrical Experience.

Schools will try to teach language in schools not with phonics, but with ebonics, using rap-along content.

Article: Activists demand that Black English be pushed on kids in California preschools

Article: Activists demand that Black English be pushed on kids in California preschools

Honestly I'm in favor of this. Ebonics has cachet as an ingroup argot that has the psychological function of separating and elevating speakers over nonspeakers. Teaching it to a bunch of white, hispanic, and asian kids will dilute its strength as a signalling mechanism and thereby render its speakers as less distinct from the mainstream.

And also we'll get a sudden upswing in nonblack kindergarteners saying the n word, which will be HILARIOUS.

I think self-driving cars will become a massive new culture war battleground. Industries that stand to benefit from human drivers (e.g. taxi drivers, Uber drivers etc.) will be relentlessly pushing every story they can find about how dangerous self-driving cars are, and we will see "scientific" "studies" with the headline finding that self-driving cars actually get into more accidents than human-driven cars per mile driven (and then you dig into it and you find that the severity of the accidents in the former case is vastly lower than in the latter). Meanwhile, Waymo et al. (along with car insurance providers) will be relentlessly touting the safety of their own vehicles and pushing stories about other kinds of dangers associated with human drivers (e.g. expect to see a lot of stories about women getting raped or sexually harassed by Uber drivers).

Eventually some city will experiment by rolling out self-driving taxis and refusing to issue any new taxi licenses for human drivers. This city will have a vastly reduced rate of automobile deaths and insurance payouts compared to peer cities, and the battleground will be quietly ceded in self-driving cars' favour.

along with car insurance providers

It's not fully clear to me that self driving cars are a net benefit to the car insurance industry.

I would say we don’t have this self driving car pushback from the groups you speak. A big reason is that no one views themselves as a member of the uber driver union except maybe some semi-legal immigrants. No one views it as a career versus something they just do for money which absolute kills the ability to unionize. Taxi-cabs had medallion investments which 10k or so people viewed as a huge asset to protect and gave them somewhat of a union.

we will see "scientific" "studies" with the headline finding that self-driving cars actually get into more accidents than human-driven cars per mile driven (and then you dig into it and you find that the severity of the accidents in the former case is vastly lower than in the latter)

100% this, and the way they measure this will be the number of incident reports available in some database, where self-driving cars automatically and electronically send a report every time they bump someone even if there is no visible damage, including someone opening their car door into another car parked next to the, while human driven cars only count if there is a police report or insurance claim.

I very nearly took a job with a self driving car startup a decade ago. After seeing a little about how the sausage was made, I've been happy to live so far out in the sticks that it'll be decades before self driving gets any traction.

Tell me more about this?

The NDA has expired, so what the hell.

The startup in question was heavily funded by a consortium of automakers. Unlike some of the other shops, their plan was to heavily geo fence their operating area and build models for individual cities. They also freely admitted during the interviews that this was never going to work well enough to work on its own, and the bulk of it was actually going to operate via regular nudges from a call center in the Philippines. They wanted to hire me to write the software for that part of the stack.

Some people here are probably going to reflexively say "well that's not a big deal - Waymo has a human fallback too*, but that's not what they were planning. The actual plan was to regularly have call center workers provide feedback and instruction during live rides "until the ML team can catch up". They figured that they could fake it until they made it, and everything would just work out in the meantime.

Jesus. Did they take the playbook straight from Amazon Go? I'm surprised the NDA wasn't longer.

It will probably be very easy on a long-enough timescale to mostly eliminate driving. Your kids won’t want to learn. Governments will make licensure increasingly onerous. The economics will lead to many people selling their cars and giving up driving altogether. In certain places.

There will also be a geographical and class component here too. Self-driving cars that work well for urban commuters will not reliably serve rural folk with big trucks and cargo towed up on the back. Imagine the city folk who control all the laws trying to make it difficult for move your RV or boat between your house and your cabin. I expect there will be a lot of that.

Kids are already not particularly interested in learning to drive. Uber is ubiquitous.

Imagine the city folk who control all the laws trying to make it difficult for move your RV or boat between your house and your cabin. I expect there will be a lot of that.

From the rural perspective, it's all the "city folk" (well, suburbanites anyway) who actually have RVs and boats they transport between the house and the cabin. If anything, it'll be city folk mandating regulations forcing rural communities to spend even more money accommodating them while pricing the locals out even further.

the prevalence of GLP-1 products and will negate the unspoken reason that high-waisted mom jeans got popular.

Hey, you said no politics!

I guess I could buy that in the "everything is political" sense, but what does that leave? Sports betting?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats