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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.

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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.

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.