Futurology

The new pope's choice of name was deliberate; he chose it to honor Pope Leo XIII who was Pope from 1878 - 1903. Leo XIII is famous for taking a left-wing stance on workers' rights in response to the Industrial Revolution, and calling for state pensions, social security, and other reforms rooted in social democracy.

In an interview this week, Mark Zuckerberg said most Americans have only 3 friends, but they'd like 15. Never fear, he has a solution to how to get 5 times more friends. Meta will create AI friends for you. As it will own them, as befits the world's second largest advertising company, their primary purpose will really be to sell you stuff.

Switching Chinese factory jobs to America has been in the news a lot lately. Many people have pointed out it doesn't make much sense. Do Americans really want sweatshop-wage jobs making sneakers?

NASA's plans are up in the air once again. The latest plans, yet to be approved by Congress, seek to ditch the SLS/Artemis plans for the Moon, and instead focus on sending people to Mars. That suits SpaceX's agenda, and would send NASA's money their way.

Hollywood's love of dystopian sci-fi has a lot to answer for, as it has shaped many people's ideas about the future very negatively. One of the most persistent of those ideas is that robots will only be owned by the 1%, who will use them to subjugate everyone else.

One of the distortions of AI commentary is that so much of its focus is on Venture Capitalism. Because many people are incentivized to talk about where the big money is flowing, they ignore outside their bubble. Meanwhile, often the really significant things happen elsewhere.

Countries applying for BRICS membership

Here's a full version of Mr. Dalio's words, and below is a summary. Also, he's written several books on this topic, more info here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard lays out the likely steps in how this will happen in this article.