Self-driving cars.

They’re one hack away from being a mass murder machine that kills thousand to hundreds of thousands (depending on the size of the hack) all around a nation (or possibly even the world).

Oh no! Talentless louts don’t like people who’ve cultivated actual skills that people appreciate!

…

Wait, remind me: Whom does this inconvenience?

For me it would be Das Boot.

I’d probably go with a huxian (狐仙). I mean look at the benefits:

1. Shape-shifting out the door. That’s always fun.
2. Since they’re on a path to becoming an immortal (仙) there’s less of that morally grey area that the huli jing (狐狸精) bring with them. I mean sure, seducing scholars to trick them could be great fun (geeks and nerds are my type), but it’s not really conducive to immortality, is it?
3. As a huxian I’m revered by the people who encounter me (as opposed to the huli jing who is often villainized and chased out).
4. Through “inner alchemy” (内丹) I cultivate in myself ever increasing magic powers like weather manipulation, herbal mastery, and astral projection.
5. In the end I become an immortal worshipped by scholars and others and can even start mentoring scholars who are cultivating themselves.

And all that without the tediousness of tending to Inari’s whims (kitsune) or being in a predatory cycle with no form of cultivation or improvement (gumiho). I’m just a well-regarded philosopher-fox.

I’m pretty sure it is too. For starters the part that’s been layered on top doesn’t have that suspicious 50/50 light/dark thing going on that gives away so many AI generations.

People owning phones and no computers is the norm here. It’s reached the point that half my colleagues do BUSINESS on the phone only; their PCs rarely turned on.

Battleship.

Going by the strictest of interpretations of your criterion, my expectations for Battleship were “ninth circle of Hell”-abouts. The actual film was only the eight circle. Still utterly dire and worthless, but not quite as dire as I’d thought it would be.

The Ringworld one is brilliant.

Don’t care much about either. My phone does the job for me and I have enough clothing to last me to the end of my life. (You know, about six weeks.) (I jest.)

If I were the kind who’d want children, I’d likely wish to raise them using a scissor lift.

This is obviously wrong? Three baby elephants inside a soda can means about 650,000kg/m³ if I haven’t screwed up the thumbnail estimates. IIRC the densest element we know is osmium and that’s “only” about 25,000kg/m³ (give or take some since it’s been ages since I learned anything like this).

Wow! He has enough self-awareness to figure this out! (Not yet enough to actually stop being a human being made entirely of intestinal effluent mind. Baby steps.)

Yeah, small businesses were already suffering at the hands of big box stores, stagnant wages, and online purchasing.

And now there’s a downturn.

Anything made in the USA (though that is not primarily because of cost of living, only partially). I used to stop off at various street food vendors for a snack on the way home every second day or so, but now I maybe do that once a month. And that is cost of living related entirely.

I think you’re missing the point. An American will see the “impact” of the “US President” “globally” while someone in Nigeria will have completely different concerns for what the Big Thing™ will be, and it will be Nigerian-centric, while someone having this same “itch” in Finland will have something Finnish-centric (say, Russia invading again) as their version and so on and so forth.

And yet, historically, when a Big Thing™ strikes it strikes from an unexpected direction from an unexpected place with unexpected outcomes for the overwhelming majority of humanity.

They also tend to think the Big Event™ will be in their geographical area and will think it’s based on their cultural concerns.

Or, alternatively, this is word salad and you’re falling for the oldest trick of the book: “it uses loads of big words and I don’t understand it so it must be profound”.

I know which direction I’m betting on.

Toward the end they mention also the bit about the writing also being bullshit generators, no?

To paraphrase someone far more clever than me: “If you can’t be bothered to actually write it, I can’t be bothered to read it.”

In the summer, beer. Ideally an import (unless there’s a good microbrewery outlet nearby) because most commercial Chinese beers are terrible. For special events, baijiu. For winter, heated rice liquor.