Time, it swallows everything

From the mighty to the meager and the poor

Dear Friends,

I’m sitting in a cafe in San Francisco after a work meeting, staring out at a city that feels both familiar and foreign. It’s my first time back since The Great Vibe Shift—or is it the dewokening? A woman is hunched over her MacBook with a bumper sticker that reads “rematriate the land.” She looks defeated.

Meanwhile, sculpted, Ayn-Randian tech workers walk by purposefully, unashamed of the corporate logos on their Patagonia jackets.

The activists seem stunned. They don’t know what they’re fighting against, much less what they’re fighting for. But the technologists are unencumbered, ascendant, dead-set on willing superintelligence into existence before anyone can stop them — or beat them to it.

I feel far removed from both tribes, an anthropologist observing the chimps and monkeys. On Friday, I walked along Mission Street in SOMA, past the homeless posted up at every doorway.¹ No one made eye contact — unlike in Mexico — or acknowledged my existence as we passed on the sidewalk. Every tenth car was a driverless white Waymo, expertly navigating San Francisco’s one-way streets. A canopy of buildings vanished into the fog. Are they empty?

This is a zombie city, I thought. Amorphous shapes of homeless bodies wasting away under blankets. AirPod-sealed techies plugged into podcast echo chambers. And driverless cars ferrying AI engineers, architects of our brave new world.

But it wasn’t all dystopia. The bars are still alive and buzzing. I met a friend in North Beach on Saturday and it was as raucous and fun as it was in 1998.² Somehow, the city’s chaotic mix of artists, activists, techies, and VCs manages to coexist in real life after tearing each other apart online. It reminded me of the cantina in Star Wars: messy, unpredictable, barely holding together, yet undeniably better than the fearful order of the Empire.

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This trip was a reminder of how much San Francisco has changed—and how I’ve changed since leaving the Bay Area for Oaxaca just over a year ago.

This week, I want to drop another note into the time capsule: revisiting my 2024 predictions before looking ahead (in a couple of days) to 2025.

What I got wrong

The biggest surprises weren’t my misses (like X’s ad revenue) but the blind spots—like Elon Musk emerging as the world’s most powerful plutocrat. The so-so performance of my predictions nods once again at life’s unpredictability … and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Of my 25 predictions, I got eight wrong:

1. Biden will win the popular vote (65%)

2. Biden will win the electoral vote (55%)

3. Democrats keep the House (60%)

4. Bitcoin’s price won’t hit an all-time high by EOY (60%)

5. The Shanghai Stock Exchange Index outperforms the S&P 500 (40%)

6. OpenAI releases ChatGPT-5 (40%)

7. 2024 will be cooler than 2023 (20%)

8. X will have higher ad revenue in 2024 than in 2023 (20%)

Ironically, I got the first four very wrong despite having had higher confidence in them. The last four I got technically wrong, but kinda directionally right.³ As I finalize my predictions for 2025, I’m reflecting on last year’s overconfidence.⁴

What I got right

I feel good about the 15 predictions I got right, especially the ones that were far from obvious.

1. Republicans will win the Senate (80%)

2. Claudia Sheinbaum will become Mexico’s first woman president. (80%)

3. China will not invade or blockade Taiwan (70%)

4. Inflation will be under 3% (70%)

5. But above 2.5%

6. TikTok will not be banned in the US (70%)⁵

7. The US will not enter a recession in 2024 (60%)

8. Argentina will not dollarize its economy (60%)

9. Threads will not overtake X in daily active users (60%)

10. There will be no government shutdown in 2024 (50%)

11. The ICJ will rule in South Africa’s favor that Israel committed genocide (40%)⁶

12. TikTok will be banned in at least three more countries (40%)⁷

13. Apple Vision Pro will sell out in first 24 hours (30%)⁸

14. Apple, not Microsoft, will be the most valuable company (30%)

15. US suicide rates will start to drop in 2024 after reaching their peak.⁹

(A couple are still unresolved.¹⁰)

Could 2025 be as wild as 2024?

2024 was a wild wild ride. Kim Mas captured it with an entertaining 4-minute recap:

Someone commented: “The start and end of 2024 feel like different decades.”

Amen. What’s in store for 2025? My best guesses are coming soon.

Yours,

David

1. A handful of retail stores remain open, their doors locked, customers admitted only after verification by a camera. Later, I had to ask the cashier at the drugstore to unlock a case holding $3 toothpaste.

2. We smoked a joint under Coit Tower and a coyote came within a few feet, staring at us with amused curiosity before ducking into the bushes.

3. The Shanghai Index had an impressive 12% gain but couldn’t match the S&P 500. OpenAI’s latest reasoning model could almost be called ChatGPT-5. Despite the rise of BlueSky and Threads, X outperformed expectations. And 2024 was only slightly warmer than 2023, despite El Niño.

4. How was I 65% sure that Biden would win the popular vote when I shouldn’t have been even 50% sure that he would be the candidate?

5. I’m going to be less confident renewing this one in 2025.

6. Reasonable people can nitpick over this one.

7. The Wikipedia page for TikTok censorship pretty wild. While technically true, I missed this one in spirit.

8. While true, a lot of people ended up returning their headsets and the consensus is that the product has mostly been a flop. I’m very curious whether Meta will beat Apple to market for AR casual glasses.

9. Based on provisional data

10. The New York Times’ copyright case against OpenAI remains in discovery, with depositions scheduled for this month. Foolishly, I predicted 2025 would be warmer than 2024—a prediction I’ll soon reverse.