Early 2022 the fears of Russia invading were real. They were downplayed and not talked about much in the mainstream but come January many already saw what Russia was up to.
Mostly it’s just that many of us, Ukrainians included (I speak from personal experience - I have Ukrainian close relatives), closed our eyes to Russia actually pulling the trigger. It is just unthinkably stupid and so, so disgusting.
Yeah, I think a lot of history of the russo-ukranian war is not known by many americans. Many people didn't even know there was a war until the invasion. I remember tensions building up a few months before the invasion and some people started talking about it (I knew a political dude online who was talking about it a few months before, he was saying something about how things could go down. I wasn't really interested but now I realize he was right (except for him supporting russia tho)).
* Nivenkos predicted that Omicron would create natural immunity to COVID, but I think alkonaut's prediction was more nuanced/accurate: that organized responses end and there are new variants that we live with (although there has been a greater level of immune escape than expected, nothing has run away... so far). Note, that while down dramatically from the peak we are at a steady state for most of the year where 500 people in the US (and about the same number in the EU) die every day from COVID [1], just no one cares now.
* alkonaut's Russia prediction correctly covers Russian annexation of Eastern Ukraine, intense conflict w/ many more Russian casualties than expected, the SWIFT and petroleum price responses and the huge role that UAVs would play in the conflict. What he missed was actually just how well Ukraine would do (no Russian victory in sight) and how successful/effective Ukraine's infowar/strategic game would be. That, the scale of Russian losses, and the huge amount of OSINT has prevented Russia from any of the narrative control people might have expected.
* Republicans by all accounts should have curb-stomped Dems during the mid-terms, but Roe v Wade ended up being a big own-goal that prevented that.
* alkonaut's prediction that "Boris Johnson is ousted as prime minster. He is replaced by a either a man of some charisma or a woman without charisma, as that is the requirement" was also quite insightful.
Wow. alkonaut called it, very specifically in some cases. Boris Johnson's replacement having no charisma was the cherry on top. Where's alkonaut's 2023 predictions?
Well, game companies have backed away immensely due to backlash, and the PFP NFTs that were all the rage has cooled (but continues on...) but one only has to look at Reddit Collectibles (or the Trump Trading Cards) to see that NFTs aren't dead, just evolving/dropping the branding. Starbucks' Odyssey is another example of this new wave of utility NFTs.
> They were downplayed and not talked about much in the mainstream
The western military intelligence communities were aware and had warned about Russian mobilization for months. They were downplayed only by far-right voices in the west that were invested in building up Putin as an effective authoritarian against the slow-moving "woke" bureaucrats of the EU and the US Democrats.
Mostly it’s just that many of us, Ukrainians included (I speak from personal experience - I have Ukrainian close relatives), closed our eyes to Russia actually pulling the trigger. It is just unthinkably stupid and so, so disgusting.
That said, this comment was spot on, and not just on Russia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746942