I don't do football. (Grew up in Leeds in the 1970s. Football there was indellibly associated with the National Front, i.e. violent fascist skinheads.)

We are, after all, homo economicus.

In general, a little controversy isn't harmful: if anything, it gets people interested.

I believe modern SF needs to at least be aware of the singularity, if only so that it can dismiss it intelligently (or work around it). But I suspect the singularity is like faster-than-light travel for the IT generation. We may hope for it, and the rules don't forbid it, but we don't know how to do it yet (and it may not be possible).

Personally, I avoid deus ex machina like the plague - if you have to use one, it means you failed to set up the universe and the plot properly. It's like a whodunnit where there's no actual way for the reader to identify the perpetrator before the climactic reveal: there's no sense of closure for the reader.

I don't want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.

What I've learned during my life is that the near future is 90% identical to the present - if you buy a new car today, it'll probably still be on the road in 2022.