In Stray, you play as a cat. For many, this is a mic drop worthy of an instant purchase, and Blue Twelve Studio, the former Ubisoft employees responsible for the game, clearly know this--from the very beginning, Stray taps in shamelessly to the memeable antics of Felis catus. You press O to meow. You hammer L and R to scratch trees (and furniture). Interludes see you waltzing on a keyboard, prancing on pianos, and terrorizing board games. And while Stray's cat is just a ginger tabby, not as long or genetically mutated or struggling to breathe as more famous internet cats, it will, just as Untitled Goose Game's goose before it, still provide rich fodder for memes.

We've found crowdsourcing (i.e., the gathering of ideas, thoughts, and concepts from a widespread variety of interested individuals) to be a very effective tool in enabling us to diversify our thoughts and challenge our assumptions. Dr. Buras' post takes the results from one such crowdsourcing exercise and extrapolates three future urban scenarios. Given The Army Vision's clarion call to "Focus training on high-intensity conflict, with emphasis on operating in dense urban terrain," our readers would do well to consider how the Army would operate in each of Dr. Buras' posited future scenarios…] The challenges of the 21st century have been forecast and are well-known. In many ways we are already experiencing the future now. But predictions are hard to validate. A way around that is turning to slightly older predictions to illuminate the magnitude of the issues and the reality of their propositions.1