Ridin' With BidenGPT

The White House has issued a long-anticipated executive order involving the regulation of artificial intelligence systems, which I know absolutely sounds like part of the opening exposition in the first five minutes of a Terminator franchise movie, but this is a dose of necessary reality here in 2023.

 

President Joe Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence Monday, setting the stage for some industry regulations and funding for the U.S. government to further invest in the technology.

The order is broad, and its focuses range from civil rights and industry regulations to a government hiring spree.

In a media call previewing the order Sunday, a senior White House official, who asked to not be named as part of the terms of the call, said AI has so many facets that effective regulations have to cast a wide net.

“AI policy is like running into a decathlon, and there’s 10 different events here,” the official said.

“And we don’t have the luxury of just picking ‘we’re just going to do safety’ or ‘we’re just going to do equity’ or ‘we’re just going to do privacy.’ You have to do all of these things.”

The official also called for “significant bipartisan legislation” to further advance the country’s interests with AI. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., held a private forum in September with industry leaders but has yet to introduce significant AI legislation.

Some of the order builds on a previous nonbinding agreement that seven of the top U.S. tech companies developing AI agreed to in July, like hiring outside experts to probe their systems for weaknesses and sharing their critical findings.

The order leverages the Defense Production Act to legally require those companies to share safety test results with the federal government.

It also tasks the Commerce Department with creating guidance about “watermarking” AI content to make it clear that deepfaked videos or ChatGPT-generated essays were not created by humans.

The order adds funding for new AI research and a federal AI hiring surge. The White House has launched a corresponding website to connect job seekers with AI government jobs: AI.gov.

Fei-Fei Li, a co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview that government funding is crucial for AI to be able to tackle major human problems.

“The public sector holds a unique opportunity in terms of data and interdisciplinary talent to cure cancer, cure rare diseases, to map out biodiversity at a global scale, to understand and predict wildfires, to find climate solutions, to supercharge our teachers,” Li said. “There’s so much the public sector can do, but all of this is right now starved because we are severely lacking in resources.”

 

And while this is a start, these remain guidelines without real enforcement consequences. Actual laws have to be written by Congress, and they keep dragging their feet as AI keeps getting further and further ahead. Ethical, social, and environmental concerns are great to have, but all this lacks any real hard and fast penalties for companies that violate them.

As it is, the major players in AI like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, all have a long history of violating federal antitrust, commerce and labor regulations. Asking them to play nicely here is not going to hold up for much longer when trillions are at stake in the years ahead for whichever company masters the process of successfully stealing a planet's worth of intellectual property to feed their Frankenstein's Monster first.

We're going to need something much, much stronger, if not an international treaty with watchdog organizations and monitoring the way we have for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons currently.

 

On top of that, we have to make it stick. We're not going to of course, not until it's well far past being too late. 

We may already be past that point now, to be frank.

Sunday Long Read: Chip, Shot

Brexit has been a catastrophic economic disaster for the UK, and things have gotten so bad in the last few years with price spikes in food, energy, and housing that even Scotland's most famous fish and chips shops are facing what one British economist calls "an extinction event." The Guardian's Tom Lamont has our Sunday Long Read:

One summer ago, before the region’s fish and chip industry was shaken by closures, before a death that was hard for people to bear, a lorry heaped with the first fresh potatoes of the season drove along the east coast of Scotland. This lorry wound its way along the East Neuk of Fife, dodging washing lines, mooring bollards and seagulls, parking with impunity to make deliveries. There was an understanding in the East Neuk that nobody would ever get angry and honk at the inbound “tattie” lorry, fish and chips being a staple meal, vital to the region’s economy. Tourists come shocking distances to sit on old harbour walls and stab around in takeaway trays with wooden forks. The fish and chips sold in the East Neuk might be the best in the British Isles and because of that (it follows) the best on the planet. Even so, by July 2022, local friers were finding it harder and harder to balance their books.

The driver of the tattie lorry, a red-cheeked Scotsman named Richard Murray, carried keys for most of the businesses on his route, to save from waking any tired friers who’d been up late the night before, poring anxiously over their sums. War in Ukraine coupled with ongoing complications from Brexit had driven up prices of almost all the goods that fish and chip shops depended on, from live ingredients to oil and salt to packaging. More distressing was the problem of rising energy costs. This meal is prepared using a great guzzler of a range cooker that must be kept on and roiling at all hours of a trading day. As the price of gas and electricity threatened to double, then triple, through 2022, friers were opening their energy bills with gritted teeth. A trade association called the National Federation of Fish Friers said that as many as a third of the UK’s 10,500 shops might go dark, warning of a potential “extinction event”.

It was about 8am when Murray drove his tattie lorry into a village called Pittenweem. He was met on the road by Alec Wyse, a skilled frier, 59 years old and known as Eck, who ran a takeaway called the Pittenweem Fish Bar. The tiny shop had been bought by Wyse’s father using money from the sale of a family fishing boat. There were nautical portraits on the walls. A peg-letter menu listed eight unchanging menu items, one of which was described in its entirety as “FISH”. Working together, Wyse and Murray unloaded sacks of potatoes from the lorry, carrying them inside on their shoulders.

A mile along the shore from Pittenweem, in the smarter harbour town of Anstruther, Murray parked his lorry outside a fish and chip shop called the Wee Chippy. Founded by Ian Fleming, a 64-year-old seafood trader with a tattoo of a shark on his forearm, the Wee Chippy stood across from a seaweed-covered strip of beach and a cobbled jetty. Fleming later told me it ruined his marriage, this fish and chip shop. “The hours,” he growled in explanation. Daily operations had long since passed to his business partner, a chef in his 40s called Chris Lewis. But Fleming kept a close eye on the Wee Chippy, which had absorbed such a big part of his life.

Leaving Anstruther behind, the tattie round almost done, Murray swung his lorry inland, in the rough direction of Dundee and a fish and chip shop called the Popular. Bright and cramped, the Popular had an eye-catching facade that was painted brown and baize green, making it resemble a snooker table turned on one side. A family concern, the Popular was staffed six days a week by a man called Graham Forbes, his wife Angela, and their two adult children. Though Forbes was in his mid-70s, he was the one who rose early to let the tattie man in. He liked to get started at about the same time the sun came up, feeding potatoes into the Popular’s rumbling peeler.

These three businesses – the Pittenweem Fish Bar in Pittenweem, the Wee Chippy in Anstruther, the Popular in Dundee – shared not only a potato supplier but the near-religious devotion of the communities they serviced. They were run by men and women who had thick skins, literally so when it came to their fingertips, which had become so desensitised to heat that they could be brushed against boiling oil to better position a fillet of frying fish or test the readiness of chopped potatoes as they fizzed and crisped. But these people were not invulnerable to strain. By the following summer, two of the three businesses would be gone, forced to close against their owner’s will.

I visited the East Neuk several times during that difficult year: in high tourist season, in the eerie quiet of winter, in the limbo between. As a national industry foundered, I wanted to document what it was like for a group of friers as they were brought to the brink, competing against each other even as they helped each other out, always prepping for tomorrow, cooking for today, running their numbers at night, trying not to become yet another fish and chip shop that disappeared. Between July 2022 and July 2023, things got tougher and sadder in the East Neuk than anybody predicted they would. By the time I made my last visit, people were in mourning, having said goodbye to a beloved local figure who gave their all to a cherished, suddenly endangered trade; and it was no longer so difficult to imagine a world without fish and chips.

A perfect storm of Brexit, Ukraine's invasion by Russia causing massive food shortages and price spikes, ocean acidification wrecking the fish population, and energy prices out of control means that the venerable chippie doesn't have much time left, and that an internationally famous fast food staple is now on the edge of extinction. 

Here in the land of burgers and fries there's a lesson to be learned about sustainable food in the coming decades as the global population heads for ten billion and climate change makes feeding that population less and less viable. Imagine an America without burgers, steak and fries, and the realization is that we need to face that reality as well. Millenials will have to, and Gen Z will absolutely need to face it, even as the newest generation is being born into a world that will be far different than even ten years ago.

Food for thought. 

AI, Oh You, And Sometimes Why, Con't

Google wants to "help" major newspapers with its Genesis AI bot technology to "help" write news articles, which is not at all a ploy to put the final nail in print journalism in America so that Google can take over that sector too.

 

Google is testing a product that uses artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories, pitching it to news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The tool, known internally by the working title Genesis, can take in information — details of current events, for example — and generate news content, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the product.

One of the three people familiar with the product said that Google believed it could serve as a kind of personal assistant for journalists, automating some tasks to free up time for others, and that the company saw it as responsible technology that could help steer the publishing industry away from the pitfalls of generative A.I.

Some executives who saw Google’s pitch described it as unsettling, asking not to be identified discussing a confidential matter. Two people said it seemed to take for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories.

Jenn Crider, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement that “in partnership with news publishers, especially smaller publishers, we’re in the earliest stages of exploring ideas to potentially provide A.I.-enabled tools to help their journalists with their work.”

“Quite simply, these tools are not intended to, and cannot, replace the essential role journalists have in reporting, creating and fact-checking their articles,” she added. Instead, they could provide options for headlines and other writing styles.

A News Corp spokesman said in a statement, “We have an excellent relationship with Google, and we appreciate Sundar Pichai’s long-term commitment to journalism.”

The Times and The Post declined to comment.

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor and media commentator, said Google’s new tool, as described, had potential upsides and downsides.

“If this technology can deliver factual information reliably, journalists should use the tool,” said Mr. Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

“If, on the other hand, it is misused by journalists and news organizations on topics that require nuance and cultural understanding,” he continued, “then it could damage the credibility not only of the tool, but of the news organizations that use it.”

Media outlets misusing technology to abuse the public trust and to spread disinformation and propaganda in order to make gobs of cash and to control the country?

 

Hell, we don't need media bots for that, it just means whatever Steve Bannon/Stephen Miller/Yevgeny Prigozhin op to control the 2024 election narrative can be highly automated and that there will be 90% fewer journalists around in any effort to combat it.

Should be fun when your "local newspaper" is managed from a server farm in Wyoming...or Novosibirsk.

Insuring The Worst, Ensuring The Worst

As climate change continues to drop more and more intense floods, fires, storms and blizzards, more and more insurance companies will jack up property insurance, or will simply stop issuing new policies altogether, making it impossible to afford to remain in disaster-prone areas.  Florida and California are the most susceptible to this as residents are paying the price. Flood insurance rates in South Florida are tripling in the wake of record Miami flooding and hurricanes last year.

 

Events of the past year have convinced more Florida homeowners of the need to carry flood insurance.

Flooding caused by hurricanes Ian and Nicole caught hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners across the state by surprise, and without flood insurance.

Similarly, many homeowners affected by last month’s historic rainfall in eastern Broward County had no flood insurance and learned tragically that damage caused by water rising from the ground was not covered by their normal homeowner insurance.

It’s not just flood victims who are experiencing hard lessons about flood insurance.

Just as homeowners are realizing the increased risks of going without flood coverage, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has released data showing that coverage costs are exploding for properties in coastal areas most vulnerable to flooding.

The cost hikes stem from mandates by Congress to require rates charged by the National Flood Insurance Program, which is run by FEMA, to reflect the cost of flood risk to individual covered properties, and to pay down the program’s deficit, which was $20.5 billion as of last November, according to FEMA.

The result is a new risk pricing model called Risk Rating 2.0, which took effect on Oct. 1, 2021, for new NFIP policies and on April 1, 2022, for renewing policies. Rather than set rates solely based on a property’s elevation within a zone on a Flood Insurance Rate Map, the new approach considers more risk variables such as flood frequency, types of flooding, and distance to a water source, along with individual property characteristics like elevation and the cost to rebuild, FEMA’s website states.

Improved modeling, however, is of little comfort to homeowners who will have to pay more for flood insurance at the same time costs of regular multiperil property insurance are skyrocketing.

Recently, FEMA released a spreadsheet that compared average premiums currently and how high they’ll climb under the new pricing model.

For example, homeowners in Boca Raton’s 33432 ZIP code can look forward to a whopping 229% flood insurance premium increase, from an average $950 per policy to $3,128.

In Broward County, the 33305 ZIP code that includes Wilton Manors and Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods near the Middle River will pay 209% more, from $1,099 to $3,400.

In the 33315 zip code, which includes Fort Lauderdale’s Edgewood neighborhood that was among the hardest-hit by last month’s flooding, average rates will increase by 64% — from $863 currently to $1,420.

These numbers are averages. Within each ZIP code are less expensive homes with cheaper coverage costs and pricier homes that will cost even more to insure.

Unsurprisingly, homes nearest the coast, particularly in low-lying areas, cost far more to insure than homes on higher ground in western suburban cities.

For example, homeowners in Coral Springs’ 33071 ZIP code are looking at a total premium increase of just 17.6% — from $669 to $787.

FEMA says the new pricing model will also drive down the cost of flood insurance for customers with low-risk characteristics. Yet, none of South Florida’s ZIP codes will see average rates decrease, FEMA’s data shows.

 

And in California, State Farm will no longer issue new policies for any property in the state. 

Across the country, the climate crisis is wreaking havoc on insurance markets. As climate change fuels more intense storms and wildfires, home insurers in disaster-prone states like Texas, Louisiana, and Florida have stopped issuing and renewing policies. In some cases, companies have even gone under in the aftermath of a particularly damaging natural disaster. As a result, homeowners are contending with skyrocketing premium payments and even beginning to struggle to find insurers willing to cover them at all.

The latest sign of the insurance industry tumult came from State Farm, the largest homeowners insurance provider in California. Last week, the company revealed that it would no longer offer policies to new Golden State customers due to “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.”

“It’s necessary to take these actions now to improve the company’s financial strength,” the company noted in a press release. State Farm indicated it would continue to keep the customers it already has on its books in California.

California’s insurance industry has been struggling to stay afloat in a state increasingly ravaged by fires and floods. Since 2017, when a series of catastrophic fires caused $33 billion in damages, insurers in the state have lost two decades of underwriting profit. As a result, the cost of homeowners insurance has risen by a quarter since 2015, and insurance companies have been withdrawing coverage in the most fire-prone parts of the state in an attempt to reduce the liability on their books. Meanwhile, Californians who have been unable to secure policies from insurance companies have flocked to the California FAIR Plan, the state-run insurer of last resort. The result is an unstable insurance market that appears to be teetering on the edge of crisis.

 

I expect that large sections of the country will be uninsurable at all in the next few years, especially in coastal states and wildfire states. The federal government will have to step in, or no more buildings and homes will be built in entire regions of the country. And even then, expect a lot less new construction ahead.

 

For example in Arizona, the state is already limiting new construction because Phoenix's water situation is unsustainable. 

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

The decision by state officials very likely means the beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country.

The state said it would not revoke building permits that have already been issued and is instead counting on new water conservation measures and alternative sources to produce the water necessary for housing developments that have already been approved.

On Thursday, Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Arizona was not immediately running dry and that new construction would continue in major cities like Phoenix. The analysis prepared by the state looked at groundwater levels over the next 100 years.

“We’re going to manage this situation,” she said at a news conference. “We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water.”

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. Most of the rest comes from rivers and aqueducts as well as recycled wastewater. In practical terms, groundwater is a finite resource; it can take thousands of years or longer to be replenished.

The announcement of a groundwater shortage means Arizona would no longer give developers in some areas of Maricopa County new permits to construct homes that rely on wells for water.

Phoenix and nearby large cities, which must obtain separate permission from state officials for their development plans every 10 to 15 years, would also be denied approval for any homes that rely on groundwater beyond what the state has already authorized.

The decision means cities and developers must look for alternative sources of water to support future development — for example, by trying to buy access to river water from farmers or Native American tribes, many of whom are facing their own shortages. That rush to buy water is likely to rattle the real estate market in Arizona, making homes more expensive and threatening the relatively low housing costs that had made the region a magnet for people from across the country.

“Housing affordability will be a challenge moving forward,” said Spencer Kamps, vice president of legislative affairs for the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, an industry group. He noted that even as the state limits home construction, commercial buildings, factories and other kinds of development can continue.

And as climate shifts render more and more of the country vulnerable to new flooding, fires, storms and disasters, we'll all be paying much higher premiums for property in the future. Eventually, millions of Americans will be stuck in homes that they can't sell because they are in uninsurable areas, and they'll get to wait until they are wiped out. I guarantee you that the people who can afford to move out will do so, leaving ruined economies and neighborhoods behind.

The people who will pay the highest cost will, as always, be those who can least afford it.

Last Call For The Late, Great, Planet Earth, Con't

The latest UN report on climate change gives us a decade at most  to stave off catastrophic global warming that will kill millions, and doing so will require massive changes to current human standards of living, or we will reach a positive feedback loop that will eventually fry most life on this rock.

Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to a major new report released on Monday.

The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, offers the most comprehensive understanding to date of ways in which the planet is changing. It says that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s,” as humans continue to burn coal, oil and natural gas.

That number holds a special significance in global climate politics: Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, virtually every nation agreed to “pursue efforts” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that point, scientists say, the impacts of catastrophic heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures and species extinction become significantly harder for humanity to handle.

But Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age, and, with global fossil-fuel emissions setting records last year, that goal is quickly slipping out of reach.

There is still one last chance to shift course, the new report says. But it would require industrialized nations to join together immediately to slash greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s. If those two steps were taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Delays of even a few years would most likely make that goal unattainable, guaranteeing a hotter, more perilous future.

“The pace and scale of what has been done so far and current plans are insufficient to tackle climate change,” said Hoesung Lee, the chair of the climate panel. “We are walking when we should be sprinting.”

The report comes as the world’s two biggest polluters, China and the United States, continue to approve new fossil fuel projects. Last year, China issued permits for 168 coal-fired power plants of various sizes, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland. Last week, the Biden administration approved an enormous oil drilling project known as Willow that will take place on pristine federal land in Alaska.

 

So no, there doesn't seem to be any chance that countries will act in the next decade, and future generations will curse their ancestors who did nothing.

 

Those that survive, that is. 

Increasingly, we're headed for author William Gibson's "Jackpot Theory", where the odds of compounding climate change, resource shortages, nuclear war, viral pandemics and biological collapse means simply surviving the future will feel like "hitting the jackpot".

Maybe those who do survive will be able to turn the human race around, but there's no reason at all to believe the next several decades will be anything other than abject misery for the vast majority of us.

At the very least, Gen Z and whoever comes after will have every reason to despise those who came before them. I don't want to be right about this, but I don't think I'm wrong.

Image

Zandar's 2023 Predictions

Another year, another look into the crystal ball as I try to predict 2023's political, social, economic, technological and scientific future. My record as a futurist  over the years is fair to middling at best, and your various pets are probably better at this than I am for crying out loud. We'll see how I fare 365 days from now, and away we go, picking up from 2022's "Didn't happen but should" category:

1) GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy still won't be House Speaker.  This one, carried over from last year, assumed falsely that he'd get the Paul Ryan heave-ho. This time around we'll find out for sure in a few days. I expect multiple votes to fail, and for another Republican to step in, the smart money being on Rep. Steve Scalise.

2) Donald Trump will finally be indicted.  It may be in Georgia for election tampering, it may be in New York for tax fraud or his payment to Stormy Daniels, or (far less likely) Special Counsel Jack Smith and AG Merrick Garland will finally present their grand unified federal case.  But Trump doesn't have any more clock to run out. SCOTUS has left him wide open and vulnerable. How the country reacts to these indictments will determine much of our future as a democracy. If he's not indicted by the end of 2023, he never will be.

3) The Supreme Court will end affirmative action in college admissions. This one's as easy as falling off a log, folks. There are five, if not six votes (depending on Chief Justice Roberts) to dismantle race as a factor in getting into college, and depending on how broad the decision is, it could end some scholarships based on race, heritage grants, or even funding for HBCUs. As with 2022's destruction of abortion rights and executive agency rulemaking, this too will have a deleterious effect on the country for decades.

4) But, SCOTUS will side with the Biden Administration on ending Title 42.  It has to, otherwise the Supreme Court would be sending immigration to the states and throwing the entire federal immigration system out. Both Gorsuch and Roberts seem very reluctant to do so, Roberts seemed like he stayed the lifting of Title 42 until a decision comes down by June.

5) I want to be wrong on this, but I believe a multi-state attack on power substations in order to cause a blackout is inevitable. It will be a simultaneous strike on dozens of substations in several states that will knock out power to millions. There have been multiple small scale attacks that are still being called "vandalism" at this point, not "terrorism". That will change in 2023.

6) Jerome Powell and the Fed will at last begin to cut interest rates.  This won't happen until the second half of the year and only then after signs of a stalled economy, reduced inflation and even monthly job losses, but we'll see the Fed cut rates before the year is out.

7) Phase 5 of the MCU makes $1 billion in 2023. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will introduce the Big Bad for the next few years in Kang the Conqueror, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will be a huge hit, and The Marvels will top it off this summer.  People are going to want an escape, and they will go to theaters to get there. 

8) Dow 36,000, no seriously this time.  Especially if number 6 is true, lowering interest rates will be like market steroids. 2022 was effectively a bear market. Then again, post-Covid, the Dow almost doubled in two years before coming back to earth. Things will rebound as Biden's infrastructure and climate change legislation starts kicking in.

9) My "way out there" prediction this year is Russian forces leave Ukraine.  Yeah I know, the only sucker bet in the world worse than SCOTUS-watching is "less war!" But if things continue to go as badly for Putin as I think things will, including a "big" offensive in early 2023 that stalls out and finally breaks the Russian army, it's possible that he cuts his losses. Which would be good. It's far better than my other Way Out There At Number Nine prediction, which is China invading Taiwan...

And finally...

10) ZVTS rolls on for another year.  I appreciate all of you sticking with me as this journey continues. We've navigated some dangerous waters and had some big wins and big losses in 2022, but I'll be here to continue to document the happenings. Thank you for being a reader, and I hope you'll continue to stay with us.

We'll see how it goes.

Zandar's 2022 Prediction Scorecard

 It's time to take stock of how my picks, pans, predictions and prognostications proceeded here in 2022, you know, with the fate of the country at stake and all if I was wrong.  Luckily, I did pretty well this year, as we run down my dartboarding.

1) Democrats keep the Senate in 2022. I can't in good faith call the House at this point. But I do know that as Mitch McConnell has proven, keeping the Senate when you have the White House means there's a lot you can do, and Biden has gotten a record number of federal judiciary appointments. The next Supreme Court justice could happen at any time, as we've seen. Without the House, things would be terrible. But without the Senate, it'll be catastrophic.

 

I get full credit for this one, and thank the universe for that.

2) Nancy Pelosi steps down as House Democratic Leader. I hate to say it, even after the long years she has proven that she has been the most effective House leader the Democrats have seen in my lifetime, but I think she steps down in 2022 and will not run as Speaker or House Minority Leader in 2023.

 

She went out on her terms, in her own time, with her own successor in Hakeem Jeffries. Another point.

3) Donald Trump is indicted in the state of New York. Don't ask me about the federal charges, but I honestly believe NY AG Tish James is going to try to prosecute Donald Trump, and it's going to be one of the most fateful chapters in our modern political history.

Not yet. Trump was able to delay indictments until 2023, and maybe further.

4) COVID-19 deaths will surpass 1.2 million total in the US. The good news here is that 2022 will thankfully have fewer deaths than 2020 or 2021, but not by much. We'll still have to contend with a very bad winter, but if we can get past that, I think there's finally some hope.

We got to 1.1 million. Not quite as bad as predicted, but still very close. Half credit.

5) The Supreme Court will gut/overturn Roe v. Wade. At this point the writing is on the courtroom wall. Roe is dead, and individual states will move to either regulate safe abortion out of existence, criminalize it with heavy penalties for women, doctors, and health care professionals, make crossing state lines to get a abortion elsewhere illegal, ban it altogether, or all of the above. It won't end abortion, just safe ones. It will change America for a generation.

I wish I was wrong here, but this was patently obvious back in December 2021 when I predicted this. A full point I dearly wish I did not get.

6) The Supreme Court will also gut executive agencies. This will be a massive win for corporations, but the bottom line is agencies like OSHA, FDA, CDC, SEC, EPA, you name it, it will be essentially turned off. I don't know what all will be stricken down, but it's going to be a huge mess when it happens. This too will change America for a generation.

This too was eminently predictable, and we'll be paying dearly for the West Virginia v EPA decision for decades to come. Another point I badly wish I was wrong about.

7) The Dow will finish the year above 36,000. I mean that's where it ended the year, so what I basically mean is I'm not predicting a recession, yay! I hope I'm right. If I'm correct on some of these previous predictions, well, things can go badly quickly.

A complete whiff here, the Dow closed the year at 33,145 with two recessionary GDP quarters in the first half, and the Fed tightening the screws with no letup in sight.

8) Marvel films will make another billion in 2022. Since it seems movie-watching in theaters is now officially back as of December, May's Doctor Strange sequel, July's Thor: Love and Thunder, and November's Black Panther 2 should easily gross a billion combined, if not more.

And even with as much criticism as Marvel's Phase 4 took in 2022, people still went to see the MCU. The three movies made nearly $1.2 billion collectively in the domestic market, and worldwide made a hefty $2.5 billion. No failures here, the box office is back, and in other movies, Top Gun: Maverick almost clearing $1.5 billion worldwide by itself, with Avatar: The Way of Water still going strong at $1.16 billion and Jurassic Park: Dominion clearing a billion even.  

9) GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy is booted from the House GOP leadership. I don't know who will lead the House GOP in 2023, but I can guarantee you it won't be McCarthy. And I think things will be so bad he'll make his plans known, like Pelosi, that he's "stepping down". The difference is with McCarthy, it won't be a choice.

Not so far, but we'll find out in a week, won't we? 

10) ZVTS will roll on for another year. It's because of you guys, you know this, and we'll sail into year 14 and then some. I want to honestly thank you, the readers. When I started this back in 2008, I had no idea where the country would go. I made the journey along with you, and I'm glad you're here, new or old.

A free point as usual, and the sentiment stands.  This blog is old enough to be driving in the parking lot. I never thought I'd make it this far, let alone have you all still with me.

Thank you.

I finish out the year with 6.5 out of 10, a better than average year for my scorecard.

As usual, my 2023 predictions coming later today. 

Hot New Fusion Cuisine

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have apparently achieved a breakthrough in fusion technology: getting more energy out of a fusion reaction than was put into it, known as ignition.

Scientists studying fusion energy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced on Tuesday that they had crossed a major milestone in reproducing the power of the sun in a laboratory.

Scientists for decades have said that fusion, the nuclear reaction that makes stars shine, could provide a future source of bountiful energy.

The result announced on Tuesday is the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that actually produced more energy than it took to start the reaction.

“This is such a wonderful example of a possibility realized, a scientific milestone achieved, and a road ahead to the possibilities for clean energy,” Arati Prabhakar, the White House science adviser, said during a news conference on Tuesday morning at the Department of Energy’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “And even deeper understanding of the scientific principles that are applied here.”

From an environmental perspective, fusion has always had a strong appeal. Within the sun and stars, fusion continually combines hydrogen atoms into helium, producing sunlight and warmth that bathes the planets.

In experimental reactors and laser labs on Earth, fusion lives up to its reputation as a very clean energy source, devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels and the dangerous long-lived radioactive waste created by current nuclear power plants, which use the splitting of uranium to produce energy.

There was always a nagging caveat, however. In all of the efforts by scientists to control the unruly power of fusion, their experiments consumed more energy than the fusion reactions generated.

That changed at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 when 192 giant lasers at the laboratory’s National Ignition Facility blasted a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond.

The laser beams entered at the top and bottom of the cylinder, vaporizing it. That generated an inward onslaught of X-rays that compresses a BB-size fuel pellet of deuterium and tritium, the heavier forms of hydrogen.

In a brief moment lasting less than 100 trillionths of a second, 2.05 megajoules of energy — roughly the equivalent of a pound of TNT — bombarded the hydrogen pellet. Out flowed a flood of neutron particles — the product of fusion — which carried about 3 megajoules of energy, an energy gain of 1.5.

This crossed the threshold that laser fusion scientists call ignition, the dividing line where the energy generated by fusion equals the energy of the incoming lasers that start the reaction.

“You see one diagnostic and you think maybe that’s not real and then you start to see more and more diagnostics rolling in, pointing to the same thing,” said Annie Kritcher, a physicist at Livermore who described reviewing the data after the experiment. “It’s a great feeling.”

The successful experiment finally delivers the ignition goal that was promised when construction of the National Ignition Facility started in 1997. When operations began in 2009, however, the facility hardly generated any fusion at all, an embarrassing disappointment after a $3.5 billion investment from the federal government.

 

And they didn't just get a bit more energy out of it, they got 50% more energy out of it, meaning that this is an honest-to-goodness real advancement in power. I know it's kind of basic, but a fusion experiment that didn't release enough energy to cover the cost going in wasn't of much use to anyone, and that's where the fusion lab has been for the last 13 years.

Until last week.  That was the big obstacle, and they cracked it wide open.

So what does that mean now?

I wouldn't expect commercially available fusion power in my lifetime, to be honest.  Maybe in Millennial or Gen Z years. But it's a start, and a big one.

And that's if we don't splatter ourselves all over history with fusion weapons in the interim, which given the state of humanity today is a very real outcome down the line. Someone's going to decide that nuclear blast damage without all the nasty plutonium fallout is a really good idea and worth pursuing.

But yeah, this is a huge step in humanity, one of those Civilization game-level milestones on the tech tree.

This is a big one, folks.  Trust in that.

The Elonator: Rise Of The Machines

Richest guy in the universe Elon Musk continues his slew of successful tax write-off projects that will not only fail spectacularly, but set yet another field back decades as it crashes and burns.

Tesla revealed on Friday a prototype of a humanoid robot that it says could be a future product for the automaker.

The robot, dubbed Optimus by Tesla, walked stiffly on stage at Tesla’s AI Day, slowly waved at the crowed and gestured with its hands for roughly one minute. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the robot was operating without a tether for the first time. Robotics developers often use tethers to support robots because they aren’t capable enough to walk without falling and damaging themselves.

The Optimus’ abilities appear to significantly trail what robots from competitors like Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics are capable of. Boston Dynamics robots have been seen doing back flips and performing sophisticated dance routines without a tether.

“The robot can actually do a lot more than we just showed you,” Musk said at the event. “We just didn’t want it to fall on its face.”

Tesla also showed videos of its robot performing simple tasks like carrying boxes and watering plants with a watering can.

Musk claimed that if the robot was produced in mass volumes it would “probably” cost less than $20,000. Tesla maintains that Optimus’ advantage over competitors will be its ability to navigate independently using technology developed from Tesla’s driver-assistance system “Full Self Driving,” as well as cost savings from what it has learned about manufacturing from its automotive division. (Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” requires a human that is alert and attentive, ready to take over at any time, as it is not yet capable of fully driving itself.)

Tesla has a history of aggressive price targets that it doesn’t ultimately reach. The Tesla Model 3 was long promised as a $35,000 vehicle, but could only very briefly be purchased for that price, and not directly on its website. The most affordable Tesla Model 3 now costs $46,990. When Tesla revealed the Cybertruck in 2019, its pick-up truck that remains unavailable for purchase today, it was said to cost $39,990, but the price has since been removed from Tesla’s website.

Tesla AI Day is intended largely as a recruiting event to attract talented people to join the company.

 

Let's keep in mind that Musk's Hyperloop nonsense was designed from the ground up to destroy mass transit and in particular high-speed rail, so that people would buy more cars. Tesla cars, you see. Now we have Tesla robots as the company goes after competitors like Boston Dynamics, Samsung, and Honda.

The M.O. is the same: overpromise, destroy the stock prices of the competition, then present a flop making the entire sector barren.  Tesla is finally making a profit, but that's because it stomped all over the EV market, one that Ford, GM, and Stellantis Chrysler are coming on like gangbusters now.

Elon's just a greedy ass.

Zandar's 2022 Predictions

Well, it's time. Here are my ten predictions for 2022. As usual I hope I'm wrong on some of them, but I fear I won't be. Either way, here's hoping that you have a good year ahead.

1) Democrats keep the Senate in 2022.  I can't in good faith call the House at this point. But I do know that as Mitch McConnell has proven, keeping the Senate when you have the White House means there's a lot you can do, and Biden has gotten a record number of federal judiciary appointments.  The next Supreme Court justice could happen at any time, as we've seen. Without the House, things would be terrible. But without the Senate, it'll be catastrophic.

2) Nancy Pelosi steps down as House Democratic Leader. I hate to say it, even after the long years she has proven that she has been the most effective House leader the Democrats have seen in my lifetime, but I think she steps down in 2022 and will not run as Speaker or House Minority Leader in 2023. 

3) Donald Trump is indicted in the state of New York. Don't ask me about the federal charges, but I honestly believe NY AG Tish James is going to try to prosecute Donald Trump, and it's going to be one of the most fateful chapters in our modern political history.

4) COVID-19 deaths will surpass 1.2 million total in the US.  The good news here is that 2022 will thankfully have fewer deaths than 2020 or 2021, but not by much. We'll still have to contend with a very bad winter, but if we can get past that, I think there's finally some hope.

5) The Supreme Court will gut/overturn Roe v. Wade. At this point the writing is on the courtroom wall. Roe is dead, and individual states will move to either regulate safe abortion out of existence, criminalize it with heavy penalties for women, doctors, and health care professionals, make crossing state lines to get a abortion elsewhere illegal, ban it altogether, or all of the above. It won't end abortion, just safe ones. It will change America for a generation.

6) The Supreme Court will also gut executive agencies.  This will be a massive win for corporations, but the bottom line is agencies like OSHA, FDA, CDC, SEC, EPA, you name it, it will be essentially turned off. I don't know what all will be stricken down, but it's going to be a huge mess when it happens. This too will change America for a generation.

7) The Dow will finish the year above 36,000.  I mean that's where it ended the year, so what I basically mean is I'm not predicting a recession, yay! I hope I'm right. If I'm correct on some of these previous predictions, well, things can go badly quickly.

8) Marvel films will make another billion in 2022.  Since it seems movie-watching in theaters is now officially back as of December, May's Doctor Strange sequel, July's Thor: Love and Thunder, and November's Black Panther 2 should easily gross a billion combined, if not more.

Which brings me to my one "out there" prediction at number nine...

Just kidding.

9)  GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy is booted from the House GOP leadership. I don't know who will lead the House GOP in 2023, but I can guarantee you it won't be McCarthy. And I think things will be so bad he'll make his plans known, like Pelosi, that he's "stepping down". The difference is with McCarthy, it won't be a choice.

and finally...

10) ZVTS will roll on for another year. It's because of you guys, you know this, and we'll sail into year 14 and then some. I want to honestly thank you, the readers. When I started this back in 2008, I had no idea where the country would go. I made the journey along with you, and I'm glad you're here, new or old.

Take care of yourselves, folks. You never know.

 

Zandar's 2021 Prediction Scorecard

It's that time of year again where I look back at what I thought 2021 was going to be like, and I was, for better or worse, more accurate than a coin flip. Yay! Let's run down the list:

1) Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th. 

 

Correct and Thank God, but we know now just how close we came to this not happening, and if we don't punish the monsters responsible for nearly pulling off a coup, it will be much worse next time. 

 

2) Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock will win the Georgia runoffs and Mitch McConnell will be relegated to Senate Minority Leader.

 

Correct. Thanks, Donald Trump!

3) Even if Dems get the Senate back, the filibuster and the current size of SCOTUS will remain.

 

Correct. This was near certain with a 50-50 Senate including Manchin and Sinema.

4) The total US death toll from COVID-19 will surpass 1 million Americans by the end of the year.

 

Half-point: And only because it was 825K and not quite a million, but my reasoning that the anti-vax idiots would martyr themselves was correct.

5) The Roberts Court will allow states to regulate abortion out of existence.

 

Correct.  It's happening in Texas right now.

6) Donald Trump will not be indicted. 

 

Correct. He was not. 

7) Hunter Biden will be indicted. 

 

My first real miss of the year, Incorrect.

8)  No movie will break $100 million at the box office in 2021.  

 

Incorrect, as Spider-Man No Way Home made over a billion, but I was mostly right up until December. I wish I was wrong, because it means movie theaters are back to normal in the era of highly transmissible Omicron.

 

9) The Dow Jones will be under 25,000 by the end of the year. 

 

Incorrect, but we do have a serious inflation problem. However, the DJIA was up a whopping 18%+ for the year under Biden.

10) ZVTS will make it through 2021.

Correct, if I'm writing this and you're reading this, I'm right.

Total score: 6.5 out of ten.

Not my best year, but not my worst, either.  2022 predictions will be up later tonight.

Tennessee Goes Viral

As the number of new COVID-19 cases have doubled this month from last month due to the dangerous Delta Variant spreading among the unvaccinated in red states like Missouri and Louisiana, and 4th of July holiday celebrations turning into super-spreader events, the problem remains that red states are doing everything they can to downplay the pandemic's rise. In Tennessee, the state's top vaccine official was fired this week over outreach efforts to vaccinate kids against COVID.

Tennessee’s former top vaccinations official said Tuesday that she couldn’t stay silent after she was fired this week amid scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department’s outreach efforts to vaccinate teenagers against COVID-19.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who was the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, said the state’s elected leaders put politics over the health of children by firing her for her efforts to get more Tennesseans vaccinated.

She said the agency presented her with a letter of resignation and a letter of termination Monday, but no reason for why she was being let go.

After choosing the termination letter, Fiscus penned a blistering 1,200-word response in which she said she is ashamed of Tennessee’s leaders, afraid for her state, and “angry for the amazing people of the Tennessee Department of Health who have been mistreated by an uneducated public and leaders who have only their own interests in mind.”

She also revealed that the Tennessee Department of Health has halted all outreach efforts around any kind of vaccines for children, not just COVID-19 ones, which The Tennessean confirmed through department documents. All of it, she warned, comes as only 38% of Tennesseans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, lagging behind much of the nation.

“I don’t think they realized how much of an advocate I am for public health and how intolerant of injustice I am,” Fiscus told The Associated Press on Tuesday in one of several interviews with numerous news outlets.

So far, Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s administration has been silent on the firing. His office and the Health Department declined to comment, citing personnel matters. After an event Tuesday, Lee did not answer questions from reporters.

Democrats blasted the firing, with Sen. Raumesh Akbari saying Fiscus was “sacrificed in favor of anti-vaccine ideology.” House Speaker Cameron Sexton was one of few Republicans to weigh in, saying through a spokesperson that health officials made the decision internally.

“While members have expressed concerns about the department’s recent vaccine marketing strategy, Speaker Sexton will not speculate on the factors that went into this decision,” said Sexton’s spokesperson, Doug Kufner. “However, Speaker Sexton does believe that those who have voiced their dissent agree with yesterday’s outcome.”

Republican Sen. Richard Briggs, a physician, said he’s also unsure why Fiscus got fired, but said “it would be wrong if the reason for her firing was because she had a campaign to try to get our children vaccinated.” He said he doesn’t want to second-guess the department, but “because of the way it at least looks superficially without the details being known, there probably needs to be some clarification.”

During a June committee meeting, angry Republican lawmakers invoked Fiscus’ name over a letter she sent to medical providers who administer vaccines explaining the state’s legal mechanism letting them vaccinate minors as young as 14 without parental consent, called the “Mature Minor Doctrine.” The letter was in response to providers’ questions and didn’t contain new information.

Fiscus said the health department’s attorney provided the letter. The attorney, she said, had said the letter had been “blessed by the governor’s office.” She said the doctrine was based on a 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling and her job was to explain what is allowable.

Republican lawmakers also admonished the agency for its communications about the vaccine, including online posts. One graphic, featuring a photo of a smiling child with a Band-Aid on his arm, said, “Tennesseans 12+ are eligible for vaccines. Give COVID-19 vaccines a shot.”

During the hearing, Republican Rep. Scott Cepicky held a printout of a Facebook ad saying teens were eligible, calling the agency’s advocacy “reprehensible” and likening it to peer pressure.

Asked about the hearing, the governor last month said generally that the state will “continue to encourage folks to seek access – adults for their children, and adults for themselves to make the personal choice for vaccine.”

 

Again, many of us live in states where a majority of our neighbors are not vaccinated and never will be. The disinformation campaign against the vaccine might be the single greatest evil act perpetrated against the US in my lifetime, one that will end up killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions in the months and years ahead.

We're going to have to deal with the fallout of unvaccinated states, and it's going to be clear by Labor Day I think that the pandemic is far from over. The real test is how states respond to the coming Delta surge in cases, and in most of the states where this will happen, the answer will be, by law, absolutely nothing.

This fall and winter will be a nightmare.

Zandar's 2021 Predictions

It's that time of year again, where I extrapolate the future and mostly get it wrong, only this year the stakes are a lot higher if I'm off.

1) Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th. I know, this is where I'm starting from, and at this point, this is still an assumption, because I honestly don't know how the next three weeks are going to play out, let alone the next year, but here we are. I gotta start somewhere though, and if I'm somehow wrong on this, well, yeah.

 

2) Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock will win the Georgia runoffs and Mitch McConnell will be relegated to Senate Minority Leader. Look, Kentucky is never getting rid of Mitch, but the other 99 senators maybe we can do something about, if albeit briefly.  Things are not going to get better until Mitch McConnell is no longer in charge of the Senate, so I have to hope that they win.

3) Even if Dems get the Senate back, the filibuster and the current size of SCOTUS will remain. No, I don't have any faith in Schumer to convince anyone on the Dem side that the filibuster needs to go, and Biden will back Schumer up on this. Considering the Dems will almost certainly lose the House in 2022 and probably the Senate again too, Schumer just can't afford it. He won't have the votes anyway.

4) The total US death toll from COVID-19 will surpass 1 million Americans by the end of the year. People aren't going to take this seriously. There will still be tens of millions of Americans who will refuse the vaccine,or masking, or social distancing. The vaccine will be available and I expect it will be ramped up for those who want it, but it's still going to be grim for the first half of the year. And yes, I know I predicting that twice as many people will die from COVID-19 in 2021 as 2020. That is horrific. I still make this forecast.

5) The Roberts Court will allow states to regulate abortion out of existence. I've been predicting this one for a couple of years running now, but there's a reason for it now with the court's 6-3 conservative bent. Come the end of the year, abortion will be not only illegal for clinicians to perform in several red states, but in more than a few states women seeking an abortion will be made into a felony. It's going to be bad, folks. The pressure on Biden will be tremendous, but the Senate won't budge.

6) Donald Trump will not be indicted.  I covered this earlier, but Donald Trump won't be charged and the New York state investigations will conclude without a grand jury indictment. They will have to, because of the very real danger of deadly terrorist violence erupting nationwide if he's arrested. We've already seen one terrorist bombing in Nashville. Imagine that, only worse, in downtown NYC, or downtown small-town America. I don't like it any more than you do, but it's very real. And if you're thinking any of the Trumps are going to jail, well, in America, we don't jail our rich felons, we rehabilitate them in the press. I want to hope again, but hope has been brutally smashed out of me by the last four years.

7) Hunter Biden will be indicted. Yeah, Joe Biden's son is going to face charges related to Ukraine and China, and Republicans will call for Joe Biden to resign. They're going to take advantage of both Bidens and try to destroy them, and by the time the 2022 elections roll around, well...

8)  No movie will break $100 million at the box office in 2021.  Hell, don't be surprised if most theater chains will be out of business by the end of the year. Movies, theater shows, concerts, eating out, we're all looking forward to those again, but the prevalence of COVID in 2021 will make things horrific for the first several months of the year, and the lack of vaccinations will only prolong the pain. The number one film in America this year was Bad Boys For Life, and that made $62 million.

9) The Dow Jones will be under 25,000 by the end of the year. This time, Republicans will have every incentive to destroy the economy and tip us fully into the Trump Depression. Unemployment will be 8% or more, and Biden will get the blame for better or for worse.

10) ZVTS will make it through 2021. You know what, if I could survive this year, everything else should be cream cheese frosting on carrot cake. And I love carrot cake. And as always, you readers will make the difference.

So we begin the journey tomorrow.  See you in 2021.

Zandar's 2020 Prediction Scorecard

Welp, it's that time of year again, where I get to try to console myself with enough half-credit points out of my ten predictions for the year that I can skate by with five or more and not feel like a complete imbecile. And then I'll do it again! 

1) Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump and becomes President.  Yeah, this is a safe guess and a pretty likely outcome, but I think it's what will happen.  Biden has been ahead in the primaries and leading in head-to-head matchups with Trump for all of 2019.  I have to believe that Biden will win, but whether or not Trump concedes in 2021 is a question for 2021. 

 

Got this one, thank Christ.

2) Trump will be acquitted in his Senate trial.  I know, I know, next I'll tell you water is wet and the sun is made of burny stuff that is hot.  But it'll happen, and it'll be a big reason why...

 

Easiest call I made all year.

3) The Democrats will reclaim the Senate in 2020.  Those votes to acquit are going to wreck vulnerable GOP senators like Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Martha McSally and Thom Tillis, and I think they're going to lose. A 50-50 tie with Biden winning means Biden's VP is the tiebreaker and the Dems will prevail...unless Joe Manchin switches parties or something. That's why I'm predicting Dems get 51 or 52 seats with Iowa's Joni Ernst losing, Pat Roberts's open seat in Kansas getting picked up, and Doug Jones holding on.

Hold on this one until next week.

 

4) Democrats keep the House.  Nancy Pelosi continues to outmaneuver the White House and I think high turnout in November will not only assure a Biden win, but a big House gain for Team Blue.

I'll take the win on this one,despite Dems losing a dozen seats.

5) The US Supreme Court will give states sweeping powers in rulings on abortion and discrimination.  I don't want to be right on this one, but I forsee a huge hole being blown in Roe and another in the Civil Rights Act as SCOTUS will come down on the side of letting states make their own rules on abortion clinic access and LGBTQ discrimination, and by January 1, 2021 it's entirely possible that there will be a dozen states with no abortion clinics, and there will be no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity at the federal level.

This has not happened.  Yet.

 

6) US Attorney General Bill Barr will announce indictments for James Comey and John Brennan. Trump has wanted these two heads for ages, and he's going to get them.  The court fights are going to be bad, but Trump rounding up FBI folks for personal revenge will be the last straw for a lot of voters.

Nope, and Barr actually resigned rather than doing this.

7) The Dow Jones will end up under 25,000 by December 31.  I don't think the recession will hit in 2020, but it'll definitely catch up to us next year. The global slowdown will be too much to overcome.

 

Another miss, the Dow did crash to 18K, but has climbed into positive territory for the year thanks to Mitch McConnell $6 trillion "COVID-19" giveaway.

8) Marvel movies will not rule the box office in 2020.  That's not to say parent company Disney won't have an incredible year again, with a pair of Pixar features (Onward, Soul), Harrison Ford starring in Call of the Wild based on the Jack London novel, and live action movies of Mulan and Jungle Cruise.  But of the three Marvel properties, New Mutants, Black Widow, and Eternals, I only see Black Widow breaking half a billion.

 

Only one was released, New Mutants, and it was a dud like everything this year, so yeah, Marvel definitely did not rule the box office in 2020.

9) Trump will finally get around to those pardons.  He'll have nothing to lose once, well, he loses.  Oh wait, he'll be headed for state cases against him and jail time, but in the meantime the pardons will be the least awful thing he does.

Boy did he ever turn pardons into a side business, full-on white-collar crime boss style.

10) And of course, ZVTS will make it through year 12.  It'll be thanks to all of you who have stuck with me since the 2008 primary race and through 4 presidential contests.

 

Yep. And this year was...bad.  But you're all still with me.

So, final score, 6-3 with one left to be determined. Not bad, considering the year we had.

My 2021 predictions will be up later today.

Zandar's 2020 Predictions

Another year means another set of ten predictions covering the next 12 months, so without further ado, here's what I think 2020 will bring. I was very pessimistic in my 2019 predictions, but I'm returning to the sunny side of the street this year.

1) Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump and becomes President.  Yeah, this is a safe guess and a pretty likely outcome, but I think it's what will happen.  Biden has been ahead in the primaries and leading in head-to-head matchups with Trump for all of 2019.  I have to believe that Biden will win, but whether or not Trump concedes in 2021 is a question for 2021.

2) Trump will be acquitted in his Senate trial.  I know, I know, next I'll tell you water is wet and the sun is made of burny stuff that is hot.  But it'll happen, and it'll be a big reason why...

3) The Democrats will reclaim the Senate in 2020.  Those votes to acquit are going to wreck vulnerable GOP senators like Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Martha McSally and Thom Tillis, and I think they're going to lose. A 50-50 tie with Biden winning means Biden's VP is the tiebreaker and the Dems will prevail...unless Joe Manchin switches parties or something. That's why I'm predicting Dems get 51 or 52 seats with Iowa's Joni Ernst losing, Pat Roberts's open seat in Kansas getting picked up, and Doug Jones holding on.

4) Democrats keep the House.  Nancy Pelosi continues to outmaneuver the White House and I think high turnout in November will not only assure a Biden win, but a big House gain for Team Blue.

5) The US Supreme Court will give states sweeping powers in rulings on abortion and discrimination.  I don't want to be right on this one, but I forsee a huge hole being blown in Roe and another in the Civil Rights Act as SCOTUS will come down on the side of letting states make their own rules on abortion clinic access and LGBTQ discrimination, and by January 1, 2021 it's entirely possible that there will be a dozen states with no abortion clinics, and there will be no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity at the federal level.

6) US Attorney General Bill Barr will announce indictments for James Comey and John Brennan. Trump has wanted these two heads for ages, and he's going to get them.  The court fights are going to be bad, but Trump rounding up FBI folks for personal revenge will be the last straw for a lot of voters.

7) The Dow Jones will end up under 25,000 by December 31.  I don't think the recession will hit in 2020, but it'll definitely catch up to us next year. The global slowdown will be too much to overcome.

8) Marvel movies will not rule the box office in 2020.  That's not to say parent company Disney won't have an incredible year again, with a pair of Pixar features (Onward, Soul), Harrison Ford starring in Call of the Wild based on the Jack London novel, and live action movies of Mulan and Jungle Cruise.  But of the three Marvel properties, New Mutants, Black Widow, and Eternals, I only see Black Widow breaking half a billion.

9) Trump will finally get around to those pardons.  He'll have nothing to lose once, well, he loses.  Oh wait, he'll be headed for state cases against him and jail time, but in the meantime the pardons will be the least awful thing he does.

10) And of course, ZVTS will make it through year 12.  It'll be thanks to all of you who have stuck with me since the 2008 primary race and through 4 presidential contests.

Am I right?  Am I wrong?  We'll file these away for the future, as always.

Zandar's 2019 Scorecard

Welp, it's December 31, and that means we take a look at how I did in my 2019 predictions, and I wasn't very accurate.  For some of these predictions that's actually a good thing.  For others, I wish I had been right.

1) Robert Muller recommends impeachable offenses for Donald Trump.

Sadly, this did not happen, and it was the miss that maybe defined the year.  If Mueller had recommended indictment six months ago, I honestly wonder where we would be right now. But he was never going to do it, and it was foolish of everyone, myself included, to believe for a second that he would.

2) Trump will wait until after Mueller's report is delivered in order to issue pardons.

That still may be the case, but the impeachment of Donald Trump has so far prevented that. Another miss.

3) Trump will not be impeached in 2019.

Another miss, but not by much.  It took until the waning days of the House 2019 session in December, but he was impeached, another miss (and I'm actually glad).


4) The Roberts Court will get a major decision on executive power related to the Mueller probe.

Again, the impeachment of Donald Trump pushed this back to 2020.  While the Supreme Court did take up the case in 2019, the decision won't come until June, if at all (being remanded back to a lower court is kind of the standard thing for these guys.) A miss.

5) The Roberts Court will effectively side with Trump in Gamble vs. United States.

This was my biggest worry, and in a 7-2 decision, the Roberts Court preserved a state's ability to try a case where the defendant was acquitted on federal charges. Siding with Trump would have meant that the NY state case against Trump would have to be dropped.  A very feel-good miss.

6) Hillary Clinton won't enter the 2020 race in 2019.

I got this one exactly right.  She stayed way, way out of it.

7) Bernie Sanders will enter the 2020 race in 2019.

Of course he did.  As I said, as much of a no-brainer as Clinton passing.

8) Dow Jones Average will be under 20,000 on December 31, 2019.

As much as I thought we were headed for a recession in 2019, it didn't happen. Despite a rough January - May period, the Dow and the economy rallied in the second half of the year and gained more than 20% for the year, the S&P 500 was up over 25%, and the NASDAQ up over 35%.  The Trump Tax Scam and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin made it possible, and it came at the direct expense of higher prices for the American consumer.

9) Marvel movies will continue to rule the box office.

Boy did they ever.  Captain Marvel came up a tad short on the domestic half-billion mark I had set, but all three Marvel films obliterated the billion mark worldwide, and Avengers: Endgame took in $2.7 billion. Eight movies broke one billion worldwide in 2019, seven of them were Disney films (and the other was Joker).  Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker is well on its way to one billion after it's December 20 release, so Disney will have a happy 2020 as well.

10) And of course, ZVTS will make it through year 11.

We did, thanks to you.  It's been a rough year, a year where I went 4 for 10, but if I had been right on more things, I think we would have been in a lot worse shape overall.

I'll have my predictions for 2020 up later this evening.

Meanwhile, I still had a better year than most of these professional pundits, so there's that.

Sunday Long Read: Climate Of Uncertainty

Author Emily Raboteau asks the big question about America's post-Millennial kids: Why isn't climate change, the effects of which Generation Z will be dealing with for their entire lives, not the most important subject in school, in culture, in their entire existence, with their parents and grandparents and the man in the Oval Office all lining up telling them that it doesn't matter?

Our son’s love of trains was once so absolute I never foresaw it could be replaced. New York City is a marvelous place to live for train-obsessed boys. When he was three and four, we spent many a rainy day with no particular destination, riding the rails for the aimless pleasure of it, studying the branching multicolored lines of the subway map, which he’d memorized like a second alphabet. I’d hoist him up to watch the dimly lit tunnel unfurl through the grimy front window of the A train’s first car as it plunged us jerkily along the seemingly endless and intersecting tracks. Some rainy mornings, our destination was 81st Street, where we exited the B or C with dripping umbrellas and his little sister in tow to enter the American Museum of Natural History.

There, at a special exhibition called “Nature’s Fury,” our son’s attention turned like a whiplash from trains to violent weather. Even before this show, the museum demanded a certain reckoning with the violence of the Anthropocene. What grownup wouldn’t feel a sense of profound regret confronting the diorama of the northern white rhinoceros in the Hall of African Mammals, or the Hall of Ocean Life’s psychedelic display of the Andros Coral Reef as it looked in the Bahamas a century ago? Meandering the marble halls of the Natural History Museum is like reading an essay on losing the Earth through human folly. Yet none of its taxonomies of threatened biodiversity, not even the big blue whale, moved my kindergartner like “Nature’s Fury.”

The focus of the immersive exhibition was on the science of the worst natural disasters of the last fifty years—their awesome destructive power and their increasing frequency and force. Accompanied by a dramatic score of diminished chords and fast chromatic descents, the exhibit meant to show how people adapt and cope in the aftermath of these events, and how scientists are helping to plan responses and reduce hazards in preparation for disasters to come.

“Are they too young for this?” my husband questioned, too late. Our impulsive boy had darted ahead and cut the line to erupt a virtual volcano. I supposed it made him feel less doomed than like a small god that, in addition to making lava spout at the push of a button, the kid could manipulate the fault lines of a model earthquake, set off a tsunami, and stand in the eye of a raging tornado.

In the section on hurricanes at a table map of New York, the boy was also able to survey the sucker punch that Hurricane Sandy delivered to the five boroughs. This interactive cartography was a darker version of the subway map he’d memorized, detailing the floodplains along our city’s 520 miles of coast. I can still see my boy there, his chin just clearing the table’s touchscreen so that his face was eerily underlit by the glow of information while my girl crawled beneath. Seventeen percent of the city’s land mass flooded, leaving two million people without power, seventeen thousand homes damaged, and forty-three people dead. On the map, the water was rising to overtake the shorelines at Red Hook, Battery Park, Coney Island… All across the Big Apple, the lights were going out.

“Come away from there,” one or the other of us called uneasily, because we weren’t prepared to confront what climate change would mean for our children, to say nothing of our children’s children. The boy was five at the time. The girl was three. In their lifetimes, according to a conservative estimate in a recent report by the NYC Panel on Climate Change, they could see the water surrounding Manhattan rise six feet. We pulled them away from that terrifying map of our habitat to go look at dinosaur bones—an easier mass extinction to consider because it lay in the distant past.

What strikes me now as irrational about our response isn’t our ordinary parental instinct to protect our kids from scary stuff. It was our denial. Their father and I treated that display as a vision we could put off until later when it clearly conveyed what had already transpired. “We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now,” preached Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 in one of his lesser-known sermons, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” He may as well have been speaking on climate change. Sandy made landfall in 2012, the year after the boy was born, while I was pregnant with the girl. It gave a preview of what the city faces in the next century and beyond, as sea levels continue to rise with melting ice sheets. The storm exposed our weaknesses, and not just to flooding. I remember that when the bodegas in our hood ran out of food, some folks shared with their neighbors. But when the gas station started running out of fuel, some folks pulled out their guns.

As much as we may worry about our kids’ future, it’s already here.

Avoiding the map didn’t annul its impact on our son. The subject of storms had gripped his consciousness as surely as his author-father’s had been gripped by horror films. That part of the boy’s brain that previously needed to know the relative speed of a Big Boy steam engine to a Shinkansen bullet train now needed to know what wind speed differentiated a category-four hurricane from a category-five. Soon enough, and for months afterward, Mr. Wayne, the friendly librarian at the Fort Washington branch of the New York Public Library, would greet our boy with an apology. There were no more books in the children’s section on the subject of violent weather than those he’d already consumed.

At bedtime, while his sister sucked her thumb to sleep, I offered my son reassurance that we weren’t in a flood zone; that up in Washington Heights—as the name suggests—we live on higher ground. “You’re safe,” I told him.

“But the A was flooded during Sandy,” he reminded me, matter-of-factly. “The trains stopped running and the mayor cancelled Halloween.” Then he’d go on rapturously about the disastrous confluence of the high tide and the full moon that created the surge, while I tried to sing him a lullaby.

Eventually, a different fixation overtook extreme weather, and another after that. Such is the pattern of categorical learners. It may have been sharks before the Titanic, or the other way around—I’ve forgotten. Two years have passed since we saw “Nature’s Fury”; a year and a half since our president led the US to withdraw from the Paris climate accords. The boy is seven now, what Jesuits call “the age of reason.” The girl is five and learning to read. If current trends continue, the world is projected to be 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels by the time they reach their late twenties. The scientific community has long held two degrees Celsius to be an irreversible tipping-point. Two degrees of global warming, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), marks climate catastrophe.

At two degrees, which is our best-case climate scenario if we make seismic global efforts to end carbon emissions, which we are not on course to do, melting ice sheets will still pass a point of no return, flooding NYC and dozens of other major world cities; annual heat waves and wildfires will scrub the planet; drought, flood, and fluctuations in temperature will shrink our food supply; water scarcity will hurt four hundred million more people than it already does. Statistical analysis indicates only a 5 percent chance of limiting warming to less than two degrees. Two degrees has been described as “genocide.”

In fact, we’re on track for over four degrees of warming and an unfathomable scale of suffering by century’s end. By that time, if they’re lucky, our children will be old. It’s pointless to question whether or not it was ethical to have them in the first place since, in any case, they are here. Their father writes about imaginary horrors. For my part, I’m only beginning to see that the question of how to prepare our kids for the real horrors to come is collateral to the problem of how to deal as adults with the damage we’ve stewarded them into.

I honestly believe these kids will look at the adults in their lives and their message to us in the future will be "You failed us utterly, and we will never forgive you.  We will do everything we can to never make your mistakes again."

Maybe Generation Z can fix this in the future.  Maybe they won't, and human civilization will be sharply curtailed on Earth.

I figure I have another 40 years if I'm lucky.  But there are kids alive today who will live to see 2100 on Earth, and they will remember what life was like today, and they will grow to hate those who came before them for what they failed to do.

The rest of this century is triage for humanity, and that's the rosy scenario.

The Year In Tech Wrecks

It's once again time for Ars Technica's yearly Deathwatch party, where the website predicts the demise of various technology companies (or at least a big enough sea change to merit getting on the list), and I have to say, this year, if correct, is going to be really something.  First, last year's review:

To be a candidate for the Deathwatch, a company or product division of a company should have experienced at least one of the following:

• An extended period of lost market share in their particular category
• An extended period of financial losses or a pattern of annual losses
• Serious management, legal, or regulatory problems that raise questions about the business model or long-term strategy of the company or product line

Last year’s class has a high survival rate (for now). Faraday Future was looking like a dead car company walking before reaching a new investor agreement. Management changes at Uber have kept the company driving despite leaping into other markets—but it now faces a whole host of new competition in every segment, on top of its problems with its driverless car business. Twitter became profitable somehow (at least on paper) in 2018, despite the bad press the company garnered over Twitter being the favorite platform of government-sponsored information operations worldwide.

A few honorees remain on life support, however. SoundCloud has been treading water since it nearly ran out of cash in 2017, and it’s not clear what the survival strategy is for the company. HTC somehow also managed to eke out a profitable quarter in 2018—just one, mostly thanks to a cash infusion from a partial acquisition by Google. But that acquisition basically handed Google most of HTC's cell phone operations, so we’re counting HTC out for this year. LeEco, the company previously managed by Faraday Futures’ CEO, is also looking like roadkill in the US. Much of its operations have shut down as the company explores ways to recover.

We also put network neutrality on the Deathwatch last year. No matter how much the Internet mourns, it’s dead. It probably won’t be back any time soon. 

And this year, after putting Twitter and Uber on notice, Ars Technica goes straight for the jugular: the Social Network itself.

Last year, we left Facebook off our list for a number of reasons, starting with its insane profitability. While some readers called Facebook a “bubble,” it was clear that Facebook is the Internet’s version of “too big to fail”: deep pockets, well-entrenched, semi-diversified (with the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp), and billions of users. Little Twitter may finally be profitable, but TWTR’s most recent quarterly earnings are a mere five percent of Facebook’s.

And yet, here we are, putting Facebook on Deathwatch. The reasons have only a little bit to do with financials. We don’t expect that Facebook will go away, but this year is going to probably determine whether Facebook’s management team will continue as it is—or whether there’s a stockholder rebellion, or a government lawsuit, or some combination of both that drives CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others out.

Facebook is in crisis, thanks to a stream of what some might refer to by the technical term “really bad management decisions” moves made by the company over the past six years to accelerate the company’s growth while skirting the limits placed by a settlement reached with the FTC over privacy issues finalized in 2012. The Cambridge Analytica “data breach” scandal, other privacy concerns, fake news, and Russian troll ops blowback created a perfect storm that left Zuckerberg looking like a deer in the headlights in front of a series of US congressional hearings (and his subsequent refusal to testify before legislators in seven other countries).

I have to agree.  I don't see how Zuck survives as CEO...well, unless he throws COO Sheryl Sandburg into the blender, which he very well might.

Also on Ars's Deathwatch this year: the unholy monstrosity that is the sutured-together corpse of Yahoo! and AOL now known as Verizon's Oath spinoff, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and Essential, the weirdest smartphone that precisely nobody bought.

We'll see how this all pans out, but if Zuck went out of pasture (along with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos) I think the world would be a much better place.