Twenty-Four Predictions for Twenty-Twenty-Four

In today’s post I’m making twenty-four predictions for the upcoming year. As you’ve already guessed, they’re grim. Happy New Year!

1. The second law of thermodynamics will hold sway.

2. My children will keep me humble and hungry by upping the ante on their perpetual campaign of terror, which will include gaslighting, extortion, sleep deprivation, verbal abuse, psychological manipulation, emotional battery, and physical assault.

3. The Economist will have bad takes on globalization, The Financial Timeswill have bad takes on taxation, The Atlantic will have bad takes on geopolitics, the Wall Street Journal will have bad takes on climate change, The New York Times will have bad takes on bad takes, and all of these venerable publications will have brain-meltingly bad takes on Israel and Palestine.

4. One, or both, of my old man knees will betray me.

5. Whether on or off the field, the University of Michigan football program will embarrass and disappoint me.

6. My bloodsucking heroic literary agent will work tirelessly to sell my kickass debut novel to a sunsetting publishing house.

7. Regardless of how that process transpires, I’ll remain culturally irrelevant and continue to furnish my wardrobe at Costco.

8. The Democratic Party will double-down on its core values of cowardice, inefficacy, and complicity.

9. Over forty-five thousand Americans will die from gun-related violence — the majority via suicide — because freedom, or something.

10. Me and my co-conspirators Catherine Baab, Dennard Dayle, and Michael Estrin will bring the funk.

11. As history has shown, the magnanimous VC firm Andreesen Horowitz loves nothing more than diluting its equity positions in profitable businesses, with strong fundamentals, and near-unlimited growth potential, which is why ChuckStack² will launch a second community fundraising round for its creators. Related: ChuckStack’s pivot to politics will go as well as expected.

12. While I celebrate a wonderful decade of marriage, my wife will mourn ten years of abject disappointment.

13. Like their Beanie Babies cryptocurrency forebears, linear regressionartificial intelligence bros will overpromise and underdeliver.

14. Goaded by the military-industrial complex, elected representatives of the U.S. Empire will betray this great nation’s supposed ideals, and venture abroad in search of foreign monsters to slay.

15. Citing the increasingly unstable nature of Earth’s atmosphere, as well as the extreme hostility and violent tendencies of its apex predator, Homo sapiens — in particular the existential risk posed their nuclear weapons technology — the Intergalactic Council for Sane and Sentient Beings (ICSSB) will strongly discourage travel to our inhospitable planet for the ten-thousandth consecutive year.

16. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Palantir, among others, will preach privacy while perfecting the total surveillance economy.

17. Over half the humans on this decaying planet will participate in democratic elections and an alarming number of their votes won’t matter. #autocracy #strongmen

18. Elon Musk, Incel King and Genius Creator of Rockets Which Always Explode^TM, will say and do outlandish and outrageous things, in a desperate attempt to be loved and admired, ensuring most lifeforms find him detestable and tiresome. #irony

19. One of America’s worst citizens — a ridiculous nepo-duncecap who manifests this godforsaken country’s ugliest impulses — will run for U.S. President for the third straight time, and lose the popular vote for the third straight time.

20. Sectarian conflict and geopolitical strife around the globe, in countries and regions including, but not limited to, Afghanistan, Argentina, Central Africa, Central Asia, China, Eastern Europe, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine, Northern Africa, Southern Africa, and Western Europe, will still be Britain’s fault.

21. The global financial services industry will create new and exotic financial innovations designed solely to enrich the global financial services industry.

22. Humans will pump billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and dump billions of tons of plastic into the ocean and continue to act surprised when aquatic mammals try to kill us.

23. Exhausted culture warriors will recognize the error of their ways, and tire of their bad faith arguments, and willful ignorance, and realize we’re all flawed humans who make mistakes, and accept that most people are inherently decent, and are doing the best they can with the circumstances they’ve been given — which they didn’t ask for — and decide to give their fellow neighbors the benefit of the doubt, regardless of skin color or religion or cultural identity or gender expression, and say: “Humanity has immense problems to solve, like climate change and global economic inequality, and the only way forward is to work together, despite our alleged differences, to create a just and fair society for all.”

24. I’ll continue to write about topics that interest me, and issues I care about, with passion and conviction and tenacity and ferocity, while remaining open to new information and ideas, and staying true to my core beliefs, principles, and values.