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This Financial Times article on 10 trends in 2024 is worth reading because FT is pretty balanced and insightful. To summarize:
- Democracy in Overdrive: Major elections will be occurring all over the world. A 200 year-old record will be broken when 46% of the global population will have a chance to vote. Populism is on the rise, so that should be interesting.
- Bond Vigilantes versus Politicians: Politicians like low interest rates, but they aren’t likely to drop very fast.
- Backlash Against Immigration: Immigration is exploding in the Western world, and the citizens don’t like it.
- The No-Bust Cycle: Economies are still slowing down, but likely to avoid a classic bust.
- European Resilience: Europe already to a hit for the high interest rates, now the US is likely to start feeling the pain.
- China is Fading: Net foreign investment in China is dropping and their economy is in worst shape than the official numbers suggest.
- Emerging Outside China: Emerging economies, like Vietnam, India and Mexico no longer rely on China and are growing.
- Dollar Decline: With the US debt at a record 6% of the GDP, the dollar is losing it’s status in the world.
- Splintering the Magnificent Seven: That is Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla and Microsoft, won’t all rise together. A.I. is the next big thing, so they are all dumping money into it, but only Nvidia is making money off of it.
- Hollywood’s Napoleon Complex: Ticket sales are about half what they were at the peak in 2002, and down 25% from 2019. It won’t be getting better.
Some of these are continuations of trends that have been ongoing for a few years, but eventually, some of them will hit big.
If 2024 is set to be tumultuous and unpredictable, just wait until 2025 if Donald Trump wins the presidency again this year.
His adversaries don’t have a history of accepting his victories with equanimity.
Trump’s opponents are sincerely, and to some extent understandably, alarmed by his conduct after the 2020 election and how he’s branded his political comeback a revenge tour.
For most of them, though, saving democracy doesn’t mean upholding the rules no matter what and letting the voters decide the election and the next president.
Democrats could have fielded better candidates. Biden is a feeble dotard and Harris is a diversity hire. Bernie Sanders was boxed out in 2020 and so was JFK Jr. for 2024. The Democrats could have attempted to govern in a responsible manner, but instead, they have indulged their worst policies and punished Donald Trump any way they can.
It’s hard to imagine what’s more extreme than one side in our politics indicting its leading opponent, creating the real prospect of jailing him in the months before an election and excluding him from the ballot in select states.
Yet if Trump wins, we have to assume this is only a taste of things to come.
Corporate media has talked about a civil war, in a theoretical manner, since 2016. It may happen, but not in the manner they presume.
It’s difficult to imagine the current political climate continuing or degrading further. If it must happen, most Americans would prefer to get it over with.
My IKEA computer desk was looking pretty haggard. The finish was wearing off around the keyboard. The computer mouse wasn’t tracking well, and there were other spots that were worn. It needed to be replaced or refinished.
The same thing happened to my IKEA dining room table. I was sanding the top to smooth it out prior to painting, when the finish started coming off. The finish is not robust, so it only took about 15 minutes to remove the finish. The veneer is thin, but it hadn’t been damaged. I decided to refinish it with water-based polyurethane. I chose that because it stays crystal clear, not yellowing a bit like the oil-based stuff does.
It came out fine, but not this good. The water-based polyurethane is thin like water, so doesn’t fill in gaps or level as well. I used oil-based clear gloss polyurethane on the computer table because it’s tougher and goes on thick, like warm honey.
This photo is after the surface has been dry for a day. I will let it cure for another 3 days before handling it.
I might try this finish for the dining room table.
Architectural Digest: Interior Race Theory
When we talk about diversity in design and architecture, there’s often a call for decolonizing the space. Everyone is fully aware that the landscape of the field needs to change, but what about rebuilding the foundation?
I might enjoy living in a yurt or a wattle-and-daub mud hut, but this article is dumb. When I was in college, the engineering students thought that the architecture students were working harder than we were. It looks like Diversity, Inclusion and Equity has infected their programs. It doesn’t take many diversity students to ruin a field since the student can never be criticized.
For the first time in decades, I find myself with no plans for New Year’s Eve. The party hosts are Covid-positive, but not ill. It would not have been hard to come up with an alternate plan, but hanging out with Sparky felt like the right move.
The photo isn’t great. I used the selfie camera and there isn’t much light. The living room lamp has been pulled out of rotation. I wouldn’t have bothered with the photo, but Sparky thought people would think I was a hermit or dead in a ditch, so should take a photo holding a beer while he flashed his winning grin.
During my teaching career, I maintained a nutty professor image. In retirement, some people think I’m a hermit. Sure, I don’t do social media, go to the mailbox or text reliably. I am good at answering the phone, so that’s something, and I do see people every other day or so. Covid about wrecked me, but even before that, I worked hard as a teacher, and taught summer camps. As an engineer, I was traveling probably six months per year and did that foreign service assignment for a year. I like to work.
Now that I’m retired, I love shambling around with my coffee for a few hours, doing what needs to be done to maintain the hound and working on whatever comes to mind here at my compound. Sparky and I have been working on some trails through the woods. I’m refinishing the computer table and reinventing the living room lamp.
So, in the new year, I hope you only see as many people as you want.
Guardian: Coroner calls for action, will Google and Amazon have the wisdom to ignore her?
Google and Amazon must act after a British woman made a suicide pact with two people she met online and bought the poison that killed her on the internet, a coroner has said.
It would be useless for Google to attempt to censor the information a 43 year-old woman used to commit suicide. Lethal compounds are fatal to humans and animals. People should know how dangerous those compounds are. There are endless methods to kill oneself. Censoring the information would only hurt the mentally stable.
Amazon provided the substances. The article doesn’t mention what was used, but the substance may very well have a productive purpose. Not selling to reasonable people to protect the crazy people is why it’s so difficult to get decent cold medicine. The crazy people always be crazy.
The British don’t seem to have much good sense anymore, so tend to do what they think the rest of the world wants them to do. They will probably cave to a random coroner.
Maine is the second state to bar Trump from the presidential ballot.
We are clearly in bat-shit crazy territory. On January 7th, the day after the protest at the Capital, journalists were calling it an insurrection. It was clear at that time that something like this would be happening.
It’s time for solidly conservative states to start doing the same thing to Biden. Use any pretense, that doesn’t matter at all. The US is being invaded from the south, Biden took money from Ukrainians and is now backing them in their war against Russia. Doesn’t matter.
Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Arkansas, Kentucky and any other states that want in on the fun. Call their bluff. Bar Biden from the presidential ballot, and wait for someone rational to step up. It shouldn’t have to be the Supreme Court.
WSJ: UW Chancellor Fired for Porn
WSJ: UW Chancellor Fired for Porn
The university system’s board of regents voted unanimously to terminate University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow during a closed session Wednesday evening. UW-La Crosse Provost Betsy Morgan will serve as interim chancellor following Gow’s dismissal, university system leaders said.
What could Gow have done that was so bad?
Scientific American: Theory that Man is the Hunter
Take a moment to appreciate the difficulties faced by a biologist. Retain your integrity and possibly lose your job, or advocate for Gender Identity Theory and try to act like the most obvious facts about humans and every other mammal are not true.
It’s much easier for anthropologists. They aren’t a hard science and their integrity was never cherished. They can sleep at night knowing that when this fetish goes out of favor, they will never be called to retract anything.