16 January 2020

Fearless Predictions for 2020


All right, all right, I'm late to the party, but what the hey.  I got distracted, which is at least better than lured.

Last weekend I spent at an AVP workshop at the penitentiary - one of our best, actually, which may or may not have been because the temperature outside was 10 degrees for the high, which meant that in the chapel (where we were assigned) it hovered around 55-60 degrees.  I've read before that it was the Ice Ages that made us humans cooperative, compassionate, and creative - so maybe the weather did the same for us.

Then, when the weekend was over, we came back home to a house that was at 55-60 degrees.  The furnace had died.  We got it repaired on Monday, and then went promptly out to hock our valuables to buy a new one, which will be installed before the next Ice Age. Which looks like it's going to be tonight.  So, before the woolly mammoths come over the rise,

Fearless predictions for 2020!

Between House, Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential races, the 2020 elections will surpass the $1.6 billion on advertising, polling, etc., spent in 2016.  This leads me to predict:
  1. The media will make out like a bandit.
  2. Someone will figure out that $1.6 billion is the GDP of a number of smaller countries, and make memes about that.
  3. Someone will figure out that $1.6 billion could be better used elsewhere.
  4. Nothing will change.  
Whether or not violence increases in our cities, nation, or worldwide, most people will believe that we live in an incredibly dangerous age, mostly because the media talisman is "if it bleeds it leads" and that's what we see.  This despite the fact that, in 1340s, the homicide rate was around 110 per 100,000, whereas today, in the US, it's 5 per 100,000.  And there were a lot fewer people around in the 1340s (and about to get fewer in 1347, thanks to the Black Death).

Woolly mammoths will be cloned, and will become the hot new pet of 2025.  (The last woolly mammoths were on St. Paul Island, Alaska, and were pgymies - they stood 5'6" - and I want one!)

President Trump will continue to tweet at the same rate most of us breathe.

There will be new record fires in California, and new record flooding all along the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts.  Climate change will continue to be considered a radical theory of why such things are happening by some.

Sloths will become the hot 2020 Christmas toy / doll / sling purse / baby carrier.

© The Far Side cartoon Imbeciles of the World Unite
© The Far Side
The anti-vaxxers will continue to spread complete bulls***. My "favorite" is this meme: "Let's bring back chicken-pox playdates to stave off shingles!"

Uh, shingles is a reactivation of the chicken-pox virus. No chicken-pox, no shingles… But by all means, make sure to give your children a virus that could very well cause them chronic pain, neuropathy, and even blindness, if not in childhood then as an adult.

To continue raging/ragging on the above, old teachers cannot stop fighting against deliberate ignorance, and the amount of time I spend trying to combat it is a major reason why I will never write enough fiction to satisfy my inner taskmaster.

Most people will go for popcorn, bathroom break, or a quick nap through the following Oscar categories:  make-up, costumes, sound, and short-film (animated and live action). Some will start streaming something on Netflix until the next "big" award.

The winners of the Super Bowl LIV (2020) will be PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg's, Mars, Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, and the Pabst Brewing Company.  Yes, and a team will actually win the game.

Axe throwing will remain a popular activity at many bars here in the Upper Midwest, because the winters are long, and nothing could possibly go wrong,

Xi Jinping will remain President for Life of China.  Vladimir Putin will make himself President for Life of Russia.  (Russian government resigns)  Major pissing contest follows.

Antonio Banderas will indeed get sexier with age.

Brexit will happen.  Almost no one, including Brexiters, will like it.
UK location in the EU 2016.svg
Brexit/Celtexit map
(Wikipedia)
Future quote: "It isn't what I expected it to be. I thought everything would be cheaper, we'd have more freedom, and all those foreigners would be gone."
Speaking of Brexit, even money that:
  • Scotland will vote for independence.
  • Northern Ireland will vote to join the Republic of Ireland. 
  • Scotland will join Northern Ireland and Wales in a Celtexit from Great Britain.  
    • Normandy and Brittany will consider joining them.  The beginning of the Great Celtexit from Europe will begin.  Catalonia will try to join, but will be told to cabrear.  
American troops will remain in the Middle East, mostly wherever Saudi Arabia wants them.

Anthony Trollope will become the hot new Victorian author in print, Kindle/Nook, movies, and television.  (And with 70 novels / short stories, there's a lot to mine.)  Speaking of Trollope, join the rest of us fanatics at https://trollope.groups.io/g/main.

Fake news and deepfakes will receive their own category at the Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and Oscars.  No one will ever know who truly wins.

Ford v. Ferrari will not win Best Picture Award.

10 comments:

  1. Gloomy but probably accurate predictions, although I suspect even this election season is not enough to lift the fortunes of most print media.

    Good luck with your new furnace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I should have been more cheerful, shouldn't I?
    Maybe I'll mix it up a bit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Updated, Janice - and others - with more fun predictions for all!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Clever, Eve. I want a baby mammoth, although one would have made more sense when I lived in the Minnesota wilds than Florida suburbia. I already have a reputation for alligators, bears…

    Does the sloth come with or without moss? They make much more sense than the Culthu plush critter that came out a few years ago.

    Trollope… (gasp) Do you realize you're predicting people will return to reading?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Eve, I just finished the National Geographic Mars series. It's dismaying how the far Left, the far Right, and a good bit in between fears and distrusts science. Sadly they're not looking where they should, e.g, genetically-modified 'foods' reducing gene diversity. Oops, I predict a rant. I'll stop while I'm ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Leigh, I would think that sloths could come with or without. And everyone I know wants a pygmy woolly mammoth.
    BTW, I loved the Mars series, too. What amazes me about the people who fear and distrust science is that they pick and choose: climate change bad, cancer and heart treatment good, birth control bad, viagra great, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Love the post. I always thought the flat earth society was a geek joke but I was watching a video today. It's not a joke! This guy was giving a proof that the sun and moon were disks not globes. And these people add to the gene pool!

    ReplyDelete
  8. What a downer!! These sound pretty accurate to me. Poor Brits really screwed themselves with Brexit, but maybe the Irish will finally get a chance to make a go of it as a united country. That’s not a downer at all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Because I don't want you to be disappointed, here's a list (compiled by the CIA's research staff) of all the countries with a GDP of 1.6 billion ($1,600.000.000) or less (2018 data):
    https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html

    (I tried to post the actual list, but that didn't work. The coiuntries closest to $1.6 billion are:
    Grenada ($1.606 billion)
    Saint Kitts and Nevia ($1.528 billion)
    Solomon Islands (1.324 Billion
    Solomon Islands ($1.226 billion)
    Northern Mariana Islands ($1.242 billion
    Samoa ($1,134 billion)
    Then the numbers fall below $1 billion.

    Ranking 230th (the last on the list) is Tokelau, at $1.5 MILLION.

    The list is worth it just for the country names--Wallace and Futuna (one country, by the way), Tuvalu, Monserrat (which I have at least heard of), Niue, Kiribati...

    If anyone writes a story (flash fiction, short story, novella, novel) set in one of these places, I will definitely buy it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks Anne.
    Lawrence, I have hopes of a united Republic of Ireland, too. Although I still like the idea of a new Celtic Union - Scotland, Wales, and all of Ireland.
    Don, back in my misspent youth, I spent a year working at Touche Ross as a typist. They had an office in Pago Pago, Samoa, and I tried diligently to get transferred there. No luck. But what if I had? There's a story, right there...

    ReplyDelete

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