Sam:
[0:00]
| Ooh, you've got shelves now.
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:03]
| Very cool. These are the custom shelves, I take it?
|
Ivan:
[0:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:08]
| Very nice.
|
Ivan:
[0:10]
| There's stuff.
|
Sam:
[0:12]
| Stuff on the shelves, yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[0:14]
| Wow, it's like, I mean, there's painting, there's things.
|
Sam:
[0:21]
| Very cool.
|
Ivan:
[0:23]
| It's, I mean, shelves. There are more shelves, and the desk is huge.
|
Sam:
[0:30]
| Beautiful. Liking it?
|
Ivan:
[0:33]
| It's quite comfy. I have to say that after not being with an office for a while and then being on a temporary desk, this is a lot more comfortable.
|
Sam:
[0:46]
| Cool.
|
Ivan:
[0:48]
| I still have some unboxing to do. I mean, I really did as much as I could, but God.
It was a lot. and actually they're supposed to have glass doors on them the fucking glass doors didn't come in oh well, the glass door guy was like so on that shelf there'll be some glass doors on it it'll look fancy very good, shall we go this ends up being almost as long as the prediction show we do oh great alright let's go okay I will try wry with the songs and if they don't work then screw them okay here we go okay.
|
Sam:
[1:58]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 6th, 2024.
|
Ivan:
[2:06]
| It is 2024.
|
Sam:
[2:09]
| Yes, and it's 414 UTC as we're starting to record.
It's Friday night for both Yvonne and I here in the U.S. Yeah.
And so this, we're just going to jump right into it.
This is our review of our predictions for 2023.
last week we made predictions for 2024 a year from now we'll see how those did it seems like we could already be on track to be wrong on a couple but you know the tarot reader at Fox News gave me hope, so the way this will work as always we have a politics section an international section, an economy slash business section section, a technology section, and hodgepodge.
And we are going to go through all of those and we will review how we did and we'll review the questions, whether we got them right or not.
Lots of them will just be like, okay, we were wrong or we were right. And we move on quickly.
We always end up getting into discussions on a few of them, but I will know.
|
Ivan:
[3:19]
| No, no, no, never.
|
Sam:
[3:21]
| But I will note We wouldn't be yammering for a while No I will note we have That's not our show Yes yes Will you let me do my note I'm saying I will note we have over 110 predictions each Fuck 110 predictions Over Over 110 each Holy shit, Holy Jesus So we're gonna get We're gonna get started I spent six hours spread out over the course of this week going through the podcast from last year, which was two hours, 43 minutes and change long, listening, pulling out every prediction and then checking them as best I could.
Most of them I was able to make a determination.
There are a few that we will have to discuss to make an appropriate determination.
I did not.
|
Ivan:
[4:19]
| Listen to it. I have in years past.
But, you know, as I was bantering with Sam before we started the show, you know, I'm still trying to finish this.
|
Sam:
[4:32]
| Remodeling and renovation before i go back to work uh next week and so i i really spent a lot of time working on that i'm right now basically on the unboxing of putting everything back into the, office thing so i i don't so anyway i i am miss i will i will i will save comments about other things for next week but i i also took the last two weeks off and i will be back at work monday And I'm sure by the time we get to the next podcast, I will have some choice words about having to go back to work.
|
Ivan:
[5:08]
| Well, I don't have to drive into work, thank God.
So, you know, at least I don't have to do that. But I might have to travel next week, though.
|
Sam:
[5:16]
| On Tuesday.
|
Ivan:
[5:19]
| But I'll be back on Thursday. I should be back on time for the podcast.
|
Sam:
[5:23]
| We should get started, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[5:25]
| All right, go ahead.
|
Sam:
[5:26]
| Okay!
|
Ivan:
[5:27]
| Let's go! Let's go! Hey!
|
Sam:
[5:29]
| So, so first question, first thing, both Yvonne and I agreed that Donald Trump would not withdraw from the presidential race before the end of the year.
|
Ivan:
[5:42]
| Shit, okay, so we both, okay, one down for us, yes.
|
Sam:
[5:45]
| We both agreed that DeSantis would run for president.
|
Ivan:
[5:50]
| Okay, all right, good, good, good. We're off to a good start.
|
Sam:
[5:53]
| We both agreed that DeSantis would not drop out of the race before the end of the year.
|
Ivan:
[5:58]
| Okay, good, good, good.
|
Sam:
[6:00]
| And we both agreed that Herman Cain, who was already dead at the point we made the predictions, would not run for president.
|
Ivan:
[6:12]
| Well, fuck, I mean, we were correct.
|
Sam:
[6:14]
| So we started out four for four, both of us.
|
Ivan:
[6:18]
| That's amazing. There you go. We're on fire. We're on fire.
|
Sam:
[6:24]
| This next question, however, the streak will be broken for one of us.
For one of us. Oh, boy. Okay.
It was about Sinema and the Arizona Senate race.
|
Ivan:
[6:40]
| And her polling.
|
Sam:
[6:42]
| And the question was whether or not there would be any polls at all throughout the entirety of 2023 that showed her leading in a three-way race.
And I went through 538 looking at all the Arizona Senate polls because it wasn't about the average.
It was about would there be any at all.
|
Ivan:
[7:05]
| Yeah, would there be any moment, at any moment.
|
Sam:
[7:07]
| For any pollster.
|
Ivan:
[7:09]
| That is such an absolute question. Of course, one of us got it wrong.
|
Sam:
[7:14]
| The answer is no. There was not a single poll that showed her leading all year long.
You had predicted, Yvonne, that there would be at least one. So you were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[7:27]
| I mean, yeah, I figured at least one. I don't know what any poll is.
|
Sam:
[7:33]
| Meanwhile, I predicted that there would not be any at all, and I was right.
Okay, next up, we both agreed that Biden would officially announce he was running.
|
Ivan:
[7:45]
| Okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[7:47]
| Next up, we both agreed that there would not be any Democratic challenger to Biden that ever in the 538 polling average got above 25%.
|
Ivan:
[8:03]
| And were we right?
|
Sam:
[8:06]
| Kennedy peaked at 17%. 17?
|
Ivan:
[8:10]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[8:11]
| So we were both right.
|
Ivan:
[8:13]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[8:14]
| And then we also both agreed that Biden's net approval on 538 would never be positive in 2023. And we were correct.
|
Ivan:
[8:25]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[8:26]
| So we've got a pretty good streak. You messed up one.
|
Ivan:
[8:30]
| We're hot. We're on fire now. Now, we're really smoking it so far.
|
Sam:
[8:35]
| So next up, the Democrats will lead in the generic ballot for Congress at some point in 2023, according to the 538 average.
We both agreed that that would be true.
And in fact, the Dems got as high as plus 2.3% in May. That was their peak.
So yeah, yeah. At this point, we were doing really well. Okay, next up.
The House speaker vote, we predicted how many ballots it would take to get. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:14]
| I wonder how many we say.
|
Sam:
[9:16]
| Well, first of all, the actual real number was 15. It took 15 ballots to get McCarthy.
You said five and I said one.
|
Ivan:
[9:27]
| Oh, I was closer, damn it.
|
Sam:
[9:29]
| You were closer. I somehow thought they were going to come to a deal beforehand and just deal with it. But of course, they did not. No.
Then I did say, though, that at the end of all that, Kevin McCarthy would be the speaker. And I was right.
You, however, predicted that in the end, Kevin McCarthy would not end up the speaker because he had made too many enemies. So you were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[9:54]
| No.
|
Sam:
[9:54]
| Next up, we both agreed that Kevin McCarthy would not be the speaker at the end of 2023. We were right.
|
Ivan:
[10:03]
| Who was?
|
Sam:
[10:05]
| I made an additional prediction, just being more specific, that if, and this was a conditional, but the conditional was true, if Kevin McCarthy gave the ability for one person to call a speaker vote, that it would be used.
And in fact, that was used.
|
Ivan:
[10:22]
| Okay. Yes, it did. Jesus.
|
Sam:
[10:25]
| Now, the next question, I sort of implied a dispute about this or that we should talk about it last week.
And you had voiced a very strong opinion on that. I just want to reiterate the question.
When we count how many speakers there were in 2023, does that interim guy count?
|
Ivan:
[10:43]
| Do you count that dweeb? And I said no.
|
Sam:
[10:47]
| Well, you see, the thing is, if you said he counted, I would have been right.
If you say he doesn't count, you were right.
|
Ivan:
[11:00]
| I did not do it knowing that in advance. So therefore, yay me. There you go.
|
Sam:
[11:06]
| Because you said there would be three and I said there would be four.
|
Ivan:
[11:10]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[11:10]
| So I guess the official list of speakers on Wikipedia does not include the interim guy. So there you go.
|
Ivan:
[11:19]
| So there you go.
|
Sam:
[11:22]
| OK, I said that Liz Cheney would not run for president. And I was right.
OK, you said that she would. And you were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[11:32]
| OK, well, I mean, at least you didn't announce last year. OK, well, yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:38]
| Yeah, the specific prediction was that she would declare.
|
Ivan:
[11:41]
| Yeah, no, she did not.
|
Sam:
[11:43]
| Okay, then both of us, this is, I guess, getting into more detail.
We had the previous question with no Dem challenger being more than 25%, but we doubled down and said nobody would be over 5% at any time in the year.
We were wrong on that. Kennedy, Williamson, and Phillips all polled higher than 5% at some point during the year.
OK, so we were both we were both wrong. Oh, well, next up, we both agreed that Biden would not be impeached in 2023. We were correct.
|
Ivan:
[12:21]
| OK.
|
Sam:
[12:23]
| Hey, we're zooming through these. We are at this point.
We have covered all of the predictions we made through the half hour mark in the podcast.
|
Ivan:
[12:32]
| Wow. OK, so, well, I mean, even accurate. I mean, you know, it helps.
|
Sam:
[12:39]
| Yeah. Yeah. And there haven't been any that are really debatable.
|
Ivan:
[12:43]
| No, yeah. I mean, you know, exactly. It's like, you know, these are, you know, these have been slam dunks pretty much.
|
Sam:
[12:50]
| Next up was Democrats will win more special elections in 2023 than Republicans.
Now, there were a couple things. We did not well specify this one, because there's special elections for the House, but there are also special elections for state legislatures.
There's a, there are a lot of things and the, and, but specifically for the house, there were only three and the Democrats won two and the Republicans won one.
None of those changed parties though. They all just were, you know, Republican left, Republican replaced them, et cetera. Okay.
But I, I made the comment that more generally, like the first one, we didn't specify house, but it was the easiest thing I could find numbers on. So there you go.
But I specified at the time that how many they win is not the right question.
It's whether they overperform the expectation in the district.
And I said they would.
And there have been several articles talking about how they were overperforming in special elections. So I'm giving myself that. You made no prediction on that.
|
Ivan:
[14:00]
| I made no prediction. Okay.
|
Sam:
[14:02]
| Okay, we both said that Trump would not hold a rally with more than 11,000 people in attendance.
|
Ivan:
[14:11]
| I think that's accurate. His rallies have been sparsely attended.
|
Sam:
[14:15]
| No, it is not. It isn't?
|
Ivan:
[14:17]
| There is one that went over 11,000?
|
Sam:
[14:21]
| It took a while. There is no, like, I was hoping for, like, just looking for a list of his rallies and attendance numbers.
There is a Wikipedia page with a list of his rallies, but it does not list attendance, probably because there'd be edit battles over the number.
|
Ivan:
[14:37]
| Yeah, I mean, yeah.
|
Sam:
[14:39]
| Because the one article that I found was about how there was this one rally that Trump claimed to have 50,000 people at.
|
Ivan:
[14:50]
| Well, you know, based on his usual estimation, there were probably around 500 people.
|
Sam:
[14:58]
| Well, not quite, but there were a few articles about this one rally, and one in specific went into all kinds of detail, talked to experts, tried to get a real estimate.
Their estimate of the real number of attendees at this rally that Trump said had 50,000 people was about 20,000.
|
Ivan:
[15:17]
| I am finding that, yes. It said, yeah, it was somewhere in the 20,000. So, damn.
Okay. All right. So, we win. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[15:28]
| Okay. We both agreed that no SCOTUS seat would open up in 2023. We were right.
|
Ivan:
[15:36]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[15:37]
| We both agreed that the House would not pass an abortion ban for greater than 14 weeks.
We were right. And I went through all of the legislation, because this wasn't passed into law, of course. This was just with the House.
|
Ivan:
[15:52]
| Right, right, right, right. So it's just right. Yeah, just the House. Right.
|
Sam:
[15:56]
| So I went to the congressional site and there were like some 120 things that the House passed.
None of them were an abortion ban.
|
Ivan:
[16:05]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[16:05]
| Like there was a lot of discussion about it, but they didn't actually do it.
Okay. Next up, Trump will be indicted for something related to January 6th. We both agreed yes.
|
Ivan:
[16:17]
| Definitely right.
|
Sam:
[16:18]
| We were right. Now, we were right this year. To be fair, we've been making like this prediction for a while, but broken clock is right.
We were right this, you know, twice a day, you know, so, Hey, no, I, I think, you know, in, in 2020, yeah, I mean, I say for a while, it hasn't been that many years.
I think we, we've been making predictions about Trump indictments and Trump family indictments since like 2015 or something.
But we, we finally got some this year. Okay. OK, and then we also both agreed that Trump will be indicted for some non-January 6 crimes. And we were right on that as well.
OK, then we had some conditionals. The first one actually happened.
So we said if he was indicted, no trials would actually start in 2023.
We agreed and we were right.
|
Ivan:
[17:16]
| OK.
|
Sam:
[17:17]
| We also had conditionals of what would happen if a trial does start, if a trial finishes.
Those aren't relevant because the precondition did not happen.
|
Ivan:
[17:27]
| Right, right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[17:28]
| We both agreed that Trump would spend no time behind bars. We were right.
|
Ivan:
[17:33]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[17:35]
| We both agreed that Trump would not appear in any Republican debates.
And we were indeed right. He did not throw up at any single one of them.
|
Ivan:
[17:44]
| Yeah, we've been on the ball.
|
Sam:
[17:47]
| Yeah, we're doing pretty damn good so far.
|
Ivan:
[17:50]
| Yeah. Damn.
|
Sam:
[17:52]
| Okay. Okay, next up, we made predictions on how many candidates in the Republican national averages, according to FiveThirtyEight, would be above 5% at the end of the year.
|
Ivan:
[18:08]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[18:10]
| I said four. You said three.
|
Ivan:
[18:13]
| Okay, and?
|
Sam:
[18:15]
| The actual number is three. It's Trump, DeSantis, and Haley.
|
Ivan:
[18:20]
| Yes! Yes!
|
Sam:
[18:24]
| And and we specified either 538 or rcp but it's three at both of them and it's the same three people at both of them there you go okay we both agreed that biden would be the front runner for the democratic nomination jeez what a shocking prediction okay the next one i looked at this and i was like what the hell were we fucking thinking but we both agreed that the front front runner for the Republicans would be Ron DeSantis.
Well, I believe at the time a year ago, he was actually just slightly ahead of Trump in the polls.
|
Ivan:
[19:05]
| And he was on, he was on fire.
I mean, you know, I mean, it seemed like it and just, you know, he's just, but then, you know, the thing is that.
I mean, he had surprised me how many people like him, because as it turns out, everybody has finally discovered he's an unlikable douchebag.
I mean, it's he doesn't. The problem is, you know, both him and Trump are dicks.
OK, the thing is that Trump can make it entertaining and bring some charisma to it, to some groups.
okay he's got some cachet whatever you know you want to call it you know this guy goes around in fucking shoes okay that people make fun of him and keeps walking around in them in order to appear taller okay and they are so obvious that it's just pathetic okay and the guy can't smile either either you know yeah he's an unlikable dickhead you know and so there you go there you go that's what you got with the samus okay next up we both agreed that there would be a government shutdown in 2023 no we were right no we were no there was no government shutdown that the re we came very Oh, that's right.
We averted it, you know, at the cost both times.
|
Sam:
[20:37]
| And that's why that was the immediate thing that caused McCarthy to leave.
|
Ivan:
[20:43]
| McCarthy to leave. Yeah. And it was close, but no cigar. Okay.
|
Sam:
[20:47]
| And it wasn't both times. One was the debt limit and one was a government shutdown.
But the next question was we both, well, actually there was, there was a conditional, if there was a shutdown, how long it would be irrelevant because there was none.
But we both, We both agreed that the debt limit would be raised.
We were both correct on that one.
|
Ivan:
[21:06]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[21:07]
| Although technically it was not raised.
It was suspended until some future date at which time it would be set to the current value.
But the debt debt limit was raised. I'm giving us that.
|
Ivan:
[21:22]
| Yeah, but that.
|
Sam:
[21:24]
| And there were there. OK, now I also went further and said if there was a debt limit increase, the Republicans would extract caps on certain social programs in exchange.
And they did that. I was correct there. There were if you look at the deal that was cut, there were about eight items on it.
|
Ivan:
[21:46]
| This was only one of the eight but in dollar amount it was the largest one it was the big part of the deal so i i hear they're doing yeah and they're i hear they're they're doing some deal like this again but of course they heard like some guy said uh what was it oh they proposed some, reasonable things to control the border which might work well we're not gonna we're not gonna do that because it's gonna help biden yes yes exactly like Like they want the issue, not a solution.
Yeah. I mean, we already do that, but it's just, you know, when they say it out loud, it's just.
|
Sam:
[22:24]
| And of course, when everybody talks about comprehensive immigration reform, the fundamental problem, the fundamental problem is and has been for.
|
Ivan:
[22:34]
| That's so funny.
|
Sam:
[22:35]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fundamental problem is and has been for decades that what they fundamentally want is different.
What Democrats want is to fix the system so we can more smoothly let people in, whereas the Republicans want to keep them out.
|
Ivan:
[22:52]
| So anyway, well, there were, yeah, I mean, yeah, the entire purpose of, yeah, they're.
Well, actually, it's a little bit more nuanced than that, because there's a lot of business groups that do support Republicans that definitely want some some flexibility in terms of immigration that doesn't exist.
And and then you've got all. But but, of course, in order to be a GOP nominee, you need the base.
And so much of the base is basically at, you know, hey, why don't we build a, you know, a new version, you know, build a wall around the country? That's the whole thing.
And so, you know, they're not going to only, only between us and Brown countries.
Correct. Right. Yeah. No, no Canadian wall that I, that I saw them.
|
Sam:
[23:36]
| Nobody wants a Canadian wall. No one wants to keep the Norwegians out, you know, et cetera.
|
Ivan:
[23:42]
| Yeah, no, no. I didn't see any, I didn't see a Norwegian ban.
|
Sam:
[23:47]
| Right. Okay. Next up. Stop. No, we both predicted that the Republicans were so shell-shocked from the beating they took on the abortion issue in 2022 that they would not enact any additional state abortion restrictions in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[24:08]
| We were wrong. They did.
|
Sam:
[24:09]
| We were both completely wrong.
|
Ivan:
[24:11]
| They did. I mean, they've they've doubled down on it. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:14]
| Yeah. North Dakota and Indiana specifically added additional bans and a whole bunch of other states successfully added more restrictions.
And there are others that are in progress, but are pending court cases and things like that.
But yeah, no, they doubled down. There was no like, hey, let's pause on this because it's obviously hurting us politically.
Nope. Nope. Okay. Okay.
Next up was SCOTUS will leave section 230 alone.
That's the section that talks about internet companies being liable for what their users post and all that.
And at the time we made the predictions, we were both like, are there even any cases?
And then as soon as we published that episode, Bruce was like, yes, there are two cases working their way through the courts right now. SCOTUS will have this.
SCOTUS actually, SCOTUS has actually heard the cases there. It's just, waiting for the decision.
The two cases were Gonzalez versus Google and.
And Twitter versus Tamna. And both of us predicted SCOTUS would leave Section 230 alone.
In fact, that's pretty much what SCOTUS did. They avoided ruling on the actual applicability of Section 230.
And they avoided the fundamental issues.
They ruled on some procedural issues, some things about the particular laws in question that weren't Section 230, but was how it was being applied and punted it back to lower courts, etc.
Net result was they didn't fundamentally change how Section 230 was interpreted.
They left it alone. So I said we were both right.
Right. I also said that Section 230 would not actually be like a major item of discussion or theme in 2023.
And I think I was right on that. Like, yeah, it came up when these cases came out.
But like, it's not like there's been an ongoing, oh, my God, let's talk about Section 230 over and over.
I feel like we had less discussion of it this year than we had in some previous years. Does that sound right to you, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[26:32]
| No, I agree. It does.
|
Sam:
[26:34]
| Okay next up we both agreed that george santos would still be in the house of representatives at the end of the year we failed that one son of a bitch i mean you know and only by a few weeks only by a few yeah very narrowly but yeah yeah okay then we both agreed that aside Aside from the debt ceiling and budget issues, we very carefully carved those out.
There would be no significant legislation signed into law.
And there were actually only 27 things passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president in the entire year.
There was an article in the New York Times that went through every single one of them.
I went through that list and there was the one on the debt ceiling that we excluded, but pretty much reading the rest of the list, there were none that I could, that I would.
|
Ivan:
[27:38]
| I mean, there were just probably like naming post offices and blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[27:43]
| I mean, there were some that weren't like nothing.
Like if you were one of the people affected by the thing, whatever it was, then you would care. Right. Right. Right.
|
Ivan:
[27:55]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[27:55]
| As like, we're all going to talk about them. Like, here we go here.
There was something about the criminal code for Washington, D.C.
|
Ivan:
[28:07]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[28:08]
| There was a bill that required the director of national intelligence to declassify info about COVID-19.
There was officially ending the national emergency related to COVID.
|
Ivan:
[28:22]
| Okay, yeah.
|
Sam:
[28:23]
| There was a law to establish a task force on improvements to NOTAMs, which is an aviation thing.
Then there was the debt limit thing. There was a law increasing the rates of compensation for veterans with service-connected disabilities.
Okay, and this is the kind of thing, like, if you are a veteran with service-connected disabilities, you would care.
|
Ivan:
[28:52]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[28:53]
| Except they were all like that. And I'm not going to read all 27, right?
But they were all like that. And there were no post offices, but there was a designation.
|
Ivan:
[29:04]
| No post offices? Wow.
|
Sam:
[29:06]
| No, but they did designate the clinic of the Veteran Affairs Department in Gallup, New Mexico as the Hiroshi Hershey Memorial VA Clinic.
|
Ivan:
[29:16]
| Wow. Wow. Why was it the Hiroshi? Why was it memorialized for you, that guy?
|
Sam:
[29:25]
| It doesn't say here.
|
Ivan:
[29:26]
| What's the name of the guy again?
|
Sam:
[29:30]
| Hiroshi Miyamura.
|
Ivan:
[29:33]
| Hiroshi Miyamura. Okay, let's see.
Okay, here we go. Senator Martin Henrich.
uh i don't know i there's a speech here by a senator but i i don't i i don't i i don't know why here we go hiroshima yamara here it is oh oh was the united it was a united states army soldier and a recipient of the medal of honor, for his actions during the Korean War. He was one of the last two surviving Medal of Honor recipients of the Korean War.
|
Sam:
[30:13]
| Okay, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[30:14]
| And he was born in 1925, and he lived until November 2022.
Okay. Yeah, so he was pretty old.
|
Sam:
[30:25]
| And there was another VA clinic also named for somebody, a veteran of some sort.
Okay, all right. It's pretty special.
|
Ivan:
[30:32]
| Okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[30:33]
| And really important here, here i mean i i maybe i'm wrong maybe this should count here the duck stamp modernization act of act of 2023 wow it's a measure to authorize the use of electronic federal duck stamps in lieu of physical stamps to meet migratory water hunter licensing requirements wow wow wow okay anyway way that i i i feel fine saying that we were correct in that aside from the debt ceiling no significant legislation i mean duck stamps i mean i didn't know we had no we stamped the ducks.
Okay now we both agreed that biden would live to the end of the year and okay, unless unless unless there's some really weird weekend at bernie's shit going on involving him him continuing to give speeches or uh what was that movie dave dave dave oh yeah it's not actually biden it's like a clone or a twin or something yes yeah because i mean he gave a speech a speech a few hours before we're recording this show that people apparently liked but it wasn't him it was so it wasn't it was no but yeah we have made we have been specific that it has to be public knowledge so even if he died at the end of last year and was replaced it still counts so uh and And the same thing for Donald Trump.
We both agreed he would live towards the end of the year, and he did.
We both agreed that Joe Biden would still be president at the end of the year, and he did.
|
Ivan:
[32:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[32:13]
| We both agreed that Kamala Harris would still be VP at the end of the year, and we were right.
|
Ivan:
[32:18]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[32:20]
| Next up, we both agreed very confidently that Hunter Biden would not be indicted.
|
Ivan:
[32:27]
| Well, we're both wrong.
|
Sam:
[32:29]
| We are both wrong on that.
|
Ivan:
[32:31]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[32:33]
| And also we both agreed that for the last five curmudgeons corner shows of the year, not including the prediction show, we would feature Donald Trump in five out of five.
And we specified that the way we would determine was that Donald Trump was specifically mentioned in the little description of the show that I put out that shows up on the website.
So there's a little paragraph and then there's like, you know, a list of segments and stuff.
And so we both agreed five out of five.
|
Ivan:
[33:07]
| And we were.
|
Sam:
[33:09]
| The actual count was four out of five.
|
Ivan:
[33:12]
| Oh, wow. One short.
|
Sam:
[33:15]
| We did not mention Trump to the degree necessary in our last show in November.
|
Ivan:
[33:22]
| Wow. Oh, well. Damn, we failed.
|
Sam:
[33:26]
| And guess what? what yeah that's already the that's already the end of the politics section wow i i think this is i think this is the fastest we've ever gone through maybe we just exhausted yeah you know because like you know in years gone past you know we would have been like hey was biden really alive at the end of the year let's discuss that let's discuss let's let's google this information can Can we look at the last picture of him?
|
Ivan:
[33:56]
| I don't know. That looks like a clone, let me tell you.
|
Sam:
[34:01]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[34:02]
| And that moon landing thing is also bullshit. I'll tell you what.
|
Sam:
[34:05]
| It's like the Melania.
|
Ivan:
[34:09]
| Oh, speaking of that. Yeah, there was some. Oh, yeah, there was some.
There was some hilarious stuff going on. I think, you know, damn it.
You know, did we make a divorce prediction on the Trumps?
|
Sam:
[34:22]
| Not this year. No.
|
Ivan:
[34:24]
| Damn it!
Man, it's looking like Blitzville there. Let me tell you something. Woo wee!
|
Sam:
[34:31]
| She's sticking around until she gets the inheritance. They may not be together.
The inheritance. They may not be together, but there's not going to be a divorce.
|
Ivan:
[34:42]
| She's got to suck it up, buttercup. Listen, whatever it is, it's already determined on paper.
I'm sure that she's probably getting screwed.
|
Sam:
[34:51]
| Well, I'm sure there was a prenup and everything and blah blah blah. So, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[34:56]
| I mean, I'm sure she's getting screwed one way or another. I mean, it's Trump. I mean, come on.
|
Sam:
[35:00]
| Well, she was clearly unhappy with him from the moment any of this even started.
I mean, there are pictures of her inauguration looking super unhappy, you know?
|
Ivan:
[35:10]
| Listen, listen, but it's, look, I mean, she wasn't at the New Year's party that he held.
|
Sam:
[35:18]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[35:19]
| He said, no, no, no, but he went on the microphone.
|
Sam:
[35:23]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[35:23]
| Know yeah because mom you know mom is dying at the hospital can you imagine if i were in a fucking party wearing a tuxedo while juana is at the hospital with her mom dying and i'm going up there oh yeah you know i'm just over here you know having a ball you know with vanilla ice and whatever because you know her mom's dying so you know she has to go over there and take care of Remember, Donald Trump acted the same fucking way when his own parents were dying, when his brother was dying.
He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't give a shit. No, I don't.
I don't. But let me put it this way. That doesn't go over well with your spouse.
|
Sam:
[36:05]
| Anyway, I don't think anything goes over well with this spouse.
She's obviously hated him for years.
|
Ivan:
[36:11]
| Anyway, at least we're all agree.
|
Sam:
[36:15]
| Are you ready for the stats from the politics section?
|
Ivan:
[36:19]
| Yes, stats, stats.
|
Sam:
[36:21]
| I made 44 predictions in the politics section.
|
Ivan:
[36:25]
| 44 predictions. Really predicting a lot of shit. Let me tell you. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:31]
| Ed, of those, I got 33 correct. So that's a 75% accuracy rate. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[36:39]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:40]
| You only made 40 predictions of which you got 28 correct. That's 70%.
|
Ivan:
[36:49]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:50]
| So our combined total is 84 predictions of which we got 61% or no, of which we got 61 correct.
That gives 72.6%. Now, by the way, I'll mention this as I do every year.
We know that's double counting in cases where Yvonne and I made the same prediction and we both got it right.
That's just the way we do this. So sorry, if you don't like it, screw you.
We're just adding up our two things, you know, so I did 44.
Yvonne did 40. That makes 84.
I got 33, right? He got 28, right that makes 61 61 out of 84 that's 72.6 percent so that's where we are and yeah that's politics okay so that means we're going to take a break and hey if we continue whizzing through this then maybe this show won't be three hours long maybe maybe but of course now that i've said that it's going to be five hours because we're going to debate every single one from here on out No, we're very good at that.
Okay, I'm doing breaks. No one cares, but I'm once again not doing them randomly just because it takes less time to prepare.
Last week, I went in order from oldest to newest.
This time, I'm going from newest to oldest, but I'm skipping, sorry, because I have to prepare them.
None of these will be Wiki of the Day. None of these will be Apple Dreams.
But anyway, here we go. First break, if it works.
|
Ivan:
[38:18]
| If it works.
|
Sam:
[39:08]
| Okay. Okay. Here we go.
|
Ivan:
[39:12]
| Here we go.
|
Sam:
[39:14]
| Picking up international. First off, we both agreed that the war in Ukraine would not be over.
|
Ivan:
[39:19]
| Yeah, we're right, unfortunately.
|
Sam:
[39:22]
| Next up, we both agreed that while fighting would still be ongoing in the Ukraine, it would be at a lower scale than 2022. 2022.
I listed this as one we should debate a little bit because I spent a while looking because I wanted to just do straight up how many people died in 2022 versus how many died in 2023.
But I could not find good numbers on that. I was able to find some estimates of the total so far, are, but none that broke it down by time period.
So my gut feeling is the answer to this is yes, because 2022 contained the actual invasion itself, Russia taking over huge parts of the country and the Ukrainians beating them back over the course of the other of the rest of the year.
in 2023 there have been lots of people dying on both sides but the front line's not really moving very much but there's still been lots of people dying to be clear i don't know i don't know like the total number of casualties in 2022 versus 2023 but it just seems like 2022 was a little bit more intense i don't know what do you feel like yvonne i i i think that it's less intense I mean, you know, there is no way to sustain that.
|
Ivan:
[40:50]
| And they have been just a lot of back and forth.
You know, it's yeah, it's kind of stalemated through a certain way. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[41:01]
| Yeah. OK, so I will give us that one.
OK. And admittedly, it could be debatable, right?
Like lots of people dying in trenches at a front line that doesn't move is still lots of people dying.
Right. But it still feels like that beginning part, there were more.
But anyway, we're going to count as right.
Next up is about the territory controlled.
I had just mentioned most of the year was characterized by tiny moves. Tiny moves.
But the question was, both of us agreed, I should say, Both of us agreed that the Russians will control less territory at the end of 2023 than at the end of 2022.
And I will specify as well, we do not have a December estimate yet.
So the comparison I made was end of November 2022 versus end of November 2023. Okay.
And I'm going by WarMapper, who puts out maps of the thing.
|
Ivan:
[42:07]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[42:08]
| So what do you think? Do you think we were right?
|
Ivan:
[42:11]
| Man, I'm going to guess no.
|
Sam:
[42:14]
| Okay, so the actual number and this completely proves the point of how static things were. You, Ukraine gained back 0.02% of their territory over the course of the year.
|
Ivan:
[42:34]
| Okay, so does that count as they gained?
|
Sam:
[42:35]
| Yes, they gained territory. So we were both right.
Russia controlled less territory at the end, but 0.02%.
And that's a percentage of the entirety of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea.
So, okay. And by the way, we are now, I've done every prediction up through the one hour mark of the podcast last year.
|
Ivan:
[43:04]
| Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[43:06]
| Next up, we both agreed that China would not invade Taiwan.
|
Ivan:
[43:12]
| And we're both right.
|
Sam:
[43:14]
| Thankfully.
|
Ivan:
[43:15]
| Thankfully.
|
Sam:
[43:16]
| Next up, we both agreed Sunak would still be the Prime Minister of the UK at the end of the year.
|
Ivan:
[43:23]
| Hey! Right again!
|
Sam:
[43:25]
| We both agreed that there would be no UK general election in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[43:30]
| Right again? Holy shit, we've been on a roll, Sam!
|
Sam:
[43:34]
| Yep. We both agreed that Trudeau would still be Prime Minister of Canada.
|
Ivan:
[43:40]
| Fucking right again!
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| We both agreed that Putin would still be President of Russia.
|
Ivan:
[43:46]
| Jesus, right again! My God!
|
Sam:
[43:48]
| We both agreed that Netanyahu would still be Prime Minister of Israel.
We both agreed that there would be no referendum on Scottish independence.
We both agreed that there would be no nuclear weapons used in anger.
|
Ivan:
[44:09]
| Nuclear.
|
Sam:
[44:11]
| Nuclear. Nuclear weapons.
Anyway, we were both right.
|
Ivan:
[44:19]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[44:20]
| Now, Ivan, one of us will end our streak.
|
Ivan:
[44:25]
| Oh, boy.
|
Sam:
[44:27]
| One of us said that there would be a nuclear weapons test somewhere in the world.
And one of us said there would not be.
|
Ivan:
[44:36]
| Okay. And?
|
Sam:
[44:38]
| There was not. The most recent was North Korea in 2017.
|
Ivan:
[44:44]
| The one of us who was wrong is was you I was going to say before that I'm sure I broke the streak I'm sure I broke it I was like so confident I should have said it, I'm like damn it, I broke the streak I must have so first off you said some country would do a nuclear test, and then you decided to down somehow, right?
|
Sam:
[45:13]
| You decided to be more specific by saying that not only would some country do a nuke test, but that it would be Russia.
|
Ivan:
[45:21]
| Oh, Jesus Christ. So, so, okay, there you go. No on both.
|
Sam:
[45:26]
| And I said Russia would not do a nuke test.
|
Ivan:
[45:29]
| No on both.
|
Sam:
[45:31]
| And then we both agreed that the U S would not be involved in any new wars.
We were right.
|
Ivan:
[45:38]
| Yeah, we were right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[45:41]
| And we also said there would not be any new overt state to state war anywhere in the world.
And we said by overt, we were talking like there's no, it's not.
Yeah, because they don't count as a state.
|
Ivan:
[46:00]
| Yeah, they are not counted as a state.
|
Sam:
[46:02]
| Like it has to be like two recognized countries.
|
Ivan:
[46:06]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[46:06]
| Right they're not they're not no and it has to be full out not not just like you know an incursion or like because you could argue that venezuela thing like there's been a couple yeah but they haven't invaded yeah they haven't yeah and and there have been there are various things going on in the horn of africa but i think they were all going on last year in last 22 as well those are not new they weren't new so i counted us as yes if anybody knows any new ones that started it up that we missed please let us know so anyway and that's the end of international international so time for statistics and i will start with you yvonne no boy you you made 15 predictions uh-huh of which you got 13 correct that's 86.7 jesus okay now i also made 15 predictions uh-huh but i got all 15 correct correct yeah you're 100 100 because because i am awesome i am incredible it's me nostra abels may that's right i i i can do the the tarot cards correctly apparently and yeah so that makes uh collectively we made 30 predictions of which we We got 28 correct, which is 93.3%.
|
Ivan:
[47:30]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[47:32]
| And yeah. Wow. We zoomed through another section already.
So it's time for another break. Even though it's really short, we take a break between each section.
And then at the end, we'll take one last break and then we'll give all the stats of the whole thing together. So next break. Here we go.
Why am I yelling? I shouldn't yell. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[47:55]
| I like to yell.
|
Sam:
[47:56]
| Okay now it decides not to work so i will add in post-production later the bugs on my face break, And we are back. Very exciting. Very exciting. Exciting. Next is economy business.
Economy slash business. Are you ready for this, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[48:57]
| Oh, God.
Ready.
|
Sam:
[49:01]
| It is one of your favorite topics with a lot of your favorite questions.
So first off, we both agreed that Tesla stock would not exceed the value it had when the Twitter purchase was finalized.
|
Ivan:
[49:21]
| I'm pretty sure that's got to be true.
|
Sam:
[49:24]
| The Twitter purchase was finalized on October 27th, 2022. 22.
On that day, Tesla ranged from 222.85 to 233.81.
The high for 2023 was 299.29. So we were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[49:43]
| So it exceeded it briefly. Once again, one of these absolute ones.
|
Sam:
[49:47]
| No, not briefly. It exceeded it for most of the year. It's higher than there now, I believe as well.
|
Ivan:
[49:53]
| No, it's a 237.49 right now. What are you talking about?
|
Sam:
[49:57]
| That's still higher than that day.
|
Ivan:
[50:00]
| It was 287, didn't you say?
|
Sam:
[50:02]
| No. The range on the day that Twitter closed was 222.85.
Oh, 222. To 233.81. To 233.81.
|
Ivan:
[50:14]
| Okay, so it's a 237.
|
Sam:
[50:15]
| So it's above, and it has been above for a decent chunk of the year.
|
Ivan:
[50:20]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[50:22]
| Next up, we talked about, you know, Twitter itself is no longer a public company, so it doesn't have a stock price per se, but we both agreed that its valuation would not bounce back.
|
Ivan:
[50:36]
| Oh, that's fucking true.
Jesus, that's fucking true. I mean, it's got.
Yes, it's according to Fidelity, but they mark down their investment 71 percent from where it was at the purchase.
|
Sam:
[50:53]
| Correct. And I've heard some estimates even lower than that, but that's the most recent one I heard.
|
Ivan:
[50:59]
| Yeah, that's the most recent one. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:02]
| Then we disagreed on Twitter entering bankruptcy. One of us was right. One of us was wrong.
You said that Twitter would not enter bankruptcy, and I said it would, and of course you were correct there. It did not enter bankruptcy.
|
Ivan:
[51:16]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[51:19]
| We also disagreed on whether the U.S. would have a recession in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[51:25]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[51:26]
| You thought it would. I thought it would not.
|
Ivan:
[51:29]
| No.
|
Sam:
[51:30]
| It did not have a recession, so you were wrong and I was right.
|
Ivan:
[51:34]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:36]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[51:37]
| Well, everybody, every fucking economist I was just mentioning today, everybody predicted a fucking recession.
Everybody. And I mean, with interest rates going up the way they did, it was like crazy. But yeah, no recession.
|
Sam:
[51:49]
| So next up was the price of Bitcoin.
|
Ivan:
[51:54]
| Oh, boy.
|
Sam:
[51:59]
| So this year, this year, the one from last week, I was like, fuck it. I don't feel like it. I'm just going to go up and down.
But last year, I was still in the mode of predicting a proper range based on a 70% confidence interval, based on the history of the thing, et cetera.
So my prediction for Bitcoin was that it would be somewhere between 6,814 and 243,101.
|
Ivan:
[52:29]
| Uh-huh.
|
Sam:
[52:30]
| And in fact, it was at 42,258 at the end of the year. So I was right.
|
Ivan:
[52:35]
| Of course you were.
|
Sam:
[52:37]
| Hey the the previous year i got it wrong my range was just as wide in fact wider you know and you still were right well and i was wrong because it had because you know the way i do it is i i i look at the entire range of how it's done so if you get like the worst performance you've ever had or in the top two or three i will you'll you'll be out of my range so anyway, Anyway, so, yeah, I got this one wrong for 2022, but right for 2023.
Your prediction was more narrow, as it tends to be.
|
Ivan:
[53:15]
| Oh, gee, what a surprise.
|
Sam:
[53:17]
| Your prediction was that Bitcoin would end the year between 18,000 and 22,000.
|
Ivan:
[53:22]
| Oh, I'm not even remotely close to right.
|
Sam:
[53:25]
| Yeah, so you were wrong.
Next, we both agreed that the U.S.
inflation rate would not drop below 2% at any time during the year.
|
Ivan:
[53:38]
| Yeah, we're right. It's close, but it's not.
|
Sam:
[53:42]
| The low was 3.0% in June.
|
Ivan:
[53:45]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:47]
| Okay. We both also, though, said we were more specific and said that, well, I'm not sure if this is really more specific, but we said something else about inflation.
We both agreed that inflation at the end of 2022 with the most recent available numbers would be down from the end of, it would be down in 2023 compared to 2022, same time.
So we compared November to November.
It dropped from 7.1 to 3.1, November to November.
|
Ivan:
[54:18]
| So we were totally right.
|
Sam:
[54:19]
| So we were totally right. We both agreed that the Fed would not lower interest rates in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[54:28]
| And we were right again.
|
Sam:
[54:29]
| We were right again. Next up. Oh, and, and right in the middle, the next one is the Dow and the one hour, 30 minute Mark passed in between you giving your prediction, me giving mine. So, so, The prediction with, with I'll start with my nice wide one.
I, I predicted the Dow would end between 32,408 and 40,551.
|
Ivan:
[54:58]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[54:59]
| You predicted it would be between 30,000 and 42,000.
|
Ivan:
[55:05]
| Shit. I think I'm right.
|
Sam:
[55:06]
| The actual number was 37,689.
|
Ivan:
[55:10]
| Fuck. I finally, I finally got this right.
|
Sam:
[55:14]
| So we were both right. We were both right.
|
Ivan:
[55:18]
| I think this has got to be the first time I've ever gotten a Dow prediction correct.
|
Sam:
[55:23]
| And I will point out, your range was wider than mine.
My range was about 8,000 wide. Your range was about 12,000 wide.
|
Ivan:
[55:36]
| But I've never gotten this prediction right, ever.
|
Sam:
[55:41]
| So congratulations, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[55:43]
| Wow! finally sure you know i you know i used the guitar to hit a baseball but what the hell finally hit it okay now unemployment rate you predicted the november unemployment rate would be exactly 4.8.
|
Sam:
[56:02]
| You refused to give a range no i i tried to get you to give a range and you're like, no, it's 4.8.
Exactly. 4.8. Damn it.
It was not 4.8. Let me give my range first.
My, my range was between 3.3 and 3.8%. The act, the actual number was 3.7.
|
Ivan:
[56:27]
| Okay. I was off my point. Okay.
|
Sam:
[56:29]
| Well, so I got it right. You got it wrong.
you know that whole exactly it tends to bite you in the ass, there are a few of these where I succeeded in getting you to you started out with a point estimate and then like you eventually like with a sigh or like okay fine I'll do minus 10% there you go okay, And this last week, we predicted based on Brent crude oil. And I'm like, we always do Brent crude.
But then I listened to last year's episode and we did West Texas Intermediate.
|
Ivan:
[57:17]
| So, you know, it's fine.
|
Sam:
[57:21]
| So now this next one is another one where you predicted an exact number.
And I convinced you to let me do plus or minus 10%. Okay.
Your exact number prediction was exactly $73 per barrel.
|
Ivan:
[57:42]
| Oh my God. I was super close.
|
Sam:
[57:45]
| The actual number was 71 33.
|
Ivan:
[57:48]
| Holy shit. I was close.
|
Sam:
[57:51]
| Now I convinced you to let give you to allow plus or minus 10%, which means a range of 65-70 to 80-30.
So you hit the oil number.
|
Ivan:
[58:06]
| So I hit the oil number? Fuck, I've never hit these numbers.
I've hit the Dow at the oil number. Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[58:17]
| Now, my oil range was $59 to $115.
So I also hit it, but with a much bigger range.
actually it was 5906 to 114 49 but but you're yours again like now if this hinges you know i had to convince you to make it plus or minus 10 percent but fuck i was awfully close jesus christ okay okay next up was the average price of gas in the united states and apparently i spelled gas g G-A-S-S.
|
Ivan:
[58:53]
| Oh, wow. You know, gas. You know, well, we've been talking about powering vehicles with our parts. Or no, our shit.
So, you know, that's true.
|
Sam:
[59:04]
| Now, just to be clear, we've been talking about this on our curmudgeons corner slack. This has not been mentioned on the show.
There were a couple articles recently about airline fuel made out of human excrement.
|
Ivan:
[59:17]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[59:18]
| And then, and then there was another one about powering things from some, it was, it was animal excrement this time for something else, but yeah.
Okay. Average fuel.
|
Ivan:
[59:30]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[59:30]
| Fuel.
|
Ivan:
[59:31]
| Uh, so, so my, yeah, we should trademark that extra ass. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[59:38]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[59:39]
| I like it.
|
Sam:
[59:40]
| So my prediction was between three and $4 a gallon. Yours was between two 50 and three 50.
The actual average price of gas in the United States at the end of 2023 was $3 and 26 cents. So we both got it right.
|
Ivan:
[59:59]
| Oh, wow. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:00:02]
| Next up i have i have that we have to discuss this one okay because i didn't know the right way to so it was that we both agreed that there would be no major fortune 500 merger or acquisition or similarly sized private companies okay so we're there yvonne i i i found a web page that listed a whole bunch of acquisitions but i wasn't sure which were fortune 500 which were not but also we, we caveated it with major.
We didn't just say fortune 500 merger. We said major fortune 500 merger.
So what does that even mean? And so you, you will make the call.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:42]
| Okay. Let's see what I've got. I'm looking up the largest merchants and acquisitions deals for 2023.
Okay. Here we go. Deal size. Okay.
From the Fortune 500, specifically. So I'm looking in here.
No. No, we didn't have any. No.
|
Sam:
[1:01:08]
| Then we were both right.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:11]
| Yeah. There it is. Yeah, Merger Tracker 2023, 2024.
And yeah, I mean, we don't. I mean, I looked through the top value ones, and it's like right out.
I mean, yeah, anything under like, you know. So, you know, these are not in 2021.
There is a large one that was announced, but this is not a Fortune 500 company.
It's Vodafone with a company called 3.
|
Sam:
[1:01:40]
| Now, we did say or similarly sized private company.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:46]
| Yeah, Vodafone's not on the European. They're not on the Fortune 500.
But Vodafone is, let me double check, but is Vodafone on the Fortune 500?
Hold on. I'm going to guess the answer is no.
No, that's not. So, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:02:05]
| But we did allow... If you lay down the criteria... Okay. I mean...
Because it's not private either. It's just your...
|
Ivan:
[1:02:12]
| It's not private. It's just right. Okay. There is an acquisition that they did of a company called 3, which was significant.
Let me go. It's a merger, but I'm going to phone 3 merger. Here we go.
Bye-bye.
And it closes, hold on, did it close?
EU waves through Vodafone 3 merger, but all eyes are on UK approval.
And it didn't close. It was just announced.
|
Sam:
[1:02:48]
| It didn't close, so no. We were right, no mergers.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:51]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:02:52]
| Now, I believe last week, when we did the prediction show, you said, when we were predicting whether or not there would be Fortune 500 bankruptcies in 2024, you looked up 2023, 23 and you said there were seven. Is that correct?
Uh, well, we both predicted there would be none in 2023. We were both wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:14]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:17]
| Next up Q3 US GDP growth.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:24]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:25]
| I predicted that it would be between negative 0.6% and positive 6.3%.
The actual value was plus 4.9%, so I was correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:38]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:40]
| Your prediction was that it would be between negative 1% and zero.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:45]
| Negative 1% and zero, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:48]
| So you were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:49]
| Oh, well, damn, once again.
|
Sam:
[1:03:52]
| And the last question or last prediction for the economy slash business section is.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:04:03]
| The deficit, the U.S. deficit at the end of 2023, we had to predict whether it would be higher or lower than at the end of 2022.
So just to give the actual numbers first, fiscal year 2022 was a $1.38 trillion deficit.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:26]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:04:27]
| 2023 was 1.70.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:31]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:04:31]
| So the deficit went up in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:34]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:04:36]
| I had predicted that it would go up, so I was right.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:40]
| I predicted it went down.
|
Sam:
[1:04:41]
| You predicted that it went down, and so you were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:45]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:04:47]
| Okay. And so that gives, it's time for the stats.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:52]
| Stats.
|
Sam:
[1:04:53]
| Stats.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:55]
| Stats. Stats. Stats, boys.
|
Sam:
[1:04:58]
| I predicted 16 items in this category, of which I got 13 correct.
That's 81.3%. Okay.
Yvonne, in the economics and business category, which is, of course, his forte.
It's his whole life is dealing with economics and business.
He made 16 predictions and got nine right, which is 56.3%.
Once again. Once again, I beat you in this category. And this has happened quite a few years in a row, I believe.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:29]
| Hey, but I got a doubt prediction right!
|
Sam:
[1:05:32]
| And an oil prediction. And an oil prediction!
|
Ivan:
[1:05:36]
| Yes! Yes! I mean, wow!
|
Sam:
[1:05:40]
| Yes, wow. So if you combine those, we made 32 predictions, of which we got 22 right. That's 68.8%.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:49]
| Wow. Amazing. Stunning.
|
Sam:
[1:05:53]
| Stunning. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:55]
| Stunning precision.
|
Sam:
[1:05:57]
| And it's time for another break. So here it is.
And now we are back for technology.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:05]
| Oh, technology.
|
Sam:
[1:07:08]
| Technology.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:12]
| Technology in the future. In the year 2000.
|
Sam:
[1:07:19]
| Very good. You know, it's almost 2025.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:24]
| I know.
|
Sam:
[1:07:24]
| We're almost a quarter of the way through this century.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:29]
| It's three decades.
|
Sam:
[1:07:32]
| It's fucking ridiculous that's all i can say about that it's fucking ridiculous okay first up whether or not apple would announce vr glasses of any sort vr ar etc um whatever you said they would and i said they would not so you were right i was.
I thought I had said they were going to delay them. They would decide that this wasn't the right time, that they didn't have whatever.
Something would go wrong. But you were right. They announced them.
And yeah, so you were right. I was wrong. Next up, we both had our some opinions about Twitter.
we both we both agreed that by one measure or another twitter would be significantly diminished by the end of the year okay i we can we can both say we that was right right yeah like by almost any measure twitter is diminished from what it was a year ago oh god yeah absolutely okay now Now, then we tried to both specify kind of what we meant by it.
The way that you specified was that, and I'm counting us both agreed as diminished, and these are separate predictions.
You predicted that by the end of the year, all of the major big name media outlets, And you named a few like CNN and the New York Times, Washington Post, et cetera, et cetera. You mentioned like five or six.
But all the major media outlets would still have their Twitter links, but would add links to Mastodon.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:22]
| Well, I was right about the Twitter links. I was wrong about what the other application they would be linking to was.
|
Sam:
[1:09:29]
| Yes. Specifically, the way you worded it was they would all have links to Mastodon in addition to Twitter.
So the prediction was about Mastodon. You were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:38]
| Right. Yeah, I was wrong. They wound up starting to move to threats.
|
Sam:
[1:09:43]
| Yeah. Well, and even then, a lot of them don't have like those links automatically on their stories, though. Some do at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:49]
| But yeah, they have been they've been slowly adding them.
But yeah, but they're really I mean, they're I mean, the real activity is is moving to threats. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:10:00]
| Yep. And the way I put it was I talked about how the news agenda for years had been driven by Twitter.
You'd hear about something on Twitter and then it would show up in the news a few days or weeks later.
And I said that there'd still be a little bit of that.
There'd still be a little bit of discussion about what happens on Twitter, but most of that would be... Actually, I didn't even say most.
I said some of that would be driven from elsewhere.
I did not specify Mastodon like you did. So I think I, I think I would.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:37]
| No, you're right. No, you're right. You're totally right. I mean, that is happening for sure right now. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:10:43]
| And, and the, you know, there's still some talk, like you'll still be, you'll still hear people talk about like the things they posted on X.
And by the way, I'm counting it. I'm counting X's Twitter. I could be cheap here and say, Nobody's doing anything on Twitter anymore because it's not Twitter, it's X.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:58]
| That's right!
|
Sam:
[1:11:02]
| But no, I'm counting X as a successor organization.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:07]
| Okay, got it.
|
Sam:
[1:11:08]
| But anyway, I count this one as right because, yeah, people still talk about things that are going on on Twitter, but less than they used to.
And you're starting to hear them talk about what happens on other social media more than they used to.
Okay. Next, we both agreed that Twitter will still be functional at the end of the year. I believe we were both correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:31]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:11:33]
| And then next up, we talked about whether or not there would be major Twitter outages over the course of the year. And if we'd left it at that, we could have said yes, but we didn't leave it at that.
We defined major as being completely unavailable for more than 24 hours.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:56]
| That did happen, though.
|
Sam:
[1:11:58]
| No, it didn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:00]
| Yeah. There was one out. Okay. Twitter outages.
|
Sam:
[1:12:07]
| I don't think they hit the 24-hour mark. Mark. They had issues for more than 24 hours once, but not completely unavailable.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:14]
| Back up after global outage. So this was in December 20th, by the way.
They had a global outage. Yeah, I mean, well, no, last year.
|
Sam:
[1:12:25]
| Right, 2023.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:28]
| The outage began after midnight. Night's unknown.
I mean, okay, Okay, did we specify it was like because there was a complete global outage like just on the 20th, but I guess it was restored early Thursday.
What day was the summer 21st of the week?
It was on a Wednesday?
|
Sam:
[1:12:56]
| We specified that it had to be complete, it had to be global, and it had to be greater than 24 hours with no access at all. And I believe...
|
Ivan:
[1:13:07]
| This outage did that, but I don't know if it hit 24 hours.
|
Sam:
[1:13:12]
| I do not believe it.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:12]
| It certainly was a lot of hours. It says here that it started at 0500 GMT, okay?
And that it came back up on the 22nd.
that's the first one i found okay i mean i'm not well and and i believe i believe even that one there was some twitter go down so often okay here we go december 28th out okay there's a january 23rd i found one that had let's see out january 23rd february 8th and 18th but this is specified the amount of time march 6th out well and a lot of these two there were there were some Some of these were like you could see tweets, but you couldn't post.
|
Sam:
[1:13:54]
| There were some where it was off and on or some people were affected and some people weren't.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:59]
| If you can see tweets, but not post, it's basically down.
|
Sam:
[1:14:04]
| That's not a complete outage. That's not a complete outage.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:14:11]
| Anyway, I don't think any of them hit 24 hours. Like you're talking about the longest one there was, and I don't think it hit 24.
It might have been close.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:20]
| But I don't think it might have been close, but I don't think I can, I can, I can say with certainty that it was 24 hours.
|
Sam:
[1:14:28]
| So I counted us wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:30]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:14:33]
| We both agreed that Elon Musk will still be involved in Twitter operations at the end of the year.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:40]
| Oh God. Yes, that was right.
|
Sam:
[1:14:44]
| Next up is on Mastodon. Um, and this is one where, We have to debate the wording we used.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:53]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:14:54]
| We said Mastodon will still be relevant at the end of the year.
What the fuck does relevant mean?
|
Ivan:
[1:15:00]
| Well, I think it hasn't imploded. I mean, people still use it.
So it's relevant, but, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:15:09]
| It's not mainstream, though. It's not like driving the news conversation.
It is, but the people who are...
|
Ivan:
[1:15:17]
| Users.
|
Sam:
[1:15:17]
| Yeah and also the people who are using it tend to be sort of wonky there's a certain group of wonky tech heads yeah you know so you want to say it i say i say it's relevant we didn't say it's like you know you know it's relevant it it's discussed i mean even Even Meta itself started integrating with Mastodon publicly.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:46]
| I mean, so yes, the platform is relevant.
|
Sam:
[1:15:49]
| Okay. Next up, I added wording that was slightly different.
And I said Mastodon will have grown to be a significant alternative to Twitter.
I'm going to say the word significant, no. No. It's an alternative.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:06]
| It's an alternative, but it's not significant. No. No.
|
Sam:
[1:16:09]
| It's not significant. And I would further argue that its level of significance has decreased year over year.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:17]
| Decreased. Absolutely. Yeah. No, no, no. Totally.
|
Sam:
[1:16:20]
| Because, you know, a year ago it was looking as like the most viable alternative, but it had a few problems.
They were unable to fix those problems fast enough and threads came in.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:35]
| A lot of the problems are still not, not resolved. No. I mean, there's a lot now.
There's still a lot of things on Mastodon that they have stubbornly not changed.
Like reposting something, for example.
|
Sam:
[1:16:50]
| Like quote tweets specifically. Quoting tweets, yeah. They put that on the roadmap for Mastodon like nine months ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:58]
| It's still not done.
|
Sam:
[1:16:59]
| But it's still not done. It's still not done. And there are all kinds of other things they have done.
They've made some things. But this was one of the main things.
It was like lots of people were, it was controversial, but it was put on the official roadmap, but it wasn't, it didn't get done.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:14]
| Never done.
|
Sam:
[1:17:15]
| And, and admittedly, one of the fundamental problems with a project like Mastodon is it's a small group of volunteers, right?
Whereas Meta can throw a team of programmers at something that are all well-paid.
And if they need more, they get more.
Meta, I mean, the official Mastodon organization that runs the nonprofit that is the sort of core group, I believe has three people, four people maybe. It's on that scale.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:49]
| I believe that.
|
Sam:
[1:17:50]
| And then they're open source contributors as well, but they're all volunteers. years, you know?
So anyway, right. Right. So I'm giving myself a no on that one. I got that wrong.
We both agreed that Macedon would still be smaller than Twitter by we specified number of posts for time, but by any measure, it's still, it's still smaller than Twitter. So we were both right.
We both agreed that Trump would not tweet in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:18]
| Oh, he posted one tweet, right?
|
Sam:
[1:18:20]
| One tweet. That's right.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:22]
| But fucker, fucker, fuck you, Donald.
Damn it. Fuck you, Donald. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:18:32]
| I believe it was only one, you know, so it's only one. Otherwise, he's stuck with truth social.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:41]
| All I know about magnets is this.
Give me a glass of water. Let me drop it on the magnets.
And that's the end of magnet.
He just said that in a rally today. What the hell does that mean?
|
Sam:
[1:19:00]
| Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:00]
| What the hell does that mean?
|
Sam:
[1:19:02]
| None of it means anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:05]
| Drop a glass of water on magnets? And these guys are arguing that Biden is supposedly senile?
|
Sam:
[1:19:13]
| Anyway, let's move on. We both agreed that TikTok would not be banned in any EU country.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:21]
| You're right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:22]
| We were correct. Several countries, and I believe the EU as a whole, said that you could not use it on a government device.
But that's different. That is not a ban of the product.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:39]
| That's different. No, that's not a ban. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:42]
| Right. Now, here's a debatable one.
I said there would, however, be TikTok restrictions in the EU.
but i i specifically implied that that was restrictions on what the app could do right where a company could do and that's not what the what i just said was it's you know it can't be on a government device right so does this count as a restriction on tiktok in the eu no no no damn it okay i'll count that as a no for me i was gonna give it to me but okay we same thing for uk and And you asked, we said TikTok will not be banned in either one, and it was not.
and next up, we both said that Truth Social will still be on the Apple App Store.
I checked, and it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:33]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:20:34]
| So we were right on that. Now, this one, the next one was on Twitter Daily Active Users.
We both agreed that it would decrease.
I actually, I spent a stupid amount amount of time trying to verify this and it was actually really really difficult first of all let me just say the the poisoning of our goddamn internet with ai generated content is definitely real oh yeah like as i as i was searching for this one piece of data i would there were dozens of search results that were fairly clearly AI generated versions of the same crap over and over again.
But often the data was out of date. Like I couldn't get 2023 numbers properly.
They'd like quote old numbers from 2019 or 2021, et cetera.
There was that site Statica or whatever it is. Statista.
There we go. They did have some stuff, but the stuff that was not behind a paywall ended in 2022.
They might've had more behind a paywall, but I wasn't willing to pay 150 bucks a month to get to it.
So I did not do that. I did end up finding one article on Business Insider from like September that gave an estimated reduction based on third-party estimates of something like 17%.
So it was a decrease, 12 or 17.
I forget. I should click the link to the stupid article to make sure.
But the outside estimate is that it is down.
This is also one of the things that's controversial because now, and we mentioned this actually on last week's show, now that it's a private company, they don't have to tell anybody jack.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:32]
| Correct. But listen, we don't know the daily active users.
They do have to reveal that to firm, you know, advertisers and that kind of stuff.
And they have to show that. But of course, you know, they make them sign confidentiality agreements when they're showing that different kind of information and stuff because it's got to do with how much you're paying for ads and stuff.
But the one sad point that we have gotten is web traffic.
And the web traffic data indicates that it's been on a downward spiral.
That can't be denied.
|
Sam:
[1:23:08]
| So the daily active users thing, and it's in a Business Insider article from October October 31st, titled Usage of Elon Musk's X is Down by Every Measure, One Year After His Takeover.
Right. And they actually quote a Wall Street Journal article.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:27]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:23:27]
| Which is behind a paywall, I believe. But they quote the Wall Street Journal as saying their estimates are from a company called Sensor Power.
Okay. Was that daily active users is down 16%.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:39]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:23:40]
| Okay. and so yeah so and we only said up or down we said down i'm counting us as right on that but but some of the controversy again is like musk and what's her name the person, tell yeah the ceo lady yacarino whose name i can never say that again yacarino linda yacarino you know anyway they have put out things of course trying to spin things in the most positive way possible so they have in various ways tried to say their traffic is actually up that's a lie whenever independent people have looked at it they've sort of said there is no reasonable way of measuring things where traffic is up you and even some of the statements where they've tried to claim it's up the way they've worded it has just been incredibly convoluted so they're only talking about some really weird scenario that they can get so they're cherry picking numbers basically to try to find something that's up but daily active users appears to be down okay so next up.
This is another one that I need your help on, Yvonne.
The question was, will a major crypto exchange fail big enough that it makes headlines?
I found a list. I found a list somewhere of crypto places that like died, but none of them were names I recognized.
Frankly, I'll send you the link. I'll send you the link.
And then, i'm i'm texting it to you yvonne and i don't know i just didn't know like did do these count do these not count like i that we had said that it makes headlines which you can also interpret do they make big enough headlines that we noticed or paid attention to because like of course there's going to be some crap ass crypto bro site that mentions anything but i don't think these are are big because like the ones that made headlines like that guy that's in jail for fraud.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:54]
| Yeah, that was not this year. That was 2022. Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:02]
| So tell me what you think, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:04]
| Let's see. How many crypto exchanges have failed? Okay, so. Hmm.
Hmm.
i don't think there was a significant one in 2023 so i i'll put it i'll put it down that we were wrong yeah we both said that it would yeah i mean you know because we had the ftx and then there was the mount gox and we had uh And they're all old.
|
Sam:
[1:26:39]
| Right, right, right. It's not like Coinbase crashed.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:43]
| No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:48]
| Okay, I'm saying no. And that does not mean that there's not some, like, there's probably some random exchange somewhere in the world that failed, but not big enough that, like, we cared.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:02]
| Well, it's just not a major one. Major Crypto Cash Show 2023 Ape Coin Well these are coins That's entirely different Yeah yeah yeah, Top five biggest crypto failures of 2020. Okay. I'll see.
These are coins, really. They own crypto companies. Okay. Genesis.
That was in January.
|
Sam:
[1:27:32]
| Are you on the page I sent you? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:34]
| No, I was looking somewhere else. I didn't look to see if you sent the link.
|
Sam:
[1:27:40]
| It sounds like the page that I sent.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:43]
| How did you send it?
|
Sam:
[1:27:44]
| Just from that. I texted it to you.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:47]
| Okay, hold on. Hold on, let me see.
|
Sam:
[1:27:50]
| Just from you reading the headline made me think maybe you're looking at the same article. But you could be looking at, like, a reissue.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:57]
| I don't have my text. There's one. It's called Pace, pacemagazine.com.
|
Sam:
[1:28:06]
| Mine was on Edge HD.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:08]
| No, it's a different one. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:28:10]
| But it might be the same crap, like, repositioned by, like, AI, just like I was talking about before.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:15]
| Here, I'll take that back. In fact, the answer is yes, because they're also including Silicon Valley Bank here.
|
Sam:
[1:28:22]
| That's not a crypto exchange. Come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:26]
| No, no, no. It's not. But here's a reason why they're saying that. Let me see here. Hold on.
Well, Genesis, by the way. Genesis was a big one. It failed in January.
|
Sam:
[1:28:38]
| Okay. Now, I'd never heard of that one, but I believe you.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:42]
| No, but that one was a pretty significant one. Yes. Yes.
Yeah, they had over $3 billion in crypto assets.
So Genesis failed. Yes, Genesis collapsed in January. So the answer is yes.
|
Sam:
[1:29:01]
| Okay, yay, we were right. Okay, moving on.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:05]
| I see here but there's something here okay and by the way silicon valley counts as well because for many years silvergate silvergate exchange network and signature bank signet platform enabled around the clock real-time payments facilitating crypto to fiat exchange, now crypto players are forced to look for alternatives and that's where the one thing that silicon valley was it it really and one of the reasons why crypto went down in march because they were one of the biggest facilitators of turning fucking crypto into actually fiat money gotcha so by the way silicon i take it back silicon as i said silicon valley bank does count as an exchange and it accounted as an exchange and it because they were one of the biggest ones that turned actual crypto into U.S. dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:29:58]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:58]
| And that's the reason why crypto crashed so hard at the beginning of the year.
|
Sam:
[1:30:03]
| Okay, next up, moving on from crypto. We both agreed that it would not actually be possible to buy a Cybertruck in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:15]
| Fuck! Damn it, that bastard released it in October.
|
Sam:
[1:30:19]
| November. So, yes, I have not...
|
Ivan:
[1:30:22]
| Fuck you, Elon, too, by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:30:25]
| I have not yet seen one in the wild, but they are out there now.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:29]
| I have not seen one in the wild, but yeah. They're out.
|
Sam:
[1:30:33]
| From everything I can see, they look like ass, but whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:39]
| I have no interest in a fucking cyborg.
|
Sam:
[1:30:43]
| But, Yvonne, they have no crumple zone, so you'll die in an accident.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:48]
| Oh, that sounds great.
|
Sam:
[1:30:49]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:50]
| Wonderful. There you go. I can die as quickly as possible.
|
Sam:
[1:30:53]
| But it won't be dented.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:55]
| No, it won't be dented. Well, that's good. There you go.
At least my surviving family will have an undented Cybertruck, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:31:04]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:05]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:31:06]
| Okay, next up. And I guess we can get your interpretation on this one as well.
Only you made this prediction. I said nothing on this one that there would be no major consequences to SpaceX to SpaceX from all the mess with Elon and Twitter.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:23]
| No, nothing's happened.
|
Sam:
[1:31:25]
| Okay. You were right.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:27]
| They're still launching stuff and whatever. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:31]
| Yeah. Yeah. And the government hasn't like pulled business from them or anything like that. Nope.
Although, yeah. And you know, we basically said, look, even if, even if Elon has been exposed as a completely insane madman, the impression of SpaceX is that other people are really in charge.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:52]
| That's pretty much. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:31:54]
| Unlike Twitter, which lurches back and forth day to day, depending on his whims.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:01]
| Ah, today we're going to boost my tweets to everybody at all times.
|
Sam:
[1:32:09]
| Yes. he actually did that once he did that one you know well specifically he did not give that direct order he complained to his staff because his tweets were not getting enough views compared to i don't know barack obama or somebody you know just put him up there have everybody look at my tweets they added a boost to the the algorithm specifically that Elon tweets got like 10,000 extra points or something in the ranking algorithm. Anyway.
Next up, you predicted that if Apple did release the VR slash AR thing, we would do an entire segment on it.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:59]
| Oh, yeah, we did. So we did. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:33:02]
| So you were right.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:03]
| So I was right.
|
Sam:
[1:33:06]
| And specifically, you more generally said Curmudgeon's Corner will devote an entire segment to some sort of new tech in 2023. Obviously, the Apple VR thing makes that true anyway.
But we also did an entire segment on AI and MLM stuff.
And then there were a whole bunch of sub-segments as well. But we said we had to dedicate an entire segment.
But there were at least two tech things where we dedicated an entire segment.
I, however, predicted that we would not devote an entire segment to new tech. And so I was wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:42]
| Nope.
|
Sam:
[1:33:42]
| I mean we're we're doing this show using ai right now i mean this is not me no no not me either yeah we're just ai's talking to each other that's right we're just having two ai's talk to each other do you hear the story about this guy who kept like getting ai generated summaries and you know documents that so it was all ai generated and then he was having the ai I generate bullets of the same summary that was all from oh you find me those bullets generate a document and then the other guy was like turning him back into bullets, yes yes yes, great lazy fuck anyway, next we both predicted that meta as a company would have a bad year financially.
Wrong wrong the stock more than doubled i don't know about other metrics but the stock more than doubled yeah yeah we're wrong yeah we're wrong yeah we're way wrong yeah no yes we were wrong yeah okay next up and then we narrowed it specifically to facebook facebook only only uh-huh you made you made the prediction and and so this this for instance i don't think threads should count because you said facebook okay you said facebook would benefit from twitter's implosion not the company yes yes because we already talked about meta and then we were like okay narrowing it from meta now let's just talk about facebook and you said facebook will benefit Benefit from Twitter's implosion.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:26]
| All right. Well, hold on.
|
Sam:
[1:35:28]
| Do you think Facebook benefited from Twitter's implosion?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:32]
| I don't know, and I'm going to look it up. Okay, let's see.
here we go i got a chart of bau's for facebook in 2023 here's a problem i okay average daily daily average use for facebook did increase in 2023 however i cannot i cannot directly directly attribute it to Twitter.
|
Sam:
[1:36:04]
| Right. So did Facebook benefit from Twitter's implosion? Yes or no?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:09]
| I don't think I can answer that. I can't answer the question.
|
Sam:
[1:36:15]
| We cannot answer the question. So throwing it out. Okay. So the next thing I have to ask you before I state my prediction related to Facebook and it's related to the chart you just pulled up, but don't look at it yet.
Okay. I want you to say, if something is described as flat, what is the maximum percentage change that you think you could legitimately say it was flat year over year?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:41]
| It'd be under 1%.
|
Sam:
[1:36:44]
| Okay, damn it. I said Facebook usage would be flat in 2023. It's up 3.08%.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:51]
| Yeah, I mean, it'd be under 1%. It'd be flat, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:56]
| Okay. Okay, I'll count myself as wrong. I tentatively counted myself as wrong.
But I was hoping you'd say if it was within 5%.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:03]
| No, no, that's not flat. I mean, what the heck? That's got to be under like 1%, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:37:12]
| Okay, fine. Damn you. Okay.
Okay, so 3.08% increase does not count as flat.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:37:22]
| Fine.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:22]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:37:24]
| Okay, now, just like we asked, out of our last five non-prediction show shows, how many would we talk about Donald Trump?
Using the same rules, we said, how many of those shows would we talk about Elon Musk?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:38]
| Five. Like, all of them?
|
Sam:
[1:37:41]
| Now, let me ask. Yeah, you predicted five out of five.
I predicted three out of five. But let me ask one question that is relevant to this. Yeah.
On one show, we spent a lot of time talking about Threads and Mastodon, but we weren't really talking about Twitter.
We were mainly talking about Threads and Mastodon. But of course, that content is relevant to Twitter.
And we also specifically said, discuss Elon Musk-related projects he's involved in.
We didn't specifically say Elon Musk himself. So does that count?
Does a conversation about Threads versus Mastodon count as an Elon Musk related conversation?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:31]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:38:33]
| No? Okay. Then you said five out of five. I said three out of five.
The real answer was zero.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:44]
| Zero?
|
Sam:
[1:38:46]
| That and remember we we defined it we defined it as being significant enough that it went into the description on the website yeah so zero so it doesn't count mentioning him in passing it has to be like a real topic of conversation okay all right well zero good for us all right, okay so time for stats are you ready are you ready i'm ready to be statified I made 22 predictions, of which I got 12 correct, for a stunning 54.5% correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:21]
| Stunning.
|
Sam:
[1:39:23]
| You made 21 predictions, of which you got 15 right, for 71.4%.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:30]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:39:32]
| So our combined total, 43 predictions, 27 correct.
That's 62.8%.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:41]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:39:43]
| And with that, we're going to take another break because we are done with tech and we will come back and we will do our hodgepodge category.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:53]
| Hodge! Hodge!
|
Sam:
[1:39:55]
| And then after hodgepodge, we will take one final break and then we will come.
Back with the gram totals and wrap up the show.
Break time.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:09]
| Break time.
|
Sam:
[1:41:17]
| And now we're back and it's time for HodgePodge.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:21]
| HodgePodge. Potpourri.
|
Sam:
[1:41:24]
| Everyone, everyone. Yes. Yvonne keeps wanting to change it to Potpourri.
A few times I've given him Potpourri segments on the regular show, but I've kept it as HodgePodge for this, you know, cause I mean, and I, and obviously hate him. So.
now and we have talked on the show as well that there's a product called poopery as well oh yes you know that my father has that at home at his house yeah my my yesterday my wife was shopping for supplies for the the place she's renting in olympia with roommates for for her legislative session and she bought some poopery. Oh, wow.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:13]
| There you go. Nice.
|
Sam:
[1:42:16]
| That's why I was reminded of its existence.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:18]
| Otherwise, I probably would have forgotten. My dad has it.
|
Sam:
[1:42:22]
| Does it work?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:24]
| I've never tried it. I see the spray there on the thing. I don't know.
It's got a vent fan. I'm a fan.
I'll get rid of it. yeah for for anybody who can't just intuit this it's intended to get rid of the smell after you've made a smell in a bathroom if i understand that i read the directions you're supposed to spray it into the into the water and it supposedly prevents the smell from leaving the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:42:58]
| Yeah, something, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:00]
| I never actually tried myself.
|
Sam:
[1:43:03]
| We are not sponsored by them. However, if you are out there and are related to the- I want to give us like a million dollars for some kind of endorsement.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:11]
| I will spray my toilet every damn time.
How many times do you want me to spray the toilet?
|
Sam:
[1:43:20]
| Okay, okay. Moving on.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:24]
| I am for sale for that kind of stuff. That kind.
|
Sam:
[1:43:28]
| Our first prediction was on U.S. COVID deaths. Okay.
Now, we predicted this in different formats, which are convertible into each other.
But I just wrote it down the easiest way we each talked about it.
So I'll go with you first.
You predicted the number of new COVID deaths in 2023.
You predicted that it would be between 100,000 and 150,000.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:56]
| Nope. So I gave a range. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:43:58]
| You gave a range. Congratulations. The actual number was 68,465, according to Worldometers.
So you were wrong. Your estimate was way high.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:12]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:44:12]
| Which I can't manage to be very upset about.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:15]
| No, I'm not going to be upset about that. No. I'm like, thank God.
|
Sam:
[1:44:20]
| And I estimated it a different way. instead i gave the total number of deaths from the beginning of the pandemic through the end of 2023, my estimate was 1.645 no let me let me i i gave full precision so i'll do it here too i gave 1 million six hundred forty five thousand seven hundred and six plus or minus ten percent okay, Which actually overlaps with your estimate fairly significantly.
The actual total through to 2023 was 1.19 million.
So I was way over as well. So I was also.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:00]
| Yeah, just a tad. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:45:03]
| Which is good.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:04]
| Yeah, no, no, no. We're good about that. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:45:07]
| And we, by the way, have a bunch of COVID predictions in the next few minutes.
And, you know, this is a theme.
We thought it was going to be worse than it was. So good. Good. Okay.
Next up though, and this is one I've noted we were going to discuss.
We spent a lot of time talking about how there were no reliable numbers out of China for COVID.
And so we did end up predicting that even though there were no reliable numbers out of China, and we thought it was highly likely there still would not be reliable numbers out of China a year later, like now, that there would be independent sources that would trustable sources that would say China had a quote unquote, very significant COVID problem sometime in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:03]
| Well, they had a very big outbreak of something.
Okay. In 2023, that they didn't really clearly explain what the hell it was, that it was overwhelming hospital.
so do we want to say yes yeah i mean yeah i mean let me go look that up but uh i know, yeah because and now people were getting worried, About how it would spread. Here we go. Beijing hospitals overrun with post-COVID surge right here. It's November 24th, 2023, right here.
Surge in respiratory illness amongst, and that's the thing. People weren't saying what.
|
Sam:
[1:46:50]
| Identifying it explicitly as COVID.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:51]
| Correct. Right. But yeah, I mean, they had a.
|
Sam:
[1:46:56]
| So do we want to count us as right as saying they had a significant COVID issue sometime in 2023? Or do we say.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:04]
| I'm saying. Yes, I'm saying yes, because they had what is an on, you know, they did not release stats.
They didn't release information on an overwhelming surge in ill people in what looks like fucking COVID. Okay.
But then they didn't say it was COVID.
|
Sam:
[1:47:25]
| Now we also said like we said that they would have the significant issue at least at the start of 2023 this is something at the end was there anything at the beginning too like I'm willing to say I'm willing to say anytime in the year counts because I think that's what we were really getting at but because we said at least at the beginning and the end is I think fine too but nothing earlier in the year you can point to no no i think i see are you do you think we should count ourselves right anyway i i think so because this looks like it was covid they're saying it wasn't but i'm like oh no it's just the usual flu blah blah blah man you know what usual fucking Fucking flu doesn't overwhelm hospitals in the capital like this. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:21]
| Okay. No.
|
Sam:
[1:48:23]
| Okay. Next up, we both agreed that according to the worldometer numbers, there would be more COVID deaths worldwide in 2023 than 2022. Okay.
So let me give you the actual numbers. And we had a...
We had significant discussion again about how China numbers were unreliable.
So we wouldn't really know the real numbers, but we would go by worldometers.
In 2022, worldwide, the worldometer number was 1,211,465.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:01]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:49:02]
| The 2023 number was 239,612 that's an 80 percent reduction 80 percent thick one so i guess we're wrong i mean they're very very wrong and thank god yeah yeah definitely and and also i'll note i i updated my my covid charts that i used to post for the first time in like nine months months, a few days ago.
And we've pretty consistently been down approximately 80% year over year for most of the last year.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:43]
| Excellent. And we have to thank the Florida Surgeon General, of course, with his great health advice. Yeah. No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:49:53]
| Yeah. Now, there are all kinds of reporting issues you can have, especially worldwide. wide.
Like there's, there's some countries that aren't reporting at all anymore. There's, it's still, you know, if it may not be 80%, but it's way down from where it was. And that looks like it's continuing to be.
So now cases is a whole different story.
And there's all kinds of people talking about, you know, still, you know, long-term health effects and stuff like that, But explicit deaths directly due to COVID at the moment you have COVID, as opposed to, increasing your long-term risk of stroke or something, is way down.
So that's all good. And we finally have good treatments.
They're in use all over the place. The more recent variants are less immediately deadly.
Some of these long-term effects are still there. But, you know, anyway. Okay, next.
And the prediction we split on, no, no, we agreed on this one as well.
We said that average COVID deaths in the U.S.
would not drop below the historical average of flu deaths.
And I apparently spelled flu, F-L-U-E, which is an entirely different kind of death.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:20]
| Oh, okay. All right. We should trademark that too, together with the gas.
|
Sam:
[1:51:24]
| Ass well yeah and this is like and i i admit at this point that i did not look up the number of deaths by people getting stuck in chimneys which would be a flu death with a flue great i'm sure there are some you know like every year you know you occasionally do hear reports of people like like pretending to be Santa and getting stuck in their chimneys. So that does happen.
But anyway, I had looked at the average of the last 10 pre-pandemic years for the historical normal number of flu deaths.
And I had normalized it to a per day, but you can multiply by 365 to get a annual.
Flu deaths before the pandemic averaged 100 people per day.
and obviously flu is highly seasonal, so more of them happened at some part of the year than others, but on average, 100 people per day.
COVID in 2023 was down significantly from its highs, but in the U.S.
was still 188 people per day.
So you still have more people dying of COVID than historically had died of flu in the past by almost double, not quite double, but almost.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:46]
| By the way that by the way blue yes deaths apparently we get about 10 deaths per year, that's okay okay well covid deaths did not fall to that level either no it did not no we get about 10 people a year dying that way by getting stuck in their chimneys basically yeah That would suck.
Yeah, that would be awful. That would be an awful way to go.
|
Sam:
[1:53:19]
| Not like there are a lot of good ways, but that would be a bad one.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:22]
| If I'm going to go, I'm asleep or something or whatever, you know, instantaneous something. I don't even know what happened, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:53:30]
| Yeah. In your sleep and instant are the preferred ways. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:34]
| Yeah. But, you know, it's like, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:53:38]
| Anyway, now I notice I did not compare the number of flu deaths in 2023 to the number of COVID deaths in 2023.
The question was worded, and specifically I looked at the historical amount of flu deaths because the pandemic changed the behavior of the flu too.
We had a couple of years with almost no flu deaths because everybody was being careful and it protected against flu as well.
I think that's rebounded some since then, but it's been weird ever since the pandemic. So it's the historical number. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:13]
| Anyway. way.
|
Sam:
[1:54:14]
| Moving on. I also said, and you did not say anything about this, but I said average COVID deaths per day would not drop below the 350 per day at the end of 2022.
And of course I just said it was 188, so I was wrong.
Okay, next up, the next prediction was the peak average deaths per day from COVID over the course of the year in terms of the seven-day average.
I said it would would be between 700 and a thousand you said it would be between 900 and 1100 okay the act the actual peak for the u.s.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:01]
| Happened in january and was 574 so we were both wrong we were both high okay i mean i didn't smoke any weed but i but i'm trying to avoid i don't like being high.
|
Sam:
[1:55:16]
| Good good good good for you I didn't either no well that's good you didn't inhale I did not inhale you know this is Seattle you can't avoid the smell sometimes so I guess I got some secondhand occasionally but you know because it's legal here and you just walk around I can't avoid it anywhere I mean you know like like unavoidable, and I'm like but you know yes anyway Anyway, okay, we asked the same question for global deaths per day.
I said between 4,000 and 5,000. You said between 3,000 and 4,000.
The actual number also in January was 2,273.
So once again, the actual number was much lower than what both of us predicted, which is great, but we were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:09]
| Oh, well.
|
Sam:
[1:56:12]
| Next were our predictions for time person of the year uh-huh now the actual time person of the year which i did predict a couple weeks ago you were like looking it up and you know no no it was the google thing it's taylor swift but it was the google thing i predicted but yeah the number Number one Google search thing was also Taylor Swift, but neither one of us said Taylor Swift, Yvonne, you said Elon Musk.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:45]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:56:45]
| He was not person of the year. I said that time would do, do one of their lame collective people of the year things like the, the, the people of the internet or like healthcare workers or something.
But, you know, they, They did not do a lame collective people of the year thing.
They did Taylor Swift. But we were both wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:07]
| Yeah, those healthcare workers, lame people. I mean, what the hell? I mean, come on.
|
Sam:
[1:57:12]
| Screw them all.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:13]
| Yeah, exactly. You know, the hell with them.
|
Sam:
[1:57:16]
| Okay. Next up, and a lot of these, by the way, just like this year, a lot of them last year were, listener-generated requests. And this is one of those. we were asked who would the champion be after wrestlemania, what i wouldn't yeah what did i think you said it would be president james madison okay was i right no you were not right okay wow james madison has been dead a while his wrestling performance is subpar okay all right i said it would be jesse ventura, even though he's in the 70s. At least he's a damn wrestler.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:00]
| Okay. And was that right?
|
Sam:
[1:58:02]
| I was also wrong. I, of course, had to look this up because...
Do you see me as a WrestleMania viewer?
|
Ivan:
[1:58:11]
| Do you see me as a WrestleMania viewer?
|
Sam:
[1:58:14]
| The actual answer was Roman Reigns.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:18]
| Fuck, I never heard of this guy. I mean, if you, you know, yeah, no clue.
|
Sam:
[1:58:23]
| We also had a listener request to predict whether Avatar 3 would come out in December of 2023.
And we both said that it would not.
And the reason we said it would not is because avatar 3 was scheduled to come out in 2024 and in fact now it has been pushed back to 2025 they probably meant to ask about avatar 2 which did come out in 2023 but it didn't matter because they asked about avatar 3 we both said it would would not come out in december and we were both correct okay well and i don't think and i don't think avatar 2 came out in december either it came out earlier in the year yeah it came out sometime earlier i remember yeah oh by the way i forgot i at first i was marking every time we had 30 minutes of last year's show and i'd forgotten to do that for the last couple we're we're now at the two hour and 30 minute mark of last year's show so you know we're coming up on the home stretch well we're not we're we're ahead because it was only two hours and 43 minutes long and a few seconds so okay the next one and you'll have to help me we'll debate this one you will look it up we both agreed that the last indiana jones movie would suck fuck oh yeah that's terrible But you specified specifically, Yvonne, that the measurement that you cared about was that it was declared rotten at Rotten Tomatoes.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:04]
| Okay, hold on. Okay. What was the name of the stamp thing?
Indiana Jones and whatever.
|
Sam:
[2:00:12]
| The Dial of Destiny. Dial of Destiny.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:15]
| It was Dial of Destiny. Here we go. Let's see.
|
Sam:
[2:00:20]
| Ah well i failed it's got a 70 approval in rotten tomatoes so 88 audience rating now it did do really badly at the box office but that's not what we said that's not what we said so we were both wrong because it did not get declared rotten nope uh next up the next couple are about both of us collectively and i know my half but i don't know yours for sure so the prediction was that neither Either one of us would receive a fax. Yvonne, did you receive a fax in 2023?
|
Ivan:
[2:00:52]
| No. As a matter of fact, I think I mentioned that my fax was, they canceled my service.
|
Sam:
[2:01:01]
| Yes, I do remember that discussion. But, you know, you could have gotten one at work or one that went somewhere else and you had to pick up.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:08]
| No, nobody sent me a fax that I know of, no.
|
Sam:
[2:01:12]
| Now, the reverse, did either one of us send a fax?
I did not. did you send one no no okay we that's what we predicted and we were both right excellent, next up was predictions on who would be the richest person in in the world at the end of the year we talked about this a little bit last week you said it would be bernard arnault yeah who was the richest person at the end of 2022 and is still the richest person at the end of 2023 23.
I, I picked the person who was number three in 2022. Got them a Donnie. I believe it is his name.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:53]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:01:54]
| Some kind of, I believe he does like shipping or something.
I reports something like that. Anyway, I was like, he's, he's going to have a great year and he'll rock it to the top of the list. He did not. So I would.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:02:10]
| Next was a tennis question you predicted that nadal would win another grand slam, okay he did not he did not no i didn't think he did he had an injury yeah he had an injury very early in the season and then was out basically he tried to come back a couple times it failed see i read his wikipedia page for you yvonne i looked this up and i read the wikipedia page of this tennis guy and and got the yeah he didn't yeah he didn't no okay we both agreed that sam me would not take down my christmas tree in 2023 and we were right absolutely right and i mentioned even last year like of course i'm not going to why would i do something stupid like that like i would just have to put it back up again so no the tree is up the tree is always up the tree will be up for the rest of our lives apparently something like that now some of the decorations came off it and then some more got put on yeah but yeah okay but but did they come Did they come off because somebody removed them, or did they fall off? They fell off.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:30]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:03:33]
| Nobody intentionally removed decorations.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:35]
| Right. They fell off. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:03:37]
| They fell off and were not put back.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:39]
| Very good. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:03:40]
| In many cases, they fell off and then were stepped on and then the pieces were like eventually vacuumed up.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:46]
| Makes sense. Okay. All right. Very good. Very good. Excellent.
|
Sam:
[2:03:50]
| Okay. Next up, and we're down into the silly part of HodgePodge.
Well, we go back to COVID for a second because we forgot something, but whatever. Next up was predictions for Best Picture Oscar.
Ivan, you predicted that Top Gun Maverick would win the Best Picture of the Year.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:12]
| I don't think that's accurate.
|
Sam:
[2:04:14]
| That did not win. I predicted that The Batman would win Best Picture.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:20]
| And?
|
Sam:
[2:04:21]
| It did not. The actual winner was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which I have not seen.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:30]
| I don't even have it. I have no idea what the hell that is.
|
Sam:
[2:04:33]
| I have a vague idea, but not enough that I would trust myself trying to say something about it. Cause I'm sure I'd be wrong.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:41]
| We're not, not, not good at this. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:04:44]
| Okay. Next is number of hurricanes to hit the U S and I believe you actually mentioned the number last week as well, that it was one.
The actual number was one. It was a, I, I daily, yeah. Did I get that name?
Right. Something like that.
And I believe there were actually only three named systems of any kind that hit the US mainland.
But you predicted four and I predicted five. So we were both wrong.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:10]
| We were both very wrong and good.
|
Sam:
[2:05:13]
| Okay, now we went back to COVID for a couple questions.
This was the seven-day average COVID death rate in the U.S. at the end of the year.
I predicted 300 to 400, and then you were so ready to be done with the show, you just said, I predict whatever you predict.
Just copy and paste what you said. So we both predicted 300 to 400.
The actual number was 53.
Now, I note that there's been such a delay of reporting now that at this point, the numbers don't stabilize until one to two months after the fact.
So the numbers for the last week of December aren't actually good yet.
Judging by recent trends, it probably will rise from 53 up to around 100.
But either way, that's not high enough. We said three to 400.
Then we did the same thing for global. And I said 1,000 to 2,000.
You said whatever you say, Sam.
The actual number, again, it was 159.
Again, it will probably rise due to reporting lag, but given recent trends, it'll probably get to about 350, which is nowhere near the range we said.
So we were wrong on those as well.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:31]
| Okay. Very good.
|
Sam:
[2:06:33]
| Then we get to the section where we did celebrity deaths.
You did your traditional Fidel Castro death prediction, but you changed it up last year.
Most years you have said Fidel Castro will still be dead.
That is not what you said this time, and you very explicitly said you were not saying Fidel will still be dead.
Instead, you said in 2023 Fidel will die again.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:05]
| Uh-huh! Did Fidel die again last year?
|
Sam:
[2:07:10]
| No, he did not. okay all right so I was wrong he's he was still dead but he did not undergo a second death he did not undergo.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:21]
| Okay, well, I was wrong.
|
Sam:
[2:07:23]
| And we still don't have zombie Fidel Castro.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:26]
| We still don't have him. Don't make a movie together with like Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse.
|
Sam:
[2:07:33]
| Yeah, exactly. Okay, I predicted that Jimmy Carter would die in 2023, and he is still with us.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:40]
| Well, you're wrong.
|
Sam:
[2:07:42]
| Yeah, he is still with us.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:44]
| By the way, I actually noticed that my wife had gifted me a couple of years ago.
the front page of the New York Times of the day that I was born February 2nd, 1971, I have somewhere over here and Jimmy Carter is on the cover of that appointing somebody to the Senate seat for Georgia as governor, on there they're also talking about an Apollo moon landing, that they're on that but yeah, Jimmy Carter is on the cover on the paper as governor of the day I was born 50 freaking years ago.
|
Sam:
[2:08:26]
| If I remember correctly, the headline on the day I was born, September 16th, 1971, was the prison riots in Attica, New York.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:39]
| Jesus Christ, I don't know how to explain that.
|
Sam:
[2:08:41]
| I'm checking that right now. It started on September 9th, 1971, and ended on September 13th.
So it was over by the time I was born on the 16th, but I believe there were still headlines about it, I guess, because I've looked this up before.
How well. And here I thought it was happening at the moment I was born, but no, apparently it had ended a couple days previously, but was still in the news.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:09:10]
| So, oh well. Okay, back to the thingy.
You explicitly said that you were contradicting yourself from earlier, but that you were doing it intentionally to make sure you were right on one of them.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:23]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:09:24]
| Because earlier, earlier you had predicted that Donald Trump would still be alive at the end of the year, and now you predicted that Donald Trump will die in 2023.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:33]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:09:34]
| And he did not.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:35]
| He did not. Oh well.
|
Sam:
[2:09:37]
| Now technically you could have been right on both counts if like you know he had a heart attack and they brought him back or something although even there you would have a debate whether you're going by a heart-stopping definition of death or a brain death definition of death and brain death is usually better and you can't come back yeah but well not better not like brain death is a good thing i didn't mean that i just meant a better definition of death because it really is permanent it anyway at least as far as we know so far okay next up we we split on this one, i said to 2023 would be the warmest year ever you said it would not be i was wrong it was it was it was you did say however that 2023 would be in the top five hottest years oh that and you were right write about that.
And then our very, very last prediction is, We both agreed that 2023 would see a new all-time recorded low for global sea ice.
And we were correct.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:49]
| We were correct.
|
Sam:
[2:10:50]
| There was a new low set in June.
And that brings us to the end of the HodgePodge section.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:58]
| HodgePodge!
|
Sam:
[2:11:00]
| Okay, here are the numbers for HodgePodge, and then we'll take a break and total up the grand totals.
but hodgepodge i made 22 predictions of which i got eight right wow that's 36.4 percent that's sad you made 24 predictions of which you got nine correct that's 37.5 that's right So while still pitiful, you slightly beat me.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:34]
| There you go. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:11:37]
| Our collective number, we made 46 predictions of which we got 17 right. That's 37.0%.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:44]
| We really did terrible.
|
Sam:
[2:11:47]
| Are you excited?
|
Ivan:
[2:11:48]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:11:48]
| Our hodgepodge section.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:50]
| We really, we really, we really torpedoed ourselves in the hodgepodge.
|
Sam:
[2:11:56]
| Yeah. Okay. Let's take a break. And we will come back and we will do the grand totals. And we will also compare how we did this year versus last year and maybe some previous years too.
We'll see. Back after this.
Okay, we are back. So first, let's do some comparisons with last year.
And I'll just do our collective numbers rather than us individually for the comparison to last year.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:08]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:14:08]
| So in 2023, if you remember, in the politics category, we got 72.6% correct.
Last year, we only got 68.1%. So we are improved in politics over last year.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:25]
| Okay, wow, there we go.
|
Sam:
[2:14:28]
| So next up, international. In international this year, our collective number was 93.3%, whereas last year it was 80.
Wow. So significant improvement in international this year.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:45]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[2:14:46]
| And then economy, our collective number 68.8% this year compared to 52.9% last year.
Again, a significant boost year over year.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:01]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:15:03]
| Technology. This year in technology, 62.8%.
Last year in technology, 37.5%. That's a massive improvement.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:18]
| I mean, I could tell we were improved across the board, definitely.
|
Sam:
[2:15:22]
| No doubt yes and then finally hodgepodge this year in hodgepodge as we just said right before the break 37.0 percent last year in hodgepodge 48.1 so we we did get worse in hodgepodge oh well okay now it's time for our overall numbers overall numbers putting everything together Put everything on the table.
Everything on the table. I made 119 predictions, of which I got 81 correct.
That's 68.1% correct.
You...
made 116 predictions of which 74 were correct.
And that's 63.8%. So I beat you. You got 63.8. I got 68.1.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:20]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[2:16:21]
| Putting that together, we made 235 predictions and got 155 right.
That is 60, rounding to the nearest 10th like everything else, that is 66.0%.
So nearly two thirds. Okay. So, and then comparing to last year, specifically last year, our overall everything number was 61.7%.
So we've gone from 61.7 up to 66.
Now I will also say, I looked back at the historical numbers.
We have beaten this number before.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:58]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:16:59]
| But it has been a long time, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:03]
| No, I know. We had been on a downward trend, so we definitely, definitely improved.
|
Sam:
[2:17:11]
| Yeah, so we're at 66% now. The last time we did better was our predictions for 2016.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:20]
| No, we did better except for one.
|
Sam:
[2:17:22]
| That year in 2016, we got 73%.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:29]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[2:17:31]
| And wait, you said you said we did better than one. I think you're you there may be a certain thing you might be referring to regarding Hillary and Trump.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:43]
| Yeah. Yeah.
I think I may have screwed a pooch on that one.
|
Sam:
[2:17:48]
| So just looking at 2016, by the way, I did predict that Trump would be the nominee, but you predicted the Republican nominee would be Rubio.
And I predicted, I did predict that if it was Clinton versus Rubio, I know, let's just forget that.
I predicted that Clinton would win. You predicted that Clinton would win.
Yeah, that, that didn't work. we made different predictions depending on which Republican would be there, like how big the margins were, but we both predicted Clinton would win and yeah, it would have been nice.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:25]
| It would have been nice.
|
Sam:
[2:18:26]
| The history of the last few years would have been very, very different. But anyway, yeah.
In both 2015 and 2016, we did better, but that's a long time.
That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven years.
You know, So, you know, the one, two, yeah, this is the best we've done in seven years, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:51]
| Wow. Wow. There you go.
|
Sam:
[2:18:56]
| 66%, 155 out of 235. So that's it.
Hey, everybody, we'll, we'll be back to a normal show next week where we talk about the actual news of the week and stuff like that.
And, and just, just to be clear where we are, and this is an election year.
next week's show will be the last show before the iowa caucus.
So and only the republicans are having one that matters this year the democrats did successfully dethrone iowa of the and then new hampshire is weird for the democrats because biden isn't in it so the first real one for the democrats won't be till south carolina but or nevada i i should check here.
Hold, give me, give me like a second, a second. I've got this stuff up here, the calendar, the chronological calendar. Here we go.
No, Nevada will be for South Carolina for the Democrats.
But anyway, so we got, we got an election year. It's going to be a rocky ride.
We got all Trump's legal issues.
We've got, you know, it's going to be a crazy year.
It's just just going to be a crazy year. But, but anyway, that's it for our, our predictions review.
We'll see how the predictions we made last year for 2024 go. Will we beat, Our, our 66% from this year, we shall see.
So normal stuff to end the show, go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
You can find all the ways to contact us. You can find the archives of the show.
And of course you can find a link to our Patreon if you want to give us some money.
At various levels, we will mention you on the show.
We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard.
We will send you a mug, all of that kind of stuff. And very importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask nicely, we will add you to our Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where we're talking throughout the week.
And by the way, one of our listeners, Pete, asked us nicely, or asked me nicely, Pete asked me nicely, can I be added to your Curmudgeon's Corner Slack this week?
|
Ivan:
[2:21:08]
| And he is slackering now.
|
Sam:
[2:21:10]
| And I added him, and he's participating, and so thank you very much, Pete.
Even though you decided to do it by just asking nicely instead of giving us tons of money.
Yes. You know, but that's okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:23]
| I prefer a multi-million dollar check. But in lieu of that, yes.
|
Sam:
[2:21:29]
| I'm sure Pete has that ready to go at any time.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:32]
| I mean, I'm sure he's probably got it in a drawer somewhere. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[2:21:38]
| So, you know, just open up that drawer, jiggle it around a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:42]
| Send us what you find.
|
Sam:
[2:21:44]
| I'm sure it'll be plenty anyway thanks for joining us Pete and for the rest of you we would love to have more of you on the curmudgeon's course slack the more the merrier it's lots of fun and what else, it's a long show so we're not going to do something interesting from the slack this week we'll do that we'll get back to normal doing that next week so that's it hey and it's almost 2 in the morning for Yvonne so we should let him go to sleep, yeah yawning yvonne okay thanks everybody have a great week stay safe hope you had a good new year and all that as well nothing else to say but goodbye bye goodbye bye, Okay, hitting stop.
|
