Sam: I can't hear you. Hold on.
Ivan: I can hear you.
Sam: Ah, that's why. Hello. Hello.
Ivan: Can you hear me now?
Sam: Yes, I can hear you now.
Ivan: I can hear you now. You're over there watching some program about kids not having
Ivan: to cross the border four times to go to school.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. It was a CGP gray clip on TikTok. His YouTube's great. You should check it out.
Ivan: I have seen some. something from him.
Sam: Okay. Yeah, I had no idea you were there. Okay. And then all of a sudden,
Sam: I'm like, wait a second, the live stream just came up. Okay.
Sam: Let's get everything toasted.
Ivan: Toasted. Okay. All right. Well, that's one.
Sam: Toasted. Toasted. Here we go. Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Sunday, January 4th, 2026.
Sam: Welcome to another Curmudgeons Corner. This is Sam Minter and Yvonne Boas here with us. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hello. This year already feels way too long.
Sam: It's only been four days.
Ivan: It's only been four days!
Sam: Not even the full fourth day yet.
Ivan: No!
Sam: Anyway, this is another of our special shows.
Sam: This is our review of our 2025 predictions.
Sam: Now, we did have at least one significant news event since last week's show.
Sam: We went into Venezuela and took Maduro, and there's undoubtedly lots to talk about that.
Sam: We've got a big review show to do, though, Yvonne. Do you want to say anything
Sam: about Venezuela before we move on, or can we save that till next week?
Sam: I mean, there may be more developments by next week, too.
Ivan: Here's the one weird thing about this whole Venezuela thing, okay? Right?
Ivan: Or maybe it's not weird. I guess it's actually expected.
Ivan: I believe that when I spoke about this on the show,
Ivan: sometime well before this happened right now, My main concern was,
Ivan: it's not that Maduro isn't an illegal dictator that I think should be removed.
Ivan: There has been a massive exodus of people. Look, I know people that have died under Maduro, okay?
Ivan: People that have had to go into exile because being persecuted by Maduro,
Ivan: okay? This isn't some kind of abstract thing that it is for most people in the
Ivan: United States that are talking a lot about it and have no clue, okay?
Ivan: Oh, well, there is this duly elected person. The entire elections in Venezuela
Ivan: have been a fraud for 20 years, okay?
Ivan: They have, I mean, independent observers have said this repeatedly,
Ivan: that the elections have been a sham, all of them, okay? So don't tell me this
Ivan: thing, that there is some lawful government.
Ivan: He illegally took power.
Ivan: Chavez took it first, transferred to him, and he's kept it.
Ivan: And they have systematically done a campaign of terror against the population,
Ivan: jailed the opposition, murdered them,
Ivan: incited murder against people, persecuted them, and left people to die.
Ivan: Repeatedly that the the number the
Ivan: the diaspora of venezuelans that has occurred over the last 15 years is crazy
Ivan: okay you there has been no country that's experienced such a mass migration
Ivan: in the americas especially one that was as developed as venezuela in the last
Ivan: you know in history and so quickly.
Ivan: So, but my problems at the beginning was, well,
Ivan: if Trump is doing this, he's not doing it for any good reasons and probably
Ivan: has no plan other than some vague thing about we're going to be rich.
Sam: Well, and I'll add, and we had a discussion on the curmudgeon's course slack about this.
Sam: There's also process issues. I mean, there's like.
Ivan: Donald, whether or not even the international ones or not, the U.S.
Ivan: processes. Yes.
Sam: Whether or not you agree with the ultimate goal. And I think there's,
Sam: you know, there's multiple issues.
Sam: There's there's whether you think, you know, it would be better if Maduro was gone.
Sam: There's, do you think the U.S. should intervene in making sure Maduro is gone?
Sam: And then there's the process. These are all independent questions, right?
Sam: Then there's the question of what's the right way to do it and what's legal and what's not.
Sam: And it's fairly clear that, you know, although I did see some legal analysis
Sam: saying there is some debate even here, But Donald Trump did not follow any of
Sam: the processes you would expect to be followed to do this kind of stuff.
Sam: Yes, 100%. He didn't go to Congress. He didn't build public support domestically. He didn't do Jack.
Ivan: I mean, what's the justification? How did he justify this for Americans? Okay?
Sam: Well, that's changed every 10 seconds.
Ivan: Yeah, but let me be clear. I've always said, what the— Listen, everybody—,
Ivan: It keeps making this too complicated. Trump is transactional,
Ivan: okay? As we all know. The transaction is super simple.
Ivan: Damn it. I shared with you. You guys don't understand.
Ivan: Trump Doral is in Doral.
Ivan: Doral is the biggest fucking community of the Venezuelan diaspora.
Ivan: A lot of those people have money. A lot of those people were members of the
Ivan: Trump fucking country club. God damn it.
Sam: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Ivan: This is transactional with those people that probably promised them riches,
Ivan: things, whatever. Hey, get us our country back and we'll make you rich.
Ivan: That's it. I guarantee you.
Ivan: There is nothing else.
Sam: Right. Yeah. As usual, he's pushing the personal stuff you talked about. He's pushing oil.
Sam: There's this. There's that. And the oil people don't even.
Ivan: Well, the oil part is.
Sam: He's like having to like coerce the oil companies to like participate in this
Sam: because they don't really want to anyway.
Ivan: The problem with the oil, OK,
Ivan: is that, you know, Venezuela had infrastructure and a very capable oil workforce
Ivan: that had been there up until the sometime in the 2000s.
Ivan: Decades of investment.
Ivan: A vertically integrated extraction, refining, distribution with Citgo in the
Ivan: United States as well. part of that, that generated quite a lot of money.
Ivan: And by the way, it was also the most efficient per employee oil company in the
Ivan: world back before Hugo Chavez took over, okay?
Ivan: And Hugo Chavez destroyed that, okay?
Ivan: Because what he, you know, the first thing that he did when he came in is that
Ivan: he decided that he wanted the company to, well, I want to do all these programs.
Ivan: You need to give me more money. You need to give me more money.
Ivan: And he was demanding so much money. Okay. You're, you're, you're making us take
Ivan: money away from the investment that we regularly do to maintain production. Okay.
Ivan: We can't, you can't, you can't extract that much money from the company without
Ivan: destroying its future ability to produce oil, okay?
Ivan: You know, these facilities need continuous reinvestment.
Ivan: And he kept doing that, and then he said, all you people aren't loyal,
Ivan: and then he fired all the oil employees, okay?
Ivan: And so for a while, as it happens with these organizations, oh,
Ivan: you see, I fired all the people, so everything's fine.
Ivan: Well, everything started breaking down over years as the lack of maintenance,
Ivan: the lack of knowledge, the lack of investment took its toll on oil production,
Ivan: where oil production now in Venezuela, even though reserves are still there,
Ivan: is down over 80, 90 percent.
Ivan: 80, 90 percent. They have lost 80 to 90 percent of their oil producing capacity.
Ivan: This is because of all the disinvestment and all the refineries and everything.
Ivan: There was an article in the New York Times the last couple of years that showed
Ivan: the environmental devastation in Venezuela from the lack of attention that has
Ivan: been paid to all these facilities that have just completely broken down, exploded,
Ivan: started leaking.
Ivan: just are non-functional and have just created environmental devastation wherever
Ivan: they are located, okay? Because they've just been left to rot.
Sam: So anyway, I want to make sure...
Ivan: So an oil company, okay, the point is you go, oh, Exxon, go down there and invest
Ivan: and you're looking at this rusting hulk of shit, okay?
Ivan: And wait, before I pull anything, I got to invest how much money?
Ivan: And by the way, this isn't light sweet crude oil, which is the easy one,
Ivan: It's bunker oil, so I have to have the refineries, and you guys destroyed the fucking refineries.
Ivan: Venezuela used to make all their own gasoline. You could buy gasoline in Venezuela
Ivan: 20 years ago at four cents a gallon, okay? Right now, they have to import gasoline.
Sam: So, anyway, we've got multiple things here.
Sam: We've got, okay, we got the guy, we pulled him out, which apparently, like, look,
Sam: Everything else equal, the fact that we were able to go in, swoop in,
Sam: grab the president and out with apparently minimal casualties,
Sam: even on the Venezuelan side, they're reporting 40 dead,
Sam: which is not nothing, but it is a lot less than it could be.
Ivan: Um and and by the way why do you i'm telling you the reason it happened is because
Ivan: the support for maduro is so low that none of those people that were there yes
Ivan: he had this entire security apparatus or whatever but when push came to shove
Ivan: they're like yeah fuck him take him.
Sam: Well well there's at least some reports going around and i think there's a lot
Sam: of reporting that hasn't been
Sam: fully verified yet, you know, but there's some reporting that the U.S.
Sam: was in back-channel conversations through Dubai with the VP about,
Sam: hey, I'm actually better than Maduro.
Sam: Let's get rid of him and you can deal with me instead, you know, this kind of stuff.
Sam: Yeah. So there's, but again, okay.
Ivan: But again, my point is that there was nobody, everybody, nobody there had the level of loyalty,
Ivan: to go and just, you know, start a shooting over defending Maduro. Okay.
Ivan: So your VP, who, by the way, they said is the main person, like,
Ivan: supporter of him, basically is like, oh, yeah, sure, I'll do it.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, get rid of him.
Sam: Anyway, anyway, we've got several different distinct issues, I think, here. One is...
Sam: Is it good to get rid of Maduro? Two, is how Donald Trump did this appropriate?
Sam: And then number three, which you brought up earlier, is there a plan going forward?
Sam: Because it already seems like no.
Ivan: There's no plan. And that was the whole fucking problem.
Ivan: I always said from the beginning, because if you were going to do this,
Ivan: the right approach, which is like the approach that happened in Panama,
Ivan: was that very quickly we had an interim government and we set up a free election.
Ivan: And that's it. OK.
Sam: But here's the thing. Even facts on the ground versus what Donald Trump is saying
Sam: versus the justification they gave are all different at this point.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: The official justification is we're going in. This is a criminal arrest.
Sam: The whole military aspect was just to support the arrest. The FBI is going in.
Sam: They're arresting him for drug charges.
Ivan: Listen, there had been ample evidence for a long time before for this that Maduro
Ivan: had used the military in Venezuela to traffic drugs in order to enrich himself.
Sam: Fine. But that justification lends towards we're in and out.
Sam: We grabbed him and then we're done. We have nothing to do with anything else whatsoever.
Sam: Meanwhile, Donald Trump is talking about regime change.
Sam: And we're going to run the country. Rubio is going to be in charge or whatever.
Sam: And I mean, wait.
Ivan: He said that he said, wait, wait, wait, he did say that. No, he didn't say that.
Sam: You you said that. I thought I thought you were channeling.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no. I that was just on my bingo card that I made up this bingo card.
Ivan: And I thought Rubio won't be in charge of Venezuela.
Sam: I thought you had actually heard him say that. No, what I can verify that he
Sam: said was that there will be sort of a committee of the important people.
Sam: When he was asked who will be in charge, he gestured around to the people in the room.
Sam: So that was Rubio, Hegseth, a few other people from the cabinet and military.
Sam: So basically he was like, it's us, us here in this room. We're the ones who
Sam: are going to be in charge. But meanwhile, on the ground...
Ivan: We're doing nothing. I mean, that's what I'm saying. I don't understand.
Sam: In order to impose something like that, you can't just go in,
Sam: grab the president, and leave because the VP is ostensibly in charge now.
Sam: There's the person who actually, quote unquote, won the previous rigged election
Sam: who was an opposition figure who reportedly got a significant landslide, actually.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: And then we've got that lady who won the Nobel Peace Prize, who's also in the contention.
Ivan: That was Weidol, who all reports say that he did—I mean, there was a lot of
Ivan: data that showed that he won the election in a landslide, yes.
Sam: But anyway, the facts on the ground are not us occupying Venezuela.
Sam: So all of this talk about all of these things we intend to do there,
Sam: where the hell is that coming from, unless there's a lot more coming up?
Ivan: I know where they're coming from, Sam.
Sam: And what Hegseth said— Wait, wait.
Ivan: No, I know where they're coming from.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Out of his ass.
Sam: Yes, yes. Well, and— I mean.
Ivan: Am I wrong?
Sam: No, you're not wrong, but I think there's at least some question of whether,
Sam: you know, whether he's just making shit up or whether he's actually delusional.
Sam: You know, and whether there's a delta between— I mean.
Ivan: I think that right now it's very difficult to discern the difference between those two.
Sam: Yes, is he lying or is he delusional? We don't know.
Ivan: Who the hell knows? Who the hell knows? Right.
Sam: Right. So, and how this plays out ends up being very different if we really
Sam: are done or whether there's more coming.
Ivan: Listen, if we don't want a repeat of Iraq, I will say the one thing, okay?
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: That leaving the current government in charge,
Ivan: Is one way of ensuring that we don't have the kind of collapse that led to a
Ivan: lot more bloodshed, like in Iraq, where we went and we created this vacuum that created just.
Sam: If you actually work with this, this government and try to coerce them into,
Sam: oh, OK, a year from now, you'll have real elections.
Ivan: You'll be right. You're going to have a independent monitor,
Ivan: you know, election that is free and fair.
Ivan: We're going to give you this timeline. You're going to do this and whatever.
Ivan: and, you know, you're going to do those actions, then OK.
Ivan: But that I mean that that but but but but the point is that they didn't seem
Ivan: to have that planned already.
Ivan: They went in and did this without without this already structured.
Sam: According to what Trump said in his news conference, this VP had told Rubio
Sam: that she'd be cooperative.
Sam: Of course, then she immediately gave a speech saying, no, no,
Sam: absolutely not. But of course, she has to. Right.
Ivan: Right. So who knows what's really
Ivan: going on? Right. Who knows what's really going on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: Okay. We should move on and do our actual show for today.
Sam: So let me introduce and then we'll take a break and then we'll get into it.
Sam: Basically, if you listened to last week's show, you heard us do our predictions
Sam: for 2026. A year and a week ago, we did our predictions for 2025.
Sam: There were five sections, politics, international, economy, technology, and hodgepodge.
Sam: So we are going to, when we come back, we are going to review the predictions we made a year ago.
Sam: I spent about, I don't know, five hours or so going over last week's show over
Sam: the last, I started last night, finished this morning.
Ivan: Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh my God.
Ivan: Oh my God. Oh my God. I gotta pull out my bingo card And cross it off Washington
Ivan: Post front cover Rubio takes on his most challenging role yet Viceroy Of Venezuela,
Ivan: Yes Shit.
Sam: You know, he should just move there into the presidential palace.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: You know, so, yeah. He can do that and be secretary of state here at the same time, right?
Ivan: I thought that I was, like, really stretching it by saying, let me put,
Ivan: you know, somebody said, hey, make a 2026 bingo card, all sorts of crazy stuff.
Ivan: So I got Putin dying and, you know, Ukraine at peace.
Ivan: I don't know, whatever. And I said, you know what? Rubio's in charge of Venezuela. Fuck it.
Ivan: I just wrote that like three days ago and boom! I didn't even get to...
Sam: Anyway Anyway we are going to have after this we're going to take a break and
Sam: then we'll come back and we'll do one segment for each of these we will go over
Sam: all of the predictions we made.
Sam: I listened to the show carefully. I wrote down every prediction that either
Sam: Yvonne or I made for most of them I tried to do a preliminary fact check so
Sam: that I know whether we were right or wrong.
Sam: For some of them, Yvonne and I will have to discuss to make a final determination.
Sam: But that's basically the plan.
Sam: And, you know, last week's show, yeah, the prediction show is usually the longest
Sam: of the year. This is usually like the second longest of the year.
Sam: So let's get to it. We're going to take the first break and then we'll come
Sam: back and talk about our politics predictions for 2025 and see how we did.
Sam: How do you think we did, Yvonne? I think we did good.
Ivan: I have no idea Okay.
Sam: Here we go Break, break, break,
Sam: I will mention that he has been posting on that channel again.
Sam: There was a new video posted just yesterday. It's an almost one hour long video,
Sam: most of which is the camera pointed at the wall of his room with nobody visible.
Sam: But you can hear him and his grandmother talking.
Ivan: Well, that's riveting.
Sam: As they work on a story.
Ivan: Are we going to nominate this for like some kind of like gold?
Sam: Globe or academy a webby.
Ivan: A webby best short film uh you know unscripted short film i don't know something.
Sam: I don't know it's that episode's long enough i'm not sure it qualifies as a
Sam: short i mean it's not a full it's not feature length i think you have to be
Sam: over an hour for that and it's like 54 minutes or something okay so.
Ivan: It quite you know it's a short film.
Sam: I guess so yeah Although when I think about short films, I'm usually thinking
Sam: like 20 minutes or something.
Ivan: 15, 20 minutes.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: It's under an hour.
Sam: Okay. Let's get started. And I'm trying to figure out like the right place to
Sam: put all my windows so I can see everything I need to see.
Ivan: Can I just mention again on the affordability? Well, two quick things before we go.
Sam: Yes, yes.
Ivan: Number one is on the affordability crisis right now. My last coffee order,
Ivan: my coffee that used to be $12 a pound came in at $23 per pack. Okay. All right.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: So much for that thing. So that's one thing.
Ivan: The second thing is that I don't remember anymore. So let's move on.
Sam: That was very profound, Yvonne. Thank you for interjecting that.
Ivan: I know that I usually have, you know, very profound things. Oh,
Ivan: no, no. The polymarkets thing.
Sam: Oh, yes, yes.
Ivan: You didn't see somebody went and like made a killing in polymarkets on the Venezuela invasion?
Sam: You posted that on our curmudgeon's corner slack like 12 hours after I did. But yes, go ahead.
Ivan: Well, no, that somebody did. Well, I didn't see that you put it.
Ivan: That somebody went and did it.
Sam: They put in a whole bunch of money on Venezuela-related issues a few hours before it happened.
Ivan: Now, here's the one thing. On that bet, man, it could have been almost anybody.
Ivan: You could have been a military guy for all, you know.
Ivan: I mean, hey, you know, you're one of the soldiers. You're going to send to Venezuela.
Ivan: You're like, well, fuck this.
Ivan: Polymarket, boom. I'm putting in money and we're invading Venezuela. Boom.
Sam: Yeah.
Sam: It could have been anybody. You're right. The number of people who knew,
Sam: quote unquote, knew something more definitive than the general public was in the thousands.
Ivan: It was in the thousands. Yeah. So, yeah.
Sam: So, we can't just automatically point this to Hegseth or something.
Ivan: Right. Which I have falling off a carrier drunk during 2026,
Ivan: and I would like to see if that happens.
Sam: On your bingo card?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: That would be cool.
Sam: It would be interesting. can we get started yes.
Ivan: Let's get started.
Sam: Okay our first prediction last year was about elon musk and how he would end
Sam: his time as advisor to the president we both agreed well,
Sam: actually this is slightly different your prediction was just that he would not
Sam: last the year as an advisor you were correct.
Ivan: That was correct.
Sam: Okay i was more
Sam: specific i had several bits on this one
Sam: was that musk would not be fired by tweet and
Sam: i was right i mean there was a there was
Sam: a tweet battle but they had a little going away for
Sam: him party for him in the oval office they had some
Sam: other stuff going on they they had pre-announced the
Sam: date before it actually happened for for his
Sam: official end date right um so i'm counting myself
Sam: as right and i will say that rather
Sam: than a formal firing i also said it would just sort of become more and more
Sam: clear that trump had stopped paying attention to musk and i think even before
Sam: he officially left that was already starting to happen but what do you think
Sam: should i should i count that for me or no.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay. I counted as yes.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Yeah. And then I said Musk will be gone by the end of June as a meaningful advisor.
Sam: His farewell in the Oval Office that I mentioned was May 30th.
Sam: His tweet about Trump being in the Epstein files was June 5th.
Sam: So I think I did good on timing. I said before the end of June and May.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Yes on that. Then, next up, we both agreed that there would be no legislation
Sam: passed to privatize the U.S.
Sam: Postal Service. And we were correct.
Ivan: Okay, good.
Sam: Okay, next up, you said that the Trump inauguration crowd size would be bigger than 2016.
Sam: Were you right, Yvonne?
Ivan: I don't know. Was I?
Sam: No, because they moved it inside and it was an invited crowd only because of weather.
Ivan: Oh, because of the weather. That's right.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Oh, wow.
Sam: So you were wrong. Meanwhile, I did predict that it would be smaller than 2016 and I was right.
Sam: Although I did not like give the, it was be because of weather and all that.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: It was smaller.
Ivan: Well, I was wrong.
Sam: I further said that clump.
Ivan: Clump, clump, I further claim Donald clump. Yes.
Sam: I said that Donald Trump will claim it was bigger though. And in fact,
Sam: not only that, but claim that it was the biggest ever.
Ivan: He did.
Sam: No, he didn't. He did neither of those things because it was inside and stuff.
Sam: So I got both of those wrong.
Ivan: Oh God. Oh, well.
Sam: Okay. Next, we both said there would be no recess appointments for the cabinet,
Sam: that Donald Trump would not need to do that.
Sam: There were, in fact, no recess appointments. They were all regular appointments for the cabinet.
Sam: So we were both right on that.
Sam: We both agreed that there would be a full cabinet in place by October 1st.
Sam: That was a date that Bruce gave us. We both said that was plenty of time.
Sam: We were both correct. In fact, the last cabinet position to be filled was March 10th.
Sam: You have a guess as to which cabinet position was last?
Ivan: Health secretary?
Sam: No, labor.
Ivan: Labor.
Sam: Health was somewhere in the middle.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. And then we both confidently agreed that there was absolutely no question
Sam: whatsoever that there would be some cabinet turnover by the end of the year.
Sam: In fact, all 21 members of Donald Trump's cabinet were confirmed and have been
Sam: there ever since and are still there.
Ivan: I'd say that's one of the more shocking developments.
Ivan: this year, the fact that there's been no turnover in the cabinet because that
Ivan: was a regular of the first term.
Sam: Well, cause I think the difference is this year he 100% went for loyalty.
Sam: Whereas last time around, he got a whole bunch of people that other folks were
Sam: telling him were experts or were good or had, you know, knew about the space
Sam: or whatever. And he didn't like any of those people because they kept telling him no.
Ivan: So he hired a cabinet of yes, men. And because the cabinet is a cabinet of yes, men and women,
Ivan: they, you know, they're all still there. Okay.
Sam: Yeah. So we were both wrong on that one. We both agreed that there would be
Sam: no January 6th type drama before the inauguration. We were correct.
Ivan: So a bunch of Democrats that didn't go and like invade the Capitol.
Sam: No, nothing like that. And I also went further and said there won't even be
Sam: the kind of drama we had in 2016, where there were some objections at the January
Sam: 6th ceremonies that were instantly overridden.
Sam: We didn't even have that, I don't think. So I'm counting myself right on that.
Sam: We also both agreed, because there was a little bit of chatter that maybe Biden
Sam: would be creative with this, but no mini-Harris presidency between Biden and Trump.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: A few folks were toying around with the idea, it was really half a joke,
Sam: that Biden could resign like a one week early, let Harris be president for a week so that, you know,
Sam: Trump wouldn't be 47, we'd have a woman president for at least a little bit,
Sam: you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: No, that did not happen. So we were both correct.
Sam: I further predicted that Biden would indeed attend the inauguration and hand it over. I was right.
Sam: we both agreed that trump would still be president at the end of the year we were correct,
Sam: You further predicted to go along with that, that Trump will not die. You got that right.
Ivan: I went, wow, I went.
Sam: I will say you hedged your bets and later in the show, you predicted that he will die. So, you know.
Ivan: Oh, so I played both sides. Okay.
Sam: You played both sides. But for this segment, you predicted he would not.
Ivan: Okay, great. Good job, Ivan.
Sam: We both said that there would be at least one additional assassination attempt on Trump.
Sam: Not that has been publicized. Not in this year.
Sam: I did look up, there were, I believe, three security incidents.
Sam: including one where they found like what looked like a hideout that had a view
Sam: of somewhere that Trump was scheduled to be, but they didn't find a person. They didn't find a gun.
Sam: They didn't actually like, you know, whatever.
Sam: So, but there were, there were security incidents, but there were no flat out
Sam: assassination attempts.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. So we were both wrong on that one.
Sam: next up we both agreed that the sentencing in the new york case would be delayed
Sam: past 2025 because they would delay it until after his term yeah we were wait no.
Ivan: No we were wrong yeah sentencing was was passed.
Sam: They sentencing was handed down on january 10th it was basically nothing but
Sam: it was handed down i had said the new york case would not be dismissed because
Sam: there was some talk of it just being dismissed.
Sam: I was right. It was not dismissed.
Sam: Next up, you know, I will stop here for a second.
Sam: We have gone through a whole bunch of these so far, and basically there's been
Sam: no discussion yet, which is unusual for us.
Sam: Oftentimes when we go through these, at least some of these prompt some discussion
Sam: on who's right, who's wrong, what happened, what didn't, you know,
Sam: but no, so far these have been pretty straightforward.
Sam: Next up, we both agreed that the Trump administration would openly investigate
Sam: their opponents or the press.
Sam: We were both correct. They absolutely did.
Sam: Then we split on whether or not there would actually be indictments of those
Sam: folks that were investigated.
Sam: You said yes. I said no. You were right. There were actual indictments resulting
Sam: from these investigations this year. We had, you know, the Letitia James one, we had the Comey one.
Sam: Now, those indictments haven't gone very far.
Ivan: But they were indictments.
Sam: But they were, in fact, indicted.
Sam: Okay, next up. We both predicted that there would be no direct U.S.
Sam: military involvement in places the U.S. was not already involved in 2024.
Sam: We were wrong.
Ivan: Where did we go that wasn't on the bingo?
Sam: Well, if nothing else, Venezuela. Yeah, but wait, wait.
Ivan: Wait.
Sam: No, no, the actual thing at the end that we said was in January,
Sam: but we attacked some docks the last week of December.
Ivan: That's true. Okay. Yeah.
Sam: And someone posted the other day a list of countries Trump has bombed.
Sam: And it apparently, the 2025 number for the number of separate countries the U.S.
Sam: has bombed was greater in 2025 than in any other year in the history of the country.
Ivan: Wow. Damn.
Sam: Because we had Nigeria. That was new, too, by the way. We bombed Nigeria.
Ivan: Nigeria was, yeah, I know. I was like, we're trying to remember which place.
Sam: But yeah, Nigeria. We bombed Nigeria, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Venezuela.
Sam: I'm missing a couple. There were like seven or eight total.
Ivan: Yeah, we're doing great.
Sam: Somalia. Did I say Somalia? I think we've done that as well.
Ivan: No, no, we didn't say Somalia, but yeah, fuck it.
Sam: So, like, if I had the list handy, I'd read it. But, like, those are just off the top of my head.
Sam: Anyway, so we were both wrong on that one. We both agreed that there would be
Sam: no invasion of Panama. We were correct.
Sam: We both agreed there would be no invasion of Greenland. We were correct.
Ivan: We were both correct.
Sam: We both agreed that the Trump tax cuts would be extended. We were both correct.
Sam: I, however, was stupid and became more specific and said that would happen in
Sam: the first hundred days. It did not.
Ivan: It did not.
Sam: The extension of the tax cuts apparently was part of the big,
Sam: beautiful bill, which I believe was July.
Sam: Then that was it for presidency, and we started talking about,
Sam: well, I guess the last couple might have been Congress.
Sam: We're now on Congress. We split on how many speakers of the House there would be in 2025.
Sam: You said two, and I said three. How many were there, Yvonne?
Ivan: One.
Sam: One. We were both wrong. we split on whether it's stunning.
Ivan: How Mike Johnson is still holding on.
Sam: Yeah we split on whether or not he would even win the January speaker vote you
Sam: said he would I said he would not you were obviously right I was wrong,
Sam: we split on how many ballots it would take to pick a speaker in January I said
Sam: I said 5 to 10 you said 2 to 10 how many ballots was it Yvonne? one it was one,
Sam: So, yeah, we were both wrong on that one. We both, however, agreed that Republicans
Sam: would keep the House all year long. And in fact, they did.
Ivan: They did? Okay.
Sam: They did.
Ivan: Yeah. They have been razor thin.
Sam: But they have. Then we both agreed that there would be at least one issue where
Sam: Republicans in Congress would break from Trump in significant numbers.
Sam: Were we correct, Yvonne?
Ivan: Oh, yes.
Sam: And what issue would that be, Yvonne?
Ivan: The Epstein file, Sam.
Sam: Indeed, we were both right. And I furthermore predicted that once it was clear
Sam: he was losing, Trump would back down.
Sam: And he did, in fact, do that.
Ivan: Yes, he did.
Sam: At the very end, he was like, okay, fine, pass the damn thing.
Sam: So I was right on that. We both, however, made the prediction that Trump will
Sam: never admit defeat about anything. Were we right, Yvonne?
Ivan: Oh, come on. Of course.
Sam: Of course.
Ivan: I mean, that's a feature. I mean, come on.
Sam: Okay, next up. We both agreed with the statement, Dodge will be a complete failure.
Sam: Were we correct, Yvonne?
Ivan: Fuck fucking at 100, 200% correct.
Sam: Okay. Now, you furthermore said that the mode that this would work in is they
Sam: would come up with a bunch of things to cut,
Sam: but those cuts would not actually happen because Congress wouldn't go along with them.
Sam: Is that how it played out, Yvonne? Not exactly.
Ivan: No, not exactly.
Sam: No. I'm counting you as wrong in that because what Dodge did was they actually
Sam: did go in and shut crap down, even though they had no legal authority.
Ivan: Even though they have no legal authority, yes, that's correct.
Sam: Right, which goes along with me saying Dodge will find ways to claim victory
Sam: without actually having done much. What would you say out of that one?
Ivan: Oh, fuck. Yes. Yeah.
Sam: I further said at best things would be held to current levels not actually decrease.
Sam: I was right on that as well. We've seen charts multiple times throughout the
Sam: year of total federal spending.
Ivan: Is a deficit down?
Sam: Wait, wait, wait. That's a separate question. We'll get to that in a second.
Ivan: No, no, no. I'm like, well, I know it's a separate question,
Ivan: but in this case, did they cut spending, Sam?
Sam: That's an entirely different question than the deficit question.
Sam: So let me answer the spending question.
Ivan: Did the total spend of the U.S. federal government with Dodge go down?
Sam: No, it did not go down. In fact, it was the highest ever again.
Sam: And if you look at the chart throughout the year, it was higher every single
Sam: day of the year than previous years.
Ivan: What a shocking development, Sam. Sam, what a shocking, stunning, Sam, I'm stunned.
Sam: Yes. Okay, next up, though, you specifically predicted that they would not cut
Sam: VA health, because that's one of the things that had been mentioned. I think they did.
Sam: They fired a whole bunch of people from VA.
Ivan: Yes, they did. They did a bunch of stuff.
Sam: So we'll count you as wrong on that one. I said they will find over a billion dollars to cut.
Sam: like because we went back like there was a we said billion not trillion we were
Sam: saying that there was a small amount they would never reach the the trillions
Sam: or whatever that they targeted but we said they would find over a billion but
Sam: it would be compensated by increases elsewhere i was right on that right yeah.
Ivan: That's 100 correct yes.
Sam: Yes i also said they will find scapegoat programs republicans don't like and
Sam: get rid of them totally correct i was right i said but Simultaneously,
Sam: they'll increase funding for things like defense and SpaceX.
Ivan: That's totally correct.
Sam: Yes. Okay. We both agreed that there would be more tax cuts.
Ivan: So 100% true on that one.
Sam: We both agreed that there would be no net spending cuts.
Ivan: It's 100% true on that one, too.
Sam: Okay, we split on SCOTUS openings. You said there would be no SCOTUS openings. I said there would be.
Sam: There were none this year. So you were right. I was wrong.
Ivan: Once again.
Sam: Okay, now the budget deficit. We both predicted the budget deficit would be up.
Ivan: Let me ask a question. What did Trump say he was going to do with the deficit
Ivan: when he came into office?
Sam: Well, he was going to kill it completely and we'd have surpluses, right?
Ivan: Isn't that what he always says? I mean, is that what he said? Hang on.
Sam: I don't remember.
Ivan: I'm going to check to see.
Sam: He promised that the first term, I think.
Ivan: I'm going to check what he promised for this time.
Ivan: All right. Let's see. Checking, checking, checking. Let's see.
Ivan: Let me see what answer I come on.
Ivan: All he said was that he would slash the federal budget deficit,
Ivan: that he would reduce spending and boost revenue.
Ivan: So, yeah. So, he was vague. He didn't do that. But that was,
Ivan: like you mentioned, that, like, the deficit to zero thing was a first campaign promise.
Sam: First term.
Ivan: Yeah, first term.
Sam: Okay, so here's what actually happened. Fiscal year 2024, deficit was $1.82 trillion.
Sam: Fiscal year 2025, deficit was $1.78.
Sam: The deficit was actually down. We were both wrong.
Ivan: The deficit was actually down. Huh.
Sam: Slightly. Just slightly. But it was down.
Ivan: Okay. Actually, you could, you know what? That was actually the tariffs.
Sam: Yeah, it probably was.
Ivan: Yeah, because it was $200 billion in tariff revenue.
Ivan: So if you add that in there, yeah, the deficit would have been higher.
Ivan: But that was straight up the tariff revenue.
Sam: We both agreed that the debt limit would be increased. Was it increased, Yvonne? Yes.
Sam: Not only increased, but increased by the biggest amount ever in the history
Sam: of the debt limit. Just saying.
Sam: Okay. I, however, said this will happen with Democrats plus a few Republicans,
Sam: because that's how it had usually played out in the past.
Sam: I believe that was not how it happened.
Sam: This was increased as part of the
Sam: big, beautiful bill, which was all the Republicans and a few Democrats.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Or most Republicans and a few Democrats.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Okay. We split on government shutdown. You said there would be one.
Sam: I said there would not be one.
Ivan: Sam, were you right?
Sam: I was not right.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: However, you decided to be more specific in two ways.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: One, you said the government shutdown would happen the first time they got to
Sam: a limit that they had to deal with.
Ivan: No, it was not the first time.
Sam: They kicked the can down the road several times. It was later in the year.
Sam: Yeah. You also predicted the shutdown would be brief. It was the longest ever.
Ivan: It was the longest ever.
Sam: So you were wrong on both of those two.
Ivan: Jesus Christ, those extra two predictions. I completely self-sabotaged myself on that one.
Sam: Okay, next up is one we might want to discuss a little bit to determine.
Sam: The question was whether there would be state versus federal conflict on the
Sam: ground in a way similar to the civil rights movement in the 1960s,
Sam: where the feds sent out National Guard, federal troops, whatever,
Sam: to enforce federal decisions over states, except obviously sort of in reverse.
Sam: You had said, no, that will remain entirely in the courts.
Sam: And I said there would be such conflict on the ground.
Sam: The question is, does what happened count?
Sam: Because we did have Trump send federalized National Guard and other troops into various cities.
Sam: But is it sufficient to count as this?
Sam: Because we also didn't have the states really. It's not like we had state forces
Sam: battling federal forces, you know. Does this count?
Ivan: I think it counts because the reality is that there was conflict with local
Ivan: officials, even though they didn't go and, like, send out, like,
Ivan: In most cases, like, you know, police to go and, like, battle,
Ivan: like, federal troops. So, I'd say the answer is yes.
Sam: Okay. So, I was right. You were wrong.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You furthermore specifically said no federal troops on the ground.
Sam: There were federal troops on the ground.
Ivan: Oh, God. There were a lot of federal troops on the ground.
Sam: Yes. And I said he would nationalize the Guard. So, I was right.
Sam: At least part of the Guard. Yeah. Not all of it, obviously.
Sam: Okay, next up is we split on whether the gross number of illegal border crossings
Sam: would go up or down this year. Did it go up or down?
Ivan: Down, I think.
Sam: It went down, which means I was right and you were wrong. You predicted it would go up.
Sam: Now, this is one, I think I know the answer to this, but I will fully admit
Sam: to not having a verified source of it. So total immigration,
Sam: so legal and illegal, to the U.S.
Sam: would go down. We both predicted it would go down. Did it go down this year?
Sam: Yes. That's what I thought. I didn't bother verifying it, but basically because
Sam: no one wants to come here anymore because we're being damn hostile to anybody who comes.
Ivan: Let me eat.
Ivan: Let me fact check that a little bit. It's not, I, this, this last weekend that I was in Disney.
Sam: I was surprised at the number of international. Whenever you say nobody,
Sam: it obviously, it's never nobody.
Ivan: I was surprised by the number of international visitors that were at Disney.
Ivan: Okay. From, from many countries. I mean, a lot of Asian visitors specifically
Ivan: that I saw, Latin American as well. Well, I was surprised by the number of international visitors.
Sam: Yeah, obviously I was being hyperbolic saying nobody wants to come here.
Ivan: No, no, no.
Sam: It's down, but it's like down 10% or something. It's not down like 50.
Ivan: It is down substantially. It's more specific for certain countries,
Ivan: which, you know, like Canadian visits are significantly down.
Sam: I wonder why. Did we piss off Canada in some way? Yeah, just a tad.
Ivan: Just a little bit. But one thing is that international students at U.S.
Ivan: universities, the total number didn't really go down that much either,
Ivan: even with all the different actions and things that happened in the first few
Ivan: months of the administration.
Sam: Okay. Next up, we split on deportations. I said they'd be up.
Sam: You said they would not be up.
Sam: They are up. They are up. They are up. Yes.
Sam: I didn't get end-of-year numbers, but as of June, we were already almost at the 2024 numbers.
Ivan: They were at double the pace that they had been before.
Sam: So I was right. You were wrong on that one. We both agreed, however,
Sam: that there would be plenty of what we called show deportations,
Sam: where they were just making examples of certain people and making sure it was
Sam: on video and talking about them a lot. There were quite a few of those.
Ivan: There were quite a few of those. I mean, specifically the one that got all this,
Ivan: press coverage recently for the 60 Minutes thing, the ones that we sent to that
Ivan: terrorist prison And El Salvador was, yeah, El Salvador.
Ivan: I mean, yeah, it's Seacott. I mean, that was like.
Sam: Well, and we have had all that attention on that guy in Maryland.
Sam: I mean, he's still in the country.
Sam: Well, he was out and then back, and then they're still trying to get rid of him.
Sam: Abrego Garcia, was it? Yeah. Anyway, yes.
Ivan: But the courts firmly ruled in his favor that the whole thing was illegal.
Sam: Oh, yeah, but they're trying under other grounds.
Ivan: I know. It's still in court right now. I know, but.
Sam: The courts— They're fighting over which country to send him to now,
Sam: as opposed to— And one of the latest things is he's actually agreed to go to
Sam: one country that has said there and would be happy to take him.
Ivan: They don't want to send him there.
Sam: They want to send him there. They want to send him somewhere else.
Ivan: Which is one of the reasons why the court went and was ruled against the federal
Ivan: government, because there is no legal basis for that. It's just to be...
Ivan: assholes. That's it.
Sam: Pretty much. Anyway, that was the last question of the politics section.
Ivan: By the way, the deportation numbers that I was able to pull out,
Ivan: what the numbers are, full fiscal year 2024 was $271,000, okay, under Biden.
Ivan: Estimate for full fiscal year 2025 is $605,000.
Sam: Right. Most definitely up. Yeah. Okay, so here's how we did.
Sam: I made 49 predictions, of which 34 were correct.
Sam: That's 69.4%.
Ivan: Nice.
Sam: You made 41 predictions, of which 25 were correct. That's 61.0%.
Ivan: So, Sam, you're in the lead.
Sam: I'm in the lead. Our combined number was 90 predictions, of which 59 were correct.
Sam: That's 65.6%. I will also compare us to 2024. Our combined number again this
Sam: year was 65.6%. I think we're better.
Sam: Last year, our combined number was 41.3.
Ivan: Yeah, we're way better.
Sam: We absolutely bombed last year.
Ivan: Oh, my God. It was so bad.
Sam: It was so bad. Yeah, so we got 2024, like, completely wrong.
Ivan: We so fucked up 2024.
Sam: Okay. With that, it is time to take a break. When we come back,
Sam: it will be time for International.
Sam: And so here is another breaky break break break break break thing. Here we go.
Sam: Okay, moving on to international.
Sam: We started out about whether or not there'd be a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Sam: You said no, I said yes. There was no ceasefire in Ukraine.
Ivan: There was no ceasefire in Ukraine, yeah.
Sam: So you were correct, I was wrong. You furthermore said there would,
Sam: however, be lots of posturing and negotiation.
Ivan: Gee, Sam, was that right?
Sam: Yes, you were right. We both further said there'd be no signed peace deal,
Sam: which is separate from, of course, a ceasefire. We were both correct on that.
Sam: I further said Ukraine would be struggling with the fact that they got less
Sam: support from Trump than from Biden.
Sam: That's kind of subjective. What would you say?
Ivan: I'd say they're about the same shape as they were before. I don't think anything
Ivan: really materially changed.
Sam: So, no?
Ivan: Yeah, no.
Sam: I almost want to fight you on that, but not quite, because Trump has provided less aid.
Sam: The situation on the ground has been a stalemate for two years.
Ivan: Exactly. Did the situation materially change? Because the thing,
Ivan: they would be struggling because of that.
Ivan: Did the situation on the ground materially change because of that? The answer is no.
Sam: Okay.
Sam: I also said Ukraine would not be completely defeated. I was right.
Sam: Then there was a question of whether or not there would still be a Ukrainian
Sam: presence in Kursk at the end of the year.
Sam: So I looked this up.
Ivan: I think the answer is no.
Sam: The answer is yes, but just barely. Okay.
Sam: They retreated from almost all of the territory they had occupied in Kursk like in April or May.
Sam: Okay. But there are apparently a handful of small, little, tiny pockets where
Sam: they are still across the border as of at least November. That was the latest data I can find.
Ivan: All right. Well.
Sam: So we split on that. You were actually right. I was wrong. You said there would
Sam: still be a presence in Kursk.
Ivan: There you go. Okay.
Sam: The next question was, would Russia increase its percentage of control in Ukraine year over year?
Sam: We both agreed that they would. We are both correct. They gained 0.8% of Ukrainian
Sam: territory over the course of 2025.
Ivan: What was the number again?
Sam: 0.8%.
Ivan: Wow. I guess it's a gain.
Sam: I think that's more of a gain than they had in 2024, actually.
Sam: So they did accelerate a little bit.
Ivan: But it's just, you know, we're calling it, I mean, it's like,
Ivan: hey, I made a massive return on my investments this year of 0.8%.
Sam: Yes.
Sam: And by the way, the cost of that 0.8% in lives lost, people injured,
Sam: equipment, and of course, cash is huge.
Ivan: It's ridiculous.
Sam: Yes. Okay, we both agreed there would be no coup in Europe. Was there any coups in Europe?
Ivan: I don't recall any coups in Europe.
Sam: Okay. We also both agreed that there would be no additional right-wing takeovers
Sam: of governments in Europe in 2025.
Sam: Were they right? I think we were right.
Ivan: I think we were right. Yeah. As a matter of fact, as anything,
Ivan: they actually shifted, you know, some, they made some gains.
Sam: The next couple questions are about gains without changes in government.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: This was just me. I said in France, we'd end up with a more conservative coalition
Sam: at the end of the year than at the beginning.
Sam: I don't think we did. There was a lot of chaos in France.
Sam: They changed prime ministers that one resigned and then was immediately reappointed.
Sam: There was craziness in France. But I think in the end, we sort of ended up at
Sam: the same place as where we started.
Sam: Does that sound right to you? I spent a little bit of time on Wikipedia trying
Sam: to figure this out, but I clearly did not know enough about French politics
Sam: to have a lot of certainty here.
Ivan: Well, I mean either.
Sam: So I'm going to say no.
Ivan: OK.
Sam: However, I did predict there'd be a more conservative coalition in Germany,
Sam: not like the far right people take over, but it was more conservative than the beginning of the year.
Sam: The conservatives did have some election success earlier in the year,
Sam: and I believe they're actually the ones that formed a government.
Sam: So I was right on that one.
Sam: We both agreed that Russia would not invade any more countries in 2025.
Ivan: Yeah, Russia did not invade any more countries that I'm aware of, right?
Sam: We are both correct. Then we split on whether Russia would still have a presence in Syria.
Sam: You said no, I said yes. Do you know the answer to this one, Yvonne?
Ivan: I think the answer is no, right?
Sam: No, Russia is still in Syria. They are. have bases in Syria.
Sam: They've been in negotiation with the new government in Syria,
Sam: who would probably prefer they leave, but so far they are still in their bases
Sam: in Syria and they have not been kicked out.
Sam: And we both predicted there would still be U.S. troops in Syria.
Sam: There are, in fact, still U.S.
Sam: troops in Syria. In fact, there were news reports as recently as mid-December
Sam: of U.S. troops killed in Syria.
Sam: So, yeah, we were both right on that one. Now, this next one,
Sam: you had said there would be a new dictatorship in Syria.
Sam: I'm going to count you as wrong on that one. because the government in Syria
Sam: has not changed over the course of 2025.
Sam: They did go from a transitional government to another transitional government, but it's the same guy.
Sam: It's that same, you know, and so I'll say no new dictatorship.
Sam: I said that the government in Syria would not be a tolerant,
Sam: multicultural, friendly government.
Sam: I'm going back and forth on that one because they've sort of tried to be.
Ivan: But haven't— Relative to the other stuff?
Ivan: I mean, shit, the answer's kind of like— Well, they are more tolerant than many others in the area.
Sam: They are. Now, there have been some issues with their treatment of certain minorities— Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah. But every country has issues with treatments of certain minorities.
Sam: Yes, obviously, including us.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: But, yeah, just in general, they have been, I don't know, I'm going to count myself wrong.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, they're not perfect. But as governments in that region go,
Sam: they're not anywhere near the worst.
Ivan: That's right. That is absolutely right.
Sam: I also predicted that the Syrian
Sam: government would not be in control of the whole country. I was correct.
Sam: The Syrian civil war continues just with a different set of players.
Ivan: Essentially.
Sam: We both agreed that there would be no democratically elected government in Syria yet.
Sam: We're both correct. It's still some sort of transitional temporary government, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Theoretically, they are saying all the right things about they want to move
Sam: beyond that, but they haven't yet.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. We both were fairly sure that Benjamin Netanyahu would no longer be Prime
Sam: Minister of Israel by the end of the year.
Ivan: We're pretty fucking wrong.
Sam: We were indeed wrong.
Ivan: I mean, a guy's a cockroach.
Sam: We both agreed there would be a ceasefire in gaza by the end of the year there was yeah.
Ivan: There was yeah.
Sam: I furthermore said that the ceasefire would basically be on israel's terms that's.
Ivan: Pretty much correct yes.
Sam: So i was right i will take this moment to note that
Sam: as i was putting together these notes i was being
Sam: very sloppy and typing quickly and not paying attention to typos so for instance
Sam: what it actually says on my little spreadsheet is si rassi fire not ceasefire
Sam: a si rassi fire well okay yeah it's a si rassi fire,
Sam: we both agree we both agreed no full withdrawal from gaza we were both correct.
Ivan: We're both correct.
Sam: We both agreed no saudi recognition of israel we were both correct Correct.
Sam: We both agreed that the war in Yemen would continue. We were both correct.
Sam: We both agreed there would be no Western country that fully normalized relationships
Sam: with Iran. We were correct.
Sam: No Western normalization. We both agreed there would be no widespread Mideast war.
Sam: Like the conflict wouldn't spread and become like, you know,
Sam: a massive war involving many countries. I mean, I guess you can count, like, this is a no.
Sam: Like, there were, you know, at various points, Lebanon was involved,
Sam: Israel was involved, Iran, Jordan was involved in some ways.
Sam: We got, you know, but there was no, we were talking about like a massive multi-country
Sam: war going on, and that never happened.
Sam: So we were both correct on that.
Sam: We split on whether Trump would reopen talks with North Korea.
Sam: You thought he would. I thought he would not. What happened, Yvonne?
Ivan: We haven't talked to North Korea, right?
Sam: No. Which means I was right and you were wrong.
Ivan: Oh, well. I figured he would. I mean, he liked the guy so much.
Ivan: I figured that he was, you know, going to go over there and,
Ivan: you know, would be chummy again.
Sam: Next up, you specifically predicted that North Korea, however,
Sam: would make trouble again over the course of the year.
Sam: Now, just last week we were talking about this. Apparently they did a few things,
Sam: but nobody's paying any attention.
Ivan: So, yeah. So the answer is no, I guess. Because nobody—I mean,
Ivan: it's not enough that anybody even noticed.
Sam: Right. Like, they apparently have been trying to make trouble, but failing.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Because nobody's paid any attention or cared.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: At least publicly. It hasn't been a big thing in the news. Okay, now,
Sam: The next one, Ed had asked us a very specific question, and then we ended up
Sam: sort of answering something else, I think.
Sam: So I will point out that Ed had asked specifically about whether ASML,
Sam: which is a semiconductor company based out of Europe, I think,
Sam: would break ground in the U.S.
Sam: That apparently did happen, but we did not actually answer his question.
Sam: We answered a slightly related question about whether or not there'd be a big new U.S.
Sam: push into domestic semiconductor production.
Sam: I don't think there was, Yvonne. What would be your answer to that?
Ivan: There wasn't. I mean, there wasn't.
Sam: There might be like little things opening here and there like what.
Ivan: Yeah, but if anything, we wound up with a situation where stuff that Biden had,
Ivan: you know, had pushed was actually, you know, kind of short-circuited by this administration.
Sam: Okay. So we were both right. Next up, and this is a judge, you know,
Sam: I'm going to ask you to judge yourself on this one.
Sam: You said relations with China will improve.
Ivan: No.
Sam: Okay. I will count you as wrong in that. I said the relationship with China
Sam: will be a mixed bag and specifically Trump will be less willing to confront
Sam: them on defense, but more willing to confront them on trade.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yes on all three? Okay.
Ivan: Yeah, I mean, he was willing. Yeah, he was definitely willing to challenge them
Ivan: more on trade, but not on other stuff.
Sam: Yep. Okay. Excellent. Next up, we both agreed that China would not invade Taiwan. we were china.
Ivan: Has not invaded taiwan as far as i'm.
Sam: Next up would gdp in argentina be up.
Ivan: I think the answer is yes.
Sam: Yes, it was. So you predicted that it would be, and it was indeed.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Next up, you'd said, however, that even though it would be up 2024 to 2025,
Sam: it would not be back up to the levels before— What's the president's name?
Sam: M-something. How do you pronounce his name? What does he—,
Sam: I mean, the current president— He's the libertarian president of Argentina.
Ivan: Oh, what's his name now? Yeah. Milet.
Sam: Did I say it?
Ivan: Milet. Milet. Milet. Milet.
Sam: Anyway, you said GDP would not be back up to levels from before Milet.
Sam: I looked this up. It appears that GDP is at new highs. So you were wrong.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And to be clear, this was GDP absolute, not GDP growth.
Sam: GDP growth is not at new highs.
Sam: but absolute level of GDP is at new highs for 2025 from what I found.
Sam: You can check me if you want. I was looking at worldometers.
Ivan: The estimate, yes. By the IMF, yes. It is higher.
Ivan: By a little bit, but yes.
Sam: A little bit.
Ivan: It is higher. But it is higher. Well, one of the things, you know,
Ivan: the thing is that this is, we're measuring it in dollars.
Ivan: And the currency has been incredibly overvalued, making the purchasing power
Ivan: of the peso right now, like, really crazy overvalued. And so,
Ivan: yeah, so that's why it's it's showing that way.
Sam: OK, next up, we both agreed that the U.S.
Sam: would not annex Panama or any part of Panama like the canal. We were both correct.
Ivan: I think we're both correct.
Sam: Now, I said more so than that. Trump will, however, try to extract something
Sam: from Panama in exchange for not taking over the canal. He forgot about Panama.
Sam: Yeah, I think there was some talk about that back, like, in December when we
Sam: made this prediction show, but it basically disappeared.
Ivan: Yeah, he's completely forgotten about it.
Sam: So I'll say no, he didn't really.
Sam: I mean, maybe something behind the scenes happened, but basically Panama stopped being talked about.
Ivan: The only thing that I remember was something about... Well, well,
Ivan: okay, now, there was one thing that happened, okay?
Ivan: Hang on. Let me double check. Let me double check, but I think that there was...
Ivan: Let me let me let me see if I OK.
Ivan: I'm looking this up. Hang on. I think there was a deal.
Ivan: There had been a push for a deal to take China out of management of ports in
Ivan: in Panama that was done by Hutchison.
Ivan: OK, and they did push them through that. But I don't think the deal actually happened.
Ivan: As a matter of fact, there's an article here.
Sam: The prediction was Trump will try to extract something.
Ivan: OK, so the answer is yes. Yes. What they were trying to do was that they were
Ivan: demanding that Hong Kong-based Hutchinson cease managing the ports and move
Ivan: those operations to U.S.
Ivan: investors because the ports are strategic here in the U.S.
Ivan: they they have been still negotiating that as a matter of wall street journal
Ivan: reported on that that they're still working on that as of december 14th of the
Ivan: year and that started way earlier in the year so the answer is yes they have been pushing for that.
Sam: Okay next question no non-peaceful transitions of power in the americas now
Sam: venezuela was 2026 so it does not count.
Ivan: That I don't think.
Sam: There were any others. No. Were there? I'm not forgetting any.
Ivan: I mean, not that the, that, that, that, that non-peaceful, that the U.S.
Ivan: was involved or just in general?
Sam: Just in general. In the Americas, non-peaceful transfer of power.
Sam: Like, as far as I know, every, every transfer of power was sort of regularly
Sam: scheduled according to the rules, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: Let me double check. I thought I was thinking about Ecuador, maybe.
Ivan: There were some impeachments.
Sam: Well, even an impeachment would be peaceful.
Ivan: True. Yeah, everything went normal. Okay.
Sam: Okay. We were both correct then. Now, you know, if the weather had cooperated
Sam: with Donald Trump, we would have been wrong.
Ivan: We would have been wrong.
Sam: Because he wanted to do the Venezuela thing on Christmas Day.
Sam: But A, the Nigeria thing took precedence, which got done on Christmas Day instead.
Sam: And then they had to wait for good weather.
Ivan: Such lovely holiday presents that we get from our president.
Sam: Okay, next up, we both agreed that Canada would not be the 51st state.
Ivan: I think that we are correct.
Sam: We both agreed that Trump would not invade Mexico. We were right.
Ivan: I think we're accurate on that one.
Sam: We both agreed that Trump would not invade Canada.
Ivan: No, we didn't invade Canada, yeah.
Sam: We both agreed that we would not buy Greenland.
Ivan: We haven't bought Greenland.
Sam: We both agreed that Trump would not trade Puerto Rico for Greenland.
Ivan: Unfortunately, Trump has not traded Puerto Rico for Greenland. I'm sad to report.
Sam: We both agreed that there would be no new war between UN member states.
Sam: I believe we were correct.
Sam: And we specified it had to be between UN member states to sort of take off the
Sam: table, like internal conflicts and... And, uh, hang on.
Ivan: Hang on.
Sam: Okay. And, and it had to be new in 2025.
Ivan: Not a civil war.
Sam: Not a civil war. Now we did have all these wars that Trump stopped.
Sam: Were any of those new in 2025? And then he stopped them.
Sam: I don't think any of them were full. I mean, even when they were like border skirmishes and stuff.
Ivan: So we had the India-Pakistan armed conflict. Okay. So we had that. But was it a war?
Sam: I mean, I guess.
Ivan: It was three days.
Sam: So is that a yes? There was a new war?
Ivan: There was a Thailand-Cambodia border war that happened during July 2025.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I mean, Iran and Israel did fucking shoot at each other for.
Sam: Yeah. I guess that there's fuzziness
Sam: in here in terms of how severe something has to be to be a full war.
Ivan: I mean, I guess, yeah, exactly. I mean, what is.
Sam: I mean, is it like a war or something? Like, did we just have a war with Venezuela or not?
Ivan: Well, okay, here's the thing. These were all short skirmishes.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Right?
Sam: I mean, I have to say. Do they count?
Ivan: I don't, I mean, I think that, I mean, where's, you know, you know,
Ivan: what is a reasonable amount of time for a conflict to become a war?
Sam: I mean, back in the old days, you'd say, was there a formal declaration of war?
Sam: But nobody does that anymore.
Ivan: Right. We don't have that. We don't have that. So.
Sam: I mean, like Ukraine and Russia clearly counted. Right. That's a war.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a war. That's a war.
Sam: You know, and I'd say, and, you know, it's not a member state,
Sam: but Israel-Gaza, that was a war.
Ivan: That was a war. That was a war. It was the length of time that was a war.
Sam: So would you count these or not?
Ivan: They were too short.
Sam: Okay. So we'll say, yes.
Ivan: There was no war. Yeah, they were too short.
Ivan: They were just too short.
Sam: Yes, no new war. We also said there would be no new civil wars that would be
Sam: significant enough that we would pay attention to them on the show.
Sam: There were all kinds of civil wars across the world going on,
Sam: but I don't think we spent a significant amount of time talking about any.
Ivan: That's true. Did we spend a lot of time talking about? No, even though there are.
Sam: Like a whole segment.
Ivan: We mentioned Sudan. That was a whole bunch of. Exactly. I was going to say Sudan.
Sam: Yeah, we've mentioned it, but we we've never like if you add up all the times we talked about.
Ivan: We don't know enough about it.
Sam: Fucking year.
Ivan: Yeah, we don't know enough about it. I agree. We don't know enough about it.
Ivan: We just don't. That's that's that's on us. But, you know.
Sam: OK, so, yes, we were right about that. And that is the end of the international section.
Sam: OK, ready for the stats, Yvonne? I made 40 predictions, of which 34 were correct.
Sam: That's 85.0%. You made 34 predictions, of which 27 were correct. That's 79.4%.
Ivan: We're pretty good on international.
Sam: So collectively, 74 predictions, 61 correct. That's 82.4%. And if we compare
Sam: to last year, 79.5% last year.
Sam: So we're up on this category as well.
Ivan: We improved again.
Sam: Okay. So time for another break. And then we will come back and do economy slash business.
Sam: And as usual, by the way, each one of these tends to be shorter than the one
Sam: before as we go through this.
Sam: So you're past the bulk of it already. So, here we go!
Sam: Okay, here we are. And actually, this section is really short.
Sam: So, for some reason, we did not do a lot of economy stuff last time around.
Sam: Okay, first up, we both predicted that mergers would ramp up under Trump. Were we correct?
Ivan: I think the answer is yes, but I got to look up data on it. Hold on.
Sam: I found a number of articles talking about how mergers were up,
Sam: and there was lots of merger activity with people excited about the regulatory
Sam: environment being more lenient.
Sam: But I'll let you confirm it. Did you confirm it?
Ivan: I'm looking. I'm trying to search. Hang on. The answer, yes. Confirm. Yes.
Sam: Yes. Okay. you predicted and for some reason i didn't but no 2025 recession were you correct yeah.
Ivan: There's no recession in 2025 as far as we know.
Sam: Now we gave we both agreed on a sort of wishy-washy prediction about antitrust
Sam: yeah uh the prediction was basically that some antitrust efforts would be canceled,
Sam: but Trump will also keep some of them because of Trump's transactional approach for everything.
Sam: Basically, if he liked you, he would stop going after you.
Sam: If he didn't like you, he would sick them on you and do all the antitrust stuff he could.
Sam: Is that correct? Is that how it played out?
Ivan: We couldn't have been more accurate if we fucking had a damn Nostradamus on our team.
Sam: Ha ha.
Sam: Okay. Next up, tariffs. We both agreed that the overriding theme of tariffs would be similar.
Sam: That regardless of anything else, in the end, they would all be transactional.
Sam: You know, Trump would, you know, tariff or not tariff based on how much he liked you.
Ivan: No. Were we right, Sam?
Sam: I believe we were.
Ivan: I mean, we couldn't have, again, we couldn't have been more accurate.
Ivan: We had a fucking, you know, damn.
Sam: Now, there were announcements of sort of these global values and all this kind of stuff.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: But then they all got adjusted based on this kind of stuff.
Ivan: And then you showed up with a fucking, like, custom Rolex and on the desk and, you know, a gold orb.
Ivan: And all of a sudden, your tariffs got reduced.
Sam: Right. Okay, next one.
Sam: You're going to have to judge yourself on this one, too. You said there would
Sam: not be enough tariffs so the average consumer would notice the difference.
Ivan: I think I'm wrong. The average consumer has been bitching to all hell about
Ivan: the affordability right now and prices soaring.
Ivan: And they can't put their thumb on exactly why, because of the delayed effect.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I mean, like I mentioned about my coffee today.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: It's double. I mean, I've been buying that shit for a long time.
Ivan: I mean, it's doubled in price.
Sam: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. We could debate whether or not knowing that it's because
Sam: of tariffs matters to this question.
Sam: But I think the average consumer has noticed an effect of the tariffs.
Ivan: They have noticed that.
Sam: They know that's what it is.
Ivan: Right. They can't afford shit.
Sam: Okay. Next up, we both agreed that there would be no significant impact from
Sam: the tariffs on reshoring manufacturing.
Ivan: That's been 100%. Yes. Look at the employment figures. Yes.
Ivan: The only thing that propped up the economy in the second half was AI investment.
Ivan: If it wasn't for AI investment, we would have been in a recession. Straight up. That's it.
Sam: Next up are a whole bunch of up and downs for various values.
Sam: We both agreed that inflation would be up.
Sam: Now, typically, we use the November number for this and compare November to November.
Sam: November 2024 was 2.7%. November 2025 was 2.7%.
Ivan: Well, let me pull up a comparison over here.
Sam: So that means inflation is not up.
Ivan: Let me see. Hold on.
Sam: I have 2.7% for both Novembers from my source.
Ivan: Okay, if we go for a full calendar year.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay, or at least the dates that we have so far.
Sam: We have never done that before. We've always just compared the November number to the November number.
Sam: Now, we didn't specify, so I guess you could argue to try to do a full year number instead.
Ivan: You see, the thing is that it, because remember that we had this problems with
Ivan: like the data reporting, okay?
Sam: Uh-huh.
Ivan: The number for last November, what did you say it was?
Sam: 2.7.
Ivan: 2.7.
Sam: I'll send you, I'll text you the link that I used.
Sam: Here's the site I used for this. As Yvonne looks.
Ivan: 2.7. You see, the problem that
Ivan: we've got is that if you look at that chart specifically, what happened?
Sam: And I'm, again, looking at usinflationcalculator.com. Yes, go ahead.
Ivan: What happened with this chart, Sam?
Sam: Well, we've got a missing October number.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: But we're looking at November. And we have a November number.
Sam: And they're equal, which since we both said it would be up, I'm counting us both as wrong.
Ivan: I mean, if we go by the...
Sam: Now, if you look at full year, we're still wrong. Like, if you look at every single month...
Ivan: Actually, the problem is it depends on what data you use to fill out the data that's missing. Okay.
Sam: Oh, yes.
Ivan: And I have some people that estimate, based on what they believe happened in
Ivan: October, it actually was higher if you punch that number in. so.
Sam: Well but again like if you look month to month.
Ivan: Can i just say something i'm sorry i based on what happened with the data reporting
Ivan: with the fucking federal government we can't just don't believe anything anymore
Ivan: now we don't have the data to actually accurately do this stupid question,
Ivan: they they fucking went and like sabotaged the data reporting it's not comparable
Ivan: apples to apples anymore so.
Sam: I still lean to saying we got it wrong do you want to actually.
Ivan: Disqualify this i'm disqualifying this question okay.
Sam: I'll disqualify the question so it just doesn't count next.
Ivan: If i go by the way i pulled up there is somewhere here let me see what this
Ivan: is no they don't have the seasonally adjusted number either.
Ivan: No, because the data is missing. Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, no, I'm disqualifying the question. I mean, there is a number there.
Ivan: There's a chart further down which shows you seasonally adjusted inflation that
Ivan: goes monthly that shows you the thing instead of like the annual inflation rate. Okay.
Ivan: Which is what you were looking at. We're looking at the top.
Ivan: And look at what happens in October or November. There's no number reported.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Which that would be actually,
Ivan: But we have no number. We have no number.
Ivan: This fucking administration has broken everything.
Sam: Okay. Well, the next one is also one that relies on government numbers, which is unemployment.
Sam: We both agreed that it would be up. The BLS number, again, comparing November
Sam: to November, goes from 4.2 in 2024 to 4.4 in 2025. So, yes, up, just barely.
Ivan: It's up, and even if you go with the private number data from other people,
Ivan: it confirms that the number is up.
Ivan: This one, there is corroboration that unemployment is up. So, yeah.
Sam: Okay, next up, we both agreed that Apple stock would be up for the year.
Ivan: That we were right.
Sam: We were right. We both agreed the Dow would be up for the year. We were right.
Ivan: We were right.
Sam: You predicted Bitcoin would be up, but I predicted Bitcoin would be down.
Sam: I was right. You were wrong.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: It's fairly flat, but it was down a little bit.
Ivan: It was down. It was down. It was down. Just a little bit. For the whole year.
Sam: Next up, eggs. We both agreed the price of eggs would be up.
Sam: No. The price of eggs are down significantly.
Sam: Down quite a bit from the end of last year.
Sam: And then we split also on West Texas Intermediate Oil.
Sam: You said it would be down. I said it would be up. It is very much down.
Sam: So you were right. I was wrong. And we are already at the end of the economic section.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I made 10 predictions of which I got eight correct. That's 80%.
Sam: You made 12 predictions of which you got nine correct.
Sam: That's 75%. So combined, 22 predictions, 17 right.
Sam: That's 77.3%. Last year, we were at 61.5. so third category in a row we beat
Sam: last year there you go and third category in a row i did better than you.
Ivan: Sam has been kicking my asses here.
Sam: Yeah i i i'm i'm amazing i'm incredible that is the way things go incredible
Sam: nostra samus nostra samus yes there you go okay let's take another break,
Sam: even though it was short.
Sam: And when we come back, it'll be time for technology.
Sam: Here we go.
Sam: Okay. And it's time to continue with technology.
Sam: And I said each one gets shorter than one before, but economy was really short.
Sam: We're back up to a bit larger numbers here.
Sam: So first up, Yvonne, this is your area of expertise, so you're going to need
Sam: to look this up. We're talking about the percent of total sales in the U.S.
Sam: of electric and hybrid 2024 versus 2025.
Ivan: It was up.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I don't remember, but the numbers were significantly up.
Sam: Significantly up. Because you'd basically said it would be plus or minus 1%,
Sam: so basically flat. And I'd said it would be down.
Ivan: And now they were way up.
Sam: So we're both wrong.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah, they were way up. I mean, you pull up the chart to confirm,
Ivan: but yeah, they were way up.
Ivan: Remember, because the expiration of the incentives, there was a massive tailwind.
Sam: Lots of people trying to get in under the line.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Ivan: Let me pull it up, but I know that I had looked it up recently because I knew this would come up.
Sam: Well, we made a new prediction on it last week, so.
Ivan: Yes. Here we go. Let's see. Yeah, they were up 11.7%.
Sam: Okay. I don't think it makes a difference for this, but was this pure electric
Sam: only or electric plus hybrid or what?
Ivan: I was looking at pure electric, like, right now.
Sam: Okay, next up was U.S. gas consumption, gasoline consumption in the U.S.
Sam: You had said it would be basically flat, plus or minus 1%, 2025 versus 2024. I said it would be up.
Sam: The best, I looked briefly for this, it looked like it was down more like 3%.
Sam: And I was comparing same month to same month.
Sam: I didn't have a full year number. so i was like comparing october to october
Sam: or something because that's the most recent month i had.
Ivan: Do you have a different info well let's see let's let's let's try look let's,
Ivan: it the estimate that is from s&p global flat to slight increase it is like basically flat.
Sam: Is it within one percent that's how you define.
Ivan: Yeah yeah yeah it was like 8.94 million barrels a day versus 8.95 million barrels a day.
Sam: Okay so you you were right oh wait you said slightly up.
Ivan: It's flat to slight increase yeah.
Sam: 8.94 okay so we were both right because i said up and you said flat so but i
Sam: i did find an october to october number that was like down for october or something
Sam: like that but i'll go with your number there.
Ivan: There's there's a there's a you know they're they're,
Ivan: It's just, you know, it's about, it's about flattish.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I mean, it's, yeah.
Sam: Now.
Ivan: But flattish to little bits. And this is from S&P Global, basically, the one that I had in AAA.
Sam: Okay. Excellent. Okay. Good. We were both right then. Next up,
Sam: the next few questions are about Tesla specifically.
Sam: You started out with a vague high level, and then we both got a little bit more specific.
Sam: So the vague high level was you said Tesla will be doing worse in 2025 than 2024.
Ivan: I mean, in terms of metrics, but I'm specifying metrics. I guess I meant car
Ivan: sales. The answer is car sales. They're down.
Sam: Okay. Then I will count you as right on that one.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Then you, then you did get more specific. You said Tesla revenue and profits would both be down.
Ivan: That's correct.
Sam: Okay. Then I said Tesla's stock would be down, and I was wrong.
Ivan: Oh, God, you were wrong.
Sam: Because, of course, those things shouldn't relate in any way, right?
Sam: No. Like the financial performance versus stock performance.
Sam: There's no reason those would be correlated.
Ivan: There's no reason those should be related. What are you talking about?
Ivan: What kind of sick person are you? Come on. No.
Sam: Okay. You then predicted that Biden's clean energy incentives would not be reversed.
Ivan: Well, I was wrong on that one.
Sam: You made the argument that a whole bunch of red states benefit from them a lot,
Sam: so there'd be congressional resistance to any rollback.
Ivan: And actually, there has been congressional resistance from those states,
Ivan: but not enough to stop it from happening.
Ivan: And I expect that—here's the other thing that I expected.
Ivan: I mean, Elon Musk is benefiting greatly from these, but he decided to completely
Ivan: shoot himself on the foot on this.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: But it's one that baffles me to this day. I don't understand why.
Sam: Okay, next up. Global carbon burned, we both agreed, would not go down this
Sam: year. We were correct. It did not go down.
Sam: It continues to increase on a global level.
Sam: I further predicted that the global CO2 level, so not the amount burned,
Sam: but the amount actually in the air would continue to go up. And yes, of course it did.
Sam: We both agreed that the percentage of global energy use from non-carbon sources would increase. It did.
Ivan: It did.
Sam: We both agreed that there would be an increase in the percentage of global power
Sam: from nuclear power, specifically year over year.
Sam: Now, I could not find 2025 data out yet, but 2024 was slightly up from 2023,
Sam: so I was going to count us both right.
Ivan: Let's see if I can find anything. Let's see what we got.
Ivan: The World Nuclear Association.
Sam: I think I may have been on their site earlier today as well.
Ivan: It says like a modest increase, like about 2%.
Sam: Percent of global? Because I found a percent increase of an absolute number, not of a percentage.
Ivan: Global, absolute, yeah. Absolute production globally, a slight increase of 2%.
Sam: Yeah, so, but we weren't talking about absolute, we were talking about a percentage
Sam: of global. So, you'd have to do the math on that.
Sam: I still gave us yes on both.
Ivan: Okay, all right.
Sam: Because the hard number I could find on percentage was a year out of date,
Sam: but it was still up slightly.
Sam: And indicators like this for 2025 are like, okay, the absolute number was up.
Sam: Whether or not the percentage is up depends on whether that increased faster
Sam: or slower than the overall number, but I'll give it to us.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay, next up,
Sam: was whether there'd be a successful reuse of Starship or Super Heavy by SpaceX.
Ivan: Was there?
Sam: Now, what I found was a reference that Super Heavy was reused in May,
Sam: but it had, quote-unquote, a hard splashdown.
Sam: So does it count as successful?
Ivan: No, no, that wasn't a successful reuse.
Sam: Well, it successfully boosted whatever it was supposed to boost to orbit.
Ivan: Yeah, but— Or whatever it was supposed to do. Well, I'm sorry,
Ivan: but also the recovery is part of the damn thing.
Ivan: You're like saying, hey, I dropped the kid off at school.
Ivan: Hey, I successfully drove to school. I dropped the kid off at school.
Ivan: Yeah, but you came back with no car!
Sam: Well, I successfully dropped the kid off.
Ivan: It was not a successful trip.
Sam: Okay, now, and to be fair, I found the references to May. I could not verify
Sam: whether they tried again after me.
Sam: Do you want to see if you can find something real quick?
Ivan: No, no, we're, we're, you know, no, okay.
Sam: No successful reuse. I'm sure if we got that wrong, Bruce will yell at us.
Ivan: Yes, we'll get a yell. We'll get a courage.
Sam: And he will probably tell us that it was a successful reuse because it did launch
Sam: the thing it was supposed to launch.
Ivan: I don't agree to successful reuse. I mean, it doesn't include like,
Ivan: you know, completing the damn.
Sam: I mean, it didn't blow up on the pad. They just, like, it had a hard landing.
Ivan: Hey, I didn't die!
Sam: Don't, yeah, yeah, okay.
Ivan: Fine.
Sam: We both agreed no major.
Ivan: My success metric is a little bit higher.
Sam: Okay, we both agreed no major new human spaceflight developments in 2025.
Ivan: We didn't have any, right? Or did we?
Sam: I think we were right.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: You predicted no major self-driving developments in 2025.
Ivan: We didn't have any. Basically status quo.
Sam: So I'll count you as right on that. But you specifically also called out they
Sam: still can't reliably do unproductive left turns.
Sam: Now, I saw some articles from late in the year saying there specifically had
Sam: been significant improvements in Tesla full self-driving doing unpredicted left
Sam: turns, unproductive left turns.
Ivan: Yeah, but not unpredicted. Once again, this is like, you know, yeah, it improved.
Ivan: Yeah, but that's like same shit as we've had. Significant breakthrough. Okay.
Ivan: Yeah, it's been improving, but it's not there yet.
Sam: Well, no, this prediction was they still can't reliably do unprotected left turns.
Sam: Can they reliably do unprotected left turns now?
Ivan: Okay. I, I, I, I, you know what? I don't know if that's the case.
Ivan: Okay. Check it. Ugh.
Ivan: Ugh. All right.
Ivan: The answer is no.
Sam: No, they still can't do them?
Ivan: No, they're not reliably in all conditions.
Sam: Okay, so I'm going to count you as correct.
Ivan: So it's improved, but it still can't do it reliably in all conditions.
Sam: Okay, next up, social media.
Sam: You made a general prediction, and then I was more specific.
Sam: your prediction was that x would
Sam: still be bigger than the other competitor social
Sam: media platforms now i broke
Sam: it down and made separate predictions for threads mastodon and blue sky but
Sam: you just made a general one against the competition so how would you because
Sam: we talked last week towards the end of the year yeah threads exceeded x on monthly
Sam: active users so does that mean you are wrong on this one?
Ivan: I may be. Let me see. All right, let's see.
Ivan: I would say because it's not a trend. It was only like one month that X was
Ivan: still bigger because it was only one month.
Ivan: You know, we did have a month where that metric did exceed, but I don't know if reliably they are.
Sam: So you want to count yourself as right.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: X is still bigger. Okay.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Well, in that case, I will make a clean sleep on the clean sleep.
Sam: Clean sleep sounds good.
Ivan: That sounds nice.
Sam: Okay, no, I separately said X is bigger than Threads, X is bigger than Mastodon,
Sam: X is bigger than Blue Sky, so I should say yes on all three.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: I got all three right. I did, however, say X will continue to decline, and that was also true.
Ivan: That's correct, yes. It did decline, but it didn't, yeah.
Sam: Okay. And this all hinges on us saying that, yes, Threads did have a good month,
Sam: but we're not quite ready to say that it's bigger than X.
Ivan: Correct, yes.
Sam: Okay. Okay. then tick tock we
Sam: both agreed that there would be no tick tock ban at any point in 2025 we.
Ivan: Were definitely right on that one.
Sam: No we were not they were shut down for 24 hours on january 19th right.
Ivan: They were shut down for 24 hours i forgot about that,
Ivan: huh yeah.
Sam: And then uh so we were both wrong on that one i specifically had predicted that
Sam: scotus would be the ones to rescue tiktok they were not it.
Ivan: Was donald trump.
Sam: It was donald j trump and in fact when tiktok turned themselves back on they
Sam: had a message thank you donald j trump So,
Sam: which, which by the way, happened before he was officially inaugurated.
Sam: He basically promised he was not going to do anything about this ban and there
Sam: and them and Apple and Google and everybody else were like, oh,
Sam: okay, then we'll, we'll turn you back on.
Sam: We'll believe you. Okay, I did have a conditional one, though,
Sam: which said if it is banned, it will come back. So I'm counting myself right for that one.
Ivan: Well, yeah, that's right. I mean, yeah.
Sam: Okay, we both agreed there would be no other major social media shutdowns.
Sam: I think we were right on that one.
Ivan: I think that's right.
Sam: Okay, we both agreed. And in fact, you made a recommendation based on this prediction.
Sam: You said that Donald J. Trump, the stock, DJT stock, would be up year over year,
Sam: and you recommended that this is the smart play for investment during the Trump administration.
Sam: How did DJT stock do over the course of the year, Yvonne?
Ivan: You pulled up the chart. I'm 90, 90, 90. I was wrong.
Ivan: I haven't even pulled up the chart. I know I was wrong. And it,
Ivan: let's see, during the year, holy fuck,
Ivan: So in, let's see, pull up one year, on January, the stock peaked at $42.9 a
Ivan: share on January 13th, right before the inauguration.
Ivan: Right now, it's at 13.7. So down like 75%.
Sam: Did I make a mistake putting my entire life savings in this, Yvonne?
Ivan: Yeah, that was probably a bad idea.
Sam: Oh, man. Okay, we were both wrong.
Sam: Then we talked about Truth Social as a social media site, and we talked about
Sam: it for a couple minutes, but the summary was that it remains just a cesspool
Sam: for MAGA and no one else uses it.
Ivan: Basically, that's what it still is. Nothing's changed.
Ivan: I mean, Truth Social should be renamed the Trump Official Communications Authority.
Sam: It's where he gets to do his 200 truth posts when he goes and does 200 of these
Sam: at 3 in the morning when he can't sleep. That's what it's for.
Sam: Okay, next up. We both agreed, and I counted this as one prediction,
Sam: but we were talking about whether or not x would introduce an email app or some
Sam: sort of cash app we both agreed they would not did they haven't.
Ivan: Introduced shit as far as i know.
Sam: Okay they.
Ivan: Even lost their ceo i don't even know who's in charge of the damn company anymore.
Sam: Wait that that lady's gone yeah oh yeah exactly it.
Ivan: Was that yeah she's gone i don't even.
Sam: Know who's.
Ivan: In charging a company anymore.
Sam: Okay well uh let me see who.
Ivan: Replaced uh at uh x.
Sam: Oh by the way last week we had talked about whether or not the the tiktok takeover
Sam: was complete and you said yes it was it just happened i saw somewhere else that
Sam: it's actually later this month oh okay like like the 28th or something.
Ivan: Okay. I guess that what they announced was formally that they announced a specific
Ivan: date it was closing. Okay. All right.
Sam: All right. It apparently has not actually closed yet. It will later this,
Sam: later this month. I forget the exact date.
Ivan: Okay. Linda Iaccarino left her role in July, 2025, and Elon did not publicly
Ivan: announce a successor for the role. So there's no boss.
Sam: Well, presumably it's him.
Ivan: I think, remember how they kind of merged XAI and X?
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I think if I remember that the guy that was running XAI and I kind of has like
Ivan: as a responsibility of X.
Sam: Grok's just running everything.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Grok's in charge.
Ivan: So everything should be fine.
Sam: Okay. I did have a conditional here that if they did launch something,
Sam: it would not be a success and nobody would use it. But it was a conditional, so it doesn't count.
Ivan: It doesn't count.
Sam: Okay. Then we both agreed that Apple would not launch glucose monitoring on the watches.
Ivan: We were correct, as far as I know.
Sam: You were correct. We both agreed that the AI bubble would not pop in 2025.
Sam: That's correct. I believe we were correct.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: If anything, things have still accelerated over the course of 2025. Yeah.
Sam: We both agreed, however, that there would not be any AGI in 2025,
Sam: you know, artificial general intelligence. I think we were right.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Now, this one's debatable because we said one thing on last week's show,
Sam: but we can argue it again now.
Sam: We disagreed on whether or not there would be a major incident blamed on AI
Sam: this year. And we debated a little bit on what would count.
Sam: I said it would be an issue with definable harm that we would talk about.
Sam: We said that it wasn't enough that people were committing suicide because they
Sam: were talking to the AIs because people committed suicide anyway.
Sam: We said it wasn't enough that Teslas were running over people in the streets
Sam: because people run over people in the streets anyway.
Sam: So the question is, what counts? Now, last week on the show,
Sam: we said that the fact that an AI apparently came up with those initial tariffs
Sam: levels counted for this. Do we want to count it again today?
Ivan: Yes, I agree.
Sam: Okay, so you were wrong. I was right because you said there would be no major
Sam: incident and I said there would be.
Ivan: Yeah. No, no, no. It definitely counts as a major incident. Yeah.
Sam: But were the tariffs really blamed on the AI? Or were they blamed on Donald Trump?
Ivan: No, they went... Listen, Donald Trump said, give me reciprocal tariffs.
Ivan: And they went, they used the AI to calculate them, and then we created a fucking...
Ivan: international massive incident based on calculations done by an AI agent that
Ivan: were pulled out of its ass.
Sam: Okay. Okay. Guess what? We're done with technology.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I made 24 predictions of which 17 were correct.
Sam: That's 70.8%. You
Sam: made 22 predictions of which 15 were.
Sam: Correct that's 68.2 percent you're
Sam: still yet another category i've beat you yeah consistently
Sam: beating me our combined number 46 predictions 32 right that's 69.6 percent and
Sam: again comparing to 2024 we had 65.6 percent so up again up again up in every category so far,
Sam: And we've only got one category left.
Sam: Dun, dun, dun.
Sam: Okay. So that last category is hodgepodge, but we're going to take a break first.
Sam: And just so you guys all know the way it's going to work, we're going to do
Sam: the hodgepodge category, then we'll take one final break, then we'll come back
Sam: with overall numbers for the whole year, and then we'll be done.
Sam: Okay, here we go.
Ivan: No blue thing.
Sam: You usually find music.
Sam: Okay, so we are back. The first item is one to debate whether it should count at all or not.
Sam: So we made a prediction about whether or not Jimmy Carter would survive 2025.
Sam: He, of course, died essentially right after we recorded the prediction show, but still in 2024.
Sam: So we said he would not survive 2025. Is this question moot and doesn't count at all?
Ivan: I think it's moot and doesn't count at all. I mean, we didn't enter 2025 alive.
Sam: Okay. Because you have your Fidel prediction, and he's still dead.
Sam: He's still dead. Like, Jimmy Carter's still dead.
Ivan: Okay, if we use Fidel as a threshold.
Sam: What we said was, will not survive. Which is different than you predicting Fidel is still dead.
Ivan: I mean... Hmm. Okay. Damn. Damn.
Ivan: I don't know. What do you think? What are your thoughts?
Sam: I think it should probably be moot. Okay.
Sam: Because surviving the year implies that at some point in the year, he was still alive.
Ivan: He was alive. Right.
Sam: Now, if we had just said, Jimmy Carter will still be alive at the end of 2025, I would count that.
Ivan: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam: Or that he was still dead.
Ivan: Yeah, but we said, yeah.
Sam: We said he will not survive. We didn't say he will be dead.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: There's a difference. So I'm just taking this off. This question does not count.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: We both agreed that he'd be dead, though.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: But he started the year dead, so we'll not count this.
Sam: Okay, next up, we both agreed that the polio vaccine would not lose approval for the U.S.
Sam: because of RFK Jr. He did not pull the approval.
Sam: He's done all kinds of things to mess with vaccine schedules,
Sam: but he did not actually pull the approval.
Sam: So we were both right. Now, this next one was a question from our listener,
Sam: Ed, about a very specific thing about whether or not dengue fever would be eliminated
Sam: for a certain number of square mile area due to a specific technique regarding using,
Sam: like, treated mosquitoes or something.
Ivan: Yeah, they've been doing that, like, experimenting with that, yes.
Sam: Yeah. Now, I could not find specific information about this on 2025.
Ivan: I haven't seen, I haven't heard that anybody used that anywhere.
Sam: Like, I looked for this and I found some general information about dengue fever
Sam: trends, but nothing specifically about trials with this technique.
Sam: Now, I could have missed it.
Sam: We both predicted that they would not only try it, but be successful at the
Sam: trials. So I'm ready to call ourselves wrong.
Ivan: I'm searching to see. According to ABC, there was a plan in Australia to release
Ivan: the mosquitoes aimed at reducing dengue risk.
Ivan: But it was paused and withdrawn after public backlash and regulatory reviews.
Ivan: So there was an attempt to do it. Yeah, there was an attempt to do it,
Ivan: but apparently it did not go through.
Sam: Okay, next question was whether or not bird flu would make the jump to human-to-human transmission.
Sam: We both said it would.
Sam: I do not believe that happened.
Sam: There have been bird-to-human transmission, but I don't think there's been human-to-human.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, no, there hasn't been human-to-human, yeah, that's correct.
Sam: So we were both wrong.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: I also predicted there would be a bird flu epidemic, but not a pandemic.
Sam: I don't think there was either. No, there wasn't. There were a handful of cases, but not a pandemic.
Ivan: No, we hadn't either. No.
Sam: Okay. Okay, next up was the Super Bowl. First of all, Yvonne, who won? Oh, my God.
Ivan: Philadelphia.
Sam: Okay. Do you remember who you said would win?
Ivan: I probably said Kansas City.
Sam: You did. Do you remember who I said would win?
Ivan: No.
Sam: The bears bills oh the buffalo bills.
Ivan: Okay all right we're both wrong there you go.
Sam: Okay so good job us um okay next up are a couple questions that alex had added
Sam: first up i predicted that abel fnaf web edition would not be canceled i was
Sam: correct it was not canceled okay,
Sam: I predicted that Abelsmay, that's me, would not die.
Ivan: Yeah, I think we're right on that one. Yes.
Sam: Unless you're a very good clone. I have something to reveal.
Sam: I am, in fact, a zombie. I have been dead for years.
Ivan: Well, you're doing great. But it didn't... Wait, but it's been for years.
Ivan: So that means you didn't die in 2025.
Sam: You're right. That's right. I died earlier.
Ivan: Yikes.
Sam: Okay. Well, anyway, Abel Smae did not die. You also agreed that Abel Smae would
Sam: not die. Thank you, Yvonne.
Ivan: You're welcome.
Sam: We were both correct. Then a second Abel FNAF web version.
Sam: Abel FNAF web version will not be canceled for real.
Sam: I was right on that one as well. It is not canceled.
Sam: However, I predicted that Abel FNAF web edition would be released,
Sam: and it has not been. so I was wrong on that one.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Next, we have a couple of traditional Yvonne predictions. You predicted that
Sam: Fidel Castro would stay dead. Did he stay dead?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay. Next, you predicted pain.
Ivan: I mean, I think that I've never been more accurate.
Sam: There you go. Next up, U.S. hurricane landfalls.
Sam: I predicted three, you predicted six. How many were there, Yvonne?
Ivan: Zero.
Sam: There were zero. We were both wrong.
Sam: Next, we both agreed that 2025 would be the hottest year ever.
Ivan: Was it? Of course it was.
Sam: No, it was not. It looks, the numbers are still preliminary,
Sam: but it looks like it's going to come in second or third.
Ivan: Oh, wow. Okay.
Sam: So we were both wrong on that one.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: You know, every year it's in, like, the top three, basically.
Ivan: But, well, I'm glad we're wrong.
Sam: I'm glad we're wrong, too. But, yeah, and so, again, still preliminary. Could be two.
Sam: Could be three. But definitely not one.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. We both predicted the best movie Oscar. You said Conclave. I said Wicked.
Sam: Do you know what it actually was?
Ivan: I have no idea. Who won?
Sam: Onora.
Ivan: Yeah, whatever. Like, Jesus, like we would have no idea. Fuck.
Sam: Yeah, no, we were both wrong. Next was a prediction of where the average number of weekly,
Sam: the trend line, where the trend line would be for curmudgeons corner seven day
Sam: downloads at the end of the year.
Sam: We both predicted it would be between 40 and 60, which is where it normally
Sam: is almost all of the time.
Ivan: And?
Sam: It was less than that.
Ivan: It was less?
Sam: Over the last few weeks, it had been in that range most of the year.
Sam: It has dropped below that in the last few weeks.
Sam: I blame it for our non-standard publication schedule. we've had the last few
Sam: weeks where we've released on all kinds of weird days instead of sort of like when we usually do.
Sam: So our numbers have gone down. Like, just as an example, we put two episodes
Sam: out only like three days apart.
Sam: And so even if somebody downloaded both of those, they count once for that period
Sam: of time, for that seven-day period.
Sam: And then we've gone a couple times waiting longer than seven days.
Sam: And now this time we're going to be shorter.
Sam: Anyway, it's been a weird schedule and it's been holidays.
Sam: I mean, we always have holidays and it doesn't usually dip this far,
Sam: but it dipped pretty low because of our—and again, I'm blaming our weird schedule.
Sam: It could be something else. People could just hate us now.
Sam: Although it has started to pop back up in the last few days so anyway we were both wrong on that one,
Sam: i predicted you made no prediction on this where the
Sam: trend line for wiki of the day downloads would
Sam: be combining all three of the wiki of the day podcasts i predicted
Sam: it would be between 125 and 175 per
Sam: seven day period at the end of the year i was wrong
Sam: it's up at 240 so let's go
Sam: look at that so and once
Sam: again a lot more people apparently download
Sam: my completely automated podcast that like
Sam: i put no effort into on a daily
Sam: basis than this one that i spend many hours on but
Sam: you know whatever well it's a much simpler shorter download simpler shorter
Sam: three minutes it's less of an investment than like a multi-hour current events
Sam: podcast you know yeah so so anyway okay we're We split on whether Taylor Swift
Sam: and Travis Kelsey would get engaged.
Ivan: What did you say? Wait, they did. So what did you say?
Sam: You said they would not. I said they would.
Ivan: So you were wrong and I was right. Ha ha ha!
Sam: Okay, next up, and I previewed this earlier, because earlier in the show,
Sam: in the politics section, you said Trump would not die.
Sam: Here in Hodgepodge, you say Trump will die.
Sam: So last time you were right, this time you were wrong.
Ivan: So I basically just canceled myself out. Great.
Sam: You canceled yourself out. So
Sam: you were wrong this time. You also predicted that King Charles would die.
Ivan: Well, King Charles is not dead.
Sam: King Charles is not dead.
Ivan: I'm like, I mean, I'm not helping any, you know, this is, you know,
Ivan: me predicting people will die is a surefire way for them to live longer.
Sam: So now on last week's show, I predicted that Dick Van Dyke will die in 2026.
Sam: But last year, I predicted he would live through 2025. And I was right.
Ivan: Ah, there you go.
Sam: However, I predicted that David Attenborough and Alan Greenspan would die,
Sam: and they did not. So I got those two wrong.
Sam: You—those were the old people, like, that were, you know—but then you—both of
Sam: us predicted one younger person who would die this year.
Sam: You predicted Jared Kushner would die.
Ivan: Yeah.
Ivan: Like I said, this doesn't help me, you know, yeah, no, Cusher's not dead.
Sam: I predicted Matt Gaetz would die.
Ivan: Well, neither of them are dead.
Sam: No, which is a shame because I didn't get to test my conditional,
Sam: which was if Matt Gaetz did die, he would die high on cocaine in the arms of a hooker.
Ivan: That would have been quite a, you know, quite a win for you.
Ivan: Yes, and everybody else.
Sam: Okay. We are now at the end of the hodgepodge section.
Sam: Can you tell, just by having gone through that, how well or not we did?
Ivan: I don't think we did do well. I don't think we did well in the hodgepodge.
Ivan: I think we really screwed ourselves in the hodgepodge.
Sam: I made 20 predictions, of which I got six.
Sam: That is 30%. You made 14 predictions, of which you got 4 correct.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: That is 28.6%.
Ivan: How hard?
Sam: So collectively, that's 34 predictions, of which we got 10 correct.
Sam: That is 29.4% in the Hodgepodge.
Ivan: How did we do versus last year?
Sam: Well, last year at Hodgepodge, we got 41.9%. Jesus Christ.
Sam: Every other category we did better this year, Hodgepodge, we were already low
Sam: last year, and we fell even further through the floor.
Sam: So, yeah. So that's that. And that's the end of the section.
Sam: so we're going to take one more quick break and then we'll come back with the
Sam: totals for everything together and then we'll say goodbye so here we go.
Sam: Okay, we are back. First off, I just want to mention that even though we did
Sam: so much worse on HodgePodge this time around than last year, I still beat you.
Ivan: Yes, you did.
Sam: So I did better than you in all five categories this year.
Ivan: You did a clean sweep on all the categories.
Sam: I did. Yeah, because I'm just that good. Okay, overall, I made 143 predictions,
Sam: of which 99 were correct.
Sam: Just one short of that 100 mark, but that's 69.2%.
Sam: You made 123 predictions, of which you got 80 correct. That is 65%.
Ivan: Okay, okay.
Sam: So our overall number, 266 predictions,
Sam: 179 correct, that's 67.29%, compared to 52.40 last year.
Sam: So significantly better than last year, just comparing to...
Sam: Years going back even further. I'm just searching back. 2020.
Sam: Whoa, this is good. This is good. 2018. 2017.
Sam: Oh. I only have records in this spreadsheet going back to.
Sam: Okay, here we go. This is the best we've done since 2016 when we got 73%.
Ivan: Damn, there you go.
Sam: So it may have not seemed great, but we actually did better with our 2025 predictions
Sam: than 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, or 2017.
Sam: Damn. Have to go back all the way to 2016 to get better.
Sam: So we did pretty good in 2016, 73%.
Ivan: You know, I noticed there's a weird thing.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, wait, 2016 was the year.
Sam: No, that was the year.
Ivan: It was the election year.
Sam: Yeah. Even though we both predicted Hillary would be president. Right. I think.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Let me make sure. Did we both predict Hillary would be president?
Ivan: Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Well, we did predict Trump was going to be president. That's for sure.
Sam: Our categories were all different. Here we go. Trump wins. Trump wins.
Sam: Super Tuesday. Blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Clinton. Yes, we both agreed that Clinton would win the presidency.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So.
Ivan: That was our biggest.
Sam: We were wrong about that one. But we were right about a lot of other things that year.
Ivan: Right about everything else except. Just a little teeny weasy.
Sam: So I guess I got to be happy. Best in like almost 10 years.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty damn good.
Sam: Okay. Well, that's it for the show. You guys know curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: We'll be back to doing normal shows next week, assuming nothing crazy happens.
Sam: And it'll be longer than normal because for this week we recorded on a Sunday.
Sam: So it'll be almost two weeks until the next episode is out.
Ivan: Is that the way this is working?
Sam: Yes, yes. We went over this last week. We record one episode every Sunday through Saturday week.
Ivan: Right, so that means...
Sam: So we're already done for the week of the 4th through the 10th.
Sam: So chances are we won't record again until like the 15th or 16th.
Sam: So unless we want to shift back to doing it earlier in the week instead of later
Sam: in the week. But, you know, anyway, but yeah, so we'll be back to a normal show next time.
Sam: And yeah, go to curmudgeoncypherandcorner.com. You can look at all our archives.
Sam: You can actually listen to the prediction show that we just talked about if you want to.
Sam: It was the last show recorded in 2024, December 27th.
Sam: You know, you can go look at the, there's an archive section,
Sam: click 2024, scroll down, find it, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: I just listened to it. It was very exciting. It was a wonderful show.
Sam: You guys should go back, listen to it.
Sam: You can go back and listen to our 2016 prediction show too.
Sam: That would have been the last one we recorded in 2015. It's all on the website.
Sam: That's what the website's for. Listen to all these old episodes.
Sam: Anyway, you can also find there all the ways to contact us, transcripts, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And of course, a link to our Patreon, where you can give us money at various levels.
Sam: We will mention you on the show, we will ring a bell, we will send you a postcard,
Sam: we will send you a mug, or importantly, at $2 a month or more,
Sam: or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our curmudgeon's corner Slack.
Sam: Where a bunch of us hang out and share links, talk about the news,
Sam: talk about other things all through the week. It's lots of fun. The more the merrier.
Sam: Please join us. We had one new person join this last week, but they haven't said anything yet.
Sam: So I don't know, you know, but maybe they're lurking.
Ivan: Yes, probably.
Sam: So welcome, Monica, if you're also listening to the show.
Ivan: Of course, we're saying it at the end, you know, at the end,
Ivan: And, you know, tail ends of a really long.
Sam: More boring show where we're just listing a whole bunch of things. But anyway.
Sam: Yeah. So did you want to highlight something from the Slack?
Ivan: Well, I did mention, because I don't think I mentioned this earlier,
Ivan: that as I was driving to Orlando last week, navigation on Google Maps suggested
Ivan: that I make a detour. Okay.
Ivan: And the detour suggested that I go through 5.6 miles of unpaved road.
Sam: Excellent.
Ivan: In order to get to Orlando 23 minutes slower.
Ivan: Not sure, really. And I looked up, I double-checked.
Sam: Was it Roy?
Ivan: No, it's not Roy. Roy is north of Orlando.
Sam: For anybody who doesn't know, Yvonne and I did a trip together in the car.
Sam: You can find it on ablesmay.com slash trip.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: I make sure I'm giving you correct information.
Sam: Ablesmay.com slash trip. It is labeled as the non-random predecessor GPS trip
Sam: where we did back roads from New Jersey to Miami Beach using a GPS in 1998.
Ivan: Okay, let's be clear. This is in 1998. We used a Garmin GPS receiver hooked up with a laptop.
Ivan: We also tried and we couldn't get to work. We were going to get with my cell
Ivan: phone a data connection to see if we could upload.
Ivan: We had a Connectix Quick Cam to see if we could connect it.
Ivan: But the adapter that we got for the phone when we got there was the wrong.
Ivan: They sent us the wrong damn adapter for the phone.
Ivan: So we couldn't make that part work. But there are digital pictures there with
Ivan: what is a terrible camera for today's standards.
Ivan: But there was a digital camera back then and stuff. and we avoided any highways,
Ivan: Toll routes. The whole purpose of the trip was to make it all the way down by
Ivan: avoiding all major highways through there. And it was a very interesting trip.
Ivan: We got a lot of things. And one of the things that happened is an incident that
Ivan: happened with this so-called city of Roy, which it routed us through,
Ivan: which looked, wow, look at this mapped out city.
Ivan: And it was like swampland that somebody just mowed through and marked some streets somehow.
Ivan: And we almost got stuck in the mud. I did go and like find Roy on the map.
Ivan: I did see that they added some major roads around again, but it is still pretty
Ivan: much swampland with a whole bunch of unpaved roads.
Ivan: There are more houses there, but it's still pretty much the same.
Sam: Excellent. I presume you've bought property there.
Ivan: Yes, of course.
Sam: Okay. That your story?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay. Well, I think we're done. So thank you, everybody, for joining us again.
Sam: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Have a great week.
Sam: Hope you had a good set of holidays, spent some time with the family, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And we'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
Sam: Say goodbye, Yvonne.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Thank you. Okay, that's it. Thank you, Yvonne. We'll see you another time.
Ivan: All right. Bye. Thank you.