Year: 2025

Twelve months ago I continued the long tradition of making incorrect predictions about the coming year, and like most of the past 17 years, the first journal entry of 2025 is a recap of how the 2024 predictions turned out (spoiler alert: DOH).

1. Joe Biden (or another Democrat if his health fails) will be elected President.

   WRONG. Given that “it’s the economy, stupid” still rings true, the Democrats should have held every campaign event at one of the dozens of new car, battery, or microchip plants that are being built as a result of the Inflation Reduction and CHIPS acts, but hindsight is 20/20. My caveat that Biden might not be the nominee was astute, but it took a long time for him to drop out and thus Americans decided to put the guy from Home Alone 2 back in charge.

2. Democrats will lose two Senate seats and lose control of the Senate.

   WRONG. Democrats lost a seat in West Virginia (as expected), but also lost seats in Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania for a net loss of four seats, giving Republicans a 53-47 advantage in the upper chamber.

3. Republicans will lose the House of Representatives, with Democrats gaining a thin majority of between 2-10 seats.

   WRONG. Democrats gained two seats but lost the chamber 220-215. Given how many Republicans will never be a “yes” vote for must-pass items like spending bills and debt ceiling increases, it’s going to be a wild ride for the next two years.

4. SpaceX’s Starship rocket will successfully deliver cargo to orbit but won’t have a successful landing.

   WRONG. While they haven’t yet tried to deliver cargo or land a second stage, SpaceX pulled off one of the greatest engineering feats of all time by catching a first-stage booster as it returned to the launchpad. Elon Musk seems to be following the Howard Hughes playbook by being a whacko eccentric who creates companies that change the world in amazing ways.

5. The US men’s Olympic basketball team will go undefeated, will win every game by at least fifteen points, and will romp to an Olympic gold medal.

   WRONG. When they beat South Sudan by only 17 points it was clear that this prediction was in trouble. A gold medal is nothing to be ashamed of, but they didn’t come close to winning every game in a blowout, nearly losing to Serbia in the semifinals, then barely pulling away from France to win by 11 in the finals. I’m not sure how a roster with Steph Curry, Lebron James, Kevin Garnet, and other stars didn’t turn the Olympics into the Globetrotters vs Washington Generals, but my prediction of a second-coming of the 1992 Dream Team (whose “closest” game was a 32 point win) didn’t come to pass.

6. Twitter will either be sold or spun off into a non-profit foundation.

   WRONG. I thought that Elon Musk might spin off Twitter X both to unload a bad investment and to free it from the perception of bias, but instead he has… gone in another direction. Meanwhile Bluesky is finally ramping up, and many of the engineers, academics and economists that I used to follow on Twitter are starting to post there.

7. 2024 will see the start of antitrust actions against Apple over its app store and iOS ecosystem in both the US and EU, but nothing will be close to changing by end of year.

   CORRECT. Hey, I got one! Both Europe and America have started antitrust proceedings against Apple, but it’s going to drag on for years. In the meantime, in an effort to stave off regulators Apple finally adopted text messaging standards that are compatible with other types of phones, so that’s a (small) win.

8. Deadpool 3 will become the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

   CORRECT. Second correct prediction! While it wasn’t Marvel’s best film (or honestly even the best of the Deadpool films), it now stands as the highest grossing R-rated film both domestically and internationally.

9. Marvin Harrison Jr and four quarterbacks will be the top five picks in the NFL draft.

   WRONG. During the draft I was thinking about this prediction as Caleb Williams (QB) was picked first, Jayden Daniels (QB) was picked second, Drake Maye (QB) was picked third, and Marvin Harrison was picked fourth. Then four picks went by until Michael Penix (QB) was picked eighth, and this prediction went down in flames.

10. Either Paramount Studios or Warner Brothers Studios (or both) will be sold to Netflix, Google, or another media company anxious to enhance their streaming offerings.

    WRONG. Paramount and Skydance are finalizing a merger, but I really thought one of the major streamers would look at Paramount as an ideal acquisition target.

11. Both the Tesla Cybertruck and the Apple Vision Pro headset will see disappointing sales and will have to either cut production targets or drop prices to attract buyers.

    CORRECT. Despite having a million reservations, Tesla is having trouble selling Cybertrucks after delivering less than 50,000, while Apple is rumored to have sold fewer than 100,000 Apple Vision Pro headsets. The technology in both products is actually really impressive, but Tesla needs to move away from their stainless-steel triangle and build a truck that actually appeals to truck owners, while $3,500 for a headset that (so far) is mostly only good for watching 3-D movies is a tough sell.

12. The Dow Jones Industrial Average will end the year up 15-25 percent.

    WRONG. The Dow was at 45,000 in early December, a gain of 19%, but then someone noticed that I had predicted a 15-25% rise for the year and pressed the smite button. The markets tanked, and while they ended the year up a very nice 12.9%, it fell short of the 15% I predicted.

13. AI generated content will lead to confusion and scandals during the 2024 election cycle.

    WRONG. It’s getting shockingly easy to generate realistic AI content, but surprisingly there wasn’t a lot of fake Trump or Kamala content going viral during this election cycle. I’m not sure if the social media companies were just really good at flagging it, or if everyone was so polarized that nothing meaningful broke through, but for whatever reason, the new technology didn’t seem to be used as nefariously as it could have been in this cycle.

14. Despite the doors literally falling off of 737-MAX planes, Boeing won’t face additional troubles in 2024 and will be on track for a very successful 2025.

    WRONG. Boeing has a new CEO, a new contract with its machinist union, and is working to change the investor-focused culture that began with its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas back to a safety and engineering-focused culture that existed pre-merger, but it looks like it’s still going to be a while before they have a “very successful” year. The new 777X has been delayed again (originally supposed to enter service in 2019, now 2026), they are laying off staff, and they have shelved plans for new planes until things are running normally, so it’s going to be several more years before one of America’s most celebrated companies is healthy again.

15. Both the Jeddah Tower and the Dubai Creek Tower will resume construction this year, portending new records in the “world’s tallest” category.

    HALF CREDIT. Both of these record-breaking construction projects are supposedly restarting construction, but while the Jeddah Tower site shows signs of activity, the Dubai Creek Tower announced it was restarting but doesn’t seem to be very active. I’m taking half credit since it looks like the Jeddah Tower is actually going to be built and become the world’s tallest building, while Dubai Creek Tower isn’t being worked on and its plans now seem to indicate that it will no longer aim to become the world’s tallest structure.

Final score: 3.5/15. Ouch. That’s only slightly worse than last year’s performance, so I’m definitely going to be keeping my day job. The 2025 predictions should be online by the end of the month, and I’m setting a goal of at least 30% correct for once, since I like to dream big.