The graph doesn’t give enough context, nor does the article IMO. China is a third party in this, as well as the Ukraine War, etc. And Trump seems unlikely to be good for the economy in his time in office so next year might be up, but there are many more factors.

With Donald Trump preparing to cut taxes and increase tariffs, US inflation is forecast to stay above 2 per cent throughout the whole of 2025, according to predictions compiled by Consensus Economics. Eurozone inflation is on the other hand forecast to drop below the ECB’s target of 2 per cent as soon as February.

“We expect a divergence to open up between the loosening cycles of the Fed and the ECB as mounting inflation risks cause the former to take a fairly cautious approach, while the latter responds forcefully to economic weakness,” said Jennifer McKeown, chief global economist at Capital Economics.

Wang Naiyu, director of the REN Centre for Urban Resilience at Zhejiang University, noted significant differences in emergency warning and rescue models between China and the United States.

In his own province of Zhejiang, on China’s eastern coast, the government deploys large numbers of frontline workers to go door-to-door before a typhoon strikes to ensure that everyone is evacuated as required.

In contrast, the US does not enforce mandatory evacuations, according to Wang. Instead, the authorities issue warnings and leave the decision to evacuate up to the residents themselves.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters, who writes for the website Yale Climate Connections, said that in China “mandatory” really meant mandatory, so there were fewer people in harm’s way when a storm hit.

“The death toll from hurricanes in the US tends to be higher because a ‘mandatory’ evacuation order is not really mandatory – up to 40 per cent of the population will ignore it,” he said.

Comments feel all over the place too. There’s something odd here indeed.

Thanks, I’ll add them and look forward to it.

My distilled understanding is that we are not psychological well built by evolution for this much information in the forms we now have technological. When you take our cognitive biases–which makes us persuadable–and couple that with a degenerating lack of taught fundamental critical thinking skills, it leads to irrational choices and mindsets which are not accounted for in our governing systems, let alone cultures, and economic. Indeed the latter point is that the capitalist system has a fiduciary responsibly to take advantage of any niche and exploit it, which has been let loose due to deregulation in various forms. Executive have little moral incentive to not be evil and instead to manipulate people in whatever manner best suits their shareholders. All of this creates echo chambers and self-reinforcing irrational behavior.

Obviously there is much more to it, but this is the elevator pitch version… Which I look forward to comparing against the books you indicated, plus any correction you might add.

This is where truth is crazier then fiction, but perhaps we can begin to get to grips with it.

How to avoid a techno-apocalypse brought on by the internet. Talks of several books where this is a core part of the plot.

THE nuclear blast that takes out Moab, Utah, in Neal Stephenson’s 2019 novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is “epistemic ground zero”. That is because it doesn’t actually happen. It is an online-only 9-11, a viral conspiracy theory that becomes the fault line along which the US fractures in two.

On one side, the people who believe that Moab is a no-go zone, and that the event has been covered up by swamp-dwelling politicians. On the other, the people who can freely travel to Moab to see the town is untouched.

The know-nothing side of the US devolves into Mad Max anarchy, becoming a no-go zone in its own right, which Stephenson brands Ameristan. The rest continue unimpeded into the technological future.

The book is one of many recent ones that tackle one of the questions of our time. As comedian Ronny Chieng put it in his Netflix special: “Who knew all of human knowledge could make people dumber?”

Perhaps it’s time for Elon Musk to trade in his rockets and tweets for something a bit more, well, boring. After all, digging tunnels seems less likely to land him in hot water—or at least less likely to attract the attention of every regulatory agency with an acronym. With the FAA reportedly raising eyebrows over SpaceX activities and the SEC keeping tabs on his social media shenanigans, maybe subterranean ventures are the way to go.

The Boring Company might just be Musk’s most grounded idea yet—literally. No satellites to launch, no cars to recall, and best of all, no character limits to consider before hitting “send.” Just good old-fashioned dirt and a machine that goes “brrrr.” Imagine the peace and quiet (well, except for the drilling sounds) of focusing on tunnels that could one day alleviate traffic woes—assuming they don’t accidentally tap into a subway line.

And let’s not forget, digging holes has a certain metaphorical elegance to it. If you’re already in one, why not keep digging? It’s a strategy that’s worked so far, right? Plus, it’s hard to get into legal trouble when you’re underground—unless, of course, you accidentally tunnel into a vault or something. But hey, even then, it would make for an exciting twist in the ever-entertaining Musk saga.

So here’s to hoping Elon swaps his Twitter tirades for tunnel trajectories. At least in the depths of the earth, there’s no Wi-Fi to tempt him into late-night tweets that launch a thousand headlines. Maybe being boring isn’t so bad after all.

Sounds like what US Special Operations does on the CA side plus or minus some.