‘This Year In The New Normal’ – 2024 Edition

Via Off-Guardian.org,

If our readers are anything like us then you spent the majority of the weekend taking down Christmas decorations and carefully organizing them, despite the knowledge that they’ll somehow become messy again by next December.

That means the new year has officially started, which makes it time for our third-annual special edition of This Week in the New Normal. The one time a year where This Week looks forward instead of back and we try and predict what’s coming.

Welcome to This Year in the New Normal, and here are our picks for the potential major stories of 2024.

1. US PRESIDENTIAL “ELECTION” AND THE DECLINE OF THE US EMPIRE

An easy one to start off: It’s election year in the US. That means non-stop coverage of which candidates said this about that, endless reporting of (probably entirely invented) polling figures and a few hours of excitement in November when they tell you what color tie the globalist puppet will be wearing for the next four years.

In case the sarcasm was not clear enough:

Democracy is not at stake, democracy is dead, buried, and the 2020 “election” was the establishment pissing on its grave.

This coming election will be rigged. How obviously and in which direction is as yet unclear (I genuinely think they might go back to Trump), and it arguably matters less than it has ever done.

To steal the tagline from Alien vs Predator: Whoever “wins”, we lose.

A more interesting & subtle narrative to observe will be the decline of the US as an imperial power, and how stage-managed it will be. After all, the decline and fall of the US could be used to sell the idea the “right side” has won.

What part will the so-called “election” play in fall of the US? Will we see more January 6th-like incidents and unrest? Is there a chance the election is postponed altogether in response to some as-yet unknown “emergency?
Were Trump and Biden selected in order to discredit the presidency and smooth the way for a change of system? If so, will this trend continue?

Questions 2024 has yet to answer.

Bold Prediction: By the end of the year, we will see mainstream articles both mourning and celebrating the end of US hegemony, and others welcoming the “post Imperial age” and/or “multipolar” or “multilateral” world.

2. AI: RISE OF THE MACHINES

2023 was the birthyear of AI in the public consciousness. Everyone was talking about AI art, ChatGPT and so on. Fear of AI allegedly spawned both the Screen Actors and Writer’s Guild strikes that halted Hollywood production in the late summer/early autumn.

The media is full of warnings about it, claiming that AI will make it impossible to know who’s human and who is not.

This is partly true, but it has been so for years. It is no longer safe, or perhaps rational, to believe what you see.

…but we suggest that’s not why the warnings are there.

In 2024 we expect this story to gather pace, and wouldn’t be surprised to see one or two staged “crises” in which AI is reportedly to blame. Maybe a “hack” or a “leak” or a major website like PayPal or VISA crashing briefly due to some AI “attack”.

In the end it will all be about surveillance and digital IDs.

Bold Prediction: By this time next year most social media and online businesses will require some form of digital “proof of humanity” before you can use their services, perhaps relying on a new form of digital identity document.

3. LAB GROWN MEAT ON SUPERMARKET SHELVES

The last we heard of cultivated or “lab-grown” meat, it was being banned in Italy. Good news for everyone, especially Italians.

Then, just before the new year, fake meat was back on the media menu.

On December 19th Forbes reported a US-based “cultivated meat company” had achieved “price parity”.

On December 27th PBS asked “How is Lab Grown Meat Made and Will People Accept it?”

On December 29th a Scotsman column asked “Will King Charles give royal seal of approval to ‘lab-grown’ meat that could help save the planet?”

The same day Longevity Tech asked “Is Lab-grown meat healthier than real meat?”

(sidebar – One minor prediction is that they will stop using the word “real” to differentiate meat from cultivated cell cubes. Expect words like “traditional”, “old-fashioned” or “non-renewable meat” to take over.)

This is no mistake of timing. The narrative is cynically being aligned with the new year to catch people in their annual “self improvement” phase. After all, it’s well known the global population of gym-going teetotal vegans quadruples on January 1st and goes back to normal by February.

…so this one isn’t so much a prediction as an observation: This trend will continue, at least until the spring.

My original “bold prediction” was going to be that 2024 would see lab grown meat labelled “vegan”…but that already happened in 2023. So…

Bold Prediction: By the end of the year at least a handful of countries will have fully approved lab grown meat, and one major fast food chain will be advertising their use of it.

*  *  *

All told, it looks like OffG is in for a busy year, and we didn’t even cover the looming war in Taiwan or the spike in “lableaks” which might cause the next “pandemic”.

Good times ahead. Happy New Year everyone.