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2024. I mean, just WTAF?

Welcome to the Asylum. Please scream if it will help you to relax.

septentrionarius
The Cult of Stupid
13 min readDec 26, 2024

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2024 — rubber stamped with REJECTED notice

Here we are again, in the perineum of yet another year. This is the bit of the year where we look back, see what a mess it was, and hope there’s an outside chance we may actually get something better next year. Sadly, 2024 is not that year. So, in no particular order, off we go.

America stared into the abyss, thought “ah, fuck it”, and jumped right in

It’s quite impressive that the US electorate looked at a) how mad Trump’s first term 2016 was, b) that tiny, little insurrection thing on 6 January 2021, c) the fact that he’s a lying, grifting, criminal, rapey, orange slug, d) how rancid and stench-ridden his family, and associates are, and e) how much of a dribbling, demented half-wit he is, and thought, “Fuck yeah! we’ll have some more of that, because voting for an actual woman, who would be able to count past ten without taking her shoes off, would be both Unamerican, and mad.”

The transitional government announcements are a mix of dystopian horror and high farce, with appointments ranging from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous, though the cynical viewer might be reminded of Douglas Adams’ description of Zaphod Beeblebox in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a president who is used to draw attention away from a whole bunch of other unpleasant stuff. It explains Elon Musk’s elevation to a place in Trump’s inner circle-jerk.

Elon Musk has gone full-on Dr Evil …

All Space Karen needs is the cat.

… but he’s just one of the new Broligarchy

A whole bunch of Silicon Valley tech bro arsehats, including (but not limited to) Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, Zuckerberg, and Bezos are lining up to see exactly how they can benefit from the oncoming shitstorm that will be the Trump presidency. The warning signs were there during the election campaign when the billionaire owners of major national newspapers like the NY Times, Washington Post (hello again, Bezos), and LA Times all suddenly decided that querulously sitting on the editorial fence was absolutely the right thing to do when there was one vaguely sane candidate running against an unhinged maniac and his hangers-on. The push, like any other oligarchy, is to loosen regulation, and public protections, just to let them run amok as they wish. What it does show is that the media landscape in the US is now comprehensively broken, and has split into alternative realities that broadcast to entirely different demographics. There’s nothing really “united” about them any more. You’d imagine some people in Beijing and Moscow might not be too disappointed with that.

Making America Sick Again

Robert Kennedy Junior has made it clear that terribly old-fashioned public health policies, such as vaccination, and water fluoridation are not going to have a place in the coming administration, and that people are just going to have to take their chances. Maybe mandated lead in water is coming next. Health insurers might be rubbing their hands, thinking that this might be another source of profit, where they can charge extra to those who still hold old fashioned notions that protection from diseases you shouldn’t be getting anymore, and that can kill or permanently incapacitate you if you do, like measles, or polio, is a good thing. But even the health insurers must be shuffling around nervously after Luigi Mangione decided to go fully postal (faintly ironically given the state of the USPS, and how much worse that will likely get in the next 4 years). The backlash, which is clearly making some corporate CEOs very, very nervous, can’t be called inspiring, but there’s a suggestion that a significant chunk of America is building up an increasing reserve of resentment and even hatred of untrammelled corporate greed, and may become increasingly willing to do something about it in the not too distant future.

Putin

Vladimir Putin is still there, and still being awful, though gaining a new lodger and his family from Syria in the latter part of the year can’t have lightened his mood. It feels like he’s just about hanging on until his asset in Washington, “Agent Orange”, cuts him some slack in January. He needs it because Ukraine is not going at all to plan for him. But all that does is make the Middle East look even more mad than it did this time last year. Speaking of which …

The Middle East

FUCKING HELL. Just, you know … fucking hell.

Europe

If you were hoping for something cheerful there, then you’re going to be disappointed. Right wing government in Italy, Orban still causing trouble in Hungary, and both France and Germany going through internal political turmoil trying to fight off right wing factions. The ongoing situation in Ukraine is not helping any of this.

Changes to Terms and Conditions for Rapey Men (France only)

The harrowing case of Gisèle Pelicot and the years of abuse she was subjected to by her own husband, and countless other men hasn’t exactly been cheerful either. But some good has come of it. Fifty of those responsible are starting prison sentences of varying lengths, and with any luck the instigator, her husband, will die behind bars. But she, and her children, have been far more remarkable for showing such strength in the face of the horrors rained upon them. Resilience is an often overrated “virtue”, usually invoked by those who just want others to shut up and accept conditions they should not have to, but this is different. She could have remained anonymous, and all of this could have happened far less publicly. Instead, she chose to waive her anonymity, so that the world could see, and feel the revulsion, and her sense of betrayal that the man she loved and trusted could visit these horrific indignities upon her for so long. It can’t be undone, but sometimes due process, and justice does win out, and a reckoning does happen.

Meanwhile, in TOTALLY Normal Britain …

The year began with ITV showing a drama about the Post Office Horizon scandal that had been brewing for years. But it needed Toby Jones and a cast of familiar faces to bring home the human cost to audiences. It was hugely successful, but even then execs at the channel were saying it had not been a significant money maker for them. Generally speaking it wasn’t a great year for trad TV, with budgets, and advertising revenues shrinking in the face of the streaming services. In those circumstances, you could also say the BBC had a fairly rough year too, and that’s without the high profile criticism of how it managed the behaviour of some of its ‘talent’, some of it fair, some a bit less so, for several reasons. Of course, the BBC’s ethically pure, and blameless opponents all jumped on it.

For the Post Office scandal itself, in the months following the drama, things moved on apace, and the public enquiry threw some of the Post Office’s management into a very unwelcome spotlight for a while. That is more than you can say for the pace of the Grenfell enquiry. As a result, the other ongoing enquiry, about the Johnson government’s COVID response, tended to take a back seat, with a few choice exceptions. Events later in the summer shifted the attention somewhat, and now there’s just a return to the low-level background enquiry thrum, which may mean the public’s memory will wander away, and the job of sorting it out and holding people to account won’t get finished. Again.

Boris Johnson wrote a book; we wish he hadn’t. It was all over supermarkets and bookshops. And newspapers. And the political discussion programmes, which mostly revealed that typically for Johnson, it was a rambling, under-edited heap of mendacious, steaming horseshit. But it committed the worst crime of all: it was apparently terribly, terribly dull, which may explain that no one really bought it, and, like toilet paper stuck in the U-bend, it continued to clog up those same bookshop shelves as the year went on. He has also managed to turn in his “will this do?” column for the Daily Mail. How lovely. But of course, being the grifter he is, he made sure he got his readies in advance.

Liz Truss “wrote” a “book” too, if you could call it that. Few cared that much, and those that did seemed to see it as either a work of performance comedy, or a coded cry for help, scrawled on the walls of the padded cell using her own shit. She showed as much skill and self-awareness shilling her product on the US “News” networks as she’d shown as Prime Minister.

After the dismal Conservative performance in local and mayoral elections in the spring, summer brought a General Election, No one expected this, except for some of Rishi Sunak’s advisors, who’d apparently been putting bets on the date. The opposition parties weren’t quite prepared for the starting gun going off so early. Sadly for most of the Conservative Party, who were expecting the campaign not to kick off until the autumn at least, neither were they. In a tactical masterstroke, Sunak launched his campaign shivering in the rain like a drowning dormouse, only intermittently audible because a man was standing in Whitehall, playing old D:Ream tunes at full blast outside the gates of Downing Street. From there, things went downhill.

When the polls closed on 4 July the only question that needed to be asked was “how bad was the defeat?” The answer was, “Holy SHIT!”. The electorate had fragmented, but it was clear that the one thing that most voters were agreed on was that the Conservatives were beyond fucking awful. Labour got their expected majority. It was also a good night for the Liberal democrats, and (less happily) for the dedicated grinning bollock-faced follower of fascism (Oh yes he is!), Nigel Farage. Reform took a significant share of the vote, but not many of the seats. Labour got what looks like a big win, but not one that feels particularly firm.

The first months of Government have perhaps not turned out as Labour might have hoped. The first reaction on walking through the doors of their new ministries for most of the new Cabinet must to been like watching all of them modelling Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Everything still feels very very broken, which they then went on to remind us. At length. There have been some significant early difficulties about accepting freebies, winter fuel allowance, and some of the very wealhiest land owners not liking their inheritance tax dodge being closed off, but they feel like they pale in comparison to the recent past. The reality of having to fix things and not having much money to do it is also starting to sink in with an impatient public. All of this means that at least the next year is not going to be easy for them either. Dr Evil’s interventions (including his efforts with helping Nigel Farage to stoke up civil unrest in Southport, and across the country during summer, followed by his promises to throw money at Reform via political donations) may only be signs of things to come. Tightening the system of political donations should be a priority, but it needs thinking through, and doing well across the board to apply fairly to everyone to avoid the inevitable legal challenges that would come otherwise. However, given that most parties are now relying on big donors to prop operations up, who will be comfortable doing that?

The Conservatives, now feeling almost like a footnote, had a totally normal one after losing the election. They took three months to choose a leader, contrived to eliminate one of the favoured (and less mental) candidates in the process, and then ended up with a run off between the two remaining candidates, both of whom are utter thumpers. Sadly, one of them had to win, and has gone on to consolidate their position as Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition by launching a blistering assault on progressive taxation, sandwiches, and the moistness of bread. How long will she last?

Silicon Valley has a proper boner for Generative “Intelligence”

Because of course they do. Most of the big tech comanies are busily crowbarring their dogshit proabilistic machine learning energy sinks into any product they can lay their hands on. When you think Google search couldn’t get any worse, they have managed to curl a massive machine-generated turd out on it, and give the world Gemini and AI search results. These are great, other than the unfortunate problem of mostly being utterly terrible, mostly by virtue of often being wrong. This not a good look for a company built on search. If you don’t want terrible bullshit text generated by stochastic legerdemain, you could maybe try using an “AI” to produce terrible images, just for a change of scene. Still, if you own Apple devices you can at least keep Apple Intelligence discreetly switched off (for now), which is more than you can say for Microsoft, and Copilot. They seem intent on ramming it to absolutely everything, like Clippy, with a lobotomy.

But boy, are the tech bros giving it the hard sell. They have to, because the venture capital has ploughed obscene amounts of cash into it, and they demand returns. After few people seemed to want yet another iteration of virtual reality, standing there in a headset that makes you look like a steaming twat, they needed to find another bubble to inflate, and this is the current bet. Unfortunately, people mostly just want to use tools that work and make stuff a bit easier in general. This is proving to be unworkable, and certainly far too unprofitable to be permitted, for the big tech companies. Glitter-sprinkled turds it is for us then.

Sport

Well, there was Luke Littler, and Keely Hodgkinson. The Paris Olympics and Paralympics were wonderful. The French did a great job, especially with a rain-soaked opening ceremony that managed to be the most fantastically French thing ever, and confused the world’s watching journos no end. Jean-Michel Jarre played at the Paralympic closing ceremony. Channel 4 in the UK couldn’t be arsed showing he majority of which his set. Bastards. Gareth Southgate waved goodbye as the England football manager, having done a better job (if you go by the stats) than almost all of his predecessors, but that didn’t stop people whining about him.

The year ended with FIFA deciding to continue pissing over any sense of ethics, instead concentrating on thinking of the cash, when they awarded the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia. If you know anything whatsoever about FIFA this will come as absolutely no surprise at all.

Other than that, meh.

Culture

Well, if you were a Swiftie, it was a great year – if you could afford the tickets. Maybe it wasn’t quite so great if you were Katy Perry, or Drake. And much, much worse if you were Sean Combs. Or Gregg Wallace. Or Neil Gaiman, Or Huw Edwards. Cue pictures of a tardigrade playing a microscopically small violin.

In Gaiman’s case, it was particularly uncomfortable for some of the terminally online lovers of his work, who had invested emotionally in the persona he had presented online. This is just one more example of how asymmetric, and more widely problematic parasocial relationships can be across any number of media. Having said that, maybe at least some of those people who threw money after Haliey Welch (the so-called “hawk tuah” girl, who appeared to have used her new-found “celebrity” to run a pump-and-dump crypto grift) and lost it, may care to reflect on some of their life choices.

As part of Dr Evil’s wider programme of world domination, he continued to weaponise Twitter (I will not call it .. that other name) to become a seething right-wing propaganda machine. Whether that was a key factor in Trump’s election win is still hard to pick apart this soon after the event, but over the year a growing number of people did start to vote with their feet, and either become dormant, or leave entirely.

As the year wore on and the “Twitter eXodus” continued, there was a choice of places for the migrants to move to. Along with Threads, and Mastodon, Bluesky seems to have benefitted. As it happened, Neil Gaiman was an early adopter of Bluesky (though for some completely unaccountable reason he has been .. ahem … very, very quiet of late) and its continuing evolution does appear to be a good news story of some sort, for now.

Still, there was some pretty good TV. Kaos was great, which was obviously why Netflix killed it off after one season. Because of course they did. At least there’s a second season of Squid Game starting on Boxing Day. Amazon added ads to Prime Video, a thing people were already paying for to have no ads; some of those people (me included) told them where they could shove it — unlubed. Doctor Who was back too, and managed to upset lots of exactly the kind of people you’d hope it would with episodes like Dot and Bubble, and Boom.

So, what kind of a year was 2024? Well, let’s be charitable and call it “mixed”, because admitting just how fucking awful it’s been would be far too depressing. Is 2025 going to be any better? Probably not, but you never know. At the beginning of November there were people stuck in Assad’s Syrian prisons who thought they’d never see the light of day, and look what happened there. Whatever comes next in Syria, that was a good moment. Besides, Donald may have a stroke, or eat too many burgers, and pop a blood vessel squatting on his gold toilet, straining to push all that ground beef out of his impacted bowel. History can turn on such seemingly small moments. Fingers crossed for 2025, chums.

NOTE: There are quite a lot of Wikipedia links in here. This is deliberate. Space Karen is historically not a fan of Wikipedia, mostly because it has said honest, accurate, and verifiable things about him in his entry, and not just repeated his PR. As an end of year treat, he’s been exhorting his minions to defund Wikipedia (not that most of them would have been giving it any cash anyway). But it made me donate again, and resolve to resume my ongoing aim of wikignoming. I recommend either or both if you can.

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septentrionarius
septentrionarius

Written by septentrionarius

Homo septentrionalis; merdarum politor

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