I don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve. I won’t be staying up until midnight, I won’t be drinking champagne with my sweetie, there will be no party. I will acknowledge a few common New Year’s Eve practices, though.
Predictions! It’s traditional on New Year’s Eve to look forward and predict what the coming year will bring. Here’s my prediction:
Everything will get much, much worse. Chaos will reign. Everything will fall apart. Expect the Republic to fall, genocide will rage all around the world, crops will fail, plague will sweep across the planet.
Prove me wrong.
Resolutions! Nothing really matters, but I will be making one change. I’ve refrained from going full arachnophile on this blog, and that means I’ve neglected the founding ethos of Pharyngula: I write for me, not you. So no more restraint, I’ll post spiders when I want to.
Some of you may argue that my resolution is contributing to my prediction, but hey, when the world burns, snuggle up to a spider.
Spiders are cool and must be treated with reverence and awe!
Bring on the hi-rez pics of them sucking big fat juicy flies dry!
And can I ask why you don’t celebrate NYE, just out of interest?
It’s an arbitrary transition used as an excuse for drunken excess. No thanks.
Good on you re the arachnids, and general good wishes to you regardless of arbitrary dates and suchlike. (sadly I fear your predictions are all-too-possible. I still quite like the random fact that we share the same birthday, though)
I for one think unleashing the spiders will be a wonderful change.
I resolve to drink no more tonight than any other night. I might need something to deal with the fireworks, which used to irk the hell out of my dog when she was still alive. Lost her in 2023.
Hopefully 2024 will get better but with the election approaching and the more scientific leaning stuff I’ve read about the activation of an authoritarian tendency amongst roughly a third of the population, I doubt it.
More spiders. No fawning over politicians, film/pop/antisocial-media idols, athlete-nonstudents, trustfundies, or techbros. What’s not to like? I’m a bit distressed in the lack of sharks, but I’m always distressed by that.
Hooray for more spiders!
Sharks are cool, too. We just have a shortage here in the midwest.
Everyone in academia and teaching knows that the year actually begins in September anyway.
And for those who aren’t aware of it, today is September 11079, 1993.
It may be an arbitrary transition but I’ll accept any excuse to go to a friends’ house, imbibe some alcohol and whatever, play some music together, and visit. (I’m not sure that “arbitrary” is exactly the right word as it fails to capture the ignorance behind the tradition. It’s clearly not the only time to celebrate a “new year.”)
As for the pessimistic predictions, as I’m sure you know we can’t prove them wrong until the time frame has past. However, there’s a good chance that lots of bad things will happen, but maybe some good things as well. The one semi-good thing to hope for is that lots of people turn out to vote against the fascists. Not that the Dems are all that much better but they seem a little more sensible.
In any case, spider away. Please.
opposablethumbs @ #4
You too? I’m 10 years older than our host (and 480 km north and a bit west). How about you?
January 1 is The Feast of the Circumcision.
Is that worth celebrating?
PZ, come on. I like and respect the heck out of you but damn it man lighten up. You sound like every Conservative I’ve ever known but maybe that’s the joke and I’m missing it.
More spider pics will be cool
I think, as always, you are too optimistic PZ…
But hey, what the hell, a happy new year to you and all the Pharyngulites.
I recall sending 20/20 vision memes to friends on New Year’s Eve 2019. That was ironic as I would go on to develop cataracts. Got that fixed in 2023 so now 20/20 is more apt though not quite. Typing this on my iPhone without my reader glasses but a struggle. Some flaring off lights and minor halos. I can see more clearly otherwise. Overall better than ever in my nearsighted life. Nothing is perfect.
Back to 2020…I hope nothing happens to come close to that hellscape year. A pandemic for starters…
Quoting nomdeplume @15
Yes!
I bring in the New Year with new eyes, football, beer, this blog, and my new gecko avatar. Geckos love spiders. Yum, yum!
I’m glad you’ll be doing more on your work with spiders here, it’s interesting.
I have quite a lot of tent web spiders in my garden (Cyrtophora citricola, or very similar) and have to be careful in the morning as there will often be new support strands for the structure around head height in the morning. Quite impressive.
The only reason I’m going to be up at midnight tonight is because of how many people in my neighborhood think that setting off fireworks is fun.
@3: Nothing arbitrary about it. It’s a slightly displaced solstice celebration. Doesn’t matter much to modern grocery shoppers in the West, I guess.
They don’t like to be called spiders!
The proper deference is shown by calling them eight legs.
Failure to show proper deference may result in transportation to Metabelis III.
FWIW (USA-centric):
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/12/28/24003198/10-good-things-that-happened-in-2023
How unfortunate!
It’s your location, of course.
In Japan, New Year’s is like Xmas without any Jesus at all, and the traditional stuff is – by the time the evening of New Year’s Eve arrives, friendly/familial in the best sorts of ways.
My family watched the sun rise (aware that the Earth is actually rotating till our area received its light and warmth) this morning on a beautiful, not even cold (7*C) morning from the nearby Shinto shrine with lots of our neighbors’ families. New Year’s Eve was buckwheat noodles, a Ghibli dvd and the last half of the NHK song contest, which started weak but ended strongly.
New Year’s here is great and this one was also great.
I like Xmas here as well, though – different but in (still) novel and good ways from the better parts of the American version – and especially because Xians and their inexhaustible poison of bitterness and stupidity do not noticeably exist here to taint it.
I expect EVERYTHING to be better by this day in 2025, even in the USA. The fairies and elves told me so, although I doubt we’ll all be living in Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane anytime soon, or ever.
@21. DanDare : Nice reference there!
FWIW, I agree with your prognosis.
Also, as to NYE, you said, “It’s an arbitrary transition used as an excuse for drunken excess.” Works for me.
BTW. It’s already New Years Day here in Oz.
Happy New Year everyone! Enjoy! Have a moment of fun and celeberation and commemortauon and reflection, and mark the changing of the numerals at the end of the year, why not?
So now we have another new year ahead. What will we make of it? Hopefully a good one or as good a one as we can in the circumstances we are given.
The Climate data is ever-more disturbing, science is coming under attack (still) and we have two wars dragging on and threatening to expand in the Ukraine and in SW Asia where too many people who do NOT deserve it are dying and experiencing hellish, unimaginable misery.
Over in the United (Lol?sob) States and global politics since the USA’s election matters sadly too much, we face the staggering prospect that the hate-filled demented cult leader who attempted a coup and refused to leave office peacefully aided by the lying media enablers from the malignant Murdoch propaganda empire is actually going to run for POTUS again and quite possibly win. Despite facing criminal charges; despite being found to be guilty of sexual assault in civil court; despite being a terrible president who damaged and divided the USA ever more badly during his time in office and, worst of all, despite him openly using blatantly nazi rhetoric and being a known fascist, coward, hypocrite, compulsive liar and incompetent mentally and ethically for the job. Please don’t let that happen however bad, Biden and the Democratic party seems Americans, please.
Yeah, its 2024 now and the trends are not looking good. Last year was disappointing in many ways and I don’t just mean how the Adelaide Strikers ended the T-20 cricket Big Bash (both Summers! 22-23 & 23-24 so far) or how Verstappen made F1 dully uncompetitive at least for wins and titles.
Can we turn things and around and stop them getting worse in many respects? Here’s hoping and working to do so..
You say that like it’s a bad thing!
Actually, I don’t really do drunken excess any more, but I did enjoy a glass of wine with Ms. KG while watching the fireworks from our front window (we moved to a house with a fine view last year). We can’t see the big display at the castle from there, but plenty of smaller ones down by the Forth and even across the water in Fife.
– Thank god that’s (2023) over by Dr Ella Gilbz
Oh and yeah, every year more and more people will die, more will be injured, rendered homeless, more carnage and human suffering and misery be inflicted by Global Overheating and denying it, won’t make it go away any more than it did with Covid 19 indeed less so..
Just go with the flow, like Sam Neill’s character in the Lovecraftian In The Mouth Of Madness .
Nothing wrong with spiders, but you’ve been neglecting cephalopods for years now!