Cappuccino Looks Back at 2022
I'm pretty sure it will go down as the weirdest year in history.
It’s great to be back after what seems like a pitifully brief holiday. So much has happened, it feels as though I’m starting all over again, gathering thoughts and ideas that have been been flung by a gale-force wind to all corners of the universe.
First, congratulations are in order. I was largely successful in fulfilling my vow to do as little as possible by “hiding in a dark place until I [had] to come out again.” Yes, I did leave the house on several occasions. Yes, I did enjoy myself. Yes, Amelia is stunningly beautiful this time of year, like an Italian jewel box, all string lights, medieval lutes, and wood smoke. But going outside always usually involves putting on a pair of pants, and sometimes that effort seems nothing short of Herculean.
So, here we are in 2023, which got off to a roaring start with a knifing in Times Square by a fledgling member of radical Islam, and then a shooting in Alabama that resulted in one death and nine injuries.
But that, as it turned out, was the least of it. Let me start with what I consider to be the best news from last year, which is …
Trump is Toast
Yes, I know the perils of making premature assumptions about Trump, but we all know it’s over, and here’s why. He lost, which in the eyes of his party and his constituency makes him “weak” and a loser. He lost most of his proxy races (e.g., Herschel Walker’s doomed candidacy in Georgia, Mehmet Oz’s shambolic run for the U.S. Senate, Kari Lake’s lunatic bid in Arizona).
Make no mistake—it wasn’t Trump’s criminal activities or his patent attempt to hold onto power by inciting an insurrection that cost him the support of his own party. It was the fact that he failed to deliver. Now, instead of the sharky charisma of a Trump who’s all juiced up on Tic Tacs, Diet Coke, and world domination, we have this pitiful old man shuffling around his own New Year’s Eve party where no press bothered to show up, not even NewsMax. Why? Trump’s savage “brand” lives on without him. The torch has been passed to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert, who managed to hang onto her Congressional seat by a mere 546 votes. They’re the new generation of unhinged headline grabbers. But rest assured, Trump is no longer one of them.
It doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would. So much damage has been done, and we still haven’t solved the problem of what to do with America’s white rage problem. Trump left a trail of smoldering rat droppings behind him, and the odor might linger for the better part of a century. Just look at who we’ve got on the Supreme Court. So, yeah, Trump may be gone, but his legacy isn’t.
Egomaniacal Tech Bros Are Finally Getting Their Comeuppance
2022 was not a good year for immature, socially cringey, everybody-cheer-up-I’m-the-king-dammit tech “geniuses” like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Jesus-wannabe Dan Price. Cracks in the façade of Techtopia were rumbling open in years previous; now, the pipes have burst, and the sewage is there for everybody to smell.
Mark Zuckerberg’s failing boondoggle, the so-called “metaverse,” is yet another billionaire ego-project where the user dons a headset and haptic vest and explores virtual environments, such as playgrounds, shopping malls, and comedy clubs, as his/her own avatar. But in reality—this reality—Zuckerberg’s metaverse is so clunky, uninspiring, and poorly conceived, he had to yank it off the market for necessary retooling.
As little as a year ago, Facebook (the company name has been changed to Meta) achieved a market cap of 1 trillion dollars. Now, only four stocks on the Standard & Poor 500 are doing worse than Meta, largely because of the billions of dollars Zuckerberg is sinking into his metaverse. Investors are dumping their stock, and some tech oracles claim that Meta has already entered into a “death spiral.”
And now there’s Dan Price.
Price makes Zuckerberg look like the only grownup in the room.
Until his recent resignation, thirty-eight-year-old technopreneur Dan Price was the CEO of a credit card processing company Gravity Payments, as renowned for his long hair and jandals (Jesus sandals) as he was for generating a tidal wave of publicity when he vowed to cut his $1.1 million salary to $70K while simultaneously raising his workers’ salaries to $70K.
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich declared Price “the one moral CEO in America.” He was lauded, adored, held as an example to disgracefully greedy CEOs of other companies. Gravity’s workers pooled their resources and bought him a Tesla as a show of thanks. He was lionized by the press, given $10,000 per speaking engagement, and offered a $500,000 book deal.
The book deal cratered when damning domestic abuse allegations made by his ex-wife went public.
Price’s ex-wife, Kristie Colón, alleged that Price threw, punched, slapped, body-slammed and waterboarded her during their seven-year marriage. It didn’t help that Price started showing up to meetings at Gravity too hungover to present. In 2013, he entered an Irish pub in Seattle and was so obstreperous, he assaulted the manager and was arrested. In February of 2022, Price was charged with misdemeanor assault, and then in April of that same year, felony sexual assault of a drugged victim in Palm Springs, California.
It’s likely that Price’s Evangelical Christian upbringing contributed to his substance abuse issues, but make no mistake: He is but one in a long line of tech-bros whose ego, inflated arrogance, inability to accept criticism, and emotional immaturity have negativity impacted the psychological and economic health of this country.
And then there are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just laid off more than 10,000 workers. Earlier last year, he posted photos on Instagram of his Blue Origin space rocket mere hours after a deadly Amazon warehouse collapse.
Elon Musk resigned as CEO of social media platform Twitter after roughly two months. Pretty much everyone is sick of his nonsense, which is already a step in the right direction. Even diehard Muskbros are openly critical now, demanding that he return to Tesla and make an effort to staunch the financial hemorrhage his absence created there. But his PR team has its work cut out. It will take a long time to rehabilitate Musk’s image.
The James Webb Space Telescope is Sending Back Stunning Images of Deep Space
In what is a legitimate triumph for science nerds everywhere, the James Webb Space Telescope is killing it right now. A hundred times more powerful than its ancestor the Hubble, the billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope is so big, it had to actually assemble itself after being launched into space. From its sunshield to its mirrors, the telescope slowly took shape over the course of several weeks, a fraught, nerve-racking process that had NASA scientists biting their nails. More than 300 potential technical problems or “single point failures” could have scuttled the mission, but they didn’t, and now we have photos like these.
The James Webb Space Telescope first entered orbit on January of 2022. Since then, I’ve been on the edge of my seat waiting to see what it discovers next.
In less wonderful news …
Putin Invaded Ukraine
February 24, 2022, was Russia’s opening shot across the bow. Videos posted online showed Russian tanks hurtling through the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, while air raid sirens blared throughout the city. Ten months later, the war is still raging, and thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, more than 11,000 wounded, Russian soldiers are being conscripted from penal colonies and mercenary groups, and we here in Europe are collaterally suffering the consequences of Putin’s avarice.
A gunman in Uvalde, Texas Killed 19 Students and Two Teachers at Robb Elementary School
On May 24, 2022, another “troubled young man” acquired an AR-15-style rifle and 1,657 rounds of ammunition, shot his grandmother in the face, and then proceeded to murder 19 children and two teachers in cold blood. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but there are times, like this one, where the death penalty seems warranted. The psychological fallout we suffered as a nation was on par with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December of 2012 where 20 children between the ages of six and seven were brutally mowed down along with 6 adults.
Roe v Wade was overturned
“Gutted like a sea bass” is the term a friend of mine used, which seems appropriate. It was one in a long long list of setbacks women underwent in 2022. Ironically, a sex scandal within the Jerry Falwell, Jr. ministry directly impacted the political demographics of the Court. Fifty years of precedent vanished into thin air, and American women are now resorting to legal and illegal means to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies, just as we always knew they would.
Outlawing abortion doesn’t end abortion, just as outlawing drugs doesn’t end drugs. These are things no one controls.
Mar-a-Lago Became Ground Zero for Stolen Classified Documents
For reasons known only to himself, former president Donald J. Trump took a whole bunch of classified information to his Florida country club, Mar-a-Lago, where in previous years, Chinese operatives like Yujing Zhang, tried to infiltrate. In 2019, Zhang was arrested onsite with two Chinese passports, four cellphones, a laptop, and a USB drive containing malware. You can bet these are exactly the kind of people we want to let loose on the Top Secret and/or Classified material.
November’s “Red Wave” Didn’t Exactly Go As Republicans Planned
What started out as the traditional midterm election slaughter ended up as a victory for America. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate; Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, and I’ll sleep a little better at night knowing our country’s democracy will survive another day.
All in all, it was quite a year, wouldn’t you say? It’s hard to predict what 2023 has in store, but if Russian president Vladimir V. Putin were to, say, slip on a banana peel, concuss his head, vomit from the concussion, and then slip in his own vomit and impale himself on a nearby barbecue fork, I wouldn’t shed any tears.
2023, just don’t go breaking our heart, okay?
How did 2022 treat you? I want to hear all about it, so leave your comments in the comments section below.
No wonder we all need a good night's sleep. It's beyond sobering seeing all that so neatly summed up. What could possibly go wrong this year?
“Shambolic?” “Smoldering rat droppings?” Yeah, that sounds about right. I refuse to do retrospectives because everybody else does them and they feel self-indulgent.
This one feels about right, though. 2022 was fucked up in the places one would’ve expected...and a few one wouldn’t. I do feel sorry for Dan Price, who genuinely seemed like the exception to the “Tech Bro Asshole” rule.
Boy, was I wrong. 🤷🏻♂️
I hope 2023 will have good things in store for you. I feel privileged to have you as a friend and fan, and I continue to admire your work and perspective.
Perhaps someday our paths will cross. 😝😁