What’s Coming for You in 2025

by Bob Sparrow

Chinese New Year in Hong Kong

Your stomach, your liver and the bathroom scale are telling you the holidays are finally over, and that you can now focus on those New Year’s resolutions.  Not so fast – the Lunar New Year celebration starts on Wednesday!  You’ve probably heard of the Lunar New Year, but not sure exactly what it is, other than maybe having something to do with the moon.  Let me get you up to speed on this holiday celebrated in most Asian countries and communities.  Traditionally, the Lunar New Year holiday season begins with the arrival of the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends 15 days later with the first full moon.  Yes, prepare yourself for a fortnight and a day of celebrating.  There goes my ‘Dry January’ . . . OK, I was never doing a Dry January.  Lunar New Year is a celebration that marks the beginning of the new year on the lunar calendar. It’s also known as the Spring Festival (although it’s not spring, even in China) or Chinese New Year.  The Lunar New Year is celebrated in most Asian countries and communities except Japan.  In Vietnam, it is called Tet, which translates into ‘Festival’.

You may have already heard that 2025 is the Year of the Snake, not just a snake, but a Wood-Snake.  On the surface, the year of the snake doesn’t sound too promising, but it can be.  The Snake symbolizes wisdom, good luck, prosperity, fertility, longevity, intuition and transformation while offering personal growth and change opportunities.  It’s also a good year for love and marriage but mediocre for health – avoid certain places (like hospitals, I guess) Hey, it can’t all be good!

Year of the Snake

Unlike zodiac signs that we’re familiar with that change approximately every 30 days during the course of a year, the Snake is the Chinese zodiac sign for everyone born this year and every year going back at 12-year intervals, like 2013, 2001, 1989, 1977, 1965, 1953, 1941, 1939, 1927 – I think that covers everyone except those readers who are 102+. The other Chinese zodiac animals are: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig.  You’ll have to look up your birth year to determine the animal that you are and just what to expect this year.  Snakes, known for their wisdom and intuition, find luck with the colors black, red, and yellow. These colors enhance their natural insight and charm.  White and brown can bring bad luck, dulling their usually sharp instincts.  In the NFL Super Bowl race, the Washington Commanders’ colors are burgundy and gold, which is a lot like red and yellow . . . we’ll see.

The Chinese zodiac signs expected to experience excellent fortune this year include Ox, Dragon, Snake, Rat, and Rooster – are you one of those? These lucky Chinese zodiac signs can expect job advancements, financial gains, and personal growth

Where will AI go in 2025?

Oh yes, there’s more.  Twenty-twenty-five is a year for listening to each other’s needs and making the best endeavor to combine in a happy compromise, for to over assert your authority is to jeopardize your own stability.  A year of deception and uncertainty may not sound all that fun — but it does bring some positives, too. According to Astrology, some Zodiac signs have the opportunity to make huge financial gains in 2025 & these Zodiac signs are: TARUS, SCORPIO, CAPRICORN, PISCES, AQUARIUS & LEO.  According to experts, Sagittarius is the happiest sign of the zodiac, because it is ruled by the planet of happiness – Jupiter.  According to those who know this stuff, 2025 will be another year of massive change. AI, Robotics, space travel, and healthcare breakthroughs suggest that the possibilities of this new year are limitless.

Well, that’s it for now, I’ve got to set up my tarot card table.  I’d wish you all good luck this year, but I already know that you’re all going to make it one of your best years ever!  Party on!     

YOUR BRAIN HAS BEEN SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER

By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Whew…these are tough days we’re in.  I readily admit that my stress level is through the roof.  This week I decided to take a break from news shows and social media.  Yes, I’m going to miss all the posts of cute dogs and scrumptious birthday cakes, but my mental health requires it.  A few days ago I decided to stick with Netflix and I hit upon the documentary “The Social Dilemma”.  The film features former executives and developers from Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter and their comments about the dangers of these social media platforms are both illuminating and frightening.  As is so often the case, these sites started out with good – perhaps even innocent – intentions to make the world more connected.  But to a person the executives are alarmed at what social media has become.  The documentary spells out in a clear way how our brains are being manipulated and even rewired by algorithms designed to get our attention and make us buy things.  And not just to buy physical “things” but to buy into ideas.  Ideas about the world, ourselves, and each other.

After watching the documentary I wanted to know more.  I read as much as I could stand about social media manipulation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Attention Extraction (AE).  You may not have heard of the latter.  AE is a business model used by all of the social media platforms to monetize their business. In other words, it’s how they make the big bucks.  The basic construct is they employ surveillance tools to observe what their users are viewing and clicking.  Have you ever thought it was creepy when you see an ad for something you were just talking about or Googled?  It is all planned.  The tech companies are constantly reviewing what interests you and then they  configure the algorithm to have ads or stories come up related to that interest.   And who is paying for those ads or stories?  Big business and big politics.  In other words, the product that big tech is monetizing is YOU!   If we only saw ads for a dog food we’d researched that might be pretty harmless.  But it goes deeper than that.  The algorithms in AI and AE  use what they know about you to tailor the news results you see.   The upshot is the average person is only seeing stories that reinforce their preexisting inclinations. Some of the tech executives opine that no one knows what is genuinely true anymore because every story has gone through a filter.  That goes a long way toward explaining why we’re so divided.  AI is increasingly being used to curate and generate the news.  Even traditional news organizations such as the AP, Bloomberg and The Washington Post are utilizing it and Microsoft has transitioned to AI to generate all the news on its MSN homepage.  And who is programming the AI and checking it?  The executives in the documentary point out that only a handful of people in any of the companies understand the AI algorithms and that AI is becoming so sophisticated that soon no one will understand or control it.

Perhaps more troubling than skewed news and advertising is the affect of social media on our youth.  According to a September 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the suicide rate for pediatric patients rose 57.4% from 2007 to 2018.  That should alarm everyone.  The Facebook engineer who invented the “Like” button did so thinking it would be a positive reinforcement.  Instead, it turned into a social measurement of popularity among young teens.  Other social media platforms followed suit and we now have a generation of kids who assess their self-worth by the comments others make about their posts and photos.  Pre-teens, who have never been known for their kindness, have taken criticism and cruelty to a new level.  Almost all of the executives interviewed in “The Social Dilemma”  ban the social media apps on their children’s devices.  That speaks volumes.  In 2020 when we add in COVID and its isolating impact, it’s easy to see how overwhelmed and vulnerable young kids have become.

Certainly social media is not to blame entirely for our problems and, in fact, it can provide some positive relationships and distractions, but we need to be better informed about how we are being influenced and manipulated.   Bob and I obviously get the irony that some of you may be viewing our blog on Facebook, which means we’re contributing to the problem.  We are going to spend some time this week discussing our social media presence going forward.  Look for news on that next week.  In the meantime, we ask that you subscribe directly to our blog.   Why?  Because we don’t monetize our site – no one pays us and we don’t pay anyone (except platform management fees) and we certainly don’t share our subscriber list.  Here is a link to the site and you can sign up in the right hand column:  http://fromabirdseyeview.com/

For me, I’m taking a break from social media.  If you post something fun or interesting please don’t be offended if I don’t click the “Like” button.  If you don’t get a Facebook message from me on your birthday, rest assured I’m still wishing you a happy year ahead, I’ll just do it via email.  Finally, if you’re one of my friends who is constantly re-posting news and political stories I respectfully ask that you stop and think about how you’re being used by the big tech giants.  If you want to write something original – great!  But re-posting just feeds the beast and the beast needs to be killed.

See you on the other side.

P.S.  In addition to “The Social Dilemma” I found the following article to be most informative.  I’ve included the link in case you’re interested.

“The Dark Psychology of Social Networks” by Jonathan Haidt in The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/