And away we go into 2024.  Fasten your seat belts and hold on because I think it’s going to be another interesting one and the old crystal ball is cloudy so it’s hard to make any solid predictions about what’s going to happen in the hot spots around the world, and I mean hot in terms of both conflict and climate change.   Artificial Intelligence seems to be evolving faster than some would prefer.  Let’s hope we can stay on top of it and use AI to our benefit.  It can be mis-used to further the aims of bad people and there is legitimate concern as the technology continues to improve and AI can be used for nefarious (there’s a cool word) purposes such as the spreading of misinformation, especially to throw a monkey wrench into the democratic process.  Speaking of which, 2024 is another multiple election year, the exception being federal, which is scheduled on or before October 2025, providing the NDP continue to support the Liberals.  If an issue came up this year making that support disappear causing a federal election in 2024, yipes!  That would make for a crowded mailbox, regular and email, plus lawn signs and campaigners knocking on our door along with our provincial hopefuls and municipal hopefuls prior to the provincial election October 28 and our municipal elections November 13.  That’s awfully close to the provincial election and perhaps should have been pushed back to spring 2025, but the province decided to leave them that close.  As I said, it’ll be an interesting year. 

That’s Coffeetalk.  I’m Vic Dubois.