JoeCover

My last forecast was this: "As of the first numbers in August, there were 1356 cases with 7 weeks remaining. So, bin one is out. We'd need to average 20 cases a week for the remainder of the period to hit bin 2, which seems unrealistic given current trends. Monitoring"

Current trends? Pshaw! We're cleanly in the middle bucket now with little chance it will exceed. 

An anti-vax movement given federal legitimacy seems to be putting a lot of people at risk. 

Updating for time 

Previously: 

Potentially could have been a component of tariff talks. I don't think Trump will sour a trade success.

Previous forecast:

My baseline assumption would be that we do not reduce forces in South Korea before a new NDAA, with the old NDAA requiring 28,500 troops.

The Pentagon denied the reduction in force.

Trump cancelled his meeting with Li at the G7 to focus on other deteriorating global situations. It doesn't seem like Trump will call for a reduction in force before using it as a bargaining chip in his trade negotiations (“It will be one of the things that we discuss that is unrelated to trade, but we’ll make it part of the trade conversation. It would be nice to wrap it all up together"). I don't think a reduction in force happens without Trump meeting with SK.

Adjusting for time

By my math, based on ACLED, if Aug 1-14 trends continue, it should come in at 651 acts of violence. 

As of the first numbers in August, there were 1356 cases with 7 weeks remaining. So, bin one is out. We'd need to average 20 cases a week for the remainder of the period to hit bin 2, which seems unrealistic given current trends. Monitoring 

Updating for time. 

Previously:

Based on my very rough math, for the decade through 2023, there have averaged a little under 1 such hurricanes making landfall in the US a year. See below.

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

I did not see any instance of more than two such hurricanes in a given year, which only appears to have happened in 2017.

Based on those statistics, leaving room for a remote possibility of something unprecedented happening, I'm heavily weighing the odds to 1 or fewer hurricanes, and giving an around 10% chance to two hurricanes  

It is the 16th. The current stat on DB Digest is 275. That'd put us right on the borderline between the two highest buckets. I'm giving it a 50/50-ish forecast. This is in line with my earlier expectations. 

Earlier: 

Comparitech (ransomware prevention and mediation) is reporting 23% year over year growth in targeting of education.

Guidepoint (ransomware negotiators) saw a record ransomware breach total in 1Q 2025, and was seeing 17.5 new postings to ransomware sites a day in 2Q (extrapolating for August, that's 542.5).