Things That Are Better Than Ever & Bye, Bye, Bondi – Top 3 Takeaways – April 3rd, 2026
Takeaway #1: Better than ever
On this Good Friday here are some things that are better than ever... Fuel efficiency...five years ago the average fuel efficiency for a vehicle in the United States was 25.4 miles per gallon. Today the average fuel efficiency of gas-powered vehicles checks in at 28.1 miles per gallon. No, it probably won’t make you feel better about paying 3.5-year high prices for gas, well above $4 per gallon (with more to come after oil’s no good very bad day following President Trump’s address yesterday)... however, what it means is that you need 11% less gas on average to do the same these you were doing just five years ago...or in other words, aside from having to stop to get gas as frequently, fuel efficiency alone is saving you what amounts to 47 cents per gallon with today’s prices. Quality of life...that’s far and away better than ever. Right about now you might be thinking about those gas prices I just mentioned, and also with affordability the top concern during this election year, and thinking...no way. But in reality, the quality of life for the average person has never been better. First and foremost, worldwide what is defined as “extreme poverty” has declined from 38% of the world’s population in 1990, to only 8.5% today. The rate of decline in extreme poverty worldwide continues to decline at an annual rate that’s twice as high as any other point in world history. And to further illustrate the point of progress within those poverty stricken, in the United States, the average person living within the federal definition of poverty owns a vehicle, a smartphone, has a home with broadband internet, air conditioning, an oven, a microwave, a refrigerator, a big screen TV among other things. Even being poor is far better than it’s ever been. Of course, everything associated with technology is ever increasingly better than before, although that can be a double-edged sword. One area where it’s just undisputably a win is when it’s applied in ways that can save lives. That’s true in medicine, that’s true in hurricane season. So, about that... It was just last week that we talked about the National Hurricane Center’s technologically driven tweaks for 2026. Specific to the topic of the forecast cone, it’s shrinking yet again by 4% to 8% due to improvements in storm forecasting. A follow up report, the 2025 Verification Report from the NHC, shows specifically why...
Takeaway #2: The answer is AI
Actually, the NHC mentioned AI as a key reason for the shrinking cone originally, however now we know specifically how it’s impacting everything. If you’re a veteran hurricane season forecast tracker, you’re familiar with all of the closely watched models of choice like the GFS and ECMWF aka Euro... aside from all of the ridiculousness of all of the spaghettis. Spaghettis are the is the hurricane season equivalent of looking up just about any health malady online. If you look around long enough, you’ll eventually find out that you’re going to die due to whatever it is that ails you...or in the case of the myriad of spaghetti models you can find, one that will have every major hurricane making landfall near you. So anyway...what model do you think performed the best last year. Was it the GFS? Was it the Euro? Was it one of the wacky strings of spaghetti in a wonky year? Nope. It was none of the above. It was AI. Specifically, the most accurate hurricane forecaster was the GDMI, also known as Google DeepMind. Yes, AI beat out the human programmed models at every interval – peaking with 10% more accuracy than any other model 60 hours in advance. DeepMind was also the top overall performer with intensity forecasting. So last year was the year that AI surpassed human accuracy in hurricane forecasting – and that was last year... It’s almost a certainty that forecasting will be better than ever this year. And for those who like to play games by cherry picking “models of choice” because maybe you heard some meteorologist say a particular model performs better than others... Two things. GFS was terrible last year – ranking dead last among the 13 leading models. But more importantly, we have arrived at a time when cherry picking a model is actually a sensible thing to do. It’s Goggle’s.
Takeaway #3: Bye, Bye, Bondi
Here’s a big tease...with Pam Bondi’s firing as AG yesterday, we’re one step closer to the day when I’ll be able to fully disclose what took place in Florida’s 2018 election cycle – from the impropriety in Broward and Palm Beach County, to what it actually took to stop the steal of Governor DeSantis’s win and Senator Scott’s victory on the Saturday following 2018’s Election Day. But aside from that story, that could be turned into a book, perhaps the biggest surprise is that she made it this long. There are two things about President Trump that can be easily understood but are too often underappreciated. If you work for Donald Trump and you become the story that’s a problem. And it’s not because of his ego and desire to be the center of attention. He can be that anytime he wants. It’s because as massive of a character as he is, if you, the employee become a major story, it’s certainly not because you’ve done such a remarkable job at your job that the news media is singing your praises...it’s because you’ve chosen to make yourself part of the story (Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi) or you’ve screwed up sufficiently to draw the attention away from Trump and onto you (Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi). In Noem’s case, she ran the DHS and ICE marketing campaign, making herself the literal face of it. That made her an easy fire when her decision making in handling ICE in Minneapolis was significantly flawed (leading to the President himself making the operational changes with ICE in Minneapolis). In Pam Bondi’s case she’d never been shy of cameras – and for good reason. She represents well at her best, however what she did early last year with her segment with John Roberts on Fox News with the Epstein Files, was in my view something she was never going to be able to undo. After more than a year on the job Pam Bondi was effective at identifying deep staters inside of the DOJ and turning them over as I covered last year, but on big issues, and anticipated big prosecutions, where are we with any of it? What’s more is that on multiple occasions the reason prosecutions didn’t go forward for actors like James Comey and Leticha James is because she literally didn’t operate according to proper timelines and procedures in naming acting prosecutors – allowing for courts to throw out the cases, the charges and the prosecutors. Bondi pinned for the job of AG going back to Trump’s first administration. But when she was given the chance...she publicly blundered and made material mistakes. It’s the Trump administration officials who aren’t in the news that he views as the “A” players.