As 2023 slinks into history, a few bold – and in some cases, wishful – predictions for 2024:

• Taylor Swift, adding to her Time Person of the Year designation, is named Muggle of the Year by the Harry Potter Fan Club. The honor comes with a replica magic wand which, when Swift wields it, works.

• Georgia surprisingly claims its third consecutive college football title by beating Florida State 73-to-2 in the Orange Bowl while the four teams taking part in the playoffs somehow all manage to lose. After walloping Penn State 51-to-4 in the Peach Bowl, Ole Miss is declared No. 2.

• A new COVID vaccine is developed that not only provides total immunity from the disease but restores hair loss in men and erases facial wrinkles for women. Republicans still refuse to take it.

• The Singularity is achieved in California when a 67-year-old man’s iPhone 6 achieves sentience. There will be no worldwide implications, however, because the man only uses the phone to make calls.

• The General Assembly, finally heeding my entreaties, designates the banjo as Tennessee’s official state musical instrument.

• Beatle scions Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, James McCartney, Dhani Harrison and Zak Starkey announce the formation of a second-generation musical supergroup to be called the Nepos. Two weeks later, internal tensions dissolve the group when Yoko Ono demands to sing lead.

• Nashville’s traffic congestion is relieved by 37% when Davidson residents realize there’s really no reason to drive to any of the doughnut counties.

• The hottest new restaurant to open in Nashville’s 12 South district features small plates with no actual food on them. Instead, each will carry a description of what the menu item might be like, if it actually existed, and invite “diners” to imagine the experience of eating it. A pop-up version quickly appears in East Nashville.

• Taylor Swift announces she will take a break from music to train as an astronaut with the goal of becoming the first woman on Mars. Ticketmaster starts taking reservations for Mars concert tickets. The service immediately crashes.

• Cillian Murphy wins the Best Actor Oscar nominally for “Oppenheimer,” but in reality for “Peaky Blinders.” Tom Hardy wins the Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Alfie Solomons in the same show, despite not having been nominated.

• Mayor Freddie O’Connell of Nashville will decide that, as he approaches age 50, it’s time to become “Fred.”

• Congress accidentally passes a bill to establish year-round national daylight saving time while trying to authorize new hours for the Capitol barbershop. A little-known 2019 Tennessee law will automatically be activated, setting the official state time as “1957.”

• The New York Yankees win their 28th World Series championship over the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games, despite the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani batting .567 with 12 home runs and winning Games 3 and 6 while pitching left-handed.

• The stock market yo-yos. Analysts attribute the volatility to public fears about the future of human civilization and the rising cost of prescription cat food.

• Facebook resets its engagement algorithms to encourage kind words, altruism and contemplative meditation. Republicans claim censorship.

• The Supreme Court issues a groundbreaking gun-control decision when justices focused on “original intent” realize that bullets didn’t exist when the Constitution was adopted.

• Marsha Blackburn and Tommy Tuberville resign from the Senate and form a political consulting firm dedicated to electing former fashion executives and football coaches to public office. The firm is named Dumb and Dumber.

• A safe, transformative method to power automobiles and electric plants through nuclear fusion is stumbled upon by two high school students in Colorado working on a science project exploring hemp-derived edibles. Joe Manchin, coal-state senator, blocks government funding.

• Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer defeats Republican nominee Nikki Haley for the presidency by 12 percentage points, 56-to-44. The anticipated 2020 rematch does not occur when Donald Trump is barred from the ballot after it is discovered he renounced his U.S. citizenship in a previously unnoticed 2021 post on Truth Social, and Joe Biden somehow forgets to file the necessary paperwork.

• Taylor Swift buys Nashville.

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.