It remains unclear to me where BA.2.86* is headed next. I'm not convinced it will ever become the dominant SC2 lineage in circulation.

True, but flu (influenza A and B) doesn't fully disappear in summer either, and outbreaks outside winter are not uncommon. See eg. surveillance data from China 2014-2018 below.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Covid turning into another flu" was the 'bad' scenario we considered in a review we wrote in 2022. My low confidence prediction is that the 'good' (fifth endemic HCoVs) scenario or something in between 'good' and 'bad' is more likely.
1/
academic.oup.com/ooim/article...

I'm really not too sure what to make of the BA.2.86 variant. It's still going up in frequency globally, but soooo slowly. At the current rate it will still take a few weeks for it to reach a 1% relative prevalence.

Note: UK outbreak downsampled to one observation in the plot below

I've just come across that interesting fungus, basket stinkhorn (Clathrus ruber), I presume.
It's the first time I saw one in Switzerland. It's weird and smelly, but still cool.