Futurist at the movies microreview: "Superintelligence," which came out 5 years ago today.

"AI-enabled power concentration would mean the political disempowerment of almost all humans. For the vast majority of people, this would mean having no meaningful say in decisions that shape their lives and futures." 80000hours.org/problem-prof...

"A majority of Americans (53%) now think artificial intelligence is likely to “destroy humanity” someday" www.yahoo.com/news/article...

"Emigration rises as countries approach around $5,000 in income per person, peaks at around $10,000 and declines thereafter." "Meanwhile 94% of sub-Saharan Africans—1.1bn people—live in countries with a GDP per person of less than $10,000." www.economist.com/briefing/202...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Mockingjay II," which came out today in 2015. This Hunger Games sequel was another in the standout crop of 2015 futurist films.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Ghost in the Shell," which came out 30 years ago today, and is the best of 1995's futurist films, and one of the best of the decade.

"China is helping governments not only combat crime, but also control their citizens and stay in power—and that is proving stunningly popular." www.economist.com/internationa...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "The 6th Day," which came out 25 years ago today. Even regular human cloning has (probably) not happened yet, much less this adult insta-cloning. But we do now have self-driving cars.

"To understand the task before them, Democrats must trace how the terms “liberalism” and “conservatism” have diminished profoundly in their capacity to reflect the preferences, aspirations, and fears shaping the post-Great Recession electorate." www.liberalpatriot.com/p/liberalism...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "The Running Man" (1987). Let's hope the new version is better than this shoddy Schwarzenegger vehicle.

The 1982 Stephen King novel The Running Man was set in 2025.

I guess my plan -- to fire grappling hooks onto the roof of the US Mint in Philadelphia (seen here) and steal 50 pounds of pennies -- has been foiled.

A neighbor has political thoughts involving the game The Oregon Trail

A soldier who died November 11, 1918, the last day of WW I, commemorated in a local DC church.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Skyline," which came out 15 years ago today --

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Red Planet," which came out 25 years ago today -- and we still aren't a great deal closer to humans landing on Mars.

"The correlation between inequality and state failure often rests on whether its institutions are inclusive, involving democratic decision-making ..., or extractive: 'designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset.'” www.noemamag.com/humanitys-en...

Destroying the scientific research capacity of universities just because you hate the Middle East Studies department is definitely going to help the U.S. beat China in the race for technological dominance. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

"In Silicon Valley, such reasoning has generated a peculiarly dystopian variant of hustle culture: Make your fortune in the next five years, and you’ll claim a place in the perpetual aristocracy of AI owners — fail, and you’ll forever be at their mercy." archive.is/oAYM7

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Annihilation," one of the better futurist movies of 2018

The meaningful aspect of this polling is that independents are much more aligned with Democrats in their views of Trump's treatment of rights and the law -- wapo.st/49ypWx6

The sandwich-thrower (now on trial) has provided Washington DC with a new protest symbol.

Four scenarios for American democracy. We are currently in the first scenario, but with many precursors of the second occurring.

Nigeria: "A U.S. military intervention will be disastrous. It would sow distrust, exacerbate divisions, fuel conspiracy theories, and would not end the insurgency in the northeast" foreignpolicy.com/2025/11/03/t...

Futurist at the movies: "Don't Worry Darling," an interesting 2022 film, is arriving on Netflix today. Here's my microreview.

“The only countries that will really learn more if [U.S. nuclear] testing resumes are Russia and, to a much greater extent, China,” says Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry

The futurist movies from this horror movie list that viewers are most fond of: - "28 Days Later" - "Alien" - "A Quiet Place" - "The Thing" - "The Birds" - "The Fly" - "The Purge" today.yougov.com/entertainmen...

"If Trump is not careful, unilateral U.S. military action in Venezuela could see the country collapse into chaos, potentially fueling a Libya-style meltdown just a three-hour flight from Miami." archive.is/aUvJF

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Beyond the Time Barrier," which came out 65 years ago. A pilot travels from 1960 to 2024, finding that humanity is on the brink of extinction due to a sterility-inducing plague.

A company is planning a constellation of sunlight-beaming satellites that could be environmentally disastrous -- www.space.com/space-explor...

The global reputation of the United States plummeted from 2024 to 2025 -- www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-count...

An A.I. told me how to suppress that phantom notification on Teams, so that trillions of dollars of A.I. spending was totally worth it.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Megamind," which came out 15 years ago today. Of the relevant supervillain technologies, only drones and brain-linked tech have advanced much in the interim.

Bill Gates -- “Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/c...

To repeat: the purpose of Trump opposing vote-by-mail is NOT to change the law about voting; it is to create a political pretext for rejecting the results of elections whose outcomes he doesn't like. www.latimes.com/california/s...

"Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of Mr. Farage in power is peculiar to Britain. Unlike Mr. Trump, he would have no formal constitution — no rigorous system of checks and balances — to stand in his way. He does not even have a political party to constrain him." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/o...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "A House of Dynamite." This is the second-best futurist film of 2025 so far, despite the present-day focus and some problems I spell out in this thread.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Coherence" (2013).

The world-ending disaster in "Paradise" isn't really possible -- www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

Venezuela -- "In the absence of a land invasion of the sort that few in the White House seem ready to back, the current operation could end by strengthening Maduro’s grip on office, just as the pressure campaign six years ago did." www.crisisgroup.org/latin-americ...

A cheap plan to fight catastrophic pandemics (including engineered ones) -- 80000hours.org/podcast/epis...

Futurist at the movies microreview: “The Quiet Earth,” a New Zealand film that came out 40 years ago, in which an exotic energy project appears to eliminate everyone who was not dying at the moment of activation.

The new White House Christmas snow globe just dropped.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "The Angry Red Planet" (1959). A woman scientist is harassed by a hairy creature on the first voyage to Mars -- but that's just her commander. Then they get to Mars and encounter aliens etc.

The long history of dystopian futures set in NYC. #future #scifi www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/a...

Burning up satellites on an ever-larger scale threatens unknown consequences for the atmosphere -- www.economist.com/science-and-...

Global public opinion on AI -- "More are concerned than excited about its use, and more trust their own country and the EU to regulate it than trust the U.S. or China" www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/...

I would like to see this unavailable 1968 pandemic comedy in which Mary Tyler Moore stars as "a hippie, but lovely." www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1et...

Gen Z activism: "Demonstrators in Nepal used Discord to sift through candidates to replace the ousted prime minister. An online vote on the platform ultimately picked ... the interim prime minister." foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/17/g...

Perhaps all our salad greens are rotting so fast because there aren’t enough immigrant farm workers to pick them in time?