"If confronting the public with war scenarios is a media revolution in Germany, other European countries have been exploring this genre for years." foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/11/e...

"Climate modeling shows Icelandic winter extremes plunging to an unprecedented minus-50 degrees Fahrenheit. Sea ice could surround the country for the first time since it was settled by Vikings. 'At that point, Iceland would be one giant glacier.'" wapo.st/3ZOQQuN

"Financialization is a grift, a rarefied form of bookmaking, of no net value to workers and consumers, the economy, or society as a whole. Let’s treat it accordingly." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

A heavy over-representation of Super Bowl ads in a particular sector (other than beer or junk food) is a very reliable indicator of a bubble. Dot com ads in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV). Crypto ads in 2022 (Super Bowl LVI). Etc.

"Wide majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike view both the positive and negative aspects of the nation’s history as important to focus on." www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

"Democracy is now back to 1985 levels according to some metrics, with 72 percent of the world’s population now living under autocracy. Russia and China are less free today than 20 years ago. And so is the United States." www.hrw.org/sites/defaul...

"The Canadian Armed Forces have modelled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion of Canada and the country’s potential response, which includes tactics similar to those employed against Russia and later U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan" archive.is/P3Ni9#select...

"A new reality has suddenly rippled across Canada: that the United States under Trump is, as strange as it may be to stomach, suddenly Canada’s largest national security threat." foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/03/u...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Bliss," which came out five years ago today.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which came out 70 years ago today. It is one of the 1950s' best science fiction films.

Goodbye to the CIA World Factbook, a staple reference for decades -- www.cia.gov/stories/stor...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Space Sweepers," a South Korean movie which came out 5 years ago today.

Iran was the world's leading killer of civilians in January, it appears -- www.economist.com/middle-east-...

The US democratic decline "during Trump’s second term stands out as the most rapid in contemporary history. It outpaces the early stages of backsliding under Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán" www.ft.com/content/b474...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "M". If you watch this North Macedonian film -- also called "Beyond the Wasteland" -- you will have watched 50% of all North Macedonian science fiction movies, it appears.

"China does not seek global hegemony but rather what I call global preeminence: a position as a sort of “first among equals”" foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/21/c...

"The good news is that these developments make Chinese military adventurism less likely, including an invasion of Taiwan." foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/27/c...

Anthropic CEO "lands on the uncomfortable thesis that the AI prize is so glittering (and its strategic value is so obvious) that nobody inside the race can be trusted to slow it down, even if the risks are enormous." qz.com/anthropic-da...

The new Global Risks Report from WEF -- trade wars and actual wars top the list. www.weforum.org/publications...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Crack in the World," a 1965 disaster movie.

4% of Americans read 46% of all books read in the US -- today.yougov.com/entertainmen...

What was supposed to be happening in 2026, according to science fiction -- guides.justwatch.com/us/2026-pred...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Plan 75." I judge this subtle Japanese film as the second-best futurist movie of 2022.

Greenland -- "The real explanation may be a desire for territorial expansion that has little to do with U.S. geostrategy." www.crisisgroup.org/qna/europe-c...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "The Fifth Wave," which came out 10 years ago today. Aliens attack Earth with a thorough but rather baroque plan.

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Agent Revelation," which came out 5 years ago. This is a not a good movie, and someone has obviously gamed the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

Greenland: The likelihood of this primary scenario has now gone down. Many of the individual events could still happen, or already are.

6 scenarios for the future of Iran, in Foreign Affairs, with varying degrees of authoritarianism and nationalist / conservative ideology. archive.is/hy2PB#select...

"We may be about to find out that it is not possible to run the most advanced civilisation in the history of the planet with the intellectual apparatus of a pre-literate society." jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o...

First Greenlandic flag seen in my neighborhood.

Greenland: Reducing affordability via tariffs for an unattainable goal that most Americans are against seems like a sound and sustainable policy. www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...

Futurist at the movies: "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" is out today. Given its companion film -- microreview below -- it seems promising.

"The [N. Ireland] Troubles’ 'manageability' is cold comfort. Over 3,500 people in a population of about 1.6 million still died. Extrapolating crudely, an American version would claim about 720,000 dead — more than the Civil War." www.politico.com/news/magazin...

After adjustments based on the next census, "the Democratic presidential nominee could win all states won by Kamala Harris, plus the Blue Wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and still fall short of 270 electoral votes." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/o...

Bremmer: the current law-of-the-jungle Trump policy is helping China, often failing, and will be undone when there is a post-Trump president -- foreignpolicy.com/live/marking...

Futurist at the movies microreview: "Outside the Wire," which came out 5 years ago today. It features Ukraine in the wake of a future war.

An initial futures wheel for potential outcomes of a US seizure of Greenland.

Part of the fundamental problem is that Trump does not understand that people care about homelands, ideas, and principles -- www.npr.org/2026/01/14/g...

The X news summary accidentally got the Greenland headline right --

Another way sci-fi is influential: "one reason we see [AI] models taking unethical actions is that they are exposed to stories about rogue AI in their training data—and then begin to role-play those characters and behaviors." www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

Canada is now preparing for potential US attack -- and for a surge of refugees fleeing the US -- archive.is/57Dsn

Venezuela: "In a country awash with guns and armed groups, it would not take many committed militants to mount an effective destabilisation campaign against an incoming government if the U.S. were to opt for full-scale regime change." www.crisisgroup.org/latin-americ...

Annexing Greenland -- "There’s good reason to think it would be the greatest foreign-policy blunder since at least the Vietnam War." foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/06/g...

Prediction market in turmoil over whether the US "invaded" Venezuela. (The wording of the conditions of the bet mostly indicate it was not an invasion as specified.) www.ft.com/content/985a...

Re: Greenland, invading Denmark was among the crimes the Nazis were charged with at the Nuremberg Trials after WW II -- www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nuremberg-tr...

"Threatening force to keep the Rodríguez government in line may work in the short term but is not a sustainable strategy for courting the kinds of long-term investment that Venezuela will need to truly rebuild." www.brookings.edu/articles/mak...

Trump has announced a US occupation and nation-building program in Venezuela. This always goes well, and will be very popular with MAGA ....

That there is a larger purpose or follow-up plan for the Venezuela attacks is assuming too much of this administration. Like so much of what Trump does, it may be little more than a gesture / meme material / trolling.

This is an odd article, given that bad present-day financial decisions by the industry are nearly irrelevant to whether AI is a deep threat to humanity. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/15/1...

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