Most frightening stories:

• One reason the U.S. blunders into war repeatedly is that it does not do a good job of analyzing the motives of its adversaries.
• International investors may be losing confidence in the U.S. dollar. And a serious financial crisis in China is a possibility, although China is also trying to become a “cyber superpower“.
• One reason propaganda works is that even knowledgeable people are more likely to believe a statement the more often it is repeated.

Most hopeful stories:

• One large sprawling city could be roughly the economic equivalent of several small high-density cities. This could potentially be good news for the planet if you choose in favor of the latter, and preserve the spaces in between as some combination of natural land and farm land.
• The problems with free parking, and solutions to the problems, are well known. This could potentially be good news if anything were to be actually done about it. Self-parking cars could be really fantastic for cities.
• The coal industry continues to collapse, and even the other fossil fuels are saying they are a bunch of whining losers. And yes, I consider this positive. I hope there aren’t too many old ladies whose pensions depend on coal at this point.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

• Some people really do win the lottery more than they should.
• You can buy a computerized chicken coop or cider maker.
• You can do network analysis or call Matlab in R.