The most frightening and/or depressing story often involves nuclear weapons and/or climate change, because these are the near-term existential threats we face. Oliver Stone has added a new chapter to his 2012 book The Untold History of the United States making a case that we have lost serious ground on both these issues since then. In a somewhat related depressing story, the massive New Orleans levy redesign in response to Hurricane Katrina does not appear to have made use of the latest climate science.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
Genetic engineering of humans might have to play a big role in eventual colonization of other planets, because the human body as it now exists may just not be cut out for long space journeys. In farther future space colonization news, I linked to a video about the concept of a “Dyson swarm“.
Kurzgesast – In a Nutshell is a site with short videos on all sorts of futuristic topics. Here is one on the Dyson Sphere. It talks about a seemingly-plausible approach to a Dyson swarm where small, cheap solar satellites are used to beam solar energy to factories on Mercury, which is used along with materials on Mercury itself to make more satellites and more factories to make satellites in an exponential manner. Sounds good except for the possibility of a runaway exponential system redirecting increasing amounts of solar generation in new directions, and the ethics of possibly disassembling an entire planet into construction materials.