geopolitics
In 1934, American Communists translated a Stalinist book about revolution into a children’s game. Curiously, it didn’t catch on.
Even if a balloon flies directly overhead, attempting to shoot it down with a conventional firearm is stupid, ineffective, and dangerous.
Spying is not usually done these days with balloons because they’re an easy target and are not completely controllable.
This graph shows how badly German cities were hit by Allied bombing raids.
Alibaba has played a key role in China’s meteoric economic rise.
Some effective altruists “earn to give” — they make as much money as they can and then donate most of it to charities.
Rogue Putin is the biggest risk of 2023. Here are the other nine, explained by global political expert Ian Bremmer.
▸
17 min
—
with
There is a strong case to be made that the China has moved too slowly to reverse the effects of its one-child policy.
Created in the 1880s, “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan,” which depicts a father murdering his son, divides Russians to this day.
From COVID and cancer vaccines to a steady drop in the number of people living in extreme poverty, there are reasons for optimism in 2023.
A disturbing interview given by a KGB defector in 1984 describes America of today and outlines four stages of mass brainwashing used by the KGB.
A quote from a 1995 book by astronomer Carl Sagan describes a world many find disturbingly similar to ours.
Although it’s often described as the Amazon of China, Alibaba has a radically different business model that does not rely on inventory management.
When maps meet stamps, you get a love child called “cartophilately.”
Nearshoring may be the manufacturing model of the future.
Retired astronaut Ron Garan believes that before we can begin solving our problems, we must understand our interrelatedness through the “orbital perspective.”
Guess which country has 269% inflation.
A vertical map might better represent a world dominated by China and determined by shipping routes across the iceless Arctic.
Surely they can’t be worse…can they?
With economic turmoil looming, everyone wants a way to keep their funds safe. But is that really possible?
Historical analyses reveal that crises almost always yield surprising benefits.
Leftover Cold War-era bunkers are still kept in a state of readiness to protect the population from nuclear war.
Airports are like mini-cities: they have places of worship, policing, hotels, fine dining, shopping, and mass transit.
After cryptoassets, a wave of central bank digital currencies is set to revolutionize our ideas about what money is and how to manage it.
Population growth is driven by three changes: Fertility, mortality, and migration.
What began as public outcry against Iran’s so-called morality police has snowballed into a mass movement targeting the very essence of the Islamic republic.
Three years after the pandemic began, we still don’t know the origin of COVID. A strange lack of curiosity has stifled the debate.
Many have argued that morals are relative, but Russia’s war crimes reveal the hollowness of that belief. Morality is universal and objective.
