Peter Zeihan in “The Accidental Superpower” predicts that the USA will withdraw from acting as the world police, this can be interpreted as the USA withdrawing from one or more of its current mutual defence treaties.

Currently the USA is party to 6...

The Open Philanthropy Project makes charitable grants based on what could be described as effective altruist principles: "global humanitarianism", "risk tolerance and patience", and "action in the face of humanity".

More broadly, the justification...

One way of dividing the space of possible futures is to consider whether transformative AI will lead to a singleton, which would be a huge change in the world order and a huge concentration of power, or a multipolar world, which would still be...

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In 2023 Ukraine commenced a counteroffensive, though as of October 30, 2023, Ukraine's gains have been modest, and it remains unclear how the controlled territory will shift in the long run.

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On 31 January 2020, HHS Secretary Azar declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Service Act related to COVID-19, which was repeatedly extended through 11 May 2023 (HHS.gov - COVID Public Health Emergency, HHS.gov - End of COVID...

Moldova and Romania speak the same language and reunification has been a possibility since independence. This Jan 2022 article quotes a poll finding 44% support in Moldova for union with Romania.

That was before Russia invaded Ukraine. Romania is in...

Although the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan) is currently recognized by 13 UN member states, and possesses de facto sovereignty over its territory, it has never formally declared independence from the People's Republic of China. Opinion...

George Santos, a U.S. Representative, faces scrutiny over fabrications in his background and potential legal issues. On the 16th of November, the House Ethics committee released a report into various aspects of Santos' conduct. Santos has not...

Many AI experts worry about powerful AI getting into the hands of bad actors—those who might use such powerful AI to cause damage or for personal gain that inflicts costs on others—via hacking. A bad actor might be a black hat hacker, a terrorist...

An important concept in economic development is Financial Inclusion: the degree which a population has access to affordable, convenient, and reliable banking and financial services. One basic measure of financial inclusion is the percent of a...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has outlined various illustrative model pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century. Its third pathway (P3) is the 'middle-of-the-road' scenario in terms of our ability...

In 2020, Moody's downgraded the UK's long-term credit rating to Aa3 from Aa2, citing concerns about Brexit-rated uncertainty and weakening institutions.

Since 2013, the UK has been downgraded from the highest rating by each of the Big Three credit...

The gold standard was a monetary system where the value of a country's currency was directly tied to a specific quantity of gold. Under this system, paper money and coins were convertible into a fixed amount of gold, creating stability in currency...

"The Treaty on Open Skies establishes a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. The treaty is designed to enhance mutual understanding and confidence by giving all participants, regardless of...

Large language models have established a new state of the art in several areas of natural language processing. It is possible that they will also be widely accepted as the state of the art for machine translation (MT) within the year.

Every year,...

A tsunami is a wave or series of waves generated by the displacement of water from an energetic event such as an earthquake. Tsunamis can be enormously destructive and cause mass casualty events; the deadliest documented tsunami, in the Indian Ocean...