Most frightening and/or depressing story: The U.S. might be headed for recession. Recessions happen, but this would be the first one where the U.S. government obviously and counter to all competent advice throws a monkey wrench in a perfectly healthy economy, that I know of anyway. Lest we think GDP growth is only a statistic that does not affect real people, the U.S. poverty rate among children was 5% in 2021 and rose to over 13% in 2023, when the economy was doing relatively well as measured by GDP growth and employment, but Congress forced the end of Biden’s tax credits for parents. So pop quiz: force a completely unnecessary recession by choice and will more or less children suffer? Shame shame shame on the Trump administration and Congress you stupid assholes.

Most hopeful story: Trump seems to have some anti-nuclear (weapons) instincts. We will see if his actions bear any relation to his words.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Prospera is a weird quasi-autonomous city-state nominally inside Honduras run by crypto-currency weirdos.