Movie and TV Reviews - March 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in March. 

Movies

• War Machine: I was hoping for a bit more alien tech in this one than what we got: a steampunk version of a Star Wars walker. And I could have done without the jingoistic rah rah stuff. The only reason to watch is Alan Richson doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation. (Netflix)
• Project Hail Mary: A typical Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster with REALLY good special effects, but it's not in the same league as Dune or Arrival.  It's. enjoyable enough if you don't think about it too much. See it on the biggest screen you can, IMAX if at all possible. (IMAX)

TV Shows

• Grace (season 3-5): Another British detective show. I'd rate this as middling; good acting and characterization, but the plots rely too much on big action sequences for resolution. (BritBox)
• Wednesday (season 2): Big production values and quirky, Tim Burton-influenced humour. Not to be taken seriously, but fun. (Netflix)
• Celebrity Antiques Road Trip (seasons 1 and 2): Another take on the original show's tried and true formula. 13 seasons will keep us going for a while. Most of the celebrities are unfamiliar to us. (PBS)
• 3 Body Problem: A solid adaptation of a complex and somewhat difficult book. I think I prefer it to the novel, which I did read but which I didn't like enough to read the next two books in the trilogy. (Netflix)
• Scarpetta (season 1): We were looking forward to this because it is based on a series of novels by Patricia Cornwall that we've read and enjoyed. We couldn't finish watching the first episode. What a disappointment and waste of some good actors. (Amazon Prime)
• Deadloch (season 2): My review of the first season described it as a "seriously twisted dark comedy" and "totally over the top and sometimes very funny". All that applies to the second season, in spades. (BritBox)
• The Puzzle Lady: A cozy mystery with a crowwwrod puzzle creator who helps the police to solve crimes, Light entertainment and not as good as Ludwig, which had a similar idea. (PBS)

The Peril of Tracking Pixels

I've known about tracking pixels for a long time but never figured that they were much of a problem. Of course, they do reveal that you read an email or accessed a web site, but there are riskier things to worry about reading emails or browsing the web. 

But things have changed, as Steve Gibson pointed out in the latest installment of his Security Now podcast. From page 8 of his show notes:

I just learned how far tracking pixels have evolved. They’re easy to miss because, much like cookies, the code their presence on any webpage allows to run is hidden from us. But last Wednesday the 18th, the security researchers at Jscrambler shared what they had recently learned about what TikTok and Meta are doing.

Their headline was: “Beyond Analytics: The Silent Collection of Commercial Intelligence by TikTok and Meta Ad Pixels”. As we’ll see, this writing is targeted at web merchants who are voluntarily adding these insidious tracking pixels to their sites’ own webpages without a full appreciation or understanding of the privacy implications for their visitors. 

It turns out that Meta and TikTok are grabbing both personal information (names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card information) and a log of just about everything that people are doing on sites with these tracking pixels. From the report, Gibson quotes this: 

Meta’s pixel includes a feature called Automatic Events, which is enabled by default. The feature automatically scans page elements and captures information such as checkout interactions and visible payment card details, including the last digits, expiration date, and cardholder name. Since this is the default behavior and not an opt-in, merchants may not be aware that the pixel is collecting this information. On separate sites, Meta captured recipients' full names and delivery addresses when users selected address options during checkout.

This information can be used by Meta to compile a huge database of behaviour that it can sell. It's also presents a risk to anyone using those sites in the case of a security breach at Meta and because the information being sent to Meta may not be encrypted, making it a vulnerability should the user be the target of an attacker. 

Both TikTok and Meta's pixel code can load and begin transmitting data before the website's consent management system has time to block it, meaning information can leave the browser before the user’s choice is applied. Even more concerning is that data may be transmitted in cleartext—occasionally within the request URL itself—exposing sensitive information to browser histories, server logs, intermediaries, and debugging tools.

This vulnerability stems not only from the pixel’s data-collection methods but also from misconfigurations during its implementation or from issues with the website's underlying architecture. Consequently, the attack surface is significantly broader than a surface-level analysis suggest

Using Firefox, which supports the full uBlock Origin, is probably a good idea. Google Chrome supports uBlock Origin Lite (which I am using), but it's not as effective as the original uBlock Origin in blocking tracking pixels, web beacons, and tracking scripts. 

Yet another item to add to my To Do list. 

Photo of the Week - March 29, 2026

This week's picture is a follow up to last week's photo. This is the same yucca, but without any snow on top of it. I hope it recovers from the winter. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro.

A yucca after the snow melts

Saturday Sounds - St. Vincent - Live in London

I haven't followed the musical career of St. Vincent (the stage name of Jules Buckley) closely though I have listened to some of her albums and enjoyed them. Live in London was performed at the Royal Albert Hall with a full orchestra as part of the BBC Pops series. 

Orchestral pop albums can be hit or miss but this one nails it. The arrangements perfectly suit her songs and the recording quality, as you might expect from the BBC, is outstanding. She's performing in Toronto with an orchestra on her current tour but unfortunately ticket prices are out of my league. 

The Bloated Web Page

I'm constantly annoyed and frustrated by the crap that websites are blasting my phone with when I try t o read an article or browse a web page. Popups, autoplaying videos that refuse to close, ads that jump out and shove the text I'm reading out of the way;; I'm sure you've seen it all.

If you want to get a better idea of what's happening and why, read The 49MB Web Page by Shumham Bose, a developer and user interface design expert. The article was triggered when they looked behind the scenes at what was happening when they opened an article from The New York Times website and found that the browser downloaded 49 MB of data. (That's roughly equivalent to an album of MP3s or 50 books in EPUB format). 

When you open a website on your phone, it's like participating in a high-frequency financial trading market. That heat you feel on the back of your phone? The sudden whirring of fans on your laptop? Contributing to that plus battery usage are a combination of these tiny scripts.

I don't usually see most of this on my PC because I run an ad blocker (uBlock Origin Lite) that blocks much of the crap that the article discusses.  I use Firefox with uBlock Origin as my default browser on the phone, despite the annoyance of having different browsers on my PC and phone. (I know, I know; it's just laziness that keeps me from using Firefox on my PC). Apps, where publishers seem to consider pushing ads their primary purpose in life, are also problematic. 

I should point out that there are real security problems inherent in the use of programmatic ad auctions and tracking pixels and their associated scripts. (I'll have another post about this tomorrow or Monday). 

This is the best article about web design that I've seen in a very long time. Even if you're not particularly technical, it's worth reading just to understand why your browsing experience is so unpleasant.

Featured Links - March 25, 2026

Things I was interested in but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Bluffer's Park on a cloudy day

• Inside the fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck. "Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones. Victims’ families blame what they say is the faulty design of a truck Elon Musk calls ‘apocalypse-proof’" Just in case you need another reason to not buy a Cybertruck. 
• No Pills or Needles, Just Paper: How Deadly Drugs Are Changing (gift link). "Lab-made drugs soaked into the pages of letters, books and even legal documents are being smuggled behind bars, killing inmates and frustrating investigators."
• Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers (archive link). "The race to power AI is already remaking the physical world."
  
• Resisting the superbugs (archive link). "Canadian researcher Gerry Wright is searching for the next generation of life-saving antibiotics." Unfortunately, discovering a new antibiotic is easier than getting it to market. 
  
• Record-torching March heat ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change. "Friday’s spring equinox may seem like a quaint notion to those already enduring furnace-like 90-110°F summer heat." In this part of the country, we've had a cold winter with more snow than usual in recent years.
• The Trap Always Closes. "Donald Trump, Lyndon Johnson, and wars we can’t win." History shows that Trump can't win this war. His only way out is to stop, and he won't.
• Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories. "We are stardust, we are golden ...".
• The World Factbook. "The community-maintained successor to the CIA World Factbook. Comprehensive data on 254 countries and territories." The CIA killed the CIA World Factbook in February and that this site is maintaining the information. 
• Canada wants to build up its long-neglected Arctic. The hard question is how. "Ottawa wants to modernize a region in the north that’s about six times the size of Texas, ‘just like in the 1800s’"
• As SpaceX Launches its 10,000th Satellite, A Photographer Captures the Impact on the Night Sky, "This week SpaceX passed an eye-watering milestone: it launched its 10,000th satellite into low-Earth orbit. The sheer scale of the devices whizzing around above humanity is unimaginable, but photographer Joshua Rozells is helping people see. Rozells’ image, Swamped Skies, is a composite of 343 photos that all contain at least one satellite streak. The Australian photographer didn’t set out to make the image; he originally wanted to capture star trails."
• Project Hail Mary is packed with hard science. An astrophysicist breaks it down. '"Project Hail Mary" is more than just an epic adventure film with beautiful visuals. It's a story that reminds us how important our world is—and how vital science is to our continued existence on it.'
• When Hyperglobalization Meets Chaos. "Choke points are everywhere you look." The crisis over the strait of Hormuz is only the beginning. 
• Historians Say They’ve Discovered a Long-Lost Page From the Archimedes Palimpsest, a Treasure Trove of Rare Ancient Mathematical Treatises. "Three leaves had been missing for more than a century. Researchers found one of them when they decided on a whim to check the archives of a French museum."

Photo of the Week - March 22, 2026

This week's photo is of a hasta yucca in our front yard that has spent most of the winter buried under a waist-high mound of the snow. I hope this winter hasn't killed it off. Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro and edited in Google Photos to improve the contrast. 

Leaves of a yucca mostly buried in the snow

Saturday Sounds - Santana - 1970/08/18 - Live at Tanglewood

This week's musical treat jumps back to 1970 with a concert from Santana at the famous Tanglewood Music Festival. Santana had released their second album, Abraxas, and the set contains several songs from that album. Carlos Santana and his band are in fine form. This is a pro shot video with good sound and decent video for the era. Enjoy,

COVID-19 Six Years Later

It's hard to believe that it's been six years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Concern about COVID-19 has faded into the background for most people, but it's still out there, lurking in the air when you go our shopping or go to a concert. 

So what's the real situation with COVID-19 right now? Your Local Epidemiologist has published an article that looks at the current disease landscape; how much COVID is out there right now, how it's affecting people, and what are the current trends. 

Six years! Six years with a complicated data story of real progress alongside real stubbornness. This anniversary is striking to me for two reasons. The first is the virus itself: it continues to surprise us, and we remain humbled by how much we still don’t understand. The second is what has happened to us in its wake.

For myself, I'm still being careful, masking in crowded situations and in medical facilities like doctors' offices and hospitals. (A good rule of thumb is that if the staff are masking then you should be too.) I'll keep getting vaccinated twice a year and keep hoping for a vaccine that protects against infection. And I'll keep reading YLE and other reputable sites for reliable information about COVID and any other nasties that might be out there. 

Canada Launches a New Space Program

The Canadian government has announced that it will fund the construction of a space launch site near Canso, Nova Scotia. Canada has been building satellites and other space hardware, like the Canadarms on the Shuttle and ISS, but has not had it's own dedicated launch site.  

The government will also be funding the development of a made-in-Canada launch vehicle. 

A spaceport in Nova Scotia. A spaceport in Newfoundland. Three funded Canadian rocket companies. A $105 million competitive grant program with more rounds coming. The global space economy is projected to reach approximately $2 trillion by 2040. Canada is planting its flag in that economy right now, while the ground is still moving — instead of letting a billionaire cult leader control the on-ramp.

Here’s the piece that most coverage is either missing or treating as a footnote, and it absolutely shouldn’t be.

Alongside the Spaceport deal, Defence Minister McGuinty announced that Canada plans to become a full member of the NATO Starlift initiative — a program designed to create a space-launch network across alliance members, allowing allies to get payloads into orbit on short notice, especially during a crisis or active conflict.

All I can say is that it's about time.  

Featured Links - March 18, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Birds wintering on the Bay

• Please drive carefully: scientists plan to transport volatile antimatter for first time. "Cern researchers are testing traps capable of moving antimatter, which explodes into energy as soon as it comes into contact with regular matter."
• War on Iran may provoke a terrorist attack in US – and that may be the point. "‘Of course there’s going to be retaliation,’ says one expert. ‘It may be that this is what Trump’s interested in’"
• When you’ve been told to find new ways to use AI in technical documentation. "Some Documentation Managers and Technical Authors are now being asked to demonstrate how they are using AI and to quantify the benefits. Here are some suggestions on how to approach that challenge." In this article, I saw several uses for AI that would have potentially improved my productivity in my last job. 
• The man who proved rockets could reach space was mocked in his time. "One hundred years ago, Robert Goddard’s invention of the liquid-fueled rocket changed space exploration." This week was the 100th anniversary of Robert Goddard's first launch of a liquid fueled rocket. We've come a long way in a 100 years. 
• Forget Google Docs, Canadian-made cDox could be your new place to write. "cDox stores your data in Montreal, and promises not to train AI on it." A Canadian alternative to Google Docs.
• Dish drive (gift link). "Hundreds of antennas take root in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley for an ambitious project to monitor signals from space."
• Wireless eye implant helps blind patients read again. "Now researchers have shown that a tiny wireless eye implant may help restore some of that lost central vision. In a clinical study, many blind older adults who received the implant regained enough clarity to recognize letters and short words. While the device does not restore natural sight, it helped several participants read again after years of irreversible vision decline."
• The “dumb” TV pivot: why your next screen shouldn’t be smart. "Reclaim your living room: screens without smart TV bloatware." We have a smart TV but hardly ever use any of the built-in features, preferring to stream through our Chromecast. 

2025 Nebula Award Finalists

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the finalists for the 2025 Nebula Awards. The finalists will be announced in Chicago and online during the Nebula Conference and Awards, June 3-7. 

These are the finalists for the Best Novel award.

When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK)

Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)

Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)

The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)

Sour Cherry, Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House; Wildfire)

Wearing the Lion, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia)

I've not read any of the finalists. I'm way behind on my reading right now but I did read a couple of current novels last year, Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler, which I did expect to be a nominee, and John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye, which might make the Hugo finalists. I also just finished Annalee Newitz's Automatic Noodle, which is a finalist for the Best Novella award. 

Photo of the Week - March 15, 2026

My vision is gradually getting better, so I've been taking the occasional picture, mostly using my Pixel 8 Pro. This is a picture of the ice on Frenchman's Bay, gradually breaking up and melting on a warm spring morning. 

Ice melting on Frenchman's Bay

Saturday Sounds - Anne's Choir - For Anne in the Attic

This week's musical treat is piece of music that links the horrors of the Holocaust to the terrorizing of immigrant communities by ICE raids in the United States. "For Anne in the Attic" was performed in Spokane, WA earlier this month. From The Globe and Mail article (gift link) titled "Chorus of Discontent"

Dressed in church choir black, the women standing at the front of the Unity Spiritual Center in Spokane, Wash., last Sunday began to sing a new song that likens the U.S. treatment of asylum seekers to the Holocaust.

“Could they see you run for your lives as the forces of hatred pursued you, found you,” the choir sang.

“Where was their humanity?”

Midway through, the pronouns shifted − no longer “they,” but “we,” a switch from the past to the present. “Do we know? Do we know?” they sang. “Can we hear your pleas for asylum when fleeing, afraid for your lives?”

The choral arrangement, For Anne in the Attic, was written by Janice Mayfield, a local woman who penned the words after rereading The Diary of Anne Frank amid the cou--ntless headlines about U.S. immigration enforcement

I have been wondering why the current political situation hasn't generated more protest songs. There have been some, as pointed out by NPR.  I blogged about Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Minneapolis" recently, but you're more likely to the 60-year-old Stephen Stills classic, "For What It's Worth" than the Springsteen song on what passes for radio these days.

You probably won't hear "For Anne in the Attic" on the radio, but it may become a modern standard in church and choral performances. (If anyone can find the lyrics online, please let me know in the comments). 

The US versus Canada 12

Trump is at it again, just this week talking about "Governor Carney" again. I think Carney, as a former central banker, must have a fairly thick skin, but the disprespect is surely pissing off a lot of Canadians, including me. 

So here are more articles about how Canada and our formerly friendly neighbour have been doing.

• Canada Is Already at War with the US—We Just Don’t Know It Yet. "Conflicts don’t always start with an invasion." 
• The United States is at War... With Canada. 'Simon Tisdall writing in the Guardian states, “Know your enemy is the first lesson of war - and Britain’s enemy is now Donald Trump.” This is a lesson that ordinary Canadians have known for well over a year. Trump continues to taunt us and belittle our nation in the same way that Putin ridiculed Ukraine prior to the invasion.'
• BREAKING: Trump's Next Pretext To Break Canada Is Already Built. It's Iran, and Canada Should Be Very Worried... "Iranian operatives. Canadian soil. American outrage. And a Pedophile/Rapist/Felon President who has already told you exactly what he wants." Note that in the last week, three synagogues and the US consulate have been shot at in Toronto. 
  
• Data Dive with Nik Nanos: The current Canada-U.S. relationship is built on contradictions (gift link). "Canadians are ripping mad at the United States. By the standards of modern polling, that anger is unusually deep and widespread. Yet even in this moment, Canadians still see the economic upside of trading with the United States."
• Americans’ feelings toward Canada, U.K. plunge to new lows under Trump, new U.S. poll finds (gift link). "A new Gallup poll finds that American views of Canada and Great Britain have dropped to the lowest levels ever." recorded, despite most still holding positive opinions of both countries." 

Amazing Stories Hits 100

Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, has just turned 100. Almost all magazines from the pulp era are long gone, but somehow Amazing has managed to hang on. Even more amazing, I know its editor, Lloyd Penney, who co-published a Torus, an SF fanzine, in the early 1990s. 

1st issue of Amazing Stories

Amazing is still around, at least as a website, and you can order their annaul best of anthology on Amazon or other online relailers.

Featured Links - March 11, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Lactose-free cat

• The Corporate Miscreants Driving the Affordability Crisis. "These 20 firms all have something in common: Their CEOs get paid millions, their workers are being pushed onto public assistance, and voters are fed up with them."
• We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI. The irony of being forced to dumb down an essay about a story warning against the forced suppression of excellence was not lost on me. Or on my kid, who spent a frustrating afternoon removing words and testing sentences one at a time, trying to figure out what invisible tripwire the algorithm had set. The lesson the kid absorbed was clear: write less creatively, use simpler vocabulary, and don’t sound too good, because sounding good is now suspicious."
• NASA’s DART Mission Did More Than Just Nudge an Asteroid, Study Says. "With these new findings, researchers are closer than ever to validating a key planetary defense technique."
• Managing phone media. "Dealing with photos, screenshots, and videos created by your phone isn’t simply a matter of deleting them. In this article, I’ll describe how to move media off your phone and onto your computer, remove media from the cloud, and disable automatic synchronization of media (which is usually the default)."
• Whiteouts, Ice Roads, and Wolverines: What Working at a Diamond Mine in the Far North Is Like. "In minus forty, even a twisted ankle can turn deadly if no one knows where to find you."
• The bombshell results that demand a new theory of the universe (archive link). "Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story." This is one of the best articles on the subject of dark matter and dark energy that I have read. 
• The Myth That Wind Farms Are a Guillotine for Birds Is Being Debunked by Hard Data. "The harm caused by wind turbines isn't nearly as bad as you think."
  
• Meat Without The Animals. "Meat cultivated from cells — with no need to raise and slaughter an animal — is now a reality. But can it be made cheaply enough to displace animal agriculture?" 
• Mozilla Partners with Anthropic to Better Secure Firefox. "As Mozilla explains, this isn’t a one-off: Unlike the previous AI-assisted bug reports it’s received, which included false positives that required unnecessary work on its part, the Anthropic bug reports were different. They focused on the Firefox JavaScript engine. And each included minimal test cases to help Mozilla quickly verify and reproduce each issue."
• ‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science. "As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world."

Detecting Logical Fallacies

I had some lectures on formal logic as part of a university philosophy course and reading current news stories is making wish I'd paid more attention. There are many ways of twisting logic to persuade an audience for a dubious argument, known as logical fallacies.

Your Local Epidemiologist has just published an article describing five common logical fallacies, using statements by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as examples. It's an excellent article, cleanly written with clear explanations and lots of examples.

How do we address the firehose of inaccurate information that is flooding the internet right now? It’s tempting to try to play whack-a-mole, tackling one rumor after another, and there is certainly value in addressing individual claims.

But emerging research shows that a better (and less exhausting) method —“prebunking,” or teaching people to recognize falsehoods before they encounter them—is highly effective. If you can teach people to recognize the common rhetorical tricks that are used to sell falsehoods, they can identify them for themselves in the wild, instead of relying on scientists and doctors to chase down every individual claim, meme, or video (which is impossible).

With that, here’s a prebunking lesson for you.

I can't recommend this article highly enough. Read it, remember it, and apply it in your daily reading. You won't regret it.  

Saturday Sounds - Philip Glass - 2019/05/27 - Live in Stockholm

This week's musical treat is a performance by Philip Glass with his Ensemble from Stockholm on May 27, 2019. I've seem Glass perform with the Ensemble many times (at least eight) and every performance has been wonderful. This concert is pretty much a greatest hits affair featuring selections from Music in 12 Parts, Koyaanisqatsi, Glassworks, and Einstein on the Beach among others. . 

0:02:00 the CIVIL warS: Cologne Section Act IV

0:11:26 In the Upper Room: Dance IX

0:20:39 Music in 12 Parts: Part I

0:27:35 Music in 12 Parts: Part II

[0:42:55 Intermission]

0:44:58 Koyaanisqatsi: The Grid

0:52:52 Glassworks: Floe

0:59:13 Glassworks: Façades

1:06:50 Glassworks: Rubric

[1:13:31 Philip Glass introduces the members of the ensemble]

1:15:25 The Photographer: Act III

1:38:18 [encore] Einstein on the Beach: Spaceship

[1:46:40 final applause and credits]

The video is not pro-shot and appears to be shot from a balcony close to the stage. Comments show that two good-quality mics were used so the audio is just fine. In any case, recordings of Glass' live performances are rare and this is a real treat. Enjoy. 

A Cautiously Optimistic Look at the Future

It's easy to get depressed when looking at the news and thinking that everything is getting worse. But there are some trends that provide some hope, at least in the middle and long-term futures. 

Science fiction author and futurist, Karl Schroeder, has published a blog post in which he highlights some things that might lead to cautious optimism about our future prospects. It's long but worth a read.  

Today I’m going to describe some hard, apocalyptic truths about our short-term future. Basically, using fossil fuels for geopolitical extortion is resulting in catastrophe. But then I’m going to make three unapocalyptic claims: first, that fossil fuel coercion is becoming structurally self-defeating; second, that future material scarcities that can be used to coerce weaker nations are shallower and shorter-lived than their predecessors; and third, that the limiting constraint on industrial civilization is ultimately ecological rather than technological or political. Finally, I’ll show how this is cause for a (cautious) optimism about our mid- to long-term future.

Featured Links - March 4, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• Fat Signing Bonuses, and Concierge Service, for Family Doctors (gift link). "In a country where a quarter of the population lacks a family doctor, Canadian communities compete in a zero-sum battle to recruit family doctors." The competition for doctors willing to work in small towns is becoming more intense in Canada, and I suspect, in the US as well. 
• This Looks Like an Insider Bet on Aliens (archive link). "Someone just put a lot of money on ET." I wonder if they have inside information. 
• Nature Comms: The Risk of Kidney Disease Increases Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Compared to influenza. Yet another reason to do everything you can to avoid catching COVID-19.
• Measles outbreaks are costing the U.S. millions of dollars. The true losses can't be counted. "As vaccination rates decline, the economic consequences will increase, research suggests."
  
• AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder. "Yes, writing code is easier than ever. AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been lower. And yet, the day-to-day life of software engineers has gotten more complex, more demanding, and more exhausting than it was two years ago."
• John Shirley's guide to wrecking your career in science fiction. "A short memoir with  material that may be upsetting. Published for the first time at Boing Boing. Some of it's about Harlan Ellison, a hero of my youth--an enemy for a while, then a friend once more. Joe Straczynski, I review The Last Dangerous Visions, which you co-edited, at the end of this."
• A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a 'crematorium for satellites'. "When we look up at the night sky and see a satellite glide past, we might not consider climate change or the ozone layer. Space may feel separate from the environmental systems that sustain life on Earth. But increasingly, the way we build, launch and dispose of satellites is starting to change that."
• The Stupidest Glitch Imaginable Killed a $72 Million Lunar Mission in a Single Day. "NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite was supposed to map water across the surface of the Moon, but glaring design and testing errors killed it."
• Trump Is Spoiling for a Fight over Canadian Potash. "The fertilizer that feeds America is key to the president’s next confrontation with Ottawa." 'Next confrontation` There's more? Oh, joy. 

When Science Fiction Moved the Markets

A week ago, the markets had a bad day. The Dow dropped by about 800 points. In a blog post, Paul Krugman made the case that the cause was a science fiction story in the form of a fictional financial report from 2028. 

Last weekend Citrini Research released a report — on Substack! — titled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. The report, which rapidly went viral, laid out a scenario for economic and financial chaos caused by AI, written as if it were a retrospective published after the dire developments it projected. Although it’s always hard to know why financial markets move on any given day, the report may have played a role in Monday’s 800-point decline in the Dow. Science fiction moving markets? Why not?

There are two distinct questions about the huge reaction to a report that didn’t actually contain any news. It was just opinion, albeit cleverly presented. The first is whether the economic scenario the report laid out makes sense, to which the answer is no. The second is why investors are so on edge that such a report could elicit such an extreme reaction.

The report, which is really a rather dry science fiction story in disguise, makes the case that AI will completely disrupt the economy over the next few years. Not being a financial analyst, I can't comment on the accuracy of the report's predictions, but Krugman, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, doesn't think they make much sense. 

Still, the fact that the report might have contributed to a large and sudden (albeit temporary) market decline shows that there is widespread concern about the long-term effects of AI technology on the economy. 

It'll be interesting to see if the report makes it into any year's best science fiction anthologies next year.

Movie and TV Reviews - February 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in February. A bit shorter than usual because we watched a lot of winter Olympics.

Movies

• Predator: Badlands. The second half  of the movie was OK but by that point I had lost interest. Prey is still the best of the Predator flicks. (Disney+)
• Mars Express: We haven't watched much anime recently, but I saw a review of this on Gizmodo and it looked interesting, It was one of the best anime films I've ween, on a par with Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Highly recommended. (Amazon Prime rental)

TV Shows

• The Night Manager (season 2): Not as good as the first season, though it did pick up halfway through. It felt like a cookie-cutter thriller without the sublety of the first season. (Amazon Prime)
• Shetland (season 10): The series continues with a typically dark, complex plot set in the barren windswept Scottish islands. One of our favourite shows. (BritBox)
• Antinques Roadshow (season 27): Now that we've worked our way through all 28 seasons of Antiques Road Trip, we're back to the PBS stalwart. 
• Live at Massey Hall: A Celebration of Gordon Lightfoot. An omnibus concert recorded at Toronto's historic Massey Hall to celebrate the life of the late Gordon Lightfoot. I liked that they didn't perform just the hits but dug into his back catalog. Worth watching just for the performance of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". (CBC Gem)
• How to Get to Heaven from Belfast: My sister described this show as "quirky" and that it definittely is. It's also very complicated, occasinally dark, and often funny. You'll need closed captioning for this one. (Netflix)
• McDonald and Dodds (season 4). Another British police procedural that falls somewhere in the middle of the cozy to dark spectrum. I liked this season more than the previous ones. (BritBox)
• Grace (seasons 1-2): Another troubled detective British police  procedural that permiered in 2021 but we're just catching up to now. On the darker side as theyse things go with good writing and acting.
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: I don't remember much about the original Dunk and Egg stories on which this series is based but no matter, it's quite watchable and better than I expected. We binge watched the whole season in one evening (yay for short episodes). (Crave HBO)