Arguably what Russia seeks is not territory, but to destabilise the Ukraine government and re-establish a puppet state.

Which would mean both sides lose on this deal.

(Not saying it’s a good deal.)

Less dramatic in the reaction it caused, but potentially of even greater significance, was the suggestion by Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of GoogleDeepMind, that AI could take on many of the tasks that only a quantum computer had been thought capable of tackling.

This might be true for early quantum computers, but once they leave the prototype stage, the problems they can solve are provably impossible for any classical machine with less than galaxy-sized hardware - even with AI or whatever tech we come up with in the future.

It would be naïve to fully rely on the old way of diplomacy, but it would mean certain defeat to do business on the terms of authoritarians. Trump wants unilateral, flashy diplomacy, because that’s where he wins. Small countries like Denmark need to work to bolster multilateral large-alliance rules based diplomacy, because that’s where they win.

By not rising to the bait, but instead presenting a calm, unified European response that there is no way Trump can buy Greenland, but that they’re happy to help him achieve whatever policy he’s using to justify this invasion talk, they at least have a chance of staving him off long enough that the whole thing fizzles out.

This approach also makes it a lot harder for Trump to actually make good on his threats. He’ll have to start a conflict with the whole EU, and he’ll end up looking like a guy who pisses on a cooperative ally rather than the strong man who beats down uppity foreigners.

And yes, that’s probably also fine by him, but it at least doesn’t play into his hand.

No-one is ignoring him. The Danish diplomacy corps is on high alert, and tons of effort is going into both securing support from Europe and trying to talk the US down.

They just don’t do diplomacy through Twitter. Public mud-throwing is Trump’s game, no need to fight him on his terms.

I won an Xbox 360 a long time ago from a Coca Cola competition. You had to use codes from the bottle caps and then quickly answer some quiz questions correctly. But you had unlimited tries. So I just kept clicking random answers quickly until I got all questions right at a ridiculously low time.

Good times. Borrowed Guitar Hero, LA Noire, Batman Arkham Asylum and Red Dead Redemption at the library, had a blast.