After the high of a near-win at the Africa Cup of Nations, we’re back to the sorry reality that is our domestic football season. Ahly and Zamalek face off at 6:00pm CLT this evening for the Egyptian Super Cup, which is being held in the UAE for the second time. Ahram Online says the national team’s players have already re-joined their respective clubs. If you, like some of us, are more into the odd-shaped ball, round two of rugby’s Six Nations gets underway on Saturday with matches between Ireland and Italy and the always exciting encounter of Wales vs England. The French and Scots face off on Sunday.

One thing to make you look forward to the end of the week for is that the second season of “Bns,” one of our favorite TV shows, starts a week from Sunday. But if you’re reading this in Amreeka and are a Showtime subscriber, you can catch episode one tonight online. And if you’re on the east coast — say, anywhere between New York City and the south coast of Newfoundland— you’ll want to load up the iPad with as many episodes of your favourite show as possible, with reports suggesting power outages are a possibility as a blizzard dumps 10-14 inches of snow atop your fair lands.

And if you’re recovering from a long work week, find some joy in the notion your week was probably better than Karl Pilkington’s when he visited Egypt a few years back as part of the An Idiot abroad series and was unwittingly made to feast on “beef [redacted]” (runtime 03:40). Otherwise, just read this, go spend time with friends and family, romp around in the outdoors, and maybe catch the last day of the Cairo International Book Fair at the Nasr City fairgrounds and find yourself a new book, or a dozen, there (we’re currently reading Gloria Steinem’s excellent memoir, My Life on the Road).

Also, we will be kind enough to remind you it’s Valentine’s Day on Tuesday and that you might need to prepare something for it other than this Netflix special with “the world’s greatest lover,” Michael Bolton.

Not celebrating Valentine’ Day? Bask in it by staying home and learning how to make the world’s longest-flying paper airplane (watch, runtime: 0:44 courtesy the Harvard Graduate School of Design) as folded by The Paper Airplane Guy.

Among the stories on our to-be-read list this weekend:

• Backing into World War III, by Robert Kagan, the neo-conservative and American interventionist turned basher of The Donald (“This is how fascism comes to America”) writes on why it is that we all need to keep living under a Pax Americana. Or: “America must check the assertive, rising powers of Russia and China before it’s too late. Accepting spheres of influence is a recipe for disaster.” (Foreign Policy)
• Guardians of a Vast Lake, and a Refuge for Humanity: Thousands of years ago, every lake was like Great Bear Lake. So pure you could lower a cup into the water and drink it. So beautiful that people composed love songs to it. So mysterious that many believed it was alive. Today, of the 10 largest lakes in the world, it is the last one that remains essentially primeval. (New York Times, Travel section)
• Michael Bloomberg’s advice or students who want to succeed in business, which we plan to read and (if any good) send to our favourite nieces, nephews and younger siblings. (New York Times, Education section)
• Watch a frozen engine warm up with a thermal camera. Also known as: Life in Canada, for those of you planning to flee Omm El Donia and emigrate. Note: The video was taken in -6°C weather. Wimps, eh? (Youtube)
• Total recall: the people who never forget: How an exceptionally rare form of “photographic memory” could change the way we understand human memory. (The Guardian)

And one little nugget of news for your before we get underway: “A federal appeals panel on Thursday unanimously rejected President Trump’s bid to reinstate his ban on travel into the United States from seven largely Muslim nations, a sweeping rebuke of the administration’s claim that the courts have no role as a check on the president.” The better angels of their nature, ladies and gentlemen. This, America, is one of the many reasons why we love you, however much you infuriate us. The fantastic Adam Liptak has the story for the New York Times.