I'd love to see a comprehensive review of "privacy" in this country.
Republicans seize Senate, gaining full control of Congress →
The next two years should be interesting. Now that the GOP controls Congress, will they step up to the challenge of legislating?
Shifting Risks in Burkina Faso →
The man who ruled Burkina Faso for 27 years fell from office a few days ago, and the contours of the transition that will follow remain unclear. The Early Warning Project’s statistical risk assessments suggest that this tumult has roughly doubled the risk of an onset of state-led mass killing in Burkina Faso for the next year or more, likely pushing it into the top 30 when those estimates are next updated in early 2015. The several area experts we consulted in the past 48 hours, however, all indicated that this worst-case scenario was highly unlikely to happen. Instead, they seemed guardedly optimistic that Burkina Faso would find its way to a competitively elected civilian government without substantial civilian bloodshed before 2016...
Wealth inequality in America: It's worse than you think →
Saez and Zucman show that, in America, the wealthiest 160,000 families own as much wealth as the poorest 145 million families, and that wealth is about 10 times as unequal as income.
I have nothing against some people earning and owning more than others; there's good evidence for positive incentive effects, as well as economic dynamism. But that general rule competes with another, which, I'm increasingly convinced is more important to focus on: power corrupts, and the more power one has, the worse it can be abused.
The Latest Debate Over Taxing the Rich Misses One Crucial Fact →
Money and power feed off each other:
Taxes aren’t just a means to raise funds: they influence how the fruits of our economic enterprises are distributed, and they point toward a way of structuring our economy that doesn’t simply enrich the very top.
Why the U.S. Has Fallen Behind in Internet Speed and Affordability →
Largely a consequence of monopoly providers, the sluggish service could have long-term economic consequences for American competitiveness.
Downloading a high-definition movie takes about seven seconds in Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, Bucharest and Paris, and people pay as little as $30 a month for that connection. In Los Angeles, New York and Washington, downloading the same movie takes 1.4 minutes for people with the fastest Internet available, and they pay $300 a month for the privilege, according to The Cost of Connectivity, a report published Thursday by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.
Facebook Wants You to Vote on Tuesday. Here's How It Messed With Your Feed in 2012. →
This is the age of big data and powerful algorithms that can sort people and manipulate them in many hidden ways. Using those tools, national political campaigns, building on the Obama 2012 reelection effort, are learning how to "engineer the public" without the public's knowledge, as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has warned. Consequently, there is a strong case for greater Facebook transparency when it comes to its political efforts and experiments.
Pakistan-India border ceremony goes ahead after bombing →
Horrible.
Pakistan and India held their traditional flag-lowering ceremony at their shared border crossing on Monday, just 24 hours after a suicide bombing killed 55 spectators who had come to watch the nightly event.
Earlier the Indian home ministry had said they had agreed to a Pakistani request to suspend the ritual held at the Wagah border crossing near Lahore in order to honour those killed in one of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan for months.
The full ceremony is something to watch. There are a number of videos on YouTube.