Some unwelcome good news →

The announcement by Tesla of a new home battery storage system, called Powerwall, costing $3500 for 10KwH of storage, has been greeted with enthusiasm, but also a good deal of scepticism regarding its commercial viability, which depends in any given market on such things as the gap between retail electricity prices feed-in tariffs for solar PV.
This is missing the forest for the trees, however. Assuming the Tesla system comes anywhere near meeting its announced specifications, and noting that electric cars are also on the market from Tesla and others, we now have just about everything we need for a technological fix for climate change, based on a combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency, at a cost that’s a small fraction of global income (and hence a small fraction of national income for any country) . 
That’s something hardly anyone expected (certainly not me) a decade ago...

Uncertain forecast for Social Security →

The study compared all forecasts made by the Social Security Administration over the 80-year history of the program with its actual outcome, and found that its forecasts of the health of Social Security trust funds have become increasingly biased since 2000. Current forecasts are likely off by billions of dollars, and the program could be insolvent earlier than expected unless legislators act, the study found.

No statement of when that might be, but it's not soon, and, as the essay later states, now that these problems are better known, proper fixes are more likely.

Welfare Is the Best Weapon Against Nepotism →

Today, The New York Times’ David Brooks gave family dynasties a hearty endorsement in one of his increasingly deranged fireside chats, suggesting that since some “powerhouse families” regularly produce successful members, "we should be grateful that in each field of endeavor there are certain families that are breeding grounds for achievement. … I bet you can trace ways your grandparents helped shape your career," Brooks advises, proving once again he knows zero people who are not rich.
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After all, if we acknowledge that sources of income—especially the choicest jobs on the market—are destined to be acquired through sheer luck, then it makes sense to put in place a failsafe for the unfortunate masses who are born to ordinary people. Universal healthcare, child benefits, heavily subsidized or free college education, and basic incomes are all sturdy and sensible programs that can ensure that all citizens, regardless of their parentage, will have a fair shot at enjoying their lives and their potential. We would all likely care a lot less about the special avenues to wealth available strictly to the parentally privileged if missing out on those juicy jobs didn’t mean losing health insurance, slipping into poverty, and finding oneself unable to afford a family of one’s own.
So I guess that, in the end, I’m with Williamson and Brooks: Nepotism is here to stay, and there’s no sense in fighting the partiality of parents for their children, especially when it comes to jobs. To respect the sanctity of those family relationships—and to save the conservative commentariat the horror of anti-nepotism policies—we need only to make sure no other person’s future is compromised, which means putting a strong system of wealth transfer programs in place. Thus, poor kids everywhere can rejoice: welfare is (rich) family-friendly after all!

Distractions →

Technology helps, but it also hinders...

Of course, these devices aren’t just tools - they’re windows. They bring the world to us, into the workplace, and the home, and even the palm of your hand. They’re a wonder, but also a danger.
With each type of device, we sacrifice a little more of the world immediately around us in exchange for the virtual one. Desktop computers are things of total immersion, where we’re almost piloting a machine. Laptops let us enter that machine from a wider variety of starting locations, and perhaps let us climb out more easily. Then we have mobile devices, which superimpose the digital world as a semi-transparent overlay on every part of our lives.
We’ve been trained by these objects. We’re presented with stimuli, and we display conditioned behaviour. Notifications and interruptions permeate the membrane between actual life, and our electronic existence - and our devices are the conduits.
A few days ago, I began wearing an Apple Watch, and I did so with some unease.

My fear was that a wearable would be the most intrusive of all devices, bringing trespass even to situations where my phone was away, and I was engaged in other activities - eating up the last remaining uninterrupted portions of my life.

I was surprised to find that, instead, the Watch helped me regain lost ground.

The problem with notifications is that they occupy the junction of several unhealthy human characteristics: social pressure of timely response, a need for diversion, and our constant thirst for novelty. Mobile devices exacerbate that issue by letting us succumb to all of those at any moment. That’s not a good thing. I’m constantly horrified that much of Microsoft’s advertising seems to presuppose that working twenty-four hours per day is mankind’s long-sought nirvana.

Perhaps we are beginning to see the solution to the puzzle around wearables: do we need another device?

For years, our mobile applications have been so rich and fully-featured that we can spend hours using them - and so we do. They’re already our preferred form of interaction with computing devices, the internet, and each other. And the truth is, we’ve been lying to ourselves about the freedom they bring.
If you’re like me, you probably hate when people phone you instead of texting or emailing. It’s intrusive, it demands an immediate response, and it ties you up for minutes at a time. I have better things to do! Let me deal with your needs once I’ve met my own.
But we treat all of our notifications like phone calls. A mention on Twitter becomes a check of your tweet stream, and a response, and a few favourites or retweets. An incoming email might mutate into checking the web site in the sender’s signature, or any embedded links in the message, and indeed writing a reply. An iMessage gets an immediate response even though you can defer it, complete with half a minute of fumbling around for the perfect emoji.
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I’m making full use of the Watch, including all the much-touted stuff like fitness tracking, sending sketches and taps to other wearers, and controlling the music in my office from my wrist. But the revelation for me has been how this little gadget - so very clearly a 1.0 product - has changed my relationship with my other devices.
In the same way that the iPhone was the first phone to really start eating away at what we used computers for, the Watch is the first wearable that’s lessened the amount of time I spend with my phone. For much of my day, the iPhone has become a sort of server, sitting quietly in a pocket, facilitating my interactions with its little brother.

Huckabee’s Welfare State Conservatism →

What Huckabee understands—and what makes him a serious presence in the GOP field—is that many Republican voters, even those on the right, aren’t opposed to generous government spending on individuals. Disproportionately older or elderly, they’re strong supporters of Social Security and Medicare, which they see as earned benefits. Instead, they’re opposed to spending on people perceived as undeserving. Texas Gov. Rick Perry discovered this the hard way in the 2012 primary, when he blasted Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” Seniors turned against him...
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The irony in all of this is that, far more than libertarians like Sen. Rand Paul, Huckabee represents an untapped constituency in modern American politics: white, rural, traditional, and nationalistic, but also generous with benefits for children and the elderly. As a policy perspective, it makes more sense than the GOP position of small government, unrestrained markets, and social conservatism, which exposes families to the invisible hand without protection from its capriciousness.
Seventy-five years ago, this would have been the Dixie branch of the New Deal coalition. Today, this kind of coalition is a mainstay in European politics—where center-right parties support a kind of conservative social democracy—but largely absent from America. Here, it lacks a place in either party. Republicans are too hostile to social spending while Democrats—who represent the so-called “undeserving” poor—are both too diverse and too permissive on social issues such as immigration, marriage, and abortion rights. In Huckabee, these voters have a candidate. They just don’t have a party.

Online Dating Scams →

...Another interesting type of scams that we identified are what we call dates for profit. In this scheme, attractive young ladies are hired by the owners of fancy restaurants. The scam then consists in having the ladies contact people on the dating site, taking them on a date at the restaurant, having the victim pay for the meal, and never arranging a second date. This scam is particularly interesting, because there are good chances that the victim will never realize that he's been scammed -- in fact, he probably had a good time.

21st-century first date rule: everyone pays for their own meal.

U. of Mary Washington Is Accused of Failing to Respond to Yik Yak Threats →

We don't know how to deal with the bad consequences of anonymity, either on a personal level where anonymous threats will get to people no matter how much of a thick skin they think they have, or on a societal level to stop endemic and harmful harassment. But this is a growing and increasingly common problem.

Overkill: America’s Epidemic of Unnecessary Care →

Virtually every family in the country, the research indicates, has been subject to overtesting and overtreatment in one form or another. The costs appear to take thousands of dollars out of the paychecks of every household each year. Researchers have come to refer to financial as well as physical “toxicities” of inappropriate care—including reduced spending on food, clothing, education, and shelter. Millions of people are receiving drugs that aren’t helping them, operations that aren’t going to make them better, and scans and tests that do nothing beneficial for them, and often cause harm.
Why does this fact barely seem to register publicly? Well, as a doctor, I am far more concerned about doing too little than doing too much. It’s the scan, the test, the operation that I should have done that sticks with me—sometimes for years...

Gawande then explains how this happens in hospitals: why doctors over-test, which leads to over-diagnosing, which ends in over-treating. Small actions which may seem like good, preventative medicine at the time, end up being worthless (and costly, in money and health), on a large scale. For example:

H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth Medical School professor, is an expert on overdiagnosis, and in his excellent new book, “Less Medicine, More Health,” he explains the phenomenon this way: we’ve assumed, he says, that cancers are all like rabbits that you want to catch before they escape the barnyard pen. But some are more like birds—the most aggressive cancers have already taken flight before you can discover them, which is why some people still die from cancer, despite early detection. And lots are more like turtles. They aren’t going anywhere. Removing them won’t make any difference.
We’ve learned these lessons the hard way. Over the past two decades, we’ve tripled the number of thyroid cancers we detect and remove in the United States, but we haven’t reduced the death rate at all. In South Korea, widespread ultrasound screening has led to a fifteen-fold increase in detection of small thyroid cancers. Thyroid cancer is now the No. 1 cancer diagnosed and treated in that country. But, as Welch points out, the death rate hasn’t dropped one iota there, either. (Meanwhile, the number of people with permanent complications from thyroid surgery has skyrocketed.) It’s all over-diagnosis. We’re just catching turtles.

There's a lot more in here. It's a long article, but worth reading if you want to know why our healthcare system is so expensive and inefficient.