— C. S. Lewis, born in 1898
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: A convicted German murderer won the right to have all mention of his crime scrubbed from internet search results under ‘right to be forgotten’ laws.
Lesson From The Tax Court: How The Court Reviews Whistleblower Office Decisions
Trump's Taxes And Tax Returns
Tax Policy In The Trump Administration
Apostrophe society shuts down because ‘ignorance and laziness have won’ London Evening Standard
Last year, when British cops were threatening social media critics after the NHS banished 23-month-old Alfie Evans to the Spartan hillside, British ex-pat Charles C.W. Cooke tweeted, “Michael Brendan Dougherty pointed out to me that police in the U.K. spend all their time on Twitter threatening people with jail time for frivolous things, and now I can’t stop seeing it.”
As a wise woman once wrote, “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them.”
Struggling To Make Sense Of Today’s Politics? Fan-Fiction Might Help
It’s a growing genre. Political fiction has always existed, but now many writers are re-imagining our contemporary political landscape in political ways that make sense to them. – The New York Times
Social Media Has Made Our Democracy More Toxic. But We Can Fix It
“The problem may not be connectivity itself but rather the way social media turns so much communication into a public performance. We often think of communication as a two-way street. Intimacy builds as partners take turns, laugh at each other’s jokes, and make reciprocal disclosures. What happens, though, when grandstands are erected along both sides of that street and then filled with friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers, all passing judgment and offering commentary?” – The Atlantic
Criminals
thrive on data abundance
WEF, October 2019. As reported by Europol, the past decade has seen an explosion of data available to law enforcement, affecting the capacity of security services to comprehend and analyse this data at speed and scale. But the issue is no longer about finding the needle in the haystack; now, the challenge is to find the needle disguised as hay. Trust in data is an essential condition of police and legal procedures. If we cannot evaluate the veracity of the data collected or the e-evidence seized, this shakes the very foundation of the judicial system.
Each day since the beginning of October, the team of designers, technologists, and researchers at Beautiful News Daily (a project by Information Is Beautiful) have been posting infographics and data visualizations that share some good news about the world. The site’s tagline is “unseen trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions”.
The bad news we see everyday on news websites, newspaper front pages, and magazine covers is important (or can be, if it’s not designed to keep people frightened and hooked on the news), but the good news is just as significant (or can be, if it doesn’t cause you to forget the world’s true suffering and turmoil).
You can keep up with Beautiful News via their website, their weekly newsletter, or Twitter & Instagram
Study: Caffeine, Xanax Found In ‘Pure’ Blood Samples Used For Transfusions StudyFinds
WEF, October 2019. As reported by Europol, the past decade has seen an explosion of data available to law enforcement, affecting the capacity of security services to comprehend and analyse this data at speed and scale. But the issue is no longer about finding the needle in the haystack; now, the challenge is to find the needle disguised as hay. Trust in data is an essential condition of police and legal procedures. If we cannot evaluate the veracity of the data collected or the e-evidence seized, this shakes the very foundation of the judicial system.
Each day since the beginning of October, the team of designers, technologists, and researchers at Beautiful News Daily (a project by Information Is Beautiful) have been posting infographics and data visualizations that share some good news about the world. The site’s tagline is “unseen trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions”.
The bad news we see everyday on news websites, newspaper front pages, and magazine covers is important (or can be, if it’s not designed to keep people frightened and hooked on the news), but the good news is just as significant (or can be, if it doesn’t cause you to forget the world’s true suffering and turmoil).
You can keep up with Beautiful News via their website, their weekly newsletter, or Twitter & Instagram
Study: Caffeine, Xanax Found In ‘Pure’ Blood Samples Used For Transfusions StudyFinds