2017 – collected articles

Herewith my mish-mash of this year’s articles.

Georgia introduced rules limiting the use of drones, so Amos Chapple published a fantastic drone based, photo-journalistic piece in the Guardian. The landscape is stunning, and it’s certainly pushed Georgia onto the list of places I would like to visit.

Sweden is another place on my list.
Chinese toulou houses, bring them back I say.
And let’s not forget the UK, the Guardian’s list of 10 forgotten beauty spots.

Probably the most important journalistic item of 2017, Ronan Farrow’s excoriating expose of Harvey Weinstein.

Science and Tech:

• An article about glass being used to fix bones caught my attention as well, or specifically bio-glass,
• Who knew the Netherlands was such a powerhouse for food?
• Not everyone is that impressed with mobile computing,
• Ctenophores, who knew?
• A useful article if you read a lot of scientific papers,
• an introduction to the block chain for those who want to understand it more,
• Then there is this one, pretty horrifying, but you need a full Sci-Am subscription to read the full article. Soil erosion – there is only enough soil left for 60 harvests, google it yourself. And in the face of all this, what does that fuckwit in the White House do? cut taxes for his elitish ilk and pretend it’s making America great again.
• and related, an article about healthy soil,
• Printing a house, gotta be the way to go
• great article about the under-lying cable infrastructure of the internet,
• Bitcoin liquidity, buyer beware,
• the case against sugar.

A lot of articles related to privacy and its erosion seemed to accumulate in my reading queue, unsurprisingly.

• Palantir, don’t lose sight of this company, this is your private enterprise spying nightmare,
• Bruce Scheier talks about internet privacy,
• Facebook, is it a structural threat to democracy? this article pre-dates the current debate,
• EFF challenges use of twitter by Trump,
• Facebook, what it did to democracy.

Politics, this could be a massive collection, but I’ve pared it down heavily.

• The face of the most dangerous arsehole in the UK, Arron Banks. This is the face of those who want to make the UK into a low wage, business-centric, US vassal state.
• What is dark money?
• Dark money threat to democracy,
• Facts and lies,
• The Koch Brothers, same bag as Banks. Ask yourself why people like this want to control your access to broadband? Ask yourself who “bought” the FCC and gave it the mandate to end net neutrality?
• something wrong here.