The new mayor of New York City plans to hold more defendants in jail before trial, and start keeping them in inhumane solitary confinement.

Some fear he is going to support real estate developers rather than try to house the many homeless people of the city. I worry about this too. However, I think it is acceptable to house people in hotel rooms even if that isn't entirely in accord with residential rules. That is better than being on the street.

The legacy company that made Blackberry phones is about to kill them off by shutting down the server they are tethered to.

Since few of those phones remain in use, I think it is legitimate to want to save money by not running a server for them. However, it is not right to stop people from modifying the phones' software so they can talk to some other server -- or modifying the Blackberry server code to give them something else to talk to.

Reviewing Tyler Stovall's work on the history of the concepts of freedom and race.

Nowadays, the conflict between "property above all" and "liberty above all" still exists, but I doubt anyone who advocates racism can manage to think seriously about the meaning of liberty. Spewing foolish slogans would be their choice today.

India has cut off foreign donations to Oxfam India.

Since the judge Sergio Moro was caught in collusion, Lula is now free and untainted, and polls suggest he will return as president in the election this year.

Hooray for Lula!