Development banks invest in growing big cattle operations even as small farms go under.

The UK wants to make a new business-supremacy treaty with the US. It also wants new food labeling rules to reduce obesity. The US will push to prohibit that.

Under plutocratist governments, the only way a trade treaty can be an improvement is if it replaces an old one (like the old NAFTA) that was worse.

Nigerian Atheist Mubarak Bala faces charges of "blasphemy" for criticizing Islam.

Fanatical officials from Kano, which makes blasphemy a crime, kidnapped him from his home state, Kaduna, where their law does not apply. Even if it were legitimate to punish people for their opinions, this would make it unjust in this particular case.

Atheists are persecuted in many countries worldwide. On the average, Americans are more prejudiced against Atheists than against any religion.

1/4 of young people get their "news" from Instagram, making giant echo chambers.

I can't argue, though, with their distrust for the mainstream media. Mainstream sites tend to have either a right-wing bias or a plutocratist bias. It is not easy to figure out what claims are true. I try my best, but I am sure I am sometimes mistaken.

Paul Graham: society gets its new ideas from people of aggressively independent-minded personality. The aggressively conventional-minded tend to bully those who differ, and social media give them a great tool to do so. Censorship is one form of that bullying, and it stultifies society in a broad way.

One of his speculations is that "Perhaps the universities are declining because so many [independent-minded people] have already left." If it is true that they now "become quants or start startups" — activities which tend to be selfish and subjugatory — rather than professors, that is a double loss to society.