Traffic signal systems designed to optimize driving make walking around the city 20% slower.

I would not assume that this is crucial to people's decisions about whether to walk or drive. It would have some effect, yes, but sometimes the effect would be that they take the bus.

If we change the design to favor pedestrians more, I would not want to take it to an absurd extreme. I as a pedestrian (which I usually am) would rather wait a couple of seconds than delay cars for ten seconds.

The bully broke off the meeting with Dictator Kim, then they arranged it again. But we don't know the sequence of real events. Did Kim eat crow to get a meeting with the bully, or did the bully eat crow to get a meeting with Kim? Or was it all a dance, jostling for who gets the public image of being most important?

A patent application suggests Uber plans to use sensing in the phone to determine whether a client is inebriated.

Uber could multiply the price by 10 or 30, figuring the client would probably accept that high price without noticing it ;-}.

Italy's anti-immigration government has intentionally provoked an European Union crisis by refusing to let a ship, the Aquarius, land African refugees.

This reminds me of what happened to the MS St Louis, which sailed from Germany in 1939 with 900 Jewish refugees. Cuba, the US, and Canada refused to allow them in, so they had to return to Europe, which proved to be a dangerous place for them.

I believe this was one of the events that inspired the modern treaties about the right to asylum.

The US Supreme Court approved the practice of dropping voters from the list if they don't vote for several years.

I think this unfortunate, as it will stop some marginalized people from voting, but I doubt this is anywhere near as harmful as voter ID and crosscheck.