Despite the spread of user-centric technology over the past two decades, democracy, a system of government that is about empowering the individual, seems to have stagnated writes Thomas Carothers. He put together a group of experts to explain why:

• Technology is good at empowering people at the local level, for example by calling attention to potholes in roads, but it isn’t a useful tool to spread change nationally.
• This may change as technology focuses the minds of those governing high density urban centers. Popular mayors who effectively respond to local feedback may then go onto change things nationally.
• Another reason maybe that technology can be used to sow dissent rather than democratic unity. After all radio – the predecessor to social media – was used to stir passions during the Rwandan genocide.
• Autocrats leading countries have also learnt to use social media and technology to crackdown on dissidents.
• And technology hasn’t really spread as much as people commonly assume. In Turkey, for example, half of all households lack internet access. They get their news from easily censored forms of media.
• Finally technology may have very little to do with spreading self-determination. Democracy requires institutions such as political parties and individual-centric social media does little to build them.

Read more of the arguments, theories, and thoughts, in a fascinating article here.

Source: Foreign Policy

Las Vegas, Nevada, is finally building a stadium that will allow it to have a professional sports team. This heralds a wider era of the gamblification of sports writes Joseph Stromberg:

• Due to previous match fixing scandals betting on sports has been banned in the United States – though loopholes exist.
• However the craze for things like fantasy sports shows that people enjoy predicting the outcomes of sports matches – and would likely wager money on their predictions.
• Fantasy Duel, a site that essentially allows people to bet on individual players made $57 billion in revenues last year.
• Teams will want a piece of the action. They could do so by, for example, offering in-seat betting.
• The stadium in Nevada may well be the first place where experiments such as this are set up.
• As for match-fixing, proponents of legalization argue that it’ll be easier to monitor anomalous betting patterns if gambling is done on official exchanges.

Read more here.

Source: Vox

Tyler Cowen discussed research about traffic management by ants:

• Ants never seem to get stuck in traffic jams, even on trails over 60 feet long.
• Unlike humans, when traffic is heavy, ants speed up instead of slowing down.
• They also widen their trail as more of them arrive on it.
• Since they don’t have great vision ants use their antennae and legs to figure out who’s behind and in front of them.
• This seems to be key to their ability to manage traffic. While human drivers are unable to do this, driverless cars probably will be able to.

You can read more here, and find the full study here.

Source: Marginal Revolution

Roberto A. Ferdman wrote about the effects that weight loss drugs have:

• It is thought that those who take weight loss pills such as appetite suppressants may end up gaining weight because they feel that they no longer have to watch what they eat or how much they exercise.
• New research indicates that merely being exposed to an advert for a weight loss pill drives people to eat worse – even if they didn’t actually take the pill.
• It seems that being told that there is a potential remedy for weight gain out there persuades people that they don’t have to worry too much about gaining weight.
• This effect disappears when pills are advertized as supplements instead of drugs.
• This might be because drugs are seen as something that work without any effort on the user’s part, unlike supplements.

Read more here.

Source: The Washington Post

The Economist wrote about the emerging practice of asking millions of strangers on the internet for help with medical problems:

• There are at least 7,000 “rare” diseases – those that affect fewer than 200,000 people.
• Doctors cannot possibly be aware of, and know how to diagnose all of them.
• Even if they’re farsighted enough to know that they’re unable to diagnose a particular condition, they may not know who to refer a patient to.
• In Europe 40% of those afflicted with rare diseases get an incorrect diagnosis at first.
• Enter the crowdsourcing healthcare site CrowdMed. The site allows users to post a detailed list of their aliments and ask for a diagnosis.
• Patients can offer monetary rewards to garner more attention.
• Those who contribute are medical students, retired doctors, and other laymen who enjoy a challenge.
• Those who provide a correct diagnosis rise in the website’s rankings and gain more prominence.
• One analysis indicates that 80% of the suggestions offered through the site were accurate.
• Surprisingly the most accurate diagnoses don’t always come from those with the best credentials.
• On the other end of the spectrum, AI systems such as IBM’s Watson are also entering into the healthcare diagnosis business by using big data to come up with suggestions.
• It remains to be seen if crowdsourcing or artificial intelligence will provide the most accurate medical evaluations in the future.

Read more in the truly excellent Economist over here.

Source: The Economistc

Europe has a thriving ecosystem of imaginary companies writes Liz Alderman:

• Imaginary companies such as “Animal Kingdom” in France sell animal food.
• They take into account their revenue, costs, and payroll. All these numbers are made up.
• The imaginary company works with other imaginary companies such as banks and suppliers.
• The companies have real offices, and real people working in them but that’s about the extent of it.
• The imaginary money that each company’s employees make can be spent buying the products of other imaginary companies.
• This ecosystem started as a government initiative to train students and the unemployed and get them used to working in an office environment.
• Since the ongoing Euro problems began they’ve taken a crucial role in fighting long-term unemployment by keeping office skills fresh.
• To fully replicate the European business experience, the companies will sometimes hold strikes complete with placards and upset employees.
• The fake companies are successful. Up to 70% of those who go through it in France go on to find a job.

Read more about the World War 2 roots of these companies, how the real workers feel about working in a fake company, and more over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Back in 2013 Linda Rodriguez McRobbie took a look at the history of the Ouija board:

• Ouija boards became popular at a time when communicating with spirits was all the rage in the US. It was particularly popular since it was thought to be compatible with Christian beliefs.
• Back then people would communicate with spirits by calling out letters of the alphabet and waiting for a spirit to ‘knock’, thus spelling out words in a time consuming process.
• Entrepreneurs fixed the problem by coming up with the Ouija board, making the process of communicating with spirits much quicker.
• The board got a boost in popularity after the patent office certified it works. They did so because the Ouija board correctly guessed the patent officer’s supposedly unknown name.
• The fact that one of the people who took the board to the officer was a patent attorney, and thus may just have known the officer’s name went unmentioned.
• The board named itself. Its creators asked it what it should be called, and it responded with Ouija – claiming it meant good luck.
• The name is possibly a misreading of the name of a woman’s rights activist, Ouida, whose picture may have been in the room at the time the board was named.
• Mediums hated the board – by bypassing them, the board was stealing their business.
• Up until 1973 the board was a bit of a joke, a game which sometimes had higher sales than Monopoly. Then The Exorcist, a movie where a child is possessed after playing with the board, became popular. Suddenly the board began to terrify people.
• It has since receded as an object of terror in the popular imagination. Several Ouija board apps are available.
• Experts believe that Ouija boards work as a result of the ideometer effect, where involuntary muscle movements are amplified. Because the movements are involuntary they are assumed by people to be caused by an external force.
• There is some psychological evidence to indicate that the board can be used to access people’s subconscious memory.

Read more about the history of the board, how the board “asked” its so-called creator to build a factory that later killed him, the role it played in the White House, how psychologists are trying to use it, and much more in a fascinating article over here.

Source: The Smithsonian

Robbie Gonzalez took us inside the life of a human cannonball:

• Human cannonballing is largely a family business. Performers are related by blood or marriage.
• The business is secretive. Only industry veterans know, for example, how the cannons are made.
• It’s a dangerous sport. One old estimate suggests that out of 50 performers, 30 had died.
• When the person is launched they travel at a speed of 66 miles per hour.
• They are shot from a cannon that is heated precisely to between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, in order to ensure that the pressurized gas powering the cannon behaves as expected.
• The cannonball lands on an airbag that is painted with a target and multiple stars that act as reference points and tell the performer how to control their speed mid-air.

Read more about the business and see some incredible videos and .gifs, including one that shows what it’s like from the perspective of the human cannonball here.

Source: io9

Self-driving cars are coming. Joseph Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto looked at what this will mean for our commutes:

• On average, despite the type of transit available, people live about a 30 minute commute from work.
• This relationship is so strong it may well have been true for ancient Greeks and cavemen.
• But the average hides a lot of variation. For a lot of people 90 minute commutes are fairly normal – though they’re offset by all the people with five minute commutes.
• Since autonomous cars will be able to drive safely at incredibly fast speeds, those willing to commute 90 minutes will be able to live much further away.
• Somebody could live, for example, in upstate Vermont and work in New York.
• Such commutes will be even more palatable since autonomous cars will likely have a lot of space for eating, reading, and sleeping.
• This will also likely herald the end of the short haul flight industry. Why fly when you can get there much cheaper and without the hassle of security?

Read more about what the future of autonomous cars means for us, the environmental concerns, and the infrastructure we’ll need to bring this about here.

Source: Slate

We’ve previously covered the market for luxury ice. Christopher Jones wrote about just how sophisticated the market has become:

• Premium bars are increasingly making premium ice a part of their brands.
• This can add up to 80 cents to the price of each drink
• This is because of the cost of the machinery involved. One that specializes in making clear ice costs $6,000 and takes three days to make 600 pounds of ice.
• Clarity is important because like diamonds, ice is judged on its clarity, density, size, and cut.
• Difference ices are used in different drinks. Large ice cubes are used in spirit heavy cocktails in the hopes of slowing down dilution.
• Meanwhile another machine makes chewy and fluffy pellet ice that absorbs flavours and is used in drinks such as mojitos.

Read about the different kinds of ice, what it costs to make them, and why ice is so important over here.

Source: Wired