Kosovo land swap could end conflict – or restart war
Best case: Redrawing borders leads to peace, prosperity and EU membership. But there's also a worst case.
- The Yugoslav Wars started in 1991, but never really ended.
- Kosovo and Serbia are still enemies, and they're getting worse.
- A proposed land swap could create peace – or reignite the conflict.
AI can predict your future tweets by looking at your friends’ accounts
A new study shows how machine-learning methods could examine your friends' past tweets to accurately predict your future behavior online.
- The study examined the past tweets of hundreds of Twitter users, each within a particular social circle, in order to see how accurate of predictions it's possible to make with machine-learning techniques.
- The results showed that machine-learning techniques can predict the future Twitter activity of a given user by looking only at about 9 of their friends, and that these predictions are about as accurate as predictions made with the benefit of looking at the user's past writings.
- The findings have troubling implications for online privacy, namely that, in theory, not even leaving Facebook or Twitter would prevent someone from generating an accurate profile of you.
26 ultra-rich people own as much as the world's 3.8 billion poorest
The Oxfam report prompted Anand Giridharadas to tweet: "Don't be Pinkered into everything's-getting-better complacency."
- A new report by Oxfam argues that wealth inequality is causing poverty and misery around the world.
- In the last year, the world's billionaires saw their wealth increase by 12%, while the poorest 3.8 billion people on the planet lost 11% of their wealth.
- The report prompted Anand Giridharadas to tweet: "Don't be Pinkered into everything's-getting-better complacency." We explain what Steven Pinker's got to do with it.
4 reasons Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for universal basic income
In his final years, Martin Luther King, Jr. become increasingly focused on the problem of poverty in America.
- Despite being widely known for his leadership role in the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. also played a central role in organizing the Poor People's Campaign of 1968.
- The campaign was one of the first to demand a guaranteed income for all poor families in America.
- Today, the idea of a universal basic income is increasingly popular, and King's arguments in support of the policy still make a good case some 50 years later.
10 reasons to be optimistic in 2019
Rwanda is pioneering the regulation and use of drones - such as delivering blood
Even the optimists among us would have to admit 2018 was a challenging year. The fractured world that became the focus of our 2018 Annual Meeting a year ago came under further pressure from populist rhetoric and rising nationalist agendas. At the same time, the urgent need for coordinated global action in areas such as climate change, inequality and the impact of automation on jobs became more intense.
How KGB founder Iron Felix justified terror and mass executions
The legacy of Felix Dzerzhinsky, who led Soviet secret police in the "Red Terror," still confounds Russia.
- Felix Dzerzhinsky led the Cheka, Soviet Union's first secret police.
- The Cheka was infamous for executing thousands during the Red Terror of 1918.
- The Cheka later became the KGB, the spy organization where Russia's President Putin served for years.
SMARTER FASTER trademarks owned by The Big Think, Inc. All rights reserved.