Weekly Filet #68: Democracy Pimped by Random. And more.
Enjoy your read: Weekly Filet #68 is here. You can view it in your browser or right below.
This week's top recommendation
"There has been quite some talk about Liquid Democracy as a new, more direct form of democratic engagement. In short: Everyone gets to vote on everything, but has the right to delegate his votes to people he trusts. Here's a case for a different approach that sounds counter-intuitive at first: If fewer people vote, outcomes will be better. For each ballot, a small subset of all people is allowed to vote, picked by random. Not quite sure what to make of it, but it got me thinking.
→ How Selecting Voters Randomly Can Lead to Better Elections (Wired)
Further recommendations
A fascinating, new view on all sorts of animals. Joel Sartore brings them in a photo studio and shoots portraits like they are usually made of the species of homo sapiens.
→ Thousands of Species, Each a Work of Art (Lens Blog)
This is the story of a married, well-settled writer who sets out to meet a man who lives the life he could have lived. Entertaining read.
→ The Cooler Me (GQ)
Today, Facebook is hitting the stock market. The NY Times has an interactive graphic that compares its IPO to those of all other tech companies since 1980. The big story unfolds when you move vom step 1 to step 2.
→ The Facebook Offering: How It Compares. (New York Times)
Lovely: An instant camera that - rather than giving you a picture - prints a text of what it sees. The trick: mechanical turks.
→ Descriptive Camera (Mitt Richardson)
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