[More unsettling NSA leaks.]

The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, according to secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

[…]

“The calls you make can reveal a lot, but now that so much of our lives are mediated by the internet, your IP [internet protocol] logs are really a real-time map of your brain: what are you reading about, what are you curious about, what personal ad are you responding to (with a dedicated email linked to that specific ad), what online discussions are you participating in, and how often?” said Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute.

“Seeing your IP logs – and especially feeding them through sophisticated analytic tools – is a way of getting inside your head that’s in many ways on par with reading your diary,” Sanchez added.

via NSA collected Americans’ email records in bulk for two years under Obama.

Jace Clayton (aka DJ/Rupture) talking about “inexpensive time-travel devices and how the future might not exist.”

Jace Clayton | EXPO 1: New York.

[There’s stuff I disagree with here, and a certain amount of weaseling, but it’s a really interesting read, especially the final section. -egg]

In virtually every realm of human existence, we turn to technology to help us solve our problems. But even in Silicon Valley, when it comes to food and obesity, technology—or at least food-processing technology—is widely treated as if it is the problem. The solution, from this viewpoint, necessarily involves turning our back on it.

If the most-influential voices in our food culture today get their way, we will achieve a genuine food revolution. Too bad it would be one tailored to the dubious health fantasies of a small, elite minority. And too bad it would largely exclude the obese masses, who would continue to sicken and die early. Despite the best efforts of a small army of wholesome-food heroes, there is no reasonable scenario under which these foods could become cheap and plentiful enough to serve as the core diet for most of the obese population—even in the unlikely case that your typical junk-food eater would be willing and able to break lifelong habits to embrace kale and yellow beets. And many of the dishes glorified by the wholesome-food movement are, in any case, as caloric and obesogenic as anything served in a Burger King.

via How Junk Food Can End Obesity – David H. Freedman – The Atlantic.

A Softer World: 982.

[This is one of the best general articles I’ve read on Lyme disease and the bitter controversy surrounding diagnosis and treatment. -egg]

Those facts are undisputed. But nearly everything else about Lyme disease—the symptoms, the diagnosis, the prevalence, the behavior of the borrelia spirochete after it infects the body, and the correct approach to treatment—is contested bitterly and publicly. Even the definition of Lyme disease, and the terminology used to describe it, has fuelled years of acrimonious debate. The conventional medical assessment is straightforward: in most cases, the tick bite causes a skin rash, called erythema migrans, which is easily identified by its bull’s-eye. If left untreated, the bacteria can spread to muscles, joints, the heart, and even the brain. Public-health officials say that a few weeks of antibiotic treatment will almost always wipe out the infection, and that relapses are rare. In this view, put forth in guidelines issued by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Lyme is normally easy to treat and easy to cure.

For many people, though, the clinical situation is far more complicated. Some who have been infected with borrelia don’t notice the rash. Others—up to a quarter of those with Lyme, including Kaleigh Ahern—never even get one. Most troubling, some patients who are treated continue to suffer from a variety of symptoms long after their therapy has ended. Nobody really knows why they fail to get better. Infectious-disease experts refer to the phenomenon, which can affect up to twenty per cent of patients, as Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome. Researchers have attempted to resolve the mystery in experiments with monkeys, mice, and dogs; human studies are also under way. As the number of infections grows, so does the number of people struggling to figure out what is wrong with them.

via Michael Specter: The Growing Battle Over How to Treat Lyme Disease : The New Yorker.

It was built for stockbrokers and bankers in their thousand dollar suits to make million dollar deals, but for nearly two decades it has held the less impressive title of the world’s tallest squat. Welcome to the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, more commonly known as the Torre David the Tower of David in Caracas, Venezuela, an unfinished skyscraper which has now been colonised by an ad hoc community of over 700 families.

[…]

Little by little however, they began crudely patching up the unfinished work that builders left behind. Found or makeshift materials were hauled up countless unlit stairwells to provide basic services and safety measures. They now have running water that reaches up to the 22nd floor. A village-like community began to flourish behind its sleekly designed shell. Grocery stores on every inhabited floor, hairdressers and even a dentist unlicensed operate in the Torre David.

via Anywhere but Here: Deserted Banking Empire turned Skyscraper Slum | Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic.

[Quick reminder that Reader shuts down July 1. Here are the alternatives. -egg]

Google Reader Is Shutting Down; Here Are the Best Alternatives.

What we do know is that, on this side of the Atlantic, efforts are being stepped up to demonize Snowden, and to delegitimize his claim to be a conscientious objector to the huge electronic-spying apparatus operated by the United States and the United Kingdom. “This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent,” General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “What Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies.” Over on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I don’t think this man is a whistle-blower… he could have stayed and faced the music. I don’t think running is a noble thought.”

via Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On? : The New Yorker.

[This man really, really dislikes Tim O’Reilly. He’s got some interesting things to say about open source, free software, and government-as-a-platform. -egg]

While the brightest minds of Silicon Valley are “disrupting” whatever industry is too crippled to fend off their advances, something odd is happening to our language. Old, trusted words no longer mean what they used to mean; often, they don’t mean anything at all. Our language, much like everything these days, has been hacked. Fuzzy, contentious, and complex ideas have been stripped of their subversive connotations and replaced by cleaner, shinier, and emptier alternatives; long-running debates about politics, rights, and freedoms have been recast in the seemingly natural language of economics, innovation, and efficiency. Complexity, as it turns out, is not particularly viral.

via The Meme Hustler | Evgeny Morozov | The Baffler.