Society

The Democracy Index published by the Economist Group is an index measuring the quality of democracy across the world. This quantitative and comparative assessment is centrally concerned with democratic rights and democratic institutions. The methodology for assessing democracy used in this democracy index is according to Economist Intelligence Unit which is part of the Economist Group, a UK-based private company, which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped into five categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. The first Democracy Index report was published in 2006. Reports were published every two years until 2010 and annually thereafter. The index includes 167 countries and territories, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states. Other democracy indices with similar assessments of the state of democracy include V-Dem Democracy indices or Bertelsmann Transformation Index.

The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) since 2002 based upon the non-governmental organization's own assessment of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. It intends to reflect the degree of freedom that journalists, news organizations, and netizens have in each country, and the efforts made by authorities to respect this freedom. Reporters Without Borders is careful to note that the WPFI only deals with press freedom and does not measure the quality of journalism in the countries it assesses, nor does it look at human rights violations in general.

In 1970 everyone was feeling bad about the economy. How bad? To put a number to the pervasively negative vibe, Arthur Okun created the “mise...

Ecophagy is a term coined by Robert Freitas that means the consumption of an ecosystem. It derives from Greek  οἶκος (oikos) 'house, household' and  φαγεῖν (phagein) 'to eat'.

This piece was published in my book Lockdown in Hell World. It’s March and it’s sunny and quiet in my old neighborhood. Too quiet except for the birds. It feels like there’s a blizzard outside that you can’t see. Toward the end of February which is

We've lost sight of how absurd living like this actually is

Even people like this

About half of people have private health insurance through an employer. However, the other half get their insurance from elsewhere or through a combination of sources.

The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was Tsar Bomba, a 50-megaton device detonated by the Soviet Union in 1961. That made it “3,300 times as powerful” as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — an almost unimaginable level of potential destructive

Claire V. Miller is a first-year student at Harvard College. In an opinion piece for the The Harvard Crimson , she writes that her fellow st...

How do you create wealth? One answer is by enabling trade. British company Ox Delivers observed that the Global South is hamstrung in this regard; entrepreneurial individuals are hampered by unreliable transportation networks, and without an efficient way to ship goods, prosperity through trade is impossible. The company thus designed

Slow, expensive, and unreliable transport is stifling trade in the Global South. OX Delivers is removing these barriers with a complete transport & trade solution to unlock opportunity and create wealth.

Under owner Elon Musk, the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, has become a hotbed of  white supremacist and neo-Nazi content. A recent

Two books explore the price we’ve paid in handing over unprecedented power to Big Tech—and explain why it’s imperative we start taking it back.

A flurry of drone sightings across New Jersey and New York has sparked national intrigue and US government responses. But experts are pouring cold water on America’s hottest new conspiracy theory.

What other kind of company inspires this sort of hatred?

Not all of them found success as quickly as Mark Zuckerberg, who became a millionaire at 22.

You usually don't see warships rocking the Jolly Roger.

Millions would be better off if the US changed its joint filing system.

An anti-establishment technology for an anti-establishment age

The brazen murder of a CEO in Midtown Manhattan—and the cheering reaction to his execution—amounts to a blinking-and-blaring warning signal for a society that has become already too inured to bloodshed.

The author of 'The AI Mirror' worries about what we're doing to our moral muscles as we grow more reliant on machines.

Sometimes, the quickest way to kill something is to give it a name