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Interesting discussion of newspapers and social currency – if people bought papers so they'd have currency to spend in interactions with fellow citizens, what changes when the locus of social currency changes to online spaces (and when interactions change, I'd argue as well…)
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Pretty much my favorite meditation on joining Facebook.
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Fascinating piece on the ways in which Belgium is becoming "the world's most successful failed state", being pulled apart on linguistic and cultural lines. "there’s almost no communication between the two communities, except through rock music, which everybody sings in English, and sports, which transcend everything"
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The rise in fuel prices has sent global shipping prices sharply higher, almost 3x in the past few years. Will this reverse the progress towards global manufacturing and create new opportunities for "neighborhood" manufacturing?
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How bad is the US newspaper industry? If you've got a spare million bucks, you could be the sole owner of the Journal Register Company, which owns dozens of small newspapers including the New Haven, CT paper. The stock is down 99% since the start of 2007…
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An interesting – if fairly superficial – rumination on the challenges of discovering what's going on in social networking websites in different languages. Useful, at least, as a reminder of the diversity and complexity of the non-English social web
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Interesting oped from a brilliant presidential historian, wondering whether American politics would allow a contemporary president to build a post-partisan cabinet. Includes some useful reflections on echo chambers and the danger of surrounding yourself only with compliant, complementary voices. (Nope, not about W – about Buchanan.)