Some US states have made it possible to buy birth control pills without visiting a doctor. This will make a big difference to women who can't afford to see a doctor for the prescription.

If we had a civilized medical system, and a proper minimum wage, etc., no women would be in that situation. But this change would still be good, even though not quite as urgently needed.

Bitcoin is becoming unreliable because of a refusal to change a protocol to increase the capacity for transactions.

US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the recently introduced discrimination in the US visa waiver program.

A school in the UK has refused to allow birthday cakes in school, for fear of being held responsible if some child has an allergic reaction.

Refugee Benham Satah is a prisoner on Manus Island. He testified in the trial over the murder of his fellow prisoner Reza Barati, and is afraid the guards will kill him for that.

He testified seeing foreign guards as well as Manus islanders beat Barati to death. However, only the islanders have been charged with the killing; foreign guards enjoy effective impunity — one of the injustices of the way Australia set up its proxy prison in Manus.

I've read two books about Manus Island: Manus Religion, by Reo Fortune, and New Lives for Old, by Margaret Meade. They describe a society that chose revolutionary change between the 1920s and the 1950s, inspired by the American soldiers that were stationed there temporarily, who treated them as acquaintances rather than as colonial subjects.

That society existed in one corner of the island, alongside other societies that may have been quite different. I suppose that they have all been assimilated together, by now, and I wonder whether the nature of things in Manus Island today relates in any way to the culture of those people, 90 years ago.