Would it be legal for a bank to deny a loan based on Facebook data about you?

The article suffers from the common confusion between inventions and patents. The method of judging loans based on a person's Facebook data is an invention. The patent is a government-created monopoly that might stop or hinder some companies from using the invention. Patents on business practices are really a form of computational idea patent, so they should not be allowed.

But that is a separate issue from the issue raised by the proposed method. Innovations can be good or bad.

What worries me most about this proposed method is that it might pressure people to be used by Facebook.

Right-wing strategy, after reducing what is available to the non-rich, is to make them fight among themselves for a share of the reduced pie. To win, the non-rich must refuse to be divided.

US citizens: call on Obama to prosecute Exxon for lying about the danger of global heating.

The illogically defended Kim Davis's refusal to sign same-sex marriage licenses, incorrectly calling this "conscientious objection".

The concept of "conscientious objection" applies to jobs people are compelled to do, such as when they are conscripted into the army. Conscripts that object to killing cannot avoid it by resigning from the army, so they have campaigned for and won the right to do some other duty, such as being a medic.

This is not pertinent to Kim Davis because nobody is conscripted to work as a county clerk. If Davis doesn't want to do that job, she can simply resign.

Although the pope continues the opposition to birth control and abortion, he is putting the main emphasis elsewhere.

Brazil has pledged a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

It is still not enough to save our ecosphere, but at least it is getting serious.