A public toilet in Beijing requires using a face recognition system to get toilet paper.

Some governments will spend lots of money to surveil people in the name of stinginess.

If there's anyone in Beijing that can't afford toilet paper, the city government should give out toilet paper for them. Why not put a box of rolls next to the toilet?

I have a hunch that that toilet does something else even worse: that it is a pay toilet. The idea of charging people to use a toilet offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet. Please join this campaign, and spread the word.

The last old forest in Europe is being destroyed by illegal logging and legal logging.

Illinois is considering bills requiring web sites to tell users what information they hold about them and what companies they have distributed it to.

I'm in favor of this, but I don't think it will do much to protect us from surveillance by web sites. And that's not to count the surveillance of bank cards, pharmacies, toll booths, phone companies, license plate cameras and face recognition cameras.

Google has found a way to track most credit card purchases in the US, even those not done through a phone, and correlate that with people's online actions.

Google can't do either side to me, since I pay cash and don't carry a mobile phone, and it doesn't know what web sites I look at.

Vietnam is recognizing the harm that rising sea level will do.