Random links

Facebook rolling out new ‘Snooze’ feature to temporarily block annoying friends & pages
Might be worthwhile. I suspect that people might want to mute me too from time to time.
The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Digital Communication
" In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington ... famously concluded that the axes of international geo-political conflicts had reverted to the ancient cultural divisions that had characterized most of human history. ... Contrary to the supposedly borderless world of cyberspace, a bottom-up analysis confirms the persistence of the eight culturally differentiated civilizations posited by Huntington, with the divisions corresponding to differences in language, religion, economic development, and spatial distance."
Health Services as Credence Goods: A Field Experiment
"A test patient who does not need treatment is sent to 180 dentists to receive treatment recommendations. ... We find that the patient receives an overtreatment recommendation in more than every fourth visit. A low short-term demand, indicating excess capacities, leads to significantly more overtreatment recommendations. ... we observe significantly less overtreatment recommendations for the patient with higher SES compared to lower SES under standard information."