Nikhil Sonnad

Usually, end-of-the-year lists say what was “best” from that year. Best albums. Best books. Best bloopers.

It’s a Christmas gif-t from the Communist Party of China.

This year, I became addicted to and deleted the following apps: Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Press (an RSS reader), and Instagram.

Donald Trump’s threats against nations poorer than his own don’t appear to have had much of an effect.

There is a sense in politics that supporters of the opposition are angrier than those who favor the rulers. But is that really true? After all, there is always something to be mad about in politics, no matter who is in power.

Donald Trump’s first tweet—from the bygone era of 2009 America—was a simple tweet, for simpler times.

On Dec. 15, a strange post went up on Facebook’s corporate blog. It was strange because it suggested that Facebook might, in fact, be bad for you.

Linguistic nationalism just scored a victory. Montenegrins are excited that their national language, Montenegrin, has been added to the list of language codes recognized by the International Organization for Standardization, identifying it as a separate language from Serbian.

The tactics of Uber under Travis Kalanick continues to look like some mix of ancient Rome and the Nixon administration.

The Centers for Disease Control is the main public health institute in the United States. It is committed to helping Americans in a way that is science-based—er, oops, I can’t say that now.

The tweets are coming in hot for #NetNeutality, following the FCC’s decision this afternoon to repeal net neutrality rules. Just one problem: there’s supposed to be an “r” in “neutrality.”

The Federal Communications Commission decided today to repeal rules that ensure net neutrality, the principle that internet traffic should all be treated the same.

Identity theft is usually used to scam you for cash, but this time you’ll want to check if you have been impersonated for political purposes.

In 2014, Democrats thought winning a senate seat in Alabama was such a long shot that they didn’t even field a candidate—Republican Jeff Sessions, now US attorney general, ran unopposed and won.

In its ongoing battle with the so-called “mainstream media,” the Trump administration has found a staunch ally: the Chinese Communist Party.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court decided to temporarily uphold the US government’s third version of a travel ban, which prohibits people of certain nationalities from entering the US.

Does anything about this translation of the Lord’s Prayer, the most well-known prayer in all of Christianity, strike you as odd?

This item has been corrected.

Last week, Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, announced to his Twitter followers, “It’s ok to be white.” There was no additional context, just this. “It’s ok to be white.”

Europe is getting old. The share of the population over 65 continues to rise, and was up to 19% in the EU last year. The median age is over 43, compared to about 38 in the United States and just 28 in India. That is already posing a number of policy challenges (pdf) in Europe, as the ratio of retirees to working-age people grows.

Duolingo, the popular language-learning app, is continuing its foray into teaching non-Western languages to English speakers. After launching Japanese and Chinese this year, it will release an Arabic course next March, Quartz has confirmed. The company—which has 200 million users and is many people’s starting point for learning new languages—says that Arabic has been one of its most requested courses.

The Chinese government doesn’t like it when English words sneak their way into its ancient language. Government censors have tried to ban English words in the media, even in cases where there is no obvious Chinese equivalent, like “wi-fi” and “iPhone.”

In the Turkish language, there is one pronoun, “o,” that covers every kind of singular third person. Whether it’s a he, a she, or an it, it’s an “o.” That’s not the case in English. So when Google Translate goes from Turkish to English, it just has to guess whether “o” means he, she, or it. And those translations reveal the algorithm’s gender bias.

Learning a new language takes time. But according to US diplomatic training guides, there are many languages that Americans should be able to learn in under a year.