There are many desktop applications that generate small amounts of data that at present cannot easily be synced or shared across computes without the use of a third party service. Firefox sync, for example, is notoriously hard to get running nicely. In fact, most desktop applications lack third-party syncing functionality all together.

Imagine instead a world where syncing settings, credentials, bookmarks, shortcuts, rss feed subscriptions is as easy as connecting an application to a self-hosted server with a simple database attached. Offline and no third-parties involved. It is incredible that this is still an unsolved problem.

All that is needed for this to take of is that one of the major open source desktop environments integrates an open protocol where any application developer can add support for their applications independently. Before long, someone will offer a hosted service, completing the circle.

A very interesting article by Yegor Gaidar from 2007 about his work on the collapse of the Soviet Union, with important insights and lessons for many of today's societies and international organizations. A quote:

[...] authoritarian regimes, although displaying a façade of strength, are fragile in crisis. In conditions of relative stability, society is prepared to tolerate the lack of real elections. People are prepared to come to terms with this situation as an inevitable and habitual evil. But they will do so only until the country encounters a seri- ous challenge [...]

A documentary about the life of Steven Fuller, the longtime Yellowstone winterkeeper. And, here is his story from the Mountain Journal.

A very interesting high-resolution resource for light pollution maps. Here is an example of continental Europe:

The Schengen agreement, abolishing internal border controls, is probably one of the most significant achievements for European cooperation in the past half-century. Yet, temporarily reintroduced border controls seem to appear for various reasons lately. Below is a link to the (continuously updated) list. It is a sad read for the future of European integration.