Assorted Links

1. Politics is not about policy - it's about who deserves higher status. Exhibt #5,271: The reaction to the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS ruling. (The SCOTUS is not to be confused with SCOTUSblog).

2. Facebook's psychological study caused a minor scandal, even if it didn't necessarily do what it claimed to do. On the one hand, this can be seen as worrisome that Facebook modified newsfeeds of some users and might have made them feel slightly worse. But on the other hand - it's seen as unethical to reproduce so many of the landmark experiments of our time and it is interesting that private companies have the potential to fund and run smaller experiments in potentially less regulated environments.

3. The value provided by HFT. Barclays wanted to pretend to pretend that they didn't have any "predatory" HFT firms in their system but without those firms they wouldn't have the liquidity to run their own dark pool.

4. Unfortunately for those growing up in poverty, peer group effects are very important. This link is quite relevant for anyone wondering whether or not they should utilize San Francisco's public school system.