Facebook continues shopping with its overvalued stock:
Facebook most recently bought Oculus Rift. The key here is that the purchase of both WhatsApp and Oculus Rift only make sense if Facebook plans on eventually ignoring the wishes of the founders. WhatsApp founders don't want ads and Oculus Rift founders don't want Facebook integration. It doesn't have to happen now, but if Facebook doesn't decide to spin out those companies then in three to five years there is no way that Facebook integration and ads aren't on both of those products. Facebook is an important stock to watch, as any long term underperformance would be a strong signal that investors are falling out of love with tech.
Corrupt US Politicians:
Leland Yee, the Californian State Senator who was in the running to be California's next Secretary of State, is really corrupt. The surprising part about the corruption is the small scale nature of it. Campaign debt of less than $75,000 was apparently enough to get him to participate in a gun running scheme. This might have been the tip of the iceberg and he could have been making a lot more money, but if corruption occurs for such low amounts of money then this is one of the best arguments for libertarianism I've seen in a long time. Corrupt politicians do less damage when they have less power.
Putin and Crimea:
The interesting thing about Russia's takeover of Crimea is that given Crimea's history and large russian population, Russia could have taken it back without force if they wanted to. One way to interpret this situation is that when their puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, got overthrown Putin wanted to make a statement. Others say that Putin is creating an "us versus them" situation to distract from the corruption that is being revealed about the set up for the Sochi Olympics. However, given that both Russia and the rest of the world would face short term pain if the situation escalated further it is unlikely to do so in the near term.