Links I Liked

The whole Fragile States discussion came a lot closer to home last week (power vacuums, formal v informal power, unstable leadership, fragmented patronage-based party systems, even the role of elite boarding schools……).

Why oh why did the Remain campaign reject this poster? We deserve an answer.

As a public service, Buzzfeed has pulled together all the best Brexit tweets of the last week. They are a spectacularly wonderful timesuck, but, like reading Private Eye, leave you feeling dirtied and depressed.

And finally on Brexit, the inevitable Downfall video – rather good, I thought

Faced with bonkers politics, my twitter feed seemed to take refuge in technology

Just in case blockchain is as important as people say (could it make banks largely redundant? Please say yes), here’s a handy explainer

While we’re on technology, nice (if rambling) piece on ‘Apple man’ v tech for real people (eg with kids, relatives etc)

Got a candidate for the 100 most inspiring social tech innovations from around the globe? Here’s how to enter the competition

Meanwhile back out there in the real world, in the 50 yrs since its independence, Botswana has gone from per capita GDP of $83 to $7300 – 15% more than South Africa. And almost all on the basis of diamonds. Resource curse anyone?

And everyone needs some good news at the moment, so how about ‘Ozone layer hole appears to be healing, scientists say’. Those pesky experts again.