Saving the Best for Last: Suspense Builds for Glenn Greenwald’s Biggest NSA Revelation

Greenwald will soon publish the names of U.S. citizens who have been targeted by the NSA; Yoweri Museveni, the anti-gay Ugandan president, may become president of the U.N. General Assembly next year; meanwhile, an algorithm may reveal the secret behind retweets. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

Greenwald’s Finale: Naming Victims Of Surveillance The man who helped bring about the most significant leak in American intelligence history is to reveal names of U.S. citizens targeted by their own government in what he promises will be the “biggest” revelation from nearly 2m classified files.

Watching the Audience Move: A New York Times Tool Is Helping Direct Traffic from Story to Story The Times’ director of news analytics explains its new Package Mapper tool: “Every URL is a potential starting point for readers.”

The Online Life of Elliot Rodger For the past two years, I’ve had Google alert me whenever the phrase “school shooting threat” shows up on its radar.

Ukraine’s Many Voices In the run-up to Ukraine’s presidential election, political scientist Tatiana Zhurzhenko reflects on the conditions for political representation in a situation of civil conflict.

Ugandan Minister May Become UN President Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who earlier this year signed a draconian “jail the gays” bill into law, could be rewarded next month with the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly.

Watch Arthur Conan Doyle Explain How He Invented Sherlock Holmes There were two questions that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle couldn’t seem to avoid being asked ad nauseum.

Invisible Public Policies & Inequalities Focusing on the massive increase in socio-economic inequality of the last few decades, Mettler’s book shows that much activity financed by the American federal government have obscured its role, making the real actors appear to be private organizations.

Japan’s Kinki U. to Change Name, Because, Well… Japan’s Kinki University is changing its name to Kindai University so as to stave off chuckles on the part of English-speakers, the Japan Times reported.

The Secret Science of Retweets There’s a secret to persuading strangers to retweet your messages. And a machine learning algorithm has discovered it.