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Why This Narrow Strait Next to Iran Is So Critical to the World’s Oil Supply

Twenty percent of the global oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water that separates Persian Gulf countries like Iran, Iraq and Kuwait from the rest of the world. From May 15 to June 15, more than 1,000 tanker ships traveled the strait. Many were destined for places as far away as China and South Korea. New York Times

How A.I. Helped Improve Crowd Counting in Hong Kong Protests

Crowd estimates for Hong Kong’s large pro-democracy protests have been a point of contention for years. But for the first time in the march’s history, a group of researchers combined artificial intelligence and manual counting techniques to estimate the size of the crowd. New York Times

The Oil Market Shows It Can Take a Punch

The Persian Gulf crisis has not ignited a major price spike, thanks to growing oil production in the U.S. and a slowing in overall demand. New York Times

Licence to be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us

By Jonathan Aldred. Modern economics, the author argues, dismisses ethics in favour of a narrow focus on self-interest. “The argument that both parties to a voluntary transaction must be better off, otherwise it wouldn’t take place,” he writes, “is used to wash away all considerations of justice, fairness, responsibility, exploitation and so on.” The Economist