17 December

People lie. Governments lie. But they can’t hide the traces of what they do. A fun example here, GDP is a measure that doesn’t tell you a lot about how well a country is really doing, and it can also be gamed. North Korea for example will tell you it’s doing brilliantly. However people realised that the wealth of a country has a strong link to how much light it uses at night. So scanning satellite images will give you an idea in real-time just how well a country is doing. In this image South Korea is blazing with light, and North Korea is in the dark.