Reverse Mind Reading

In real life, novel mutations are more often bad than good, because the status quo is tightly selected for being reasonable close to optimal.

The same ought to apply to the kind of psychic or supernatural mutations featured in comic book series like the X-Men and speculative fiction works like the TV series "Heroes." But, we rarely seek the dark sides.

One more negative than not psychic mutation might be "reverse mind reading." Instead of being able to read someone's mind, everyone else would be able to know exactly what someone with "reverse mind reading" is thinking.

One might be able to use it in a useful or positive fashion, but I've never seen it portrayed for good or ill.

Deep Thought About Modern China

Boing Boing flags "a kind of masterclass on contemporary Chinese politics, authoritarianism, liberalism and dissidence" from wunderkind Kaiser Kuo. This explains many aspects of the modern political scene with a social contract between the ordinary Han Chinese masses and non-radical intellectuals of China:

a kind of bargain between the authoritarian technocrats of the Chinese state and its people: "let us govern as we wish, and we will keep chaos at bay and sustain the growth that is lifting you out of poverty."

It also makes the pointed observation that one of the reason that we don't see a lot of visible signs of dissatisfaction with the regime (outside of Hong Kong where people have a certain amount of insulation from the regime's totalitarian practices to which they are clinging with all their might) is that dissenters end up dead or incarcerated, including more than a million members of ethnic minorities in concentration camps there, so the notion that "the Chinese people like their government" is somewhat overstated even if it gets across an important point.