February Links

What I'm reading

Author

Riley Haas
February 28, 2026

This is a monthly post of what I’ve been reading plus what podcasts I’ve been listening to.

What I’m Reading:

  • Vladimir Nabokov: The Gift (1938): I really struggled with this to start but I’m enjoying it much more now. It’s very…Russian, and I don’t have the knowledge to fully get everything. (Also, I was into Russian literature in my 20s, not any more.) I don’t know that I can recommend it.

  • “Virtue will always be irritating”: A very left wing writer who has problems with woke/SJW - far more than me - on why it was still a good thing. One point I’ve tried to make about all of it ad nauseam is better expressed here: “Turning on the left because of these stupidities would be stupid enough, joining the right another folly entirely. Particularly insane is the idea that a bunch of shouting 20 and 30-somethings being rude to you on the internet justified voting for Trump. If things get really bad, history will look back on that excuse with something like dark amusement.” (My emphasis.)

  • “He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive”: It is pretty ridiculous that the world has just decided this is fine. (They don’t scam the rich, that’s why.)

  • “Fraud Investigation is Believing Your Lying Eyes”: If you can handle this guy’s style, this is a fascinating discussion of how easy it is for people to defraud the US government and why. It focuses on the Minnesota issues in particular just because they’re current.

  • “The War on Terror in Minnesota”: This is mostly a plug for a podcast appearance but I’m sharing it for what he wrote: For example: “[Democrats failing to reduce funding for ICE] is the Democrats telling you that they're fine with you being shot dead in the street by ICE as long as they do it with their faces showing and the bodycams running. When the snuff video of you or your loved one circulates, they'll shake their heads regretfully before disciplining their presumed voters against rudely demanding abolition. They were already fine with your neighbors being disappeared and herded into disease-ridden, medically neglectful concentration camps far out of sight, where at least 32 people died just last year.”

  • “The Threshold”: It is just crazy to me that American politicians and media figures routinely insult American athletes and half the country is totally fine with it. It’s a testament to how warped patriotism is that American politicians are swearing at athletes on social media for the mildest comments and people think they are being patriotic. It’s crazy! Could you imagine if Polievre becomes PM and he and his caucus just start tweeting insults at Canadian athletes during the Olympics?

  • “Political Backflow From Europe”: This is an interesting idea. As you know, if you ask the average Canadian about our politics, they will mistake aspects of American politics for Canadian, be it institutions, trends, issues. This is true in the rest of the world too, apparently, though I bet it’s less true than it is here. But what if it goes the other way too? This argues that American conservatives have mentally imported European immigration problems to the US, so when they make (often easily falsifiable) claims about immigrants to the US, they are actually talking about immigrants to Europe.

  • “Americans think everyone is corrupt”: I think we Canadians can probably all agree that the US tolerated more corruption in their federal politics than we do even well before Trump made it cool. This interesting idea is that Americans believe all politicians are corrupt so more corruption is just a difference of degree, not of kind. Makes it pretty hard to fight actual corruption if that’s what you think!

  • “The Median Voter Theorem is a Clarity Trap”: I.e. the idea that centre left parties can and should find and appeal to the average voter is an oversimplification that prevents parties from adapting and innovating to our changing times.

  • “The Toronto Police Has Been a Rogue Agency for Too Long. Rein Them In”: In response to TPS’ latest scandals, here are a bunch more. (I am familiar with some of them from Commons, which he hosted.)

  • “I swear the UFO is coming any minute”: This is a links post but I’m sharing it because a bunch of them are to debunkings of canonical psychology studies.

  • “Record Low Crime Rates Are Real, Not Just Reporting Bias Or Improved Medical Care”: A few years ago I encountered a theory that argued that crime rates (in the US) hadn’t actually declined as much as we think and they actually were roughly the same as they were in the 1960s because of reporting problems and improved medical care. This struck me as wrong but also kind of threatening because a huge part of my world view is “this is the best time to be alive ever because X, Y, Z and A,B,C” and one of those is that crime has never been lower. So I kind of covered my eyes and hoped it was crazy. Anyway, this post refutes that theory, though I don’t believe it cites the post I read directly. Sometimes things really are what they seem. A follow up on whether “disorder” is increasing which is why everyone thinks crime is up: “Crime As Proxy For Disorder.”

  • “An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me”: Well this is nuts.

  • “"Deadwood" and the community of spirits”: As the subtitle says, “On rewatching David Milch's masterpiece in the age of the oligarch.” One of my two GTSOATs (Greatest TV Shows of All Time).

  • “MEDIA ECOSYSTEM OBSERVATORY BRIEF: Conspiratorial Claims and Institutional Distrust in Canada’s Online Ecosystem”: I’ve just started reading this and likely will not be done before I share it with you. But the reason I’m reading it is this finding: “100 online users account for 68% of conspiratorial posts, capturing 90% of views and 86% of likes. The same users generally promote multiple conspiratorial claims, particularly about the deep state, election fraud, and media-elite collusion, and gain attention primarily by posting around high-profile events.” So, it’s a grift. It’s always a grift. But, secondly, if someone is running around loudly proclaiming a conspiracy theory, there’s a good chance, they're either guilty of something similar or they want power to be able to do something similar. (See: everything that is currently unfolding in the US right now.)

  • “Venture Fraud” [paper]: “We find that VC-backed firms are 54% more likely to face fraud charges than comparable non-VC-backed firms within a subsample of newly public firms where detection likelihood is high and homogeneous…Founder-controlled boards are 88% more likely to commit fraud than VC-controlled or shared-control boards, even within the same firm.” Guffaw.

  • “Smartphones, Online Music Streaming, and Traffic Fatalities” [paper]: “Using event study analysis, we show that music streaming – an indicator for smartphone use, where streaming most often occurs – sharply increases, by nearly 40%, on dates of major music album releases, while U.S. traffic fatalities increase by nearly 15% on those same days.” (!!!)

  • “It must be very hard to publish null results” [paper]: “We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results.” Well that probably shouldn’t be happening. (This is in poli-sci but no doubt is true of all academia to some extent or other.)

  • “Master and Commander: How a Small Welsh Town Tried to Save a Popular Sea Shanty Band from The Captain”: If you get tricked into performing for free in a band in another country and don’t have enough money for the flight home - because “The Captain” won’t pay you - and you’re stopped by the police, tell the police!

What I’m Listening to:

  • Behind the Bastards:

  • Canadaland:

  • Darknet Diaries: I’ve haven’t managed to listen to the newest episode yet but I will soon.

  • In the Dark: Still listening to season 4, the COVID season, after all.

  • The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: Now that the trade deadline is over he’s no longer talking about Giannis, thank Science.

  • The Bill Simmons Show: Zach Lowe is now on Sundays, since the NFL is over, so I’m listening to those episodes as well which is why I’ve listened to fewer episodes of other shows. 3 NBA podcast episodes a week take up a lot of time and especially when Simmons is involved.

  • Reply All:

    • “The Real Enemy”: A three-part series out of their usual wheelhouse on the Alabama Democrats that is really interesting. It strikes me that a country isn’t really a democracy if the parties who run for office never change their leaders. I had no idea this was on in Alabama (in 2019) and it makes me wonder how many other state party apparatuses are like this. It also makes me wonder how many of our parties have people making decisions who have been there for decades.

    • "Thank You for Noticing": This is one of those internet mysteries they solve which reminds you why this show was so great.

  • Science Vs.:

What I’m Watching: