January Links

What I’m Reading:

• Caroline Criado Perez: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019): I will be starting this as soon as I finish Cover Her Face so definitely before the end of January. I’d love to say “maybe this is out of date” but, you know, probably not!

• P.D. James: Cover Her Face (1962): I will be done this today or tomorrow and will have a review then. I grew up with P.D. James books on the shelf but didn’t know where they were. This is my second of hers but first proper mystery (as the first one was Children of Men). This genre isn’t really my thing.

• Nate Silver: The Signal and the Noise (2012): This is a very interesting and readable book about making successful predictions. I do wish there was a little more on why humans are bad at this but I do think that’s not really his lane.

• Yasmeen Abutaleb, Damian Paletta: Nightmare Scenario: Inside the the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History (2021): Well this feels more relevant now than it would have been had I read it in early 2024 or something. Though I’m not sure it would have convinced enough people, I wish that a certain 77+ million people had read this book in the summer or autumn of last year. Maybe somebody could have made a documentary since nobody reads.

• “The Ghosts in the Machine”: I want to say Spotify is evil but if people cared about what they listened to this couldn’t have happened.

• “Where will AI be at the end of 2027? A bet”: Yes! (I mean, I’d bet no but I’m glad there’s a bet.)

• “The Players on the Eve of Destruction”: I hope he’s wrong.

• “This Is 40: The Stats That Define LeBron’s Extraordinary Career”: GOAT. (And it took me forever to get over The Decision and “Not 1, not 2…” and I’m not even a Cavs fan.)

• “Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia”: Wikipedia is one of the most valuable knowledge resources ever created (despite what your teachers told you). It’s no wonder the powerful hate it.

• “Real Time True Crime: The Unsatisfying and Often Damaging Outcomes of Internet Sleuthing”: On how mass shooters (and those driving trucks, etc.) and would-be folk hero assassins do not fit nicely into political polarization or the culture war.

• “Priscila, Queen of the Rideshare Mafia”: This woman committed fraud and identity theft but she mostly did it to…give people jobs. It’s a testament to how weird the world is that this is a story. And I don’t really know how I feel about it. Obviously this is a crime. But it’s also basically harmless. (And harm should be the measure, more often than not.) And I’ve long found it really strange that big tech does a bad job of security and then it’s somehow the US government’s job to punish people for exploiting those loopholes. Doesn’t quite make sense to me.

• “U.S. Military Service Is Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence”: Well that’s shocking. It’s almost like one of the reasons the United States is so much more violent than countries with similar levels of affluence is their extraordinarily militarized culture.

• “Our Generation Ships Will Sink [2015]: A science fiction author argues that humans will never be able to “colonize the stars.”

• “We’re getting the social media crisis wrong”: This is really insightful.

• “With January 6th and Trump, the Truth Has Always Been Bad Enough”: As usual, I do not agree with plenty of what he says but, as one of the few on the American Left who are not having a panic attack right now, he’s worth reading.

• “On Priesthoods”: I found this very interesting until it turned into a complaint about wokeness. I never fully entered my priesthood and so I have no idea what has been going on in my field but every time anyone uses the word “woke” I become very skeptical they are arguing in good faith. (I do think Scott argues in good faith, though.)

• “Stay Gold, America”: I don’t believe in heroes but this man seems like a pretty good dude.

• “Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats”: I find his position entirely too credulous towards “government should be efficient” people (as if they don’t have ulterior motives). (Also, government should be effective not efficient; they are different incentives.) The part I like about this is the theory of bureaucracy existing in part to try to prevent lawsuits. I’m starting to think this is a major reason why we have too many rules.

• “Stop speedrunning to a dystopia”: I absolutely hated Amusing Ourselves to Death but I do find myself increasingly worried about technology. Maybe that’s age, or maybe it’s something more. I do like this “solution.” (It’s not much of a solution.)

• “The School Shootings Were Fake. The Terror Was Real”: If I was an American I too would want to know why stopping this guy wasn’t a priority.

• “A Comprehensive And Maddening History Of Color Star, Would-Be Titans Of Just About Anything”: If you haven’t follow this saga, well it’s insane. It just shows you how much fraud there is in the world that is just minimal enough to not really get noticed. There are so many good lines in this article. Here is just one: “Wu and Huang seem to have had a good grip on a grim truth of modern capitalism: You do not become rich by selling things to consumers. You become rich by selling projects to investors.”

• “Uninsurable Futures”: Climate migrations have already begun and they are only going to get bigger. Maybe one reasons the climate change-denying Republicans want to takeover Canada is they secretly understand this.

• “Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?”: Many interesting things here including the similarities between books in this genre and this publishing house that seems to get all their book ideas from the owner rather than the authors. Something smells fishy.

• “So Donald Trump Has Decided To Annex Your Country”: I liked step one. Step two I like less but he does have a point: we have been relying on American reliability perhaps past the point we should have. Over 20 years ago they invaded another country just because the President wanted to get back at that country for his dad. That could have been a warning sign.

• “Nothing Is Sincere, and Everything Hurts”: Worth it for this: “People are, rightly, asking: Why can’t we figure this shit out? And yet this class of liberals really resented you questioning them. The populists, they reply, will be so much worse. That may be true. But at least the populists know how to talk to people.” Also: ““In seven days,” Pillai told me, “the federal government put together the most ambitious plan we’ve ever seen to deal with fentanyl.” That is, for sure, good news. But it was put together, after more than a decade of unimaginable volumes of death, “to respond to a tweet.”

• “The Trouble with Elon”: A former friend of Musk’s isn’t one any more and it started because of COVID.

• “David Lynch Was The Artist of Our Time”: I thought this was the best obituary I read that wasn’t just a social post. See also this.

• “Has The Tennis Ball Gotten Worse?”: Maybe?

• “Perhaps You Would Be a Little Touchy Too”: On people claiming they have mental health problems which don’t appear to exist.

• “The evolution of overconfidence” [2011 paper, PW]: “we present an evolutionary model showing that, counterintuitively, overconfidence maximizes individual fitness and populations tend to become overconfident, as long as benefits from contested resources are sufficiently large compared with the cost of competition.” Seems relevant.

• “Swiping Left on MAGA”: American-centric, of course, but of interest because it is about the idea that liberalism and feminism have failed young men.

• “A Disease of Affluence” [November]: Written by the same person as the piece immediately above, this is an angry but thought-provoking read about an interesting idea: “What if so much of the Right’s resentment comes from the threat of greater equality?” Maybe it’s not so much “I want to be richer than my parents” as it is “My parents had obvious social inferiors and I don’t. Waah”

• “Algorithmic ranking is unfairly maligned”: What if we controlled the algorithms?

• “The Indoor Plumbing Test”: I am the target demographic for this rant but it has some great lines like “if you can’t imagine a use for your product that would be meaningful to a competent person, you just invent an incompetent one to sell it to.” And “I find it profoundly easy to order a pizza online.”

• “DeepSeek Disruption Has Its Upside”: ““It is difficult to know exactly how to make money in AI” does seem like an essential aspect of the AI trade…But the actual answer turns out to be “build a cheap AI model and short Nvidia.”” Guffaw.

• “It Is 89 Seconds To Midnight”: Jesus tapdancing christ.

• “Liberals were Cool. Then Your Mom Became One.”: I think she might be on to something.

• “The Wages of Leaving Guantanamo Open Have Arrived”: For something like 10 years Spencer Ackerman has been saying “If Guantanamo isn’t closed, the US government is going to find a new use for it.” Welp.

• “Enron”: Man, if they make money, al the power to them.

What I’m Listening to

• 30 for 30: “Pink Card”: An interesting four-part series on women soccer fans in Iran.

• Behind the Bastards:

  • “Roy Cohn: The Man Who Made Donald Trump”: I know more about Cohn than I do most of this show’s subjects but I’m still learning stuff. (Such as: did you know that McCarthy may have also been gay? Did you know that congressmen knew Cohn was gay and mocked him on mic while still letting him pursue the Lavender Scare?)

  • “The Worst Police Union in History”: I strongly recommend listening to this if you don’t know why so many people hate the cops.

  • “Uprising: A Guide from Portland”: This is a series and I only listened to the first episode. I think it is worth your time if you think that what happened in the summer of 2020 was just a bunch of riots. I decided not to proceed when a lawyer said that property damage wasn’t bad. I completely agree that it is far less bad than cops shooting people. BUT, the store owners whose stores are damaged are not the police who shoot people. Some of those property owners empower the police to be worse than they should be but property destruction is often indiscriminate.

  • “Let’s Talk About Dave Rubin”: I only listened to the first half because I didn’t need to hear excerpts from his book. Clearly someone who is only Right Wing because they’re the easiest people to grift right now.

  • “Elite Panic: Why the Rich and Powerful Can’t Be Trusted”: This one starts with just a horrific story about a fire. This concept is important but I’m not sure this is the most convincing version. I do wish the science on this was better.

• Canadaland: “Commons”:

  • “Dynasties”:

    • “The Irvings”: This is better than episode one in part because the Irvings are far more powerful than the Stronachs.

    • “The Stronachs”: This is mostly schadenfreude and far less interesting than “Crude.”

  • “Crude”: Though it is now quite old, every Canadian should listen to this series.

    • “The Apocalypse is Now”: Even in Canada where, mostly, we’ll just have warmer weather (and its associated issues) due to climate change, we’re already seeing some climate-related disasters. (This episode is over 5 years old.)

    • “Tar Teck: The Final Frontier”: This project got cancelled since this was recorded.

    • “Spies, Lies & Private Eyes”: The Canadian oil industry spies on protestors.

• Conversations with Tyler: “Joe Boyd”: The famous folk rock producer (Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, REM etc.).

• Darknet Diaries: “Bike Index”: Bikes can be worth thousands but the cops are just uninterested (or incapable) of going after most bike thieves. Another episode about why some people don’t like the police.

• Dunc’d On: This has become my go-to replacement for The Lowe Post until Zach gets a new podcast.

• Reply All:

  • “Is Facebook Spying on You?”: They make the same argument I’ve always made to my parents about this - minus the “what about storage and bandwidth?” - but the fun part is how unconvinced everyone is.

  • “The Skip Tracer”: There’s a bit of information at the end that is intended as a bit of a gotcha but I really don’t think the “illegal immigrants are committing all the crimes” people care what anyone’s status is.

  • “Is That You, KD?”: This is one of my favourite “Yes Yes No” segments only somehow the boss gets some of his NBA facts wrong.

  • “At World’s End”: About what happens to internet ephemera (games in this case) over time.

• Science Vs.:

  • “Murder in the Ivory Tower”: I got some deja vu with this one.

  • “Cannabis: Can I Get High With a Little Help From…Science?”: Weed’s strands are bullshit, it doesn’t help your anxiety like you think it does, and the horror stories of overuse in the media are from people who really, really, really smoke too much weed.

  • “Intermittent Fasting: Hungry for Facts”: As an intermitted fasting skeptic, I enjoyed this. (Stop starving yourselves for 2/3rds of the day you weirdos!)

  • “Dreams: What Could They Mean?”: As someone who remembers a lot of his dreams, I found this very interesting. Related.

• Serious Trouble: “Thank You For Suing, Drake”: I listened to this for the pardons.

What I’m Watching

• “Quantum Mechanics The Uncertainty Principle Light Particle's”: A brief and very easy to follow explanation for how counterintuitive quantum mechanics is.

• “Elon Musk is Lying About Being Good at Video Games”: Ha! But of course he is. Still, I enjoyed this immensely. I got here from this.