July Links

A monthly post on the books and articles I’ve been reading, plus podcasts and the odd video.

What I’m Reading:

• Alan Taylor: The Civil War of 1812 (2010): The War of 1812 is my “favourite” war, for lack of a better word. I have likely read more books about the American Civil War and definitely read more books about World War II but I’ve read a number of serious/adult books about the War of 1812 and I continue to do so. (Whereas I haven’t read anything about the Civil War in ages.) Errol Morris once called The Crimean War “the perfect war” because of how utterly pointless it was and how awful it was. I have somewhat similar feelings of The War of 1812 though, as I read more and more, it seems less crazy than it did when I first read about it as an adult. (As a kid I just liked the idea that we beat the Americans.) It still seems pretty damn petty and stupid, though. Just more confusing than I was led to believe by earlier histories.

• “Why do sociologists think that they are critical theorists?”: On why sociologists seem to be incapable of understanding that normative conclusions don’t always follow from empirical evidence. (Weird!)

• “Dead Country Fair”: Happy 4th! (I read this on the 4th of July.) “Imagine a sprawling sewage treatment facility that does not actually treat any of the sewage that comes through it, instead just giving it a quick stir before kicking it right back into the water supply. "Amazing," in a value-neutral sense, is definitely one way to describe the daily experience of living in a country that holds itself out as a global leader while also acting in the ways that the United States acts.”

• “Unlike The Defendants, One Of The Prairieland Judges Is Part Of An Organized Cell Of Extremists”: The extremists, in the author’s view, are The Federalist Society.

• “For the Right, Playing Dumb is a Full-Time Job”: I really don’t understand why the Right Wing media ecosystem in the US is so successful. Wouldn’t you just get so bored of this shit?

• “Tom Colicchio’s Final Service”: The Top Chef judge closed his most famous restaurant.

• “The Wrong Man: The Bestselling Author, the Exoneration and the Rape Crisis the Police Ignored”: When a man was exonerated for raping Alice Sebold, people blamed her, not the police who, it seems, did a terrible job of dealing with rape cases, nor Syracuse University, which actively discouraged investigations of crimes near or on campus. This is fucking awful.

• “The Supreme Court is corrupting American democracy”: I particularly liked the opening discussion about what corruption means in a democracy.

• “The Decline of Deviance 2”: A follow up to his first post. (Also, check out that subtitle: “2 Decline, 2 Deviance.”)

• “Quebec cops killed a teenage boy. Now they’re targeting his friends.”: I somehow had not heard about this. (I don’t watch the news, so that might be a reason.)

• “No wasted roster spots”: This is a really good piece which takes folk wisdom - don’t overpay players - and puts numbers behind it.

• “Pseudpocalypse”: This is an extremely dense post (warning: Math!) about how soon we will all be identified by how we write. They are concerned in part because they are pseudonymous…for the time being.

• “The Old Ways of Making New Land”: Written by a libertarian nepo baby, this is interesting nonetheless.

• “On the decline of sumptuousness in cinema”: This is part 1. Here is part 2.

• “Farms aren’t nature”: Something to think about when defending our Green Belt.

• “Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest management”: Why the fires that made Toronto very smokey mid month are from climate change.

• “Your Book Review: Great And Desperate Cures”: A book review of a book about the history of lobotomies.

• “The War on Terror Approaches Its Final Form”: Everyone who freaked out about US government overreach post 911 has been vindicated. (People like me, I might point out.) The US government executes people on the street for existing.

• “The Parents Who Chose Their Faith Over Their Daughter’s Life”: This is fucking awful.

• “I Wouldn't Say Pangram is Broken, But I Would Say That It's Brittle”: On the market-leading AI writing detector and what will happen as more and more people use these.

• “How to survive boiling water”: Some bacteria can survive boiling water.

• “Chatting Alone”: On how LLM chatbots don’t remember.

• “Little Red Scare 2.0”: 45 years ago, the Reagan administration tried what the Trump administration is trying vis a vis communist and nobody remembers it because it didn’t work.

• “Links For July 2026 (Part 1)”: Sharing specifically for #23. Scott writes: “Did you know: groceries are the most affordable now, relative to average wages, in US history[?]/One reason I suspect the vibecession is about unjustified negative sentiment rather than genuine decline poorly captured by statistics is that many people specifically despair about things that we know are better than ever, like the groceries - providing an existence proof that negative sentiment can make people think the economy is collapsing even when it’s fine. But the alternative hypothesis would be that some other real problem gives people a vague-but-unlabelled sense of economic malaise, and they flail around attributing it to random things.”

• “The Rise of Anti-Flock Influencers Who Make Things Up for Clout”: Flock is evil but this is certainly not going to help.

• “Your Book Review: Breakdown In Pakistan”: On how on international aid NGOs often ruin the volunteer organizations they fund.

• “The End of Reading is Here” [PW]: I was trying to ignore this as I try to ignore every “The end of [X]” article but my father sent it to me so I read it. I am not convinced, as this is the most human urge, to proclaim the kids aren’t alright. Not only does every generation do it, but it’s become so much more common now that we have an insatiable need to create content that gets attention. There are lots of rebuttals, questioning the data she used, like this one. (Also, she quotes Postman more than once. His book sucks! He was wrong! It was published 40 years ago. Stop quoting him! She also relies on multiple other “technology is bad” ideas from the 1980s. Ahem.) I also wonder what I, someone who reads constantly, am supposed to do about it if indeed other people don’t want to read. There are lots of things I like to do that other people don’t. I do not see threats to our civilization in their choices.

• “On becoming less full of shit”: A philosophy professor on his journey to moderation. As a fellow former anarchist, I connected with this.

• “Public intellectuals need to say what they actually believe”: From January but I agree. It was a point I tried and failed to make in “You Can Just Say Things” only that was about politicians and people in authority more generally.

• “Study Shows Corporate Subsidies Only Create Jobs for Lobbyists”: This is about the States (thank Science) but should not come a surprise to us. I think cities and subnational divisions should form blocs specifically pledged to deny any and all corporate subsidies. Local governments don’t have enough money as it is.

• “The Project of Software is Complete”: This bold and perhaps incorrect. But I do think the thinking is sound as long as AI cannot manipulate our reality.

What I’m Listening to:

• 30 for 30 Podcasts: Murder at the U: Like all podcasts, they eventually just become a true crime show. The last episode I listened to, they were focusing on a teammate. I got really annoyed because the victim routinely got in fights with gang members and also was inexplicably well off despite being a college athlete pre-NIL. But then they gave me a reason he is a good suspect.

• Behind the Bastards:

  • “The Nesara Cult and QAnon’s Origins”: The wildest part of this is when they prosecute the Omega fraudster, get him to confess on the stand, get a conviction, and try to give restitution to the victims and some of the victims say they don’t want their money back because they’re still holding out hope that it will pay out. People will believe the craziest things.

  • “The Slavery Loving Fascist Who Built Modern Japan”: Especially in the first episode, I was thinking that at least one of the guest host has gotten a lot better. This is a bleak, bleak episode, and he does a decent job of telling the story, certainly better than the other protege/guest host. But then we get to the final part. For someone who is as left wing as he is, Robert Evans is pretty good at nuance. You know who’s not? This guest host. The version of the history of modern Japan this guy tells lacks any agency for the voters in Japan who made this man Prime Minister. That means it’s not the complete story. It’s disappointing.

  • “The Italian Invasion of Ethiopia”: It’s perhaps even more ridiculous than you think. Weird that he doesn’t cover how it ended, though. (I guess we all know.)

• Canadaland: Commons:

  • “Monopoly”:

    • “Big Milk”: Death to the milk cartel! This is a little goofy but was a good reminder we have a regulatory system around dairy created for problems which existed 60 years ago.

    • “Lost in the Supermarket”: This one had me worried. I know we have more oligopolies in the grocery space than in the States and they have actually been caught price fixing, but I worry when non-economists start talking about grocery prices.

  • “War”: I just want to reiterate that I think this season is essential listening for all Canadians.

    • “Who Pays the Price?”: What, if anything, did Canada’s presence in Afghanistan actually accomplish?

    • “The Long Slow Death”: The Afghanistan War, PTSD, suicide, and how the Canadian Forces deal with it, or don’t.

• Darknet Diaries: “Pacific Rim”: This one is pretty technical but is extremely interesting if you are willing to put up with the technical stuff.

• The Life of the Record: “Slint: Spiderland”: An oral history. It’s the 35th anniversary. I figured I should listen to this. But it’s really, really long.

• The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: He will go on his usual August hiatus shortly and I will have to find more stuff to listen to.

• Raptors Republic: “Kawhi Leonard is a Raptor [again]”: When it happened I wrote: “I really didn’t like the price, given Kawhi’s age. It’s literally more than they gave up 8 years ago!!! (Who cares if he’s extending if he’s 35?) However, they talk me into it. (This was pre Raptors freak out over potential Aspiration punishment.)” Of course, now we don’t know if it’s even happening.

• Reply All:

  • "This Website Will Self Destruct": A woman creates a site that will disappear unless people post on it. People post on it with predictably chaotic results.

  • "Search Party": A new segment which is moderately amusing but certainly not as entertaining as “Yes Yes No.”

  • "The Test Kitchen”: I’ve been trying to think how to talk about this: So this is a four part series that was killed half way through, with them publishing only two episodes. As far as I can figure out, this eventually killed the show as they made fewer than 20 more episodes. So: these episodes are published and former employees at Gimlet (notably people of colour whose show was cancelled) accuse Gimlet and Reply All specifically of having a similar culture to the one at Bon Appetit profiled in these episodes. One of the hosts resigns as does the producer, an Indian woman, who was also the lead reporter on these episodes. As far as I can figure, they resigned because they didn’t support the formation of the Gimlet union a few years earlier and that was interpreted by the former employees as a lack of allyship or something. The whole thing was litigated on Twitter and Reddit. It’s something I have a hard time imagining occurring now, in our current climate, and I also have to wonder what was it all for. I understand I will never know what it is like to be the subject of discrimination, but: you got a white host and his producer (who is both not male and not white) to resign from an internet culture show and eventually killed the show to what end? What exactly was the goal and was it achieved? I remain mystified about why this was a big scandal and why everyone allowed the whole thing to be litigated online. (In their defense, these were all very online people at the time, so I guess that’s what they do.)

  • “"Account Suspended": I think I found this one fairly interesting - about social media companies finally suspending Trump due to January 6 - but I’ve mostly forgotten it due to the above.

• Science Vs.:

  • “Boredom: Is It Good for You?”: No, not really and it’s not the same thing as relaxation.

  • “Vaping: Does It Really Cause Cancer?”: Yes, just not as much as cigarettes.

  • “Running: Will It Wreck Your Body?”: It depends…

  • “Artemis: Why Are We Really Going Back to the Moon?”: There is at least one good reason.

  • “How to Stop Scrolling”: Not really for me most days - I have a different phone problem - but still I guess worth it for people who really can’t quit. Related: I would love to be disconnected next week but I am in the process of being interviewed by 2-3 different companies and need to take my devices to the cottage. It’s a hard life. (Normally I would take none if I could.)

• The Bill Simmons Podcast:

  • 2011 Redraft: With Zach. I missed these!

  • 2020 Redraft: It turns out, he did a 2020 one a few days earlier.

  • “2018 Redraft” [2022]: I learned about this during the 2020 redraft and it’s hilarious. Trae Young taken second! That is totally insane four years later. Like bat-shit crazy. But, at the time, it was kind of defensible. But then, the absolutely insane take - the one that isn’t even defensible - is Simmons taking Ayton third. (Third!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?) Though at least he immediately regrets it. The recency bias is strong in this one. Who goes fourth? SGA. What a change four years makes.

• Wait a Second: “Karen Read Updates”: I was unfamiliar with this clusterfuck. I will be watching a documentary about it in the future, and if there’s a podcast you can recommend, please do. This episode…illustrates Jenn’s and my different likes when it comes to podcasts. I had trouble listening to this but she recommended it to me due to the police corruption. (I love police corruption.)

What I’m Watching:

• Ray Delahanty: “The Newest Vegas Loop Stations Will Blow Your Mind”: This remains the funniest thing.

• Garbage Day: “Trump's shitposting strategy is embarrassing (and it's backfiring)”: I hope so.

• Last Week Tonight: I think I had a backlog:

  • “Trump & Crypto”: Why don’t people care more about the corruption?!?!?

  • “Trump’s Reflecting Pool”: It would be funny only they’ve gone further and turned it into more authoritarian nonsense.

  • “Iran Peace Deal”: I wish the media would stop reporting on “deals” that don’t happen.

  • “UK Elections”: Recorded before it happened.

  • “New College of Florida”: This is quite funny. Very typical: “We will fix this thing!” and then immediately they break it.

  • “Trumps Pardons”: Why are so few people mad about the rampant corruption? Why should rich people get to pay to avoid punishment?

• Justin Portela: “The Deadliest Decision You’ve Never Heard of”: I have some…issues with this video. It’s pretty fast and loose with some of the details. But I’m still glad I watched it.

• Unbuilt Toronto: “The Eglinton West Subway”: This video might put you to sleep. That is, until the microwave bell starts going off. But I was interested in the history.