May Links

This is monthly post summarizing what I’m reading, the podcasts I’m listening to and the videos I’m watching that don’t qualify as movies or (narrative) TV.

What I’m reading:

• Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children (1981): It’s a testament to howl little I read lately that I still haven’t finished this book, which I am mostly enjoying.

• “Our Future Is Being Devoured By Feral Thought Experiments”: This is a great - and relatively brief for the subject - summary of how magical thinking has completely captured the AI world and is capturing too much of the economy. These people do not actually know what will happen. They have reversed the arrow of time in their minds and we need to be very skeptical of everything they say.

• “Elections Alberta's massive failure could have put people in danger. I tried to warn them.”: Just great.

• “(In)effective Immediately”: I have been mad at the media for covering social media posts as news since they first started doing it. But it wasn’t because of what has become the biggest problem: when a world leader posts stuff that they may not actually. This post breaks down the policies that Trump has posted about which haven’t happened at all or which took months or more to occur. To me, this is a major part of his Presidency that should be covered far more.

• “Five Ways The War on Terror Empowered The ICE Assault”: They are:

  • “CONFLATION OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AND COUNTERTERRORISM…

  • EXPANDED AND POLITICIZED 'TERRORIST' DESIGNATION LISTS…

  • DEPORTING PEOPLE AS TERRORISTS WITHOUT PROVING ACTUAL VIOLENT CONDUCT

  • INDEFINITE DETENTION, TORTURE AND RENDITION OF NONCITIZENS

  • ANTIDEMOCRATIC CONCENTRATION OF EXECUTIVE NATIONAL SECURITY POWERS”

• “Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores”: On Avi Lewis’ bad ideas.

• “Nobody Asked for This Washington Post Podcast”: Remember when Bezos left the Post alone and everyone thought it was great to have an owner like that? That wasn’t that long ago. I’d ask the obvious question: why do people keep gutting newsrooms and replacing them with opinion-havers? But we all know the answer: journalists investigate, and sometimes they investigate the rich as well, especially when the rich do bad things.

• “The Desert Safety Net”: “For less than the cost of a single night in many American hotels, a person can legally live on public lands in the desert for seven months.”

• “I am heartbroken”: A coach who works with NBA players on Brandon Clarke, the 29-year-old Canadian NBA player who died recently.

• “The Guadalupe Swept Us Away. This Is the Story of All That Came After”: If you read the horrible story about the family that got swept away in their cottage during the Texas floods last year, this is the follow up.

• “The Truth About Residential School Graves”: I had somehow missed there is now a Residential Schools denial movement out there. Anyway, this is an interview with an archeologist that I found informative.

• “LLMs and the Library Card Fallacy”: It’s good to remember history every time the media tells us the kids are doing something different than what they always have.

• “The Interracial Cuck Porn Theory of Everything”: Yes, I read this viral theory. I found it interesting and I think it mostly checks out. I do think the opening Freudian framing is incorrect because, well, Freud was wrong.

• “What will be scarce?”: A speculative piece on where money will go if AI is doing everything.

• “Book Review: The Dialectical Imagination“: This is an interesting, to me, review of a book covering the Frankfurt School, whose philosophy I am only a tiny bit familiar with (due to its rather huge influence on other philosophers). It is by someone who is not sympathetic, FYI.

• “The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech”: This is extremely funny. It is also extremely over the top, but it’s very funny.

• “The Grate Cheese Robbery”: Apparently cheese is the most stolen food in the world.

What I’m Listening to:

• 30 for 30 Podcasts: Chasing Basketball Heaven: I find this kind of maddening. Two aging basketball writers talking about one of the first guys to try to get teams to switch to shooting more threes who happened to all [redacted]. It’s very scripted, with stupid little jokes. It also feels like it’s pretty surface level. One episode in particular really got my goat: they called the obsession with 3-point shooting and shots at the rim Morey-ball without giving any credit to anyone who did anything before him (and also failing to mention that, last I checked, a Daryl Morey team has never made the Finals). They also said “some fans and media don’t like the emphasis on the 3” and just moved on, completely legitimizing the laziest complaint about the NBA, which is clearly the product of people who do not regularly watch the NBA. (You know what’s a better indicator of style of play than 3-point attempts? Pick and rolls per 100 possessions. I am not in basketball media, and yet, I know this.) It’s pretty short, though, so I will finish it.

• Behind the Bastards:

  • “Let’s Talk About Thalidomide”: Jenn knew more about this than I did because, apparently, there was a telethon in Saskatchewan.

  • “Hitler’s Drug Problem”: I knew the Nazis did meth but I’m not sure I knew the extent of it.

  • “Joe Arpaio: America’s Favourite Concentration Camp Operator”: I knew a little about this asshole but I didn’t know much. And what I learned from these episodes is that he was certainly abetted.

• Canadaland: I listened to parts of stray episodes this month, but it was more media criticism than I was looking for.

  • Commons:

    • “War”: It should be titled “Afghanistan.”

      • “Tarnak Farms”: I was in a bubble in university at the time and I don’t remember this.

      • “Lords of War”: Extremely maddening. And surprising, too. I don’t think I’d ever heard of the lack of awareness of the lack of electricity before and how it impacted the war.

      • “The Last Plane Out of Kabul”: I have very mixed feelings about this one because of the context but I do think it’s worth listening to.

    • “Mining”:

      • “The Crying of Lot 8”: I found the whole series illuminating but this was particularly upsetting. I wish we learned more about this in school and I think the whole country has failed.

      • “Barrick and the Cruelty of Gold”: I was too young for this story, I think. But I wish it had penetrated down to me.

• Darknet Diaries:

  • “SuperBox": One of the most interesting episodes he’s done, I think. Certainly one of the most relevant to people who don’t normally listent to this show. I called my father after listening to make sure he wasn’t using one.

• The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: Finals! (starting Wednesday)

• Reply All:

  • "Country of Liars": I would have found this more interesting if I hadn’t already heard multiple versions of this story, about who likely (currently) is Q (of QAnon).

  • "The Mold and The Beautiful": A typically great “Yes Yes No.”

  • “Long Distance: The Real Alex Martin": An excellent and fascinating follow up to “Long Distance,” a two-parter (eps. 102 and 103) from 2017 about scammy call centres in India.

  • "Candidate One": I am of two minds about this episode, about a high school election gone awry. On the one hand, it suggests that the crap that goes on in elections is inherent. On the other hand, can we let kids be kids?

• Science Vs.:

  • Proxy: “Brian Can’t Stop Fact-Checking His Mother-in-Law”: Usually I kind of hate these, where they air an episode from a different show I’ve no intention of listening to. But this was really good and made me want to check out Proxy. (Yes, that’s the point, I know.) As our parents age, this is going to become more and more of a concern for my generation and society at large (given the Greying of North America currently occurring).

  • “Is Your Relationship OK?”: So this one feels like the result of someone on staff being treated really poorly. They try to find the science of identifying bad partners and discover it’s very specific to the particular relationship which is…not helpful.

  • “What Do Tear Gas and ICE Raids Do to People?”: I’m always a little on the fence when a non-political podcast wades into politics but I found this one much more interesting than I thought, especially the first half. It turns out, tear gas is unregulated in the US and nobody knows what’s in it. Seems bad!

  • “The Secret to Happiness”: Spoiler alert, it’s good relationships. I’m pretty sure I knew that already.

• The Bill Simmons Podcast: I’m listening to this every Sunday because Zach’s on it. This past week it was Saturday because Game 7 was on Saturday.

What I’m Watching:

• Henry Farrell: “AI as Social Technology”: I’ve read his articles about this (and shared some of them) but this is the theory in a 40 minute lecture.

• Garbage Day: “The little known metric that ruined every website”: aka “Everything is porn now.”

• Last Week Tonight:

  • “Structured Settlement”: Apparently this isn’t legal in Canada. Hooray!

  • “The Shadow Docket”: I’m not sure why this exists though I guess the reasoning behind execution stays is solid. (You could, you know, not have executions.) I’m glad I’m Canadian.

  • “Gas Station Drugs”: Jesus tap-dancing Christ.

• Only in Monroe: Stephen Colbert guest-hosted a public access show in Monroe, Michigan the night after his last show. It is quite funny.

• Raptors Republic: Bald Don’t Lie: “The Definitive Toronto Raptors Season Review”: This was a really great. Positive but realistic. Some really good insights.

• Rebecca Watson: “Epstein Files Reveal How Pathetic Richard Dawkins & Other Men Are”: This is more about Lawrence Krauss actually.