November Links

A monthly collection of the books and articles I’m reading, plus the podcasts I’m listening to. This is a shorter one this month because, well, you’ll find out next month.

What I’m Reading:

• Haruki Murakami: 1Q84 (2009-10): This was 1150 pages long. Why did I read it?

• “Why Warm Countries Are Poorer”: A new (?) theory as to why.

• “The Biggest Lottery Scam Is The Lottery Itself”: I liked playing the lottery because it lets me daydream. But I don’t buy tickets that often and I have plenty of money to drop a few dollars here and there on a ticket. Unlike the majority of people who play the lottery.

• “This moonlighting”: A basketball writer on the Blue Jays on the eve of Game 7. Also: “Toronto Will Never Get Over This.”

• “His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies”: Amen.

• “The Blue Book Burglar": A fascinating story about potentially “the hardest-working art thief.”

• “Doomsday Scoreboard”: The apocalypse is 0-278.

• “John von Neumann Shot Lightning From His Arse”: The man so many people point to as proof of “nature over nurture” actually had an incredibly good education and most of the stories of his genius appear to be exaggerations or outright false.

What I’m Listening to:

• Behind the Bastards:

  • “Dr. Phil Is Even Worse Than You Think And You Probably Think He Sucks”: This was recorded over 4 years ago so it’s prescient!

• Canadaland:

  • “How to Unsh*ttify Canada, with Cory Doctorow”: This feels very similar to the conversation they had last year (?) and other interviews I’ve listened to recently with Doctorow.

  • “What the Media Gets Wrong”: I started listening to this, as I liked the concept of experts calling in to say what is wrong, but I hate call-in shows and it got too call-in for me.

  • Commons: “The Police”:

    • “The G20: The Conspiracy”: On what the police did ahead of the 2010 G20 to infiltrate protest groups. If you don’t know, I was an observer during the G20 for the CCLA. It sounds like, from this, that the CCLA may have been infiltrated as well. If that’s true, that’s…just totally crazy.

    • “Who Killed Myles Gray?”: If I knew about this, I had forgotten about it. It’s awful.

    • “Dirty Tricks”: Somehow I skipped over this one and had to go back and listen to it. And that was silly because this is a fascinating episode and perhaps the most interesting one of the entire season. One of those unknown history of Canada stories that way more of us should know about.

• Darknet Diaries:

  • “Tanya”: A Canadian who used to work for our government. “App-sec.”

• Dunc’d On: I listened to their first (incomplete) “15 in 60” because I was waiting for another show to appear.

• In the Dark: Season 3.

• The Zach Lowe Show [nee The Lowe Post]: My usual basketball podcast.

• Reply All:

  • “We Didn’t Start the Fire”: A fun “Yes Yes No” about a bunch of memes you’ve absolutely forgotten about because people had already forgotten about them 5 years ago.

  • "Adam Pisces and the $2 Coke": An interesting episode about Domino’s.

• Science Vs.:

  • “The War Keeps Raging Against Science” [May]:

  • “Bird Flu: The Next Pandemic?”: Well this is just a tiny bit alarming.

What I’m Watching:

• Isaac Brown: “Gen-Z Music Producer Reacts to a Beatles Album”: The thing I will give this guy is that, though he seems to know absolutely nothing about music history - he doesn’t know the covers at all, some of which are very famous songs - he is actually critical here and there. So many “reactions” videos are people just doing fan service for old boomer fans of the artists. In fact, I’d argue the vast majority of “x reacts to y” YouTube music videos are fan service rather than genuine reactions at this point.

  • “Part 1” (i.e. Please Please Me)

  • “Part 2” (i.e. With The Beatles)

• “ChatGPT made me delusional”: This is fine.

• Last Week Tonight:

  • “Felony Murder”: Only in the United States.

  • “Police Chases”: They’re bad. Everyone knows they’re bad. And yet, so many police departments insist they are necessary.

• Soft Power: “The Wagner Group in Africa: A Story of Terrorism, Coups, and A Russian Warlord”: I watched this primarily to support Justin Ling, a Canadian journalist who I think is doing some of the best work out there. But I learned a bunch!