Five extra books/articles/links/etc. from February 2025:
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I don’t know that I’ve read another book that managed to capture the sublime so well.
- Longevity noodles from Omnivore’s Cookbook. Very high value for effort recipe.
- This post by Joseph Heath of the Substack In Due Course, on how ambiguities within liberal ideas can be the basis for illiberal thought. He focuses on illiberal progressives, but I think concepts from the post apply to other cases as well.
- Saddam Hussein wrote a romance novel, titled Zabibah and the King. It’s apparently very bad. But in case you think he might have been innovative, Napoleon got there earlier. Cover of the English edition of Hussein’s novel:
- Several people I know interpret Donald Trump’s 2024 US Presidential election victory as being due to consumer sentiment being low because of inflation. But consumer sentiment itself seems highly dependent on partisanship and who’s in power:
![consumer_sentiment]()
(Source: Noahpinion reproducing a point made by the NYT.)
(Source: