May 2025
[Note: Originally published on 2025/06/01.]
Links
1. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Beautifully written, with beautiful plot twists.
2. The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which came out in 1992 but seems a lot older—in a good way. I notice a trend over the last fifty or so years of novels favoring naturalness, with writing styles that mimic simple speech. As it's narrated by a pretentious scholarly sort, The Secret History doesn't need to be as simple, and I get the sense that Tartt consciously tried (and succeeded) to make the writing beautiful, rather than merely functional.
3. The album Sierra Tracks by Vega Trails
4. The Secret Life of Books podcast episode on Richard III
5. I spent my formative years reading the full archive of Unqualified Reservations. So naturally, I found this exciting.
A dispatch from under the local rock
All the things I heard while intentionally consuming as little news as possible last month.
Donald Trump
People continue to be very worked up over Donald Trump—I guess he's still President. There are more deportations to El Salvador, including of people not related to El Salvador. They get sent to horrible prison camps, in exchange for money and legitimacy for Bukele. Others get rejected at the border in spite of having valid visas.
A federal judge in the US got arrested for aiding a man who was sentenced for deportation to stay illegally. Her arrest took place amidst a court proceeding, even though she didn't seem like a flight risk. While she did do something illegal, her trial is overly focused on her political beliefs rather than the pure facts of the crime. This was implied to be Trump-related by the person who told me, though I don't know enough about how the US system works to evaluate how plausible that is.
Additionally, Trump has a shitcoin, though maybe the term isn't fair because the value, as of now, isn't zero. Melania has one too, though it's less successful.
War
The Hooties attacked the airport in Tel Aviv. Israel retaliated, escalating their war with the Hooties and with Hamas in Gaza.
India attacked Pakistan with missiles in the struggle over Kashmir.
Religion
The last Pope died in late April. A new Pope has been elected. He's called Pope Leo, is American, and has a math degree. As a Cardinal, he knew about a child sex abuse case within the Catholic Church and failed to report it.
Tech
Mark Zuckerberg thinks that Meta should make AI friends to solve the problem of people not having enough close friends. This is nowhere near operational yet.
Culture
There was a particularly suspenseful Champion's League semi-final between Milan and Barcelona (or was it Madrid?) The match was a tie until the very end, where Milan won.
A Gazan writer won a Pulitzer prize for journalism. This pick was controversial, because in some of his social media posts he dismissed Israeli hostages and implied they were lying or exaggerating (or something to that effect).
In other controversies, Israel participated in Eurovision again this year, placing second. Austria won.
Denmark
In response to souring relations with the US, there's an increased emphasis on digital sovereignty and open source software in Danish politics, with support across the political spectrum. Policies may be enacted targeting Microsoft in particular, as their products are widely used in the Danish public sector.
More controversially, a Danish prison was built in Slovakia to save money. The prison is meant to follow Danish standards of prisoner welfare.
The CEO of Novo Nordisk got fired.