September 2025
Extra links/books/whatever from September 2025.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. It would have been my favorite book at age 11 had I read it then. But even as an adult, it’s extremely entertaining.
The First and Second American Nations on the Substack Not With a Bang. I have many quibbles with the details making up the argument, and I don’t fully agree with everything in the post. But nonetheless I understood many things about the US which I’d previously found confusing. For example: why Americans were willing to venerate Confederate generals as heroes even outside of the South. What American white nationalists even mean by that name, given that “white” in the US doesn’t represent a distinct racial category. Why Americans used to brag about descent back to the Mayflower cohort, whereas now white Americans lean into being Irish.
The Psmith’s book review of Paul Fussell’s Class, and their Substack more generally. I especially enjoyed their clarification that wokeness has gone middle class, and feel I’ve learned much about my own class prejudices, even though I was already familiar with Fussell’s ideas.
Faithful Place by Tana French. The biggest twist in French’s mystery novels is how good a character writer she is compared to the baseline in the genre.
The title of a paper: HOW TO MAKE A NEW NOSE FOR SOMEONE: WHICH IS OFF ENTIRELY: AND THE DOG HAS EATEN IT by Heinrich von Pfalzpaint. (H/T Replaceable You by Mary Roach.)
Bonus horse link: I think it’s fair to say that Azalea Banks is known for getting in beefs. According to her Wikipedia page, one of her controversial statements about gay men is that they “appropriate horse culture” by using ketamine, harnesses, and lube. I am not sure how she manages to come up with this stuff, but hats off to her for creativity.
A dispatch from under the local rock
American right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. He was known for, among other things, going to American university campuses and discussing politically salient issues with anyone who came up to him.
Oracle’s stock prices rose because they got some big US defense and AI contracts. As a result, the owner of Oracle is now the richest person in the world.
Towards the end of the month, heavy rain in Valencia, Spain caused flooding, similar to last year.
Tucker Carlson interviewed Sam Altman and accused him of hiring a contract killer to murder one of his own employees.
In Danish news, Roskilde University and the University of Southern Denmark had a huge recent inflow of Bangladeshi students, likely by fraudulent means. I haven’t been able to gather exactly how this happened, especially since Danish university tuition is steep by Bangladeshi standards, but it appears that the students did this to get a Danish visa for themselves and their families, and the universities let it slide for extra income.
The Danish government plans to restructure the high school education system to shut down HTX (technical schools) and merge them with STX (mainstream high schools). They also plan to integrate the less-demanding two-year high school program HF more closely with STX.