Anglo Deaths of Despair, North Korean Intranet, Lauren Southern Memoir, and More

Links for February 2026, plus Kakistocracy review copies available

This month, I did a video interview with the Free Press as part of their series on people who’ve changed their minds, and also wrote an article on how I decided it was a mistake to vote for Trump. In the video, you’ll see that I was squinting, which I didn’t realize I was doing. I think it was because the interviewer was really far away, and I’m nearsighted, so I was trying to make up for that. Anyway, next time I’m in a similar situation I’ll just open my eyes all the way and not care whether I can actually see the person well.

For UnHerd, I published an article on cutting back on my phone use.

I can now distribute copies of my upcoming book. If you are a journalist, podcast host, or someone who might review it or bring attention to it in some way, reach out and I can get you a PDF. If you want to enter into the ACX book review contest, also be in touch. I can’t give a copy to everyone who asks, but I will probably share if I have good reason to think you’ll actually enter the contest, like if you’re a professional writer or at least have participated in contests like this before.

You can read about the book here, and order it here.

Below, I review Lauren Southern’s new memoir This Is Not Real Life, and have links on topics including the North Korean intranet, the last days of Assad, findings on Neanderthals mating with human women, and more.

1. You might have heard that the murder rate has gone down because we've gotten better at saving people. Yet Jeff Asher says there's no evidence of such an effect over the last 15 years. Go back further, and the data becomes iffy and it's hard to say. One countervailing force of better medical technology is that guns on the street have apparently gotten more powerful. See also Scott Alexander’s post on this.

2. Lyman on Gulf Arab fertility. I recently found out that the TFR numbers for these countries that you can look up online include foreign residents. But they’re somewhere in the range of 40% to 90% of the population of each state! So you need to dig a bit to have any kind of citizen fertility estimate. Lyman says that UAE and possibly Kuwait are still at around 3 and therefore doing remarkably well given their levels of development. Why is this? Lyman puts forth a theory that UAE just functions so well that…citizens feel like things are working and have more kids as a result of this optimism? Perhaps. But not really a testable theory. The idea that it’s just Islam works better. Muslims are overperformers everywhere. Granted, the Gulf Arabs are much bigger overperformers than other Muslims, so it’s not just Islam, but it’s no secret that this region of the world practices a stricter form of the religion. Anyway, I hope Lyman is right about governance, because if he is, that means there are transferable lessons that can be applied elsewhere. I’m intrigued by his idea that Israel and UAE are two countries that started focusing on fertility before it fell below replacement, and this helped maintain a positive equilibrium.