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This Week on the Lindy Newsletter
New data is out on how people meet each other and form relationships. For the first time ever, online dating is the majority. It is growing tremendously and is crowding out every other avenue to meet someone.
When I was growing up dating online meant you were a complete loser. Now, it’s normalized. What if it becomes so normal that meeting people outside of online becomes low status? Think of all the songs and books written about romance and meeting people in social spaces, they seem antiquated now.
I grew up needing to learn how to approach a woman I didn’t know in order to get dates. Today, we all have to learn to optimize our dating profile. How do we do that?
Weekend Reads
The City of Chicago held an election for a new mayor this week. The incumbent mayor lost and the run-off is between a tough on crime candidate and progressive. Chicago is famous for a lot of things, but something that most people do not know about is the infamous 2008 parking meter deal. In 2008, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley leased the city parking meters to a group led by Abu Dhabi investors for 75 years in exchange for $1.16 billion. The infusion of cash allowed Chicago to close a huge budget gap they had. Today, the parking meter deal has already made the investors all their money back, $500 million in profit. There is still 61 years left.
The share of people under 55 newly diagnosed with colorectal cancer has nearly doubled since 1995. Colorectal cancer incidence rate has fallen from a peak of 66.2 cases per 100,000 people in 1985 to 35.7 cases per 100,000 people in 2019. But what is driving the rise in young people? No one knows.
One of the reasons why politics seems so adversarial these days is because We are living through the longest period of narrow majorities for institutional control in U.S. history. Every election is close to 50-50. This is a recent phenomenon. Each party used to have massive majorities. Is this how it’s going to be now forever?
America may have a high crime rate compared to Europe or other countries, but kidnappings are rare. 90% of Kidnappings in São Paulo result from dates on Tinder and similar apps. That is something we at least do not have to worry about.
Loneliness reshapes the brain. We're biological creatures evolved to be outside, to interact with the physical world and real people. There are upsides and downsides to every nation, the upside of American individuality is looser social bonds and more loneliness.
People aren't machines that work linearly and consistently. They work in bursts. These bursts precede idle time, or interruption or whatever. When people are interrupted from doing their normal work they become more innovative during downtimes. Bursts go deep, here is a long talk on it.
The wealthiest enjoy parenting the least. The poorest people like parenting the most. Why is that? I think it’s because having kids limits your options. The world we have created today is an adult-playground. You can travel anywhere, enjoy wonderful restaurants and engage in so many activities. Kids limit your options. With poor people, there are no options, so they just enjoy being parents.
A survey asked Americans where they would prefer to live in if money was no object. California, specifically, Los Angeles is still the dream for many Americans. The other cities on the list probably change depending on the economy or trends. But LA still exists in the American imagination as the ideal place, for probably the last 70 years. However, it’s expensive and more people want to be there.
If you're new to Primitive Technology then it's worth starting from the oldest videos and working forward. He's been at it for years initially as a hobby and now he earns enough to make it his "job". He doesn't attempt to recreate the paths taken by ancient people - he's willing to use modern scientific knowledge - but he does appear to live by his rule of not taking anything with him and just using only the natural resources around him.
Up until the 1940s, chickens played a small role in agriculture compared to beef and pork. That all changed in the 1930s with sophisticated breeding techniques which transformed the chicken from a small egg-layer into a giant, meat-producing machine. What’s interesting about the chicken is that it is a predator, it eats other animals. Humans usually don’t eat predators and eat mainly herbivores.
