Weekend Reads

This Week on the Lindy Newsletter

1) How Do We Measure Social Trust? I argue America is a nation with very high social trust. Americans assume things work, people do not cheat you on transactions and institutions are credible. When they don’t work we get mad. In the rest of the world, people have the opposite attitude. I explore the uniquely American tradition of tipping, which holds up an entire industry and is not legally required from customers. Finally, I analyze 3 technologies that can reduce trust: Paternity tests, Social Media Algorithms, AI generators.

2) Is Height Bias Lindy? I explore the reasons why the limb lengthening surgery business is booming. Taller people in the USA get preference in the dating market, in careers and in other inter-personal relations. But that is only true for some countries that have been selected for height. I discover that in Mediterranean countries, the opposite is true. Those people are selected for shorter height. We find tall-shaming proverbs and sayings both in ancient Rome and modern day Italy and the surrounding region.

Weekend Reads

The US has strange laws because interest groups are powerful. I recently ran out of contact lenses. But I couldn’t order replacement ones because I have to go to the optometrist to get a “new” prescription. Your eyesight does not change much in a year. But the optometry lobby forced a law that requires a checkup ever year. This is only something that exists in America. Yascha Mounk notes that around the world no prescription is needed. There’s even vending machines for contacts in other countries.

Where would you put the desk?

Imagine losing your rudder out at sea and sending out a distress call. And then the largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship in the world comes to your rescue.

We can now extract DNA from 20,000-year-old sweat. A wapiti deer tooth found in the famous Denisova Cave was fashioned into a pendant 19,000-25,000 years ago, and researchers were able to extract not only the deer’s DNA, but the DNA of the person who wore the pendant. Fascinating thread.

I’m not a huge drinker, but I have one or two glasses of wine or cocktails on the weekends. I don’t think Vodka is a pleasurable drink. However, it got really popular in the 2000s and it is the most popular hard alcoholic drink in America. Lately, however, it looks like Tequila will become number 1 in America. Politico recently did a deep dive into how Vodka and Russia are linked.

I talk about Stuck Culture all the time. I couldn’t tell you if a commercial was from 2012, 2018 or 2023. What people are wearing and their hairstyle and the way they talk haven’t changed much. But when you look at this commercial from the 1970s, you can immediately notice it is the 70s. It has a distinct style.

King Charles of the United Kingdom was coronated this weekend. The UK has the last monarchy that is full of ceremony and pomp left in the western world. It was interesting to watch. The symbolism was outstanding. However, support for the Monarchy is low among people 18-24 and only half in people 24-49. This institution may not last for very many generations. Nassim Taleb tweeted that it’s tough to take a ceremony for a monarch seriously if they have no real power (1, 2)

1.8 million tons of wreckage lies on the bottom of the North Sea. Will it poison us?

People used to raise entire families in apartments. I recently finished a book about it in 19th century New York. If you look at most new construction in cities it is always studios or one bedrooms or sometimes 2 bedrooms but they do not look comfortable enough for children. The path of least resistance for home seekers is simply to move to the suburbs and buy or rent a freestanding single-family house, where building codes are much looser and zoning affords developers massive tracts of land, so none of this is an issue. This article does a great job of explaining why the American building code drives bad outcomes and needs to be reformed.

Napoli won its first Italian league Soccer Serie A title after 33 years. I’ve been getting into walking tour videos on Youtube lately. Most of them are not good, or they focus on the downtown. But some of them are ok. They are meditative but not boring. They do not create a buzzing sensation in my brain like Twitter or TikTok or other social media. It’s the visual equivalent of instrumental music that you can listen to while at work. Sometimes I leave it playing on another monitor while I work during the day. Here is a walking tour of Napoli.

Music