December 2022

This Week on the Lindy Newsletter

I write about having a Thanksgiving meal. Specifically, having relatives psycho-analyze people. Is any of this lindy?

The contemporary obsession with diagnosing psychological states and trauma do not really have a precedent in the classics. The ancient tendency was to perceive character in moral terms.

Not only are ancient biographers interested in judging more than in explaining, but they do not invoke peculiar childhood influence. The focus of individuals in antiquity is action.

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Weekend Reads

I've been writing about refinement culture and the loss of beauty for years. But it's interesting to see this type of content has reached progressive magazines like n+1 who usually defend ugliness. It seems a coalition is forming for a return to architectural tradition.

Which fast food franchise do you think will last another 100 years? I tend to think just McDonalds. It isn't the best, but it is the most consistent and has a distinctive taste. Most fast food exists because you know exactly what you're getting without variation. A safe bet.

Taleb on Utopianism

How tall can we really build Skyscrapers if we wanted to? Whats the limit?

It's amazing how big professional sports have gotten. With the introduction of legalized sports gambling it will only become bigger. I wonder if we have reached peak sports? Sports Teams were once considered poor, unpredictable investments. Today they’re among the most coveted assets in the world. What changed?

I was written about in the Athletic recently for their article on the refinement culture in Soccer.

Bordier is considered very high-end/premium butter that you find mostly at cheesemongers (the large ones you see in the video, they get cut on demand) and Michelin star restaurants (the small cones for example). It's not particularly cheap, but unless you have a local small farm around (doing it the old way, which is probably not much of a thing), it's about as good as butter can get.

A 1.0 TFR for Manhattan, a 1.3 TFR for Los Angeles.

Music

Rock music is a mostly dead genre now. But in the 90s and early 00s it was the preeminent popular form of music. I remember growing up hearing George Miller play the song Jet Airliner probably a million times. I found it recently it was a cover song. The original is much more interesting.