March 2022

This Week on the Lindy Newsletter

I write about the usefulness of knowing what the opposite of something is.

Opposites are sometimes complementary. For instance, Plato discusses the envy inherent in sameness

I examine George Constanza doing the complete opposite of his instinct and having success. Also, why having anti-role models is better than having "role models." Knowing what you don't want to be is more important than knowing what you want to be.

Weekend Reads

Noah Kulwin writes about his appreciation for the Saab and the ugliness of modern cars. I drove a Saab as a younger man. I always loved that car. Every new car today looks like the same identical “bar of soap with wheels.” They are differentiated visually by small things like grille shape and lighting clusters. Everyone blames it on fuel economy and safety features but I think that simply no manufacturer is willing to be daring anymore, and they have trained their customers to like boring design. Even colors: you rarely see anything but white, black, gray, red, and blue.

History and entropy

They examined the existence and pattern of "love" in 3800 years of literature. The romantic elements in the literature have increased according to the economic development throughout history.

A water sommelier helps you choose the right bottled water at CVS

Patrick McKenzie writes about SWIFT and moving money internationally

One of the toughest jobs was probably being a WW2 bomber turret gunner.

We take for granted that so much stuff is being made for cheap. Think about videotapes, it was made in high cost countries in the early 80s, manufacturing was still in the US Or Japan at this point and by the 80s Japan was not really a "cheap" country.

That had a lot to do with it. Consumers were not used to getting cheap electronics yet nor was collecting media normalized except LPs and Cassettes (mid-80s). Stuff was expensive and people just didn't buy as much of it.

Chris Arnade takes a walking tour and writes about the cats of Istanbul

Lindy Music