Weekend Reads

This Week on the Lindy Newsletter

I wrote about the 20-30% of households in America who are engaging in a widespread prosperity era. This class of people are consuming cars, houses, vacations, restaurants and a host of other material objects at rich-like levels.

However, this class is not really the rich and therefore will potentially fall into traps that may ruin them.

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Weekend Reads

The war between Russia and Ukraine is one years old today. Currently, they are locked in a stalemate without much recent progress. However, at the beginning of the war, people weren’t sure what was going to happen. Many thought Russia would take the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in a few days. I’m not sure how this ends. Ukraine has millions of soldiers they can send to the front line, America has a lot of money to fund arms to them, Russia’s national pride is at stake, they can’t lose. This is a nice interactive map of the past year you can scroll through.

Advertising changes depending on who the target customer is. In the 1960s, a lot of flying was done by heterosexual men. So the Ads had to catch their attention. Today, everyone flies. So you probably won’t see anything like this ever again from an airline.

Is artificial light poisoning the planet? Seeing the stars in the sky outside the city is an incredibly enjoyable experience. But you can’t have the city or the town and the stars at the same time anymore.

A rare ancient paycheck of A Roman Legionary soldier found at Masada. The paycheck of a Roman legionary soldier dated to 72 CE. This is one of three paychecks ever discovered in the Roman Empire. It includes deductions for boots, a linen tunic, and barley fodder for his horse. The deductions almost exceeded the soldier’s salary, which begs the question, “Why enlist?” For the same reason people enlist in the military today, for a plot of land and pension after retirement.

There’s a powerful new filter on Tik-Tok that turns people 20 years younger. It’s actually pretty good and realistic. Some people are having emotional responses to it. When you age, you don’t really feel the process and assume your face looks like it has always looked. Secondly, there’s a cult of the youth aspect in American society. This is place where people don’t want to get old and want to stay young forever. This filter taps into that impulse. I wrote a little about it in my Transhumanism article.

How many shootings have happened in your neighborhood over the last 9 years? Type in your address to find out. This is where I’m living now. It looks dangerous.

The new remastered GoodFellas film has a few changes. They “fixed” the falling license plate from the car, they changed the road signs and they also removed a lot of the brightness of the color of the film. It looks more gray now. I consider this part of Refinement Culture.

We sometimes forget how dominate the Dutch were in the 17th century. Before the British Empire, there was the Dutch. Here is a list of why they became dominant during those years.

In 2015, Microsoft built a room that is now officially designated in the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest place on Earth. Dubbed the anechoic chamber, it is located at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Amazing graph. This could be because nobody mixes sound correctly and everyone is just watching shows on their laptop. But 60% is a big number. I’m not sure what’s going with the youth here. This video tries to explain it but cannot.

Left Handed people were discriminated against for a long time. I even remember it as a kid. They would have to learn how to use their right hand. You can see it in the graph below. That’s mostly gone away. One reason is writing has mostly gone away and people just type on computers now.

Thomas Jefferson’s travel advice to his nephew.

Scrub Daddy, a sponge in the shape of a face, does $670m in annual sales. The smiley face has a long history. It was found on an Anatolian jar 3,000 years ago. Still routinely used today in emojis. It's Lindy.

Spotify released an AI DJ that will play songs for you. But based on this commercial, it looks like it is only playing songs based on your past. I wonder if this is another symptom of Stuck Culture.

Homo Sapiens brought archery to Europe About 54,000 Years Ago — A new study suggests that Homo sapiens introduced bows and arrows to Europe on their way out of Africa 54,000 years ago. There’s no evidence neanderthals used bows and arrows. It was a powerful tool that could kill large animals. Here is a video on how to make one.

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