January 2022

This Week on the Lindy Newsletter

One of the rarest skills is to have any sense of how different things were in the past. These days, it feels like the majority of humanity treats the present moment as infinite, as it is all that there ever was and all there will be. Technology accelerates this mindset. Every algorithm (Google, Youtube) seems to favor recency. If someone didn’t live through it, it’s hard for them to incorporate lessons of the past into the present. The iPhone is 15 years old but it may as well be 300 years old in our collective imagination. I write about how us moderns are different than the people who came before us

Later in the article I focus on how we have removed negotiation from our day-to-day life. Click here to read the entire piece.

Weekend Reads

Kevin Kelly writes down a list of modern heretical ideas. Some of them I agree with, others I think are crazy. It's interesting though.

Ted Gioia writes about how old music is killing new music. The 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams. As culture becomes more and more fragmented due to the internet, people will likely find common cultural references from the 20th century because we all lived in a closed media monoculture system.

Here is an interesting article on a tiny town in Alabama that decided to raise revenue by going all in on the taxation by citation plan, and the numbers are staggering. In 2018 fines and forfeitures made up 14 percent of city revenue. By 2020 it was 49 percent of the budget.

I think people are mostly over the pandemic at this point. 2 years is a long time and no one wants to think about it anymore. But it is amazing how fast Omicron spread. For perspective:

There is such a thing as overtraining. Athletes are less healthy than people who exercise moderately.

There is quite a bit of evidence that high-altitude living is not good for mental health. In such circumstances, a 40% increase in depression. I did feel differently living on the 9th or 20th floor than when I lived on the ground floor or 3rd floor in my previous homes.

There is quite a bit of evidence that high-altitude living is not good for mental health. In other circumstances, a 40% increase in depression would be seen as a damning finding, but it is ignored in the din of urbanist boosterism.

There is quite a bit of evidence that high-altitude living is not good for mental health. https://theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/16/cities-depression-stress-mental-health-high-rises-urban-design-london-toronto…I n other circumstances, a 40% increase in depression would be seen as a damning finding, but it is ignored in the din of urbanist boosterism.

There is quite a bit of evidence that high-altitude living is not good for mental health. https://theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/16/cities-depression-stress-mental-health-high-rises-urban-design-london-toronto…

In other circumstances, a 40% increase in depression would be seen as a damning finding, but it is ignored in the din of urbanist boosterism.

There is quite a bit of evidence that high-altitude living is not good for mental health. In such circumstances, a 40% increase in depression. I did feel differently living on the 9th or 20th floor than when I lived on the groundfloor or

There is quite a bit of evidence that high-altitude living is not good for mental health. In such circumstances, a 40% increase in depression would be seen as a damning finding, but it is ignored in the din of urbanist boosterism.

You need to be an electrician to properly diagnose most modern car problems. It's expensive, so instead we get mechanics reading codes and replacing parts suggested by the manual/reader and billing you for it even if that doesnt fix the problem.

Really crazy story here

Music

I am enjoying the new album by the Weeknd. It's giving me Giorgio Moroder vibes