Ten years of Tinder
A masterpiece obit by Simon Schama—What the 1968-69 Golden Globe sailing race can teach us about maintenance.
Is a short, weekly newsletter format from The Alpine Review, where I share three things that drew my attention. This is an experiment and will evolve based on perseverance and feedback. I’m curious to know what you think.
If you only want to hear when the next Alpine Review is ready, you can opt out of Ticket No3 here.
This week, three wide-ranging explorations on sharply different topics that somehow assembled in my mind around the idea of the compass — Elizabeth II was a compass, Stewart Brand’s take on maintenance is a metaphorical compass (for better governance) and there’s no doubt that Tinder has disrupted our evolutionary compass concerning romantic relationships — LJ
London Bridge is Down
“But the choice this time was more than an arbitrary pick from London topography; rather, words denoting profound collapse.”
A masterpiece obituary of Elizabeth II by Simon Schama in the FT (unbelievably, paywalled, find it here instead *).
Incredibly eloquent (as you’d expect) and interesting throughout — with fantastic picture editing as a bonus. (As a rule, if talking about Schama, I always like to point to the acclaimed 2006 BBC Series The Power of Art — the episode on Rembrandt is a gem.)
On a related note of appreciation — the passing of acclaimed pianist Lars Vogt, who died from esophageal cancer at 51 last week, led me to this beautiful, intimate and very adroit interview by fellow pianist Zsolt Bognár recorded in July. (Keep this one for the weekend or when you can listen with tranquillity, and possibly a glass of wine.)
*On paywalls — Stunned that the venerable FT has not removed its paywall for this and related piece surrounding the passing of the Queen. While I support the idea that we should pay for good journalism (and I do), I can’t understand the FT/Nikkei’s rationale on this one, hence the archive.ph link above.
Stewart Brand on Maintenance
“Probably a great many famous stories could be retold in terms of maintenance.”
No one speaks about maintenance better than Stewart Brand, who needs no introduction. A gem of a story on the topic, with the Sunday Times 1968-69 Golden Globe sailing race as a backdrop. I’ll confess being fond of maintenance and repair, which are chronically misunderstood and underappreciated concepts. Stewart’s classic book How buildings learn: what happens after they’re built is a classic well deserving of a spot on your shelf.
Ten years of Tinder
Over at Common Sense (Bari Weiss’s little media empire), seven short essays on the app that now defines the dating game.
I enjoyed and learned something from each essay. There’s William Costello talking about evolutionary mismatch, which I immediately connected to the famous E.O. Wilson quote.
This is the epitome of evolutionary mismatch. That is, our current world differs radically from the environments in which our psychological mechanisms evolved. Dating apps expose us to more potential mates in one day than our ancestors would have met in a lifetime.
Patrick Blumenthal on how tech nerds influenced how we date:
It’s not that the game isn’t beatable. It is. But beating the game only means adopting tech’s mindset that dating is an optimization problem, to be solved by abandoning those pesky unknowables like serendipity and romance.
Katherine Dee on intimacy and rejection:
Another one of the knock-on effects of Tinder was the increase in the volume of rejection people experienced while dating. One bad first date turned into 100 bad first dates. One instance of being ignored turned into hundreds, even thousands, of leftward swipes. High volumes of rejection were becoming par for the course, thanks to social media and Tinder importing it into our romantic lives.
Even Jordan Peterson chimed in:
If you treat others as if they exist only for your pleasure, then you learn to be callous and exploitative, and that attitude will inevitably color even your perception of yourself.
Pairs nicely with a piece by the excellent Suzy Weiss on the same topic, aptly called Generation swipe. Worth checking out.
Thanks for reading.
I call them tickets because they opened a door in my mind and briefly turned me into an investigator, wanting to know more. Perhaps they will have the same effect on you.
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Simon Schama's piece was indeed a long one. But if you only read one piece on the topic, this should be the one. Thanks for it.