Newsletter
Language is a barrier to communication and other things
March 1, 2025
Hello,
Here’s everything since my last little missive to you:
Language is a barrier to communication
Excerpt: To make the leap from someone else’s idea to your own understanding of it is often troubled by something I call ‘the language problem’. Most of the time this is because of a difference in experience. Knowledge is sometimes a barrier to learning, and this is almost always related to the language problem. Let me show you what I mean.
Main idea: Our brain clusters things that are similar to each other together. This includes ideas and the words we attach to them. If your words are attached to the wrong ideas, you’re going to struggle to make the connection for them.
Are women more left? No:
Women are not more Leftist, per se. Rather, the specific variety of Leftism that is currently riding high is extremely well suited to feminine preferences.
And some commentary on alt right women too.
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The Coronavirus pandemic in the US represented a fundamental challenge to casual dating and to romantic relationship formation. The How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) data for 2017–2022 show that the rate of singleness among US adults rose from 18.9% in 2017 to 24.3% in 2022 (or higher after adjusting for age), implying that more than 10 million more US adults were single during the pandemic in 2022 compared to 2017. HCMST data show that the difficulty in forming new relationships during the pandemic seems to explain most of the rise in pandemic singleness. Young adults were especially affected by the pandemic dating recession. The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines did not ameliorate the pandemic dating recession; on the contrary, vaccinated adults were more likely to describe barriers to dating in 2022. The rise in singlehood during the pandemic has been under-appreciated because our official data sources focus primarily on marriage and cohabitation, leaving casual and informal romantic relationships understudied. The lack of data on casual romantic relationships in the US has led to a lack of appreciation for the potential vulnerability of casual relationships to external shocks such as a pandemic.
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Everyone knows your location—an informal exploration of how much data is harvested from your phone. Interesting and fun, on top of the usual amazement.
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I hope you found something interesting.
You can find links to all my previous missives here.
Warm regards,