Measuring things at @spindl.

My FID is lower than all but 52 of you.

Fun pastime: any time you see a tweet making fund of Europe, post in the group chat and let @antonio defend the entire continent.

The problem is that I'm basically 100% right, and nobody I ever debate this with knows enough about Europe to recognize that.

Our debate in that GC was totally ridiculous, BTW.

I'm absolutely right about both the quality of life in Europe, and how American intellectual influence abroad (beyond popular culture) is surprisingly thin given the very real geopolitical dominance in the past few decades.

this makes me realize I’m not entirely sure what I would classify as American intellectualism 

infra wise, capitalism & democracy sure but ‘in the weeds’ of it feels vague & v melting pot like our pop culture

agreed, I guess the epiphany you’ve induced for me is more targeted at origin & subsequent richness of American intellectualism v say france, greece, etc

makes me realize through all my travels the cross-culture talks never left fashion, media, celebs, etc when discussing usa

To be clear, there *is* American intellectualism, in the sense that there are American versions of (almost) all the intellectual fashions that swept the wider world: romanticism, futurism, sci-fi, sociology, etc. Just that nobody but Americans read them. It's like baseball or american football that way.