Longitudinal Studies
Are twins more prone to codependency? And as the end of 2025 approaches, five things I'm focusing on. Plus, basketball.
Cooper Flagg is 6’9” and a consensus generational prospect who was just taken number one in the MNBA draft by the Dallas Mavericks. His older twin brother, Ace, is 6’7” and also very good at basketball, but is playing for the University of Maine, a Division I college. Ace will never be Cooper, let’s just say. There are a lot of examples like this in sports—one great, one pretty good but not quite professional quality—especially with fraternal twins, which Cooper and Ace are.
The identical twins who both make the league, whichever league, are numerous as well, and make more sense since they are well, genetically identical. However, even in those cases, one twin is usually better than the other. Plenty of studies have been done on twins, is what I’m trying to awkwardly say. But here’s the study I need: are twins more prone to being codependent?
For example, George and I both like doing stuff with other people, simple errands, having friends lounge about, being in constant contact with someone, checking and re-checking “Find My Friends,” that kind of thing. I’m pretty sure emotionally, we are the kind of people who feel the need to have a partner of some type around. But is that just because of how we just happen to be? Or is twindom a factor? Where are the studies of twins in romance? Is one twin always anxious, one avoidant? One a giver, one a taker? Someone, please, do this important work!
Also, in a podcast I was listening to the other week, the host mentioned that they basically don’t believe in any sociological studies. They said that most studies, when you dig down into their methodology, are so flawed or have such an insufficient sample size, that they are basically just pure fiction. Sounds like a perfect field for me! I’m an expert at pop psychology tropes, anecdotal generalizations, and lay theories. Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of them, some often sticking with me for far longer than they probably should.
For example, here’s one….My friend, who worked at a Kumon—aka sees lots of children—said that two siblings can be hit or miss as far as how close they are. Maybe they are best friends, maybe they are enemies. However, having a sibling grouping of three, made them all much closer, as there was more chance to shifting alliances and thus more give and take between three versus just two. I’ve held onto that nugget of observation forever and feel like it’s absolutely true even though I have no idea. Someone, somewhere, has probably studied it “scientifically” for sure.
Here’s an interesting one I just read about yesterday, from musician John Darnielle: “the average beats-per-minute of any era’s pop music corresponds to whatever the drug of the moment was.” 🤔
So what I want to know is what sociological studies, or pop psychology thing, do you believe in the most?
For my longtime sixteen team MNBA keeper league, I made a series of dramatic moves pre-draft. Instead of slogging through a season missing Jayson Tatum, I sold off all my good non-Tatum players and went all-in on the 2025-26 draft class. Out went Lauri Markkanen, Myles Turner, and Trey Murphy III for the right to draft RD1.2, RD1.3, and RD1.5. Since I already had the draft rights to the first pick and thus Cooper Flagg, I decided I should just totally rebuild my team.
With those extra picks, I grabbed Dylan Harper, VJ Edgecombe, and Kon Knueppel—and took Cedric Coward with a later pick. All of them have been better than expected. In fact, this MNBA rookie class has a chance to be really historic, and since I’m so invested fantasy-wise, I’ve been watching so much basketball at nights. Okay, I just had to tell everyone that because my rookies plus Tatum roster is so exciting. Thanks for listening.
There’s six weeks left of 2025, so the year end evaluations and recollections will begin soon. Before that though, there’s a bit of time to get some stuff wrapped up. Many book people online are doing “Ten Before the End,” the ten books they want to finish before the end of the year. While I won’t be doing that, I am trying to figure out what I can squeeze into the next month and a half before the year is fully in the books. Since it’s been awhile since I’ve been back to newsletter land, let’s lay down the track that will take me to the end of the year…
One, get going on some writing for the year, which can be any form. Ideally in some sort of “writing words for a book” form, but at this point I’ll take anything that is disciplined and thought out. I mathed out that even if I write only one thousand words per week, that is good enough for about a whole book in a year. Yes I could’ve had ten books by now if I had applied this theory a decade ago! In related news: I’ve stopped calling myself a writer due to the self applied application of my “you can’t say you do it if it was over ten years ago” rule. Except when socially advantageous of course. Like at book clubs when I’m trying to meet other writers.
Two, time to actually join a gym. With surfing summer over and travel behind us, the gym beckons. I know this newsletter was started under the spirit of an exercise transformation, but it’s been not quite that yet. Still, I have all the gear now—Adidas from head to toe—and I’m ready to pump pump pump! Also, in related news, my cholesterol is very high and I must make many changes to my diet, along with the new exercise regimen.
Three, use our new Criterion Channel account to breeze through some French New Wave films, and then watch Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague. So far the handful of these films I’ve managed to watch have been less than stellar, but I want to do this mini-New Wave course before I launch into something else next year. For 2026, I’m going to try making seasonal syllabuses, as inspired by Elle’s newsletter. My new “top five” book system served me well in 2025 but for next year I think I wanna continue that and then theme up as well.
Four, ukulele! Many years ago I had tried to start learning ukulele but that sort of petered out to nowhere. I had some friends teach me the basics but then when I switched to my own ukulele, I bought a pineapple one, which was too small and hard to use—and then I gave it away. So one day last month, I woke up and got the idea that I needed to get back on the ukulele track asap. I rushed out, right in the morning, to two music stores, secured two ukuleles—one for me and one for Sachi—and now we’re going to start prepping for our soon to be legendary concerts. This sudden ukulele craze was most likely set off by a San Diego visit from James, who played some guitar and singalong for me recently. With plenty of YouTube tutorials so easy to access, our ukulele career is starting now!
(Yes, I also dug out my flute recently as well, but only to learn “Always Remember Us This Way,” to play with my mom. But as I’ve long said, “nobody wants to hear a flute during a jam session” so it’ll one song and done.)
Five: In an effort to just let my brain roam free, I’m gonna try blocking out times when I just sit around with no stimulation whatsoever, and see what comes out. Chuck Klosterman does this, he said, using chunks of his day to just lay there and do nothing. Here’s what he also said, heavily paraphrased: “The greatest detriment to American culture right now—in terms of creating and the arts—is the systematic elimination of daydreaming.”
Let us all daydream more, shall we?
Also, in actual dreams, the other night George and I entered a karaoke contest held at our old dentist’s office. The big dilemma was if we should skip taking a test and to follow our ambition of being singing stars. Somehow, we were the favorites for this contest—with a Fergie song no less—and sadly I woke up too early to find out if we were actually the winners. I tried desperately to re-enter the dream, but that never works when you want it to, does it?