Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

 This book was very obviously written in the era of paid-per-word. I could re-write this book and it would be a quarter of the length while losing none of the story. I think I could honestly make it more dynamic too. Overall, very, very mid. If written today, it wouldn't even get into print. 

- "And have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, that in our Petersburg circles if two clever men meet who are not intimate but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation. They are dumb. They sit opposite each other and feel awkward."  Ha ha ha! 19th century description of autistic people

Analyze People with Dark Psychology - Charlie Kain

If you legitimately want to understand people, this book was a joke. It's full of neurotypical, sexist commentary, ideas and phrasing. It's very obviously dated and was written like a "how-to" book for aliens to understand non-verbal communication (or maybe neckbeard, basement dwellers). It was stilted and weirdly written. I think it would be useful for someone who wanted to be an actor on the stage or someone just starting out in their acting career, but as far as real world understanding of your fellow humans, nah. You can skip this one. 

The Unthinkable: Who Survives when Disaster strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley

 EVEYRONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK!!

This is an amazing book, well written and honest, but most of all the information contained in it is invaluable to anyone caught in a disaster. The author uses a wide variety of examples to detail how people don't seem to behave in the ways media is so convinced they should portray them. 

A lot of it comes down to people denying there's something wrong for way too long, not taking decisive steps once they admit there's a serious problem, and all around not knowing what to do because your brain basically short-circuits thinking capabilities during an event. The answer to this problem is practice, so that when the time comes, you don't have to think, you already have been taught what to do. Take running fire drills seriously, pay attention to the airline safety video/read the safety pamphlet, take an evasive driving course, practice shooting your gun repeatedly, research evacuation routes before you need them, walk up the stairs when first going to your hotel room, etc. This is all advice you've been given before and stuff any adult technically knows, but so few people actually follow it. I believe the power of this book is that it drives home the importance of these lessons. 

- " In 1990, the national hurricane center could predict the path of a hurricane only about 24 hours in advance, now it can do so 72 hours beforehand.  That forecasting ability gives politicians and the public precious time to push through the denial phase and decide whether and how to evacuate. . . These warnings . . . will only help us if we can trust them."

- " As I write this, trust has never been more endangered. If I had to predict the future, I'd say more people will die from distrust than disasters in the next 50 year, unless we make major changes, individually and collectively. . . In many way, the pandemic was like a dressed rehearsal for climate change. Both require that countries respond collectively in a coordinated way at an unprecedented scale."

- "During the covid-19 pandemic, we were inundated with nonsense data. Too many news outlets routinely published the number of new cases or deaths without telling us how that number compared with the week or month before. . . It was maddeningly difficult to get a sense of relative risk."

- " 'This my the the largest public information mess I've ever witnessed, he said quietly. 'It just breaks my heart. We know how to do emergency planning than anyone on earth and it's NOT there!' " A quote from an extremely talented public information specialist about the US's covid response. 

- "Way back on January 28, 2020, before anyone in America had even been diagnosed with covid-19, President Trump's security advisor tried to get him to see what was coming. 'This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.' Robert C. O'Brian said according to a later interview with journalist Bob Woodward. It was early enough to make a massive difference in the response. O'Brian was trying to nudge Trump out of denial. And it seemed to work on some level, just over a week later, when there was still time to prepare the public for what was to come, Trump called Woodward and said the virus seemed to be unusually contagious. . . . But publicly Trump was saying the exact opposite. . . Again and again, he downplayed the threat in all kinds of ways, contradicting his own public health authorities and sometimes even himself."

- "Almost every survey ever done on risk perception finds that women worry more about almost everything, from pollution to handguns. On a superficial level, this makes sense. Women are smaller, on average, and traditionally more responsible for caring for others. Maybe they need to worry more. But when risk expert, Paul Slovic, tried to explain the gender gap this way, he ran into problems. The stereotype didn't quite fit. For example, black men worried just as much as white and black women generally did. So Slovic tried other variables. Are women and minorities less educated and therefore more irrational in their risk assessments?  Well, no. When Slovic controlled for education the sex and race differences persisted. In fact, when he asked scientists who study risk perception for a living to rank hazards, women scientists still tended to worry more than their male counterparts. Maybe women and minorities just have less faith in government and authorities. Do they worry more because they don't trust other people? But, there again, when the researchers controlled for such attitudes, it didn't fully explain the worry gap. Eventually, Slovic realized he was obsessing over the wrong people. Men were the ones throwing off the curve, not women or minorities, and not all men, but a small subgroup. As it turned out, about 30% of white males saw very little risk in most threats. they created most of the gender and race gap all on their own. So Slovic began to study these men. They had a few subtitle things in common. They liked the world of status, hierarchy, and power, says Slovic. They believed in technology. They were more likely than any other group to disagree with the statement that 'people should be treated more equally'." I just want to point out how this information applies to how people approached covid and arguments about fighting bears and so on. 

- "After 9/11, . . . among survivors who were in or near the world trade center during the attacks. Those with a high sense of self-worth rebounded relatively easily. They even had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva."

- "A strong leader can make decisions fast, which is what you need in a crisis. Hierarchy is more efficient than democracy." This is in relation to chimpanzee behavior, but is completely applicable to humans' heard behavior too. I also want to point out the manufactured crisis' we see in right-wing media and the rise of overbearing, obnoxious politicians popular on the far right too. 

- "There were important differences: rescuers tended to have healthier and closer relationships with their parents, they are also more likely to have friends with different religions and classes, their most important quality seemed to be empathy. It is tricky to say where empathy comes from, but Olander believes the rescuers learned egalitarianism and justice from their parents. When they were disciplined as children, rescuers were more likely to have been reasoned with, non-rescuers were more likely to have been whipped."

- ". . . and interviewed them about why they did what the did. As with the WW2 rescuers, he found a range of explanations, but a full 78% cited the 'moral values and norms' they had learned from their parents and the wider community. Many talked about how they had been taught at some point in their lives that people are supposed to care for one another."

A little tea book: All the Essentials from Leaf to Cup - Sebastian Beckwith & Caroline Paul

 A good, short book covering all the basics about tea. Not great for someone who knows their tea inside and out but perfect for the person just beginning to dive in more. (Also has a great Further Reading list at the end)

Winter in the Blood - James Welch

 This is another one of those "classics" you're supposed to read in school, and like may of those, it's not really a story but a chronologically disorganized series of events that happens to someone with no purpose, goal, or discernable plan. Don't read this book. It's meandering, pointless and stupid. Nothing about it is dynamic or interesting. 

Fight Right: How Successful Couples turn Conflict into Connection - Julie Schwartz Gottman & John Gottman

 This is a pretty great book and I would highly recommend it for anyone who ever wants to be in a romantic relationship. It has lots of excellent insight that can help anyone, no matter where they are on their journey in life. It could even be applied to non-romantic relationships. Seriously, you need to read this book!

- "The Zeigarnik Effect: She found that participants could recall the details of the interrupted tasks 90% more accurately than the ones they had been able to finish to their satisfaction. It appeared that a desire to finish something, a sense that it was incomplete or unresolved, lead to that event being retained in memory much more vividly. The act of completing something then was what allowed to to begin to fade, to be forgotten." This is why unresolved relationship fights stick in your brain so hard. 

- "It's hard to push back against cultural and systemic pressures. Deeply coded expectations surrounding gender roles are one form of pressure that can make it hard, especially for men in this society, to accept influence when we should. But any of us can struggle with accepting influence.  And ironically, refusal to accept influence is the main way we give up our own influence. Don't be the rock. Here's the bottom line for all people and all couples: when you can't be moved or influenced, you lose all power in the relationship. If you're someone who always says 'no' to whatever your partner wants or proposes, you become and obstacle.  You're a dead end for them. There's no new information there. No in-roads to connection, and no collaborative way forward, so they find a way around you. . . When you won't accept influence because you don't want to give up power or control in a situation, you become that rock that your partner is just going around. Now you're powerless.  You have no influence. The only way to became powerful in a relationship is to be capable of accepting influence. It's only when there's a true give and take that a person has real power. That means you treat the other person, their emotions, needs, and dreams with honor and respect."

https://gottmanreferralnetwork.com/

The Rooted Life: Cultivating health & wholeness through growing your own food - Justin Rhodes

 This was a cute book and I feel that the author did a 100% A+ job of achieving his goal in writing to book. He writes convincingly and authentically about pros and cons and benefits of gardening/farming. It was quite motivating and I believe that even someone unsure of themselves when starting an agrarian adventure could be moved to finally take the leap upon reading this book. The author does a great job of including both stories and simple, factual how-to. I liked that as most books are either one or the other. There's also a plethora of other authors mentioned or recommended that you could follow an education trail to. I would highly recommend this book to anyone considering gardening for the first time on up to someone who has done it before but just hasn't found the push needed to get going again.  

The Golden Spruce: A true story of Myth, Madness, and Greed - John Vaillant

 I don't even know how this book came into my possession to begin with, but being as I apparently own it, I thought I should read it. It's not my normal read, but I liked it overall. It was particularly useful in that you could pick it up and put it down without missing much of the plot. For people that like nature and non-fiction, this would be a great book. 

The Kill Society - Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim Novel, Bk. 9)

 I'm definitely in love with these books. Typically, I try to read books I like slowly so I can enjoy them over time, but I went through this one pretty fast, and I think I enjoyed it more that way. I'm not sure why. I also heard a rumor that it was going on screen, not sure if the plan is a movie or series. (I saw both mentioned.) Either way, I'm excited and hopeful about that. 

Unlovable - Darren Hayes

 I've been a massive fan of Darren's work since the first few seconds of seeing the I Want You American music video. I've followed all his ups and downs. I'm truly, madly, deeply in love with his work. Therefore, my emotional attachment to the book is certainly more significant that the typical reader. That being said, it's an intense ride from beginning to end. I loved it, and hated parts too. The details on the long road to making the songs was mesmerizing. The trips through his childhood were awful. The suicidal ideations were so hard to listen to because I wanted to yell back, "You're too wonderful to be dead!" I greatly appreciate the sincerity behind all of it. I will re-read this book in the future and take notes on all the details about the songs so I can go back and listen to them in real time. 

Hammered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Bk. 3) - Kevin Hearne

 Super fun fight scene! I highly recommend this series for people who enjoy a good fictional romp!

Healing through the Vagus Nerve: Improve your body's response to anxiety, depression, stress, and trauma through nervous system Regulation - Amanda Armstrong

 This book was so boring that I had a very hard time paying attention to it. Maybe if this was my problem, I would have felt more invested and been able to, but it just.... bleh.  Now, I DO think it's super relevant and important for people who do have these issues. And I could see it being highly useful for those people too, but that's not me. 

- "Thoughts: I must do this now! It must be done just right, or else! If I slow down everything will fall apart! Are they mad at me? There's not enough time! I have to fix this!"

- "If you're activated, insert a tool and then feel more settled or calm, even a tiny bit, it worked! Or if you're shut down, insert a tool and feel more connected or energized, it worked!" This is just..... wording people! Wording! This is NOT how to word this! hahahaha

Miraculous Abundance: One quarter acre, Two French farmers, and enough food to feed the world - Perrine and Charles Herve-Gruyer

 I was expecting this to be more of a permaculture book with ideas and how-to's, but instead it was more of a love story to micro-farming, which I guess is fine, but it wasn't what I came here for.  It was mildly interesting to hear about the rise of French micro-farming and permaculture and the resurgence of interest in small farms in the area.  The old-school garden farmers of Paris from 100+ years ago was also interesting. It had a few good recommendations on how-to books, but that's all this was really good for. 

- "Is it reasonable to let corporations forced into logic of profit in the short-term and competition for market share decide how our bodies are formed?"

- "Ingesting polluted industrial 'food' is a form of assault to our bodies, an assault to life. Giving these 'foods' to our children can be seen as slow assassination." 

- "No civilization can endue when it allows itself to waste 10 calories to produce one. Our system as evolved into a massive process of unstocking the oil resources that nature took hundreds of millions of years to form. We live in the heart of a fireworks display that can only be short-lived. A growing number of experts are sounding the alarm bell. If there were a sudden shortage of oil linked, for example, to a geo-political event, France would have only a few days of food reserves."

- "The foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity in the modern sense because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such strides of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby, the peacefulness of man."

A Sky beyond the Storm - Sabaa Tahir (Ember in the Ashes, Bk. 4)

 The last of the series, I thought it did an excellent job of tying up all the lose ends. It was a good story, but probably not one I'd recommend to many people. It was fine, but not special. 

It did have one amazing quote: "I needed to prey on humanity's worst traits, tribalism, prejudice, greed."

Gardening Basics- R. S. Rusbot & Carmen Ellis

 Small and pretty light on actual information other than they worked real hard to sell organic gardening. There were a few useful tips that I knew but hadn't thought about in a while. (get your soil tested, cube gardening instead of rows, etc.) I guess they didn't want to overwhelm or scare off any newbies, but I didn't think this was worth my time. 

The Shock Doctrine: The rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein

"The best time to invest is when there's still blood on the ground."

This book made me so freaking mad! SO MUCH of the pain and poverty in the world could have been avoided if governments, especially the US government, weren't trying to make stupid amounts of money for their friends and blindly raping other countries based on faith in a provenly false economic theory. Anyone associated with the Chicago School's economic theories or Milton Friedman should be considered a terrorist. I highly recommend this book to anyone alive today or in the future. I fully suspect that, as of today, the current administration is attempting to manufacture home-grown panic that will allow this exact process to take place in the US. *Spoiler alert* Places where this took root are still struggling decades later. 

It's amazing how intertwined the world is now.  The current destruction in Palestine is directly caused by Boris Yeltsin and meddling from the Bush 1 admin. But you couldn't know that without a lot of knowledge about the current history of both regions, religion and economics. There are people who specialize in all those things and that's why I read their books; they do all the background for me. I'll leave you with a few general quotes to give you an idea of the book:

- "A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between big government and big business is ... corporatist. It's main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor, and an aggressive nationalism that justifies bottomless spending on national security."  Sound familiar?

- " ... more cuts, more privatization, more speed. In that year and a half, many of the country's business elite had had their fill of the Chicago boys' adventures in extreme capitalism. The only people benefiting were foreign companies and a small clique of financiers known as the piranhas, who were making a killing on speculation. The nuts and bolts manufacturers who had strongly supported the coup were getting wiped out." Also sound familiar?

- "The clear goal in Russia was to erase the pre-existing state and create the conditions for a capitalist feeding frenzy, which, in turn, would kick-start a booming free market economy, managed by overconfident Americans barely out of school."  This smacks of Musk's high school grads running amok in the payroll offices.

- " ... the rise of Russia's billionaire oligarchs proved precisely how profitable the strip mining of an industrialized state could be. And Wall Street wanted more. Immediately following the Soviet collapse, the US treasury and the IMF became much tougher in their  demands for instant privatization from other crisis wracked countries. The most dramatic case to date came in 1994... when Mexico's economy suffered a major meltdown known as the Tequila crisis. The terms of the US bailout demanded rapid-fire privatization and Forbes announced that the process has minted 23 new billionaires. The lesson here is fairly obvious, to predict whence the next burst of billionaires will issue look for countries where markets are opening."

- "The promises made to the Poles and Russians, that if they followed Shock Therapy, they would wake up in a normal European country. Those normal European countries with their strong social safety nets, workers' protections, powerful trades unions, and healthcare emerged as a compromise between communism and capitalism."

- "After the speech, plenty of Pentagon staffers complained that the only thing standing between Rumsfeld's bold vision of outsourcing the army was the small matter of the US constitution, which clearly defined national security as the duty of government, not private companies. 'I thought the speech was going to cost Rumsfeld his job.' my source told me. It didn't. And the coverage of his declaration of his war on the Pentagon was sparse. That's because the date of his contentious address was September 10, 2001." 

- "Once a market has been created, it needs to be protected. The companies at the heart of the disaster capitalism complex increasingly regard both the state and non-profits as competitors. From the corporate perspective, whenever governments or charities fulfill their traditional roles, they are denying contractors that could be performed at a profit."

- "Apparently, charities and NGOs were infringing on their market by donating building supplies, rather than having Home Depot supply them for a fee."

- "...disaster apartheid, in which survival is determined by who can afford to pay for escape.  That what's needed are leaders who recognize the destructive course we are on. But I'm not so sure. Perhaps part of the reason so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident that they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it."

- Lockheed-Martin ... received $25 billion of US taxpayer's dollars in 2005 alone."

- "Memory, both individual and collective, turns out to be the greatest shock absorber of all. Despite the successful attempts to exploit the 2004 tsunami in Asia, memory also proved to be an effective tool of resistance where it struck, particularly in Thailand. Dozens of coastal villages were flattened by the wave. But unlike in Sri Lanka, where many fishing families were forced to relocate inland and to find another means of survival, many Thai settlements were rebuilt in months. The difference did not come from the government. Thailand's politicians were just as eager as those elsewhere to use the storm as an excuse to evict fishing people and hand over land tenured to large resorts. Yet what set Thailand apart was that villagers   approached all government promises with intense skepticisms, and refused to wait patiently in camps for an official reconstruction plan.  Instead within weeks, hundreds of villagers engaged in what they called 'land reinvasions'. They marched passed the armed guards on the payroll of developers, tools in hand, and began marking off the sites where their old houses had been. In some cases, construction began immediately." I don't believe anyone would be surprised that taking matters into your own hands is both quicker and safer than waiting for some guy in a suit to decided what to do and how. 

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers betrayed America - Bruce Cannon Gibney

 This book is shockingly eye opening. I highly recommend it for anyone trying to figure out what in the hell is going on in the US right now. The book was published in 2017 and I would love to see a newer analysis with the most recent political insanity included, though perhaps about 1 year in the future from now so we know a little most about how this evil will shake out. I made a TON on bookmarks on this. I think it's too many to include in a single review so I might paraphrase them. If you're looking for exact quotes or more detail, you should read the book. Everyone should read this book; it brings enlightenment to so many current issues! I'll start my paraphrasing now, in my own words: The most selfish generation ever to exist has done their damndest to pull the ladder up behind them every single step of the way. They hate their children. They hate their planet. And they probably hate themselves.

- "Rather it is the mass democratically sanctioned transfer of wealth away from the young and towards the boomers, the later having adjusted tax and fiscal policies to favor the accumulation of wealth during their lives at the expense of the future.  A future whose course is of little concern because whatever failures it holds will be cushioned by the tens of trillions of entitlement dollars boomers will receive." We're not even out of the introduction yet before this book starts throwing punches.  This section also draw attention to the difference between median income and mean income and how the big difference between those two numbers show significant problems rumbling through the economy.

- "TVs limits pose special problems when it comes to news programming." People who get most of their news from a tv get fewer facts at a slower pace than written news (nearly 1/3 of a news program is commercials, banter, junk, segues). People who are highly knowledgeable about current events or the mechanics of government are not people who get their news from the TV. I've had this argument with my own boomer father. 

There's so much more I want to say (maybe I'll add it in later), but suffice to say, just read the dang book!

- "All of these factors, the shift to more progressive parenting, baby formula and television, had affects that manifested by the mid-1960's. Studies repeatedly show that more permissive parenting styles produce lower performance in schools, make children more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to exhibit problem behaviors. . . It is, perhaps not surprising that boomers' test scores started sliding. Before they were even adults, boomers were already failing. Constant SAT scores in both verbal and math categories slipped from 478 to 424 between 1964 and 1980, that is, when the boomers were taking these tests. Once the boomers graduated, test scores stabilized."

- "Northern Europeans have vastly more generous welfare states and higher personal savings rates. They understand that even in generous systems, individual responsibility remains paramount."

- "A key feature of boomer sociopathy is maximizing present consumption regardless of future costs. So reshaping the economy would be the focus of the revolutionary project. This proceeded under a set of theories, political and economic, now known as neoliberalism." Without going into the full description of neoliberalism, boomer neoliberalism is even more messed up because it's practically free-market a la carte, where they pick the benefits that they want and everyone/thing else can just implode on the market. 

- "Nothing could be less helpful to the shortsighted glut of sociopathy than this explanatory system of evidence and causality, one that happened to undermine the deceit of which sociopaths are so fond. Vastly better suited to the sociopathic enterprise are feelings, guaranteed to align with the needs and desires of the moment because they supply them in the first place." 

- "Many boomers dressed up indulgence as a moral crusade, just as they had with draft dodging, tax cuts, and their own military adventures."

- "The debt ceiling has been raised 16 times from 1997 - 2015, which makes it something like a diet where the number of permitted calories rises the fatter the dieter gets." You have only 1 guess as to which cohort was firmly in charge of the government during this period.  I'm so disappointed thinking that for my generation, this kind of kick-the-can-down-the-road is now normalized. 

- "The crisis was not so much acute, as ongoing, beginning with the SNL disaster of the mid-1980's and continuing with the LTCM emergency of 1998, the dot com crash of 2000 and the housing and financial panics of 2008, and yet, over years of boomer control, the response has always been the same: more deregulation, more spending, lower taxes, and no adequate structural reform during the windows of opportunity between scandals. Despite the quickening of crisis, nothing about boomer finance changed." Idiots, this is the definition of an idiot: doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. 

- "As the boomers became Washington's most lethal invasive species, environmentalism waned."

- "The erosion of the church-state boundary has been another boomer era loss. A humanist republic must now endure the humiliation of watching boomer supplicants ... pay obeisance to a medieval theocrat as their counterparts busily misquote the bible. Jefferson would have thought the whole thing ridiculous while JFK would be astounded because his own election suffered from the perception that JFK would be obedient to papist idolatry at the expense of the protestant civic tradition."

- "During the 1950's, before boomers were old enough to exert political control or even participate in opinion surveys, polls showed overwhelming support for science and technology. . . When asked whether all things considered would you say that the world is better or worse off because of science, 83% of Americans answered better.  The better percentage dropped to around 70% in the 1970's, which while still high in absolute terms, reflected a disturbing shift in attitudes. Notably, the percentage who believed that science had made things outright worse rose from 2% to 5-8%, low numbers to be sure, but alarming enough given their embrace of a view radically contradicted by the facts. These were sentiments one might expect from popes and younkers, not boomers swaddled in space-age prosperity. . . while the public displayed increasing skepticism for science's ability to solve society's problems."  Remember that part above about using feelings to dictate government? Science doesn't care about your feelings, and that's why boomers hate is so much while they use it freely to keep being awful. 

Hexed (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Bk. 2) - Kevin Hearne

 I'm a big fan of these books. My only complaint is that I wish they were longer!

Real Estate Investing: Shopping Centers - Frank Vogel

 Much of this was too vague or irrelevant as I've already picked a property to go after except for the point about keeping up with technology based security, but the financing section was still a little useful in that it basically had a list of financing options that was easy to go through: Traditional like bank loans, commercial mortgage loans where the shopping center itself is the collateral (this makes the most sense to me because it's much like a home loan), private equity investment, real estate investment trusts (REITs), as well as possible government-backed financing options.  I doubt there are any government financing options nor grants that would make sense beyond something from the city, unfortunately. But crowdsourcing would make sense, too. 

Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth - Ingrid Robeyns

This book is great at seriously making you think about how to world works, why, and if that's the way you truly want it to function. I didn't agree with everything this author wrote, but I've pondered and want to implement much of it. 

- "There is one group in particular that has a very strong interest in promoting the belief that class doesn't exist, the very rich and the super rich. Because if you can make the vast majority of a population believe that class no longer plays a significant role in their social and political lives, then there is no need for class struggle, redistribution of wealth and a fundamental revision of the social contract."

 - "Person 1: Do you know how America's class system works?    Person 2: America has a class system?     Person 1: Yes, that's how it works!"

- "Economic inequality hinders productivity and grown through various mechanisms. It means that children and teenagers grow up without the support and opportunities to realize their full economic potential. It harms social mobility, which in turn, hinders innovation and the stagnation of all except the rich and super rich goes hand in hand with decreasing consumer demand that could otherwise help grow the economy. You might thing that given all this evidence, the idea of trickledown economics would have disappeared by now. Sadly, this is not the case."

- "... when we look at global poverty statistics, which showed us that in reality living standards for the most vulnerable have only improved a little, while for the very richest, they have improved a lot. The people at Davos and the WEF are the same people who keep insisting that we consider the question of weather everyone is better off than they were before instead of asking, 'Why were the gains from globalization distributed so unequally and who go to decide?' "

- "Between 1978 and 2021, American CEO compensation grew by 1,460%, whereas the compensation of the typical worker increased by just 18% in the same period."

Introduction to Psychology: The Great Courses - Catherine A. Sanderson

 I highly recommend this to everyone human! Despite not majoring (or even minoring) in any social sciences, I do have a considerable background in the subject, but there was still a lot of fascinating, new information in here for me. I liked the section on gender differences as well as developmental psychology, no surprise there. Here's a few of my favorites:

- A test was given to people. If they were told it had to do with language and emotional reasoning, the women did better. If they were told it had to do with calculations and spatial reasoning, the men did better. The catch? It was the SAME TEST! That's how much sex based cognitive biases plays with our heads!

-  "Within the United States, liberals tend to prioritize preventing harm and ensuring fairness. This emphasis tent to explain why liberals tend to vote for measures that gibe everyone a helping hand and try to equalize differences between the haves and have nots, welfare, healthcare, affirmative action and so on. Conservatives might tend to prioritize loyalty and personal purity. This explains their support for institutions and traditions and order. Liberals and conservatives may also differ over which positions of authority are most deserving of respect, scientists vs military leaders."

- "We now understand that these gender differences in achievement motivations are largely, or perhaps even entirely, a result of social learning. Men and boys are often praised for their high achievements where as women and girls learn there can be negative consequences, even a social backlash, for seeming too smart or too focused on career advancement, especially if they violate stereotyped expectations about how women are supposed to behave, as friendly, nice, warm, nurturing. Moreover, stereotyped perceptions of likeability and competence for men often go hand-in-hand. For women, perceptions of likability and competence can be inversely related."