Benjamin Lorr – The secret life of groceries
Narrated with bravado, the book conjures the nostalgic image of a 1950s store and skillfully contrasts it with the current state of the industry.
The relationship between biological make-up and human behavior is governed by complex interaction effects
The author set out on a daunting program with impressive results in a fascinating domain.
Through an anthropological lens, the English can be characterized as a withdrawn, class-conscious, ironic, understatement-loving and uptight tribe, whose members loosen up only in the pub
Kate Fox – Watching the English
Light read with amusing observation, stretched out over slightly more pages than necessary to convey the message.
Neuroscience increasingly provides evidence how the Arts influence psychology and social behavior
Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross – Your brain on art
Interesting to read how advances in brain science lead to confirmation of intuitive but traditionally hard-to-prove hypotheses.
Elections are not democratic but aristocratic, because only members of the elite get on the ballot
David van Reybrouk – Against Elections (read in Dutch)
It would be interesting to expand the solution space to include not just random selection of citizens but also modes of participation and collaboration from non-political domains like open source software development.
Indigenous societies show that, next to capitalism, there are many alternative blends of violence, knowledge and charisma on which a viable social power structure can be built
David Graeber and David Wengrow – The dawn of everything
The authors attack a overly simplified version of the theories they aim to refute, failing to recognize the necessarily non-linear nature of evolution.
The unlikely journey of a talented, black physicist from the hood shows the mechanics of ‘privilege’
Hakeem Oluseyi – A quantum Life
Impressive and heart-warming life story
Today’s dominant ideology is the acceptance of ‘how the world really is’ and that any attempt to change that will lead to ruin
Slavoj Zizek – Like a thief in broad daylight
Mix of interesting Marxist perspectives on contemporary politics and confusing rants about old movies.
Statistical thinking leads to better decisions, but unfortunately most people are bad at that
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein – Noise
Overly simplified presentation of basic statistics that cuts some corners, as superbly pointed out by Andrew Gelman.
Truly understanding strangers is difficult, but failing to do so may cause grave harm to individuals as well as society as a whole
Malcolm Gladwell – Talking to strangers
Gladwell once more makes his well known point that prejudice is often subconscious and institutionalized (cf. also Blink), this time inspired by a BLM atrocity.
Because we fundamentally believe resources can and will be redistributed, we will fall into the trap of always trying to make the overall pie as big as possible
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo – Good economics for hard times
Smart agent-based modelling perspective on global challenges around poverty and sustainability.
To accurately ‘read people’ look for combinations of non-verbal tells
Joe Navarro – What every body is saying
The glossary of non-verbal signals and their meaning makes you aware of the limitations of Zoom, Teams, and Skype, espacially in COVID times.