Sociology – dr.Pep

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.