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Scarcity brain : fix your craving mindset and rewire your habits to thrive with enough / by Easter, Michael(Health and fitness writer),author.;
Are we hardwired to crave more? From food and stuff to information and influence, why can't we ever get enough? The author of The Comfort Crisis shows us how to overcome our built-to-crave mindset and discover the tools to finally feel satisfied. Anything is fine in moderation. But why are we so bad at moderating? Michael Easter, one of the world's leading experts on behavior change, shows that the problem isn't you. The problem is your scarcity mindset, left over from our ancient ancestors. They had to constantly seek and consume to survive because vital survival tools like food, material goods, information, power, and more were scarce and hard to find. But with our modern ability to easily fulfill our ancient desire for more, our hardwired "scarcity brain" is now backfiring. And new technology and institutions -- from dating and entertainment apps to our food and economic systems -- are exploiting our scarcity brain. They're bombarding us with subversive "scarcity cues," subtle triggers that lead us into low-reward cravings that hurt us in the long run. Scarcity cues can be direct and all-encompassing, like a sagging economy. Or they can be subtle and slight, like our neighbor buying a shiny new car. Easter traveled the world to consult with remarkable innovators and leading scientists who are finding surprising solutions for our scarcity brain. He discovered simple tactics that can move us towards an abundance mindset, cement healthy habits, and allow us to live our lives to the fullest and appreciate what we have, including how to: Detect hidden scarcity cues to stop cravings before they start, from a brilliant slot machine designer in a Las Vegas casino laboratory ; Turn alone time into the ultimate happiness hack, from artisanal coffee-making Benedictine monks ; Reignite your exploration gene for a more exciting and fulfilling life, from an astronaut onboard the International Space Station ; Reframe how we think about and fix addiction and bad habits, from Iraq's chief psychiatrist ; Recognize when you have enough, from a woman who left a million-dollar career path to adventure the world. Our world is overloaded with everything we're built to crave. The fix for scarcity brain isn't to blindly aim for less. It's to understand why we crave more in the first place, shake our worst habits, and use what we already have better. Then we can experience life in a new way -- a more satisfying way.
Subjects: Self-help publications.; Desire.; Desire; Happiness; Quality of life.; Scarcity.; Scarcity; Self-actualization (Psychology);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Doom : the politics of catastrophe / by Ferguson, Niall,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of a number of developed countries, including the United States, to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? The facile answer is to blame poor leadership. While populist leaders have certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more profound problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in history can we see that this was also a failure of an administrative state and economic elites that had grown myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why do appeals to "the science" often turn out to be magical thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics, public health, and network science, Doom is a global postmortem for a plague year. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson has studied the pathologies that afflict modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online schism. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn--if we want to avoid the doom of irreversible decline"--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 (Disease); Epidemics; Political leadership.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Burning down the house : how libertarian philosophy was corrupted by delusion and greed / by Koppelman, Andrew,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A lively history of American libertarianism and its decay into dangerous fantasy. In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But thefire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed-some with horror and some with enthusiasm-that this revealed the true face of libertarianism. But libertarianism did not always require callous indifference to the misfortunes of others. Modern libertarianism began with Friedrich Hayek's admirable corrective to the Depression-era vogue for central economic planning. It resisted oppressive state power. It showed how capitalism could improve life for everyone. Yet today, it's a toxic blend of anarchism, disdain for the weak, and rationalization for environmental catastrophe. Libertarians today accept new, radical arguments-which crumble under scrutiny-that justify dishonest business practices and Covid deniers who refuse to wear masks in the name of "freedom." Andrew Koppelman's book traces libertarianism's evolution from Hayek's moderate pro-market ideas to the romantic fabulism of Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Ayn Rand, and Charles Koch's promotion of climate change denial. Burning Down the House is the definitive history of an ideological movement that has reshaped American politics"--
Subjects: Capitalism; Individualism; Libertarian literature; Libertarianism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The petroleum papers : inside the far-right conspiracy to cover up climate change / by Dembicki, Geoff,author.; David Suzuki Institute.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Drawing from hundreds of confidential oil industry documents spanning decades, this explosive work of investigative reporting reveals for the first time the far-right conspiracy that's stopped the world from preventing the climate crisis. In The Petroleum Papers, investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki tells the story of how the American oil companies that founded the tar sands in Alberta, Canada--home to the third-biggest oil reserves on the planet--ignored warnings about climate devastation as early as 1959. Instead of alerting the world to act on this impending global disaster, Exxon, Koch Industries, Shell and others created ad campaigns saying climate change isn't real and that alternatives to oil are an economic disaster. These companies built a global right-wing echo chamber to ensure tar sands could keep flowing into the U.S., which helped elect Donald Trump and now leaves the Joe Biden administration with a sprawling climate mess. But Dembicki also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: the Seattle lawyer who brought Big Tobacco to its knees and is now going after Big Oil, a young Filipino activist who saw her family drown in a climate disaster, and a former engineer at Exxon who was pushed out for asking too many hard questions. With experts now warning we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control, The Petroleum Papers provides a step-by-step account of how we got to this precipice and the politicians and companies who deserve our blame."--
Subjects: Climatic changes; Petroleum industry and trade; Right and left (Political science);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Wasted : how we squander time, money, and natural resources - and what we can do about it / by Reese, Byron,author.; Hoffman, Scott,author.;
"Waste. We spend a great deal of energy trying to avoid it, but once you train your eyes to look for it, you'll see it all around you-in your home, your business, and your everyday life. In Wasted, futurist Byron Reese and entrepreneur Scott Hoffman take readers on a fascinating journey through this modern world of waste, drawing on science, economics, and human behavior to envision what a world with far less of it-or none of it at all-might look like. Along the way, they explore thought-provoking issues such as why the United States got a higher proportion of its energy from renewable sources in 1950 than it does today, whether the amount of gold in unused consumer electronics can be mined for profit, how switching to water fountains on a single flight from Singapore to Newark could prevent the use of 3,400 plastic bottles, whether the amount of money you save buying goods in bulk is offset by the amount you lose when some spoil. Ultimately, the question of reducing waste is scientific, philosophical, and, most of all, complex. According to Reese and Hoffman, the rush toward simple answers has often led to well-meaning efforts that cause more waste than they save. The only way we can hope to make progress is to treat waste as the complicated issue it is. While the authors don't promise easy answers, in this compelling book they take an important step toward solutions by examining the questions at play, giving actionable steps, and ensuring that you'll never see the world of waste the same way again"--
Subjects: Environmental ethics.; Recycling (Waste, etc.); Refuse and refuse disposal;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Survival of the richest : escape fantasies of the tech billionaires / by Rushkoff, Douglas,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the "Event": the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters-Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion-QAnon, for example, or meme stocks-reinforce the same destructive order. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created-a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies-and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn't happen in the first place"--
Subjects: Billionaires; Survivalism; Technology and civilization;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The age of AI : and our human future / by Kissinger, Henry A.,author.; Huttenlocher, Daniel,author.; Schmidt, Eric,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is transforming human society fundamentally and profoundly. Not since the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason have we changed how we approach knowledge, politics, economics, even warfare. In 'The Age of A.I.', three of our most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore what it means for us all.
Subjects: Artificial intelligence;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The lonely century : how to restore human connection in a world that's pulling apart / by Hertz, Noreena,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An economist takes on the most urgent social issue of our time, exploring the evolution of the global loneliness crisis, the sweeping impact of social isolation during the coronavirus, and the opportunities a post-Covid world presents to reverse these trends-by finding new ways to reconnect with each other, our communities, and even our democracy. Even before the global pandemic brought terms like "social distancing" into the vernacular, loneliness was well on its way to becoming the defining trait of the twenty-first century. Today, nearly half of adults in the United States report feeling lonely, and more than twenty percent of millennials say they have "no friends at all." All around us, the fabric of community is unraveling. And technology isn't the lone culprit. Rather, the crisis stems from the dismantling of civic institutions, the radical reorganization of the workplace, mass urban migration, and decades of neoliberal policies that placed self-interest above the collective good. On one hand, the prolonged period spent under lockdown has accelerated these trends: from remote work to contactless commerce to the hollowing out of shared public spaces. On the other, it has sharpened our awareness of the toll isolation takes on our families, our communities, and our mental health. This is not merely a mental health crisis. Loneliness increases our risk of heart disease, cancer, and dementia. Statistically, it's as bad for our health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It's also an economic crisis, costing us billions annually. And it's a political crisis, as feelings of marginalization fuel divisiveness and extremism around the world. In The Lonely Century, readers accompany Hertz as she "rents a friend" in Manhattan, attends a "how to read a face" class at an Ivy League university, and meets Japanese nursing home residents who knit bonnets for their robot caregivers. Along the way, she urges us to ask ourselves what kind of world we want to create, post-pandemic: one where we retreat further into our self-isolating bubbles and remain ever-fearful of others, or one where we are more committed to reconnecting with one another, and with the democratic process itself. From compassionate AI to new models for urban living to the ingenuity unleashed in finding new ways to stay connected in the era of social distancing, The Lonely Century offers a hopeful vision for how to heal our fractured communities and restore connection in our lives. In the wake of Covid-19, this is not only more urgent, but more possible than ever"--
Subjects: Interpersonal relations.; Loneliness; Social media; Loneliness;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Firebrand : a tobacco lawyer's journey / by Knelman, Joshua,author.;
"Mad Men meets Bad Blood in this addictive, behind-the-scenes globe-trotting narrative of moral ambiguity, law, public policy, and big tobacco. "Given everything the lawyer knew up to that point about smoking, as far as he could tell, cigarettes shouldn't even have been available as a mass market product ..." It's the start of the new millennium and a young lawyer is recruited to work for an unnamed multinational company. It isn't until his second interview that the product the company produces is revealed to him: cigarettes. Possibly the most controversial consumer product in human history: seductive, addictive, and deadly--yet completely legal. Over the next decade, he travels the world as he works as legal counsel to successfully market cigarettes in dozens of countries. Firebrand ventures into the heart of the tobacco industry and the icy paradoxes of capitalism, each chapter a counterintuitive lesson on how cigarette companies, the target of anti-smoking campaigns by health authorities, pivoted and recovered after the seismic 1964 Surgeon General's Report and 200-billion-dollar debt of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement--and are now thriving, drenched in profits from their one billion smokers worldwide. As Mad Men did for the alcohol-fuelled, oversexed, corrupt world of New York advertising, Firebrand does for the even more despised world of big tobacco, in an addictive piece of storytelling that spans the globe. The lawyer's work takes him from manufacturing factories to hocking "sticks" at UK corner store counters; from tacky resorts in Spain and pirate city-states to luxury hotels and Grand Prix events across European and Asian cities. A contemporary tale of our ambiguous times, told through the eyes of an anti-hero created by our corporate age. Written with the character-based gusto and narrative flare akin to Michael Lewis, and the behind-the-scenes intrigue of Bad Blood and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Firebrand is a compelling paradox of corporate responsibility, public health, and an engrossing tale of a morally dubious yet completely legal enterprise."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Knelman, Joshua.; Cigarette industry.; Cigarette industry; Corporate lawyers; Social responsibility of business.; Tobacco industry.; Tobacco industry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Soul boom : why we need a spiritual revolution / by Wilson, Rainn,1966-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The trauma that our world experienced in recent years-as result of both the pandemic and societal tensions that threaten to overwhelm us-has been unprecedented and is not going away anytime soon. It is clear that existing political and economic systems are not enough to bring the change that the world needs. In this book, Rainn Wilson explores the possibility and hope for a spiritual revolution, a "Soul Boom" in order to address today's greatest issues-mental health, racism and sexism, climate change, and economic injustice. For Wilson, this is very serious and essential pursuit, but he brings great humor and his own unique perspective to the conversation. He feels that, culturally, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater-and that bathwater is spirituality, Faith and the Sacred. The baby is us, and we are in need of profound healing and a unifying understanding of the world that religion provides. Sharing his experience of losing his father during the summer of 2020 as well as his personal struggles with addiction and mental health, Wilson is an empathetic narrator and thinker who readers will appreciate and trust. Wilson's approach to spirituality-the non-physical, eternal aspects of ourselves-is relatable and will apply to people of all beliefs, even the skeptics. Filled with genuine insight-not to mention enlightening Kung Fu and Star Trek references-the book offers the keys to delving into ancient wisdom and seeking out practical, transformative answers to life's biggest questions"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Wilson, Rainn, 1966-; Religions.; Social change; Soul.; Television actors and actresses; Spirituality;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 121 to 130 of 143 | « previous |