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- Outrage machine : how tech amplifies discontent, disrupts democracy--and what we can do about it / by Rose-Stockwell, Tobias,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Over the last two decades, there has been an inescapable rise of anger and aggression across our planet. Hate speech has become increasingly prevalent online, Western governments are turning towards authoritarianism and populism, and extremist groups are rising across both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Every day, it seems, we're hearing more angry voices and fearful opinions, we're seeing more threats and frightening news, and we're reacting faster and less rationally. The cause is hidden in plain sight: for the first time, almost all of the information we consume as a species is being controlled and curated by algorithms designed to capture our emotional attention. This, media researcher and strategic advisor Tobias Rose-Stockwell argues, is the outrage machine. It is the wide-cast net of social media that is propelled by tech, has been exploited by all of us, and which has been allowed to steadily replace our newspapers, emergency communication systems, town halls, churches, and more. In the vein of The Righteous Mind and Factfulness, Outrage Machine is a big-think book that explores the unintended consequences of this alarming shift in today's smartphone era--and shows us how to navigate the world we now live in. First, he explains how and why we've become addicted to not just technology, but outrage itself. Since social media algorithms now favor the most inflammatory content because it gets the highest engagement, the levels of righteousness, certainty, and extreme judgment in our daily interactions have increased as well. Next, he shows us why we're more prone to panic, and how the immediate dispersion of our panic can be more dangerous than the threat itself-and can bypass necessary confirmation of the accuracy and potential harm of this information. Rose-Stockwell also explores how the original intent of many of our social tools has been compromised, from improving click-through rates for charitable causes to catalyzing our current culture of click-baiting and sensationalism on an unparalleled scale. Fortunately, Outrage Machine is not just a warning--it's also a critical guide that clearly explains the underlying machinery that has come to control us, and a compass to help guide people toward reflection rather than reaction. The culmination of 15 years of research and inquiry, this book gives readers a language with which to comprehend what is happening to society, and offers new mental models for how to manage our time, our technology, and our attention. It also offers big-picture recommendations for how to redesign these platforms, as well as methods for fixing this broken system before it "fixes" us"--- Subjects: Democracy.; Information society.; Social media; Social media.; Hate;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The marsh queen / by Hartman, Virginia,1959-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Loni Mae Murrow's life in Washington, DC is tidy, if a trifle constrained. Single and in her mid-thirties, she's a bird artist at the Smithsonian who spends her days at a desk, making elaborate drawings of belted kingfishers and scrub-jays and purple gallinules. Then she's abruptly summoned back home to the wetlands of northern Florida, where she grew up. Her mother, critical and difficult, has grown frail and been resentfully consigned to assisted living, and her younger brother, Phil, juggling a job and a wife and two young children, needs her help. Loni may not be her mother's only child, but there are some things only a daughter can do. Although Florida, with its suffocating heat and difficult memories, is a place she thought she'd managed to get away from, Loni soon discovers that home is not so easily forgotten. Going through her mother's things, she finds a cryptic note from a woman whose name she doesn't recognize: "There are some things I have to tell you about Boyd's death," it reads. Boyd is her father, a man who drowned in a boating accident out on the marsh when Loni was twelve and Phil just a baby. The circumstances of his death, long presumed a suicide, turn out to be murkier than anyone thought. Against her better judgment, Loni finds herself drawn into a quest to discover the truth about how he died. Against the mottled landscape of her youth, she is led both away from and toward the truth about the past and its betrayals. One by one, the forces keeping her in Florida become stronger. Someone begins to threaten her as she uncovers pieces of her father's story, but she can't figure out who. In the midst of this danger, she struggles to reconnect with her mother through the remnants of their past and to reconcile with her brother and his pushy, provincial wife. And she fights an attraction to a man who encourages her to stay in the South even as she determines to return to her job in Washington. At last moved to avenge the wrongs done to her family, Loni has to decide whether to join the violence or end it"--- Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Artists; Families; Mothers and daughters; Secrecy;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The wide wide sea : imperial ambition, first contact and the fateful final voyage of Captain James Cook / by Sides, Hampton,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides' bravura account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science--the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment. Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain's imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook's intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook's overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter. At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Cook, James, 1728-1779; Cook, James, 1728-1779; Scientific expeditions; Voyages around the world;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- The Outsmarters [electronic resource] : by Ellis, Deborah.aut; cloudLibrary;
What can you do when the adult world lets you down? Suspended from school and prone to rages, twelve-year-old Kate finds her own way to get on with her life, despite the messed-up adults around her. Her gran, for one, is stubborn and aloof — not unlike Kate herself, who has no friends, and who’s been expelled for “behavioral issues,” like the meltdowns she has had ever since her mom dumped her with her grandmother three years ago. Kate dreams that one day her mother will return for her. When that happens, they’ll need money, so Kate sets out to make some. Gran nixes her idea to sell psychiatric advice like Lucy in Peanuts (“You’re not a psychiatrist. You’ll get sued.”), so Kate decides to open a philosophy booth to provide answers to life’s big and small questions. She soon learns that adults have plenty of problems and secrets of their own, including Gran. When she finds that her grandmother has been lying to her about her mother, the two have a huge fight, and Gran says she can’t wait for Kate to finish high school so she’ll be rid of her at last. Kate decides to take matters into her own hands and discovers that to get what she wants, she may have to reach out to some unexpected people, and find a way to lay down her own anger. Key Text Features quotations dialogue literary references signs Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.5 Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot.Children/juvenile.- Subjects: Electronic books.; School & Education; Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance; Drugs, Alcohol, Substance Abuse;
- © 2024., Groundwood Books Ltd,
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- The Wide Wide Sea Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook [electronic resource] : by Sides, Hampton.aut; cloudLibrary;
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. “Sides has mastered the art of you-are-there historical narrative. A thrilling and necessary update to one of history’s most consequential cultural collisions." —John Vaillant, New York Times bestselling author of Fire Weather and The Tiger On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science-–the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment. Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain’s imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook’s intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook’s overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter. At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers.- Subjects: Electronic books.; Adventurers & Explorers; Maritime History & Piracy;
- © 2024., Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,
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- Reagan : an American journey / by Spitz, Bob,author.;
"From New York Times bestselling biographer Bob Spitz, a full and rich biography of an epic American life, capturing what made Ronald Reagan both so beloved and so transformational. More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, and infused with irresistible storytelling charm, Bob Spitz's Reagan stands fair to be the first truly post-partisan biography of our 40th President, and thus a balm for our own bitterly divided times. It is the quintessential American triumph, brought to life with cinematic vividness: a young man is born into poverty and raised in a series of flyspeck towns in the Midwest by a pious mother and a reckless, alcoholic, largely absent father. Severely near-sighted, the boy lives in his own world, a world of the popular books of the day, and finds his first brush with popularity, even fame, as a young lifeguard. Thanks to his first great love, he imagines a way out, and makes the extraordinary leap to go to college, a modest school by national standards, but an audacious presumption in the context of his family's station. From there, the path is only very dimly lit, but it leads him, thanks to his great charm and greater luck, to a solid career as a radio sportscaster, and then, astonishingly, fatefully, to Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Bob Spitz's Reagan is an absorbing, richly detailed, even revelatory chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life - giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and rocky but ultimately successful run as California governor, and ultimately, of course, his iconic presidency, filled with storm and stress but climaxing with his peace talks with the Soviet Union that would serve as his greatest legacy. It is filled with fresh assessments and shrewd judgments, and doesn't flinch from a full reckoning with the man's strengths and limitations. This is no hagiography: Reagan was never a brilliant student, of anything, and his disinterest in hard-nosed political scheming, while admirable, meant that this side of things was left to the other people in his orbit, not least his wife Nancy; sometimes this delegation could lead to chaos, and worse. But what emerges as a powerful signal through all the noise is an honest inherent sweetness, a gentleness of nature and willingness to see the good in people and in this country, that proved to be a tonic for America in his time, and still is in ours. It was famously said that FDR had a first-rate disposition and a second-rate intellect. Perhaps it is no accident that only FDR had as high a public approval rating leaving office as Reagan did, or that in the years since Reagan has been closing in on FDR on rankings of Presidential greatness. Written with love and irony, which in a great biography is arguably the same thing, Bob Spitz's masterpiece will give no comfort to partisans at either extreme; for the rest of us, it is cause for celebration"--- Subjects: Biographies.; Reagan, Ronald.; Presidents; Governors; Motion picture actors and actresses;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 21 to 26 of 26 | « previous