Search:

Stolen focus : why you can't pay attention - and how to think deeply again / by Hari, Johann,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening-and how to get our attention back. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding it much harder to focus than he used to. He found that a life of constantly switching from device to device, from tab to tab, is diminishing and depressing. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions-even abandoning his phone for three months-but in the long-term, nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention and to study their scientific findings-and learned that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. In the U.S., teenagers now focus on a task for only sixty-five seconds on average, and office workers manage only three minutes. We think this inability to focus is a personal flaw, an individual failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: Our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces, and the science shows that these forces have been ramping up for decades-leaving us uniquely vulnerable, when social media arrived, to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. These forces have been so successful that our collapse in attention is behind many of the wider problems society faces. In Stolen Focus, Hari embarks on a thrilling journey, taking readers from veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD, to Silicon Valley dissidents who exposed social media companies' furtive attempts to hack our focus; from a favela in Rio where everyone lost their attention in a particularly catastrophic way, to an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore their workers' attention. In this urgent, deeply researched book, Hari shows that if we understand the twelve true causes of this crisis-from the collapse of sustained reading to the disruption of boredom to rising pollution-we, as individuals and as a society, can finally begin to solve it by staging an "attention rebellion." Finally, we have a way to get our focus back"--
Subjects: Attention.; Distraction (Psychology);

The emotional lives of teenagers : raising connected, capable, and compassionate adolescents / by Damour, Lisa,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An urgently needed guide to help parents understand their teenagers' emotional highs and lows--and how to support their sons and daughters through this critical development stage--from the New York Times bestselling author of Untangled and Under Pressure. In teenagers, powerful emotions are the rule, not the exception. Unfortunately, many of today's parents now regard their teens' negative feelings as disruptive, dangerous, or diagnosable, thanks to the rise of the wellness industry and the widespread use of psychotropic drugs. To make matters worse, the global pandemic, academic pressure, social media stress, and a bleak environmental future have left today's teenagers feeling overwhelmed. Parents who read this book will learn: a teenager's mental health isn't just about "feeling good," it's about having the appropriate feelings at the appropriate time; parents can help their teens regulate those feelings to avoid emotional floods; strategies to keep teens from being overwhelmed by their emotions, so that kids aren't at the mercy of their moods; how to connect with their teens to facilitate open, honest conversations; how to deal with their teens' arguments, risk taking, romance, friendships, social media, and much more. With concrete, relatable explanations embedded in vibrant, real-life anecdotes, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents the science-based information they need to guide their teens through a challenging developmental phase during challenging times"--
Subjects: Emotions in adolescence.; Parent and teenager.; Teenagers;

The Mediatrician's guide : a joyful approach to raising healthy, smart, kind kids in a screen-saturated world / by Rich, MichaelProfessor of Pediatrics,author.; Barker, Teresa,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.In this comprehensive reference, Dr. Michael Rich, dubbed the Mediatrician thanks to his acclaimed work as a pediatrician, child health researcher, and children's media specialist, offers a science-backed approach to give parents the confidence they need to raise a child well in the digital age. Dr. Rich presents a compassionate and encouraging look at the reality of growing up in a screen-saturated world. You won't find fear-mongering here-just accessible explanations, case studies, and practical tips you need to help your kids thrive in a technology-rich environment and emerge as happy, well-informed, empathetic adults. Backed by evidence as well as decades of professional and personal practice, 'The Mediatrician's Guide' will give you peace of mind and your kids much-needed tools to navigate digital media for the rest of their lives.
Subjects: Child rearing.; Internet and children.; Internet and teenagers.; Parenting.; Smartphones and children.; Technology and children.; Digital media;

This is your mind on plants / by Pollan, Michael,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants -- and the equally powerful taboos Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: people around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. We don't usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So then what is a "drug?" And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In THIS IS YOUR MIND ON PLANTS, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs -- opium, caffeine, and mescaline -- and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and such fraught feelings? A unique blend of history, science, memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively -- as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that's one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay written more than 25 years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world"--
Subjects: Psychotropic plants.; Opium.; Mescaline.; Caffeine.;

Omar rising / by Saeed, Aisha,author.; Adam, Vikas,narrator.; Playaway Products, LLC,issuing body.;
Narrated by Vikas Adam.Grades 5 - 9.In this compelling companion to New York Times best seller Amal Unbound, Amal's friend Omar must contend with being treated like a second-class citizen when he gets a scholarship to an elite boarding school. Omar knows his scholarship to Ghalib Academy Boarding School is a game changer, providing him - the son of a servant - with an opportunity to improve his station in life. He can't wait to experience all the school has to offer, especially science club and hopefully the soccer team; but when he arrives, his hopes are dashed. First-year scholarship students aren't allowed to join clubs or teams - and not only that, they have to earn their keep doing menial chores. At first, Omar is dejected - but then he gets angry when he learns something even worse - the school deliberately "weeds out" kids like him by requiring them to get significantly higher grades than kids who can pay tuition, making it nearly impossible for scholarship students to graduate. It's a good thing that in his favorite class, he's learned the importance of being stubbornly optimistic. So with the help of his tightknit new group of friends - and with the threat of expulsion looming over him - he sets out to do what seems impossible: Change a rigged system.
Subjects: Social problem fiction.; School fiction.; Children's audiobooks.; Boarding schools; Schools; Book plus audio.; Dyslexia-friendly books.; Social status; Poverty; Classism;

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;

Snowpiercer. [videorecording] / by Basso, Annalise,1998-actor.; Connelly, Jennifer,actor.; Diggs, Daveed,actor.; Sumner, Mickey,1984-actor.; television adaptation of (work):Lob, Jacques,1932-1990.Transperceneige.English.; television adaptation of (work):Rochette,1956-Transperceneige.English.; Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Firm),publisher.;
Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, Mickey Sumner, Annalise Basso, Sean Bean, Miranda Edwards, Karin Konoval, Mike O'malley, Aaron Glenane, Sheila Vand, Lena Hall, Iddo Goldberg, Alison Wright.As Season One ended, so did the revolution, with Layton emerging as Snowpiercer's leader and another threat to the survivors fast approaching in the form of a rival train. In Season Two, Mr. Wilford arrives, bringing a secret from Melanie's past. A new power struggle emerges, causing a dangerous rift as people are divided between their loyalties to Layton and to Mr. Wilford, who has a new train, new technology and a game plan that keeps everyone guessing. While Layton battles Wilford for the soul of Snowpiercer, Melanie leads the charge over a shocking new discovery that could change the fate of humanity.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Apocalyptic television programs.; Dystopian television programs.; Science fiction television programs.; Television programs.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Climatic changes; Railroad trains; Social classes; Survival;
For private home use only.

Red team blues / by Doctorow, Cory,author.;
"New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues is a grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works. Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a-contain your excitement-self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life. Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before-and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive"--
Subjects: Science fiction.; Novels.; Criminals; Cryptocurrencies; Hackers; Older men;

Igualada. by Mejia Botero, Juan,film director.; Márquez, Francia,actor.; The Film Sales Company (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Francia MárquezOriginally produced by The Film Sales Company in 2024.In Colombia, a nation marred by profound racial and socio-economic disparities, a Black woman from a rural background challenges the status quo by launching a presidential campaign. Reappropriating the term “igualada,” Francia Márquez, catapults a movement to the upper echelons of power, by refusing to “know her place.” Fifteen years in the making, this documentary peels back the curtain on how unprecedented change can happen.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Political science.; Social sciences.; Latin America.; Foreign study.; Documentary films.; Current affairs.; Businesswomen.; Colombia.;

Cachada. by Viñayo, Marlén,film director.; Filmhub, Inc. (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by Filmhub, Inc. in 2019.Five Salvadoran street vendors and single mothers turn their heartbreaking life stories into theater. As they face trauma and violence, they find hope on stage. The cycle of violence is perverse, but the power of art proves more vital.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Performing arts.; Arts.; Social sciences.; Economic development.; Business.; Latin America.; Foreign study.; Sociology.; Gender identity.; Documentary films.; Women's studies.; Artists.; Current affairs.; Poverty.; Women--Health and hygiene.; Central America.;