Revelations already leaked into de-classified public domain are enough to shock and amaze
Now that UFO sightings, also known as UAP (“unidentified aerial phenomena”) encounters have become too numerous and too tangible to dismiss as “swamp gas” or “reflected light” or anything of the kind, the next step is for the Pentagon to reveal much more about what it already knows. And from all accounts; it’s a lot.
Recently, for example in the CBS “60 Minutes” segment that aired on Sunday, May 16th, 2021 the growing body of de-classified data and credible accounts from government, ex-government and military personnel has been thoroughly cataloged and competently explained, the the degree that it is possible to explain at all.
In an interview exchange between CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker and Lue Elizondo, who was in US military intelligence for 20 years and was part of “what The Pentagon called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, the discussion turn to the amazing current state of publicly available information on UFO sightings by the military.
Lue Elizondo:
“The mission of AATIP was quite simple. It was to collect and analyze information involving anomalous aerial vehicles, what I guess in the vernacular you call them UFOs. We call them UAPs
Imagine a technology that can do 6-to-700 g-forces, that can fly at 13,000 miles an hour, that can evade radar and that can fly through air and water and possibly space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet still can defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity. That’s precisely what we’re seeing.
In some cases there are simple explanations for what people are witnessing. But there are some that, that are not. We’re not just simply jumping to a conclusion that’s saying, “Oh, that’s a UAP out there.” We’re going through our due diligence. Is it some sort of new type of cruise missile technology that China has developed? Is it some sort of high-altitude balloon that’s conducting reconnaissance? Ultimately when you have exhausted all those what ifs and you’re still left with the fact that this is in our airspace and it’s real, that’s when it becomes compelling, and that’s when it becomes problematic.”
A series of revelations that are building and increasing, not a scattered random sequence
The segment went on to interview two of the four pilots that were witnesses to an very close encounter with a UAP during a training mission with the USS Nimitz carrier strike group 100 miles southwest of San Diego, CA in 2004.
CBS News interviewed them, David Fravor, a graduate of the Top Gun naval flight school and commander of the F/A-18F squadron on the USS Nimitz; and flying at his wing, Lieutenant Alex Dietrich, who has never spoken publicly about the encounter:
“For a week, the advanced new radar on a nearby ship, the USS Princeton, had detected what operators called “multiple anomalous aerial vehicles” over the horizon, descending 80,000 feet in less than a second. On November 14, Fravor and Dietrich, each with a weapons systems officer in the backseat, were diverted to investigate. They found an area of roiling whitewater the size of a 737 in an otherwise calm, blue sea. “
The interview went on to describe in great detail the shockingly real and yet impossible to grasp behavior of the UAP and how hard it is to fathom the origin of something so advanced and so far beyond anything we can imagine as being possible to build by humans with current technological means.
‘Either or’ is a short list of what could explain the mysteries
According to various unnamed pilots, of the many that have had sometimes multiple highly corroborated and documented UAP encounters, there are three likely possible sources for these “anomalous aerial vehicles” origin:
secret U.S. technology,
an adversary’s spy vehicle
something otherworldly.
What no-one, outside the “UFO fringe element” has speculated to is the exact meaning and source of “something otherworldly” being involved, or a 4th possibility that this is the most advanced and elaborate hoax ever devised to create the illusion of an ultra sophisticated entity “watching” us.
This last completely speculative statement underscores just how unlikely it is, with this much evidence already uncovered, that this is any kind of “hoax” at all, and how that would be even more far fetched than #3 above, an “otherworldly” explanation.
Now that, since last August, AATIP has been reactivated by the Pentagon, and it’s now called the UAP task force, more information has likely been cataloged since service members now are encouraged to report any strange encounters.
In December 2020, while still head of the intelligence committee, Senator Marco Rubio, of all people, asked the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon to present Congress an unclassified report.
That report will be next major step in this building story. It is scheduled to be released to the Senate on June 1st, 2021.
As can be seen in the tweet above, Elon Musk has announced that he is working with Dogecoin developers to improve system transaction efficiency. He feels, apparently that this ongoing development, an effort to improve energy efficiency, no doubt, is “promising.
This comes after both his silly kinda-sorta negative jokes from his Saturday Night Live appearance a week ago, and his subsequent announcement regarding bitcoin and issues with energy consumption (see below).
Regardless of those issues being about perception or reality, which is an ongoing hot debate within the crypto community, at least the issue of making crypto even more viable as a medium of exchange and store of value is being talked about in good faith serious tones.
This is an indicator of his highly positive attitude and beliefs regarding the future of Bitcoin, Dogecoin and cryptocurrencies in general.
PR nightmare abated and pre-empted by announcement that Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin
In a sudden about-face Elon Musk announced that Tesla would not accept Bitcoin for its environmentally friendly electric vehicles after all. This, after the company made big news when it purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency which was revealed in an SEC filing.
In the first quarter report of 2021 the company revealed that it sold a portion of its Bitcoin and netted a $101 million profit. That number represented nearly a fourth of the reported total profits for the quarter.
An even larger contributing factor to the positive news at the time was the massive sales of regulatory credits were $518 million. In other words, profit from Bitcoin and government subsidies was basically 100% of the upside. Car sales, not so much.
Enter the massive media frenzy over the energy use “wasted” on Bitcoin mining and you have a PR disaster waiting to happen for Tesla and Musk. Naturally, clever lad that he is, it was prudent to cancel, at least temporarily the policy of allowing customers to pay with Bitcoin.
Odd thing is, there are many worse things sucking up energy than Bitcoin. And the mining will not stop or slow down because Tesla is not getting any for its cars. But the perception that there’s a “great cost to the environment” from crypto-mining is enough to make this sudden announcement mandatory from a PR standpoint.
Though not mentioned in the tweet where this policy change was announced, it is unlikely that Tesla will go forward with accepting Dogecoin, which was mentioned recently by Musk also, due to the perceived similarities in the mining process.
In the statement attached to Musk’s tweet he also states that they will potentially use a crypto currency if it can be used at an energy cost of less than 1% of Bitcoin per transaction.
This is a separate issue from the mining energy usage but it has also been a criticism that the energy expended to transact using Bitcoin is very high, compared to what is a separate question. Perception is at the root, but wanting more efficient crypto is certainly a laudable goal.
This part of the statement will no doubt lead to feverish speculation as to which cryptocurrency might meet his stated requirements.
Elon Musk’s support for cryptocurrency is, like his commitment to sustainable energy, a positive stance and, before his personal success became completely overblown, a courageous one.
Taking on the fossil fuel industry, it’s easy to forget, was no easy feat in the early days. And, similarly, the inevitable upcoming clash between crypto-adherents and governments (printers of fiat currencies) will need established eminent “super-citizens” to give crypto a chance of survival.
For that reason it is good to see that this does no represent a rejection of crypto itself on Musk’s part, but a necessary response to mounting criticism based on the perception of hypocrisy.
You can bet that, if there is a way to mine with sustainable energy sources (actually in many ways already happening) he will reverse his stance yet again.
A unique talent for choosing and presenting exactly the theme and subject of the moment, and for posterity
Above:Photo from ‘The Big Short’ courtesy of Paramount
Very few authors have the intense feeling for the “zeitgeist” that Michael has shown throughout his long career. The ability to capture the spirit of the times so well is also possibly the reason why so many of his books have been snapped up and made into successful films. Examples are “The Big Short” (Christian Bale), “Moneyball” (Brad Pitt), “The Blind Side” (Sandra Bullock), all three of these also received Best Picture Oscar nominations.
While perhaps not an author to be remembered as a high literary genius such as James Joyce or William Shakespeare, the body of work, as a chronicle of modern times seen through the lens of his minds eye is, nevertheless, substantive and engaging. While “The Big Short”, both the book and subsequent film, capture with amazing clarity a confusing period that has been in many ways glossed over, even willfully, by those that were partially responsible but never held to account.
Though it remains to be seen how the future will look back on the 2020 novel coronavirus era, “Premonition” has, once more, the same potential to become one, potentially definitive portrait, of the crisis and it’s emergence into a full blown worldwide pandemic.
Now, soon, “The Premonition” is set to be produced by Amy Pascal for Pascal Pictures, with Rachel O’Connor. Directors are slated to be Phil Lord and Chris Miller who are mostly known for lighter fare.
To make it easier a great selection of Michael Lewis’ books are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the various publishers), and with some links for a variety of options of where to purchase.
Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.
The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control.
A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society.
A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.
Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.
The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts.
The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.
Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar’s Poker.
Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.
Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms.
During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years–a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business.
From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A’s, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge–insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money. Also made into a hit movie starring Brad Pitt, Moneyball is a book that exposes human nature, and how it can suddenly be overcome when unique perspectives lead to innovative choices.
When we first meet him, Michael Oher is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write.
He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family’s love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost.
Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability, his blind side.
In Michael Lewis’s game-changing bestseller, a small group of Wall Street iconoclasts realize that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders.
They band together–some of them walking away from seven-figure salaries–to investigate, expose, and reform the insidious new ways that Wall Street generates profits. If you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. Billions have been spent by Wall Street firms and stock exchanges to gain the advantage of a millisecond. “Is it a scam?” 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asks during his interview with the author, It’s bigger than a scam, Lewis says.
Lewis further explains how ordinary investors are affected and argues that high-frequency traders have created instability in the stock market — for everyone. A reoccurring metaphor Lewis uses in his book “Flash Boys” is one of “prey and predators.” According to Lewis, the prey is “anybody who’s actually an investor in the stock market.”
Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed.
The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives from ensuring the safety of our food and drugs and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.
Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics.
One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.
What you didn’t even know you needed: a zombie heist movie!
Director Zack Snyder has been hard at work. As most are patiently awaiting the upcoming “Justice League” movie to drop on HBO Max on March 18, 2021, another entertainment gem has landed on our laps.
Now “Army of the Dead” is here and will follow to an online audience on May 21st after first going for the live in theater crowds, newly legal across the USA.
The initial theatrical only stint will be the widest release in company history after limited engagements for Oscars hopefuls in recent years. Naturally, this has caught the attention of the entire entertainment industry
A new teaser trailer for the next action packed film by Snyder, this time for the Netflix streaming platform has dropped called “Army of the Dead”.
According to Netflix, the film will follow a group of fearless mercenaries who decide to take the ultimate gamble during a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas. The group breaks away from the quarantine zone to pull off one of the wildest heists ever attempted.
“It is a full-blown, balls-to-the-wall zombie heist movie, so it’s genre-on-genre in a great way,” Snyder told EW.com. “So you expect pure zombie mayhem, and you get that, 100 percent. But also you get these really amazing characters on a fantastic journey. It’s going to surprise people that there’s a lot of warmth and real emotion with these great characters.”
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The movie will be released to stream on Netflix on May 21, 2021, with plans to make the film into a franchise in the form of a prequel anime series.
Starring Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Matthias Schweighöfer, Tig Notaro, Nora Arnezeder, Hiroyuki Sanada, Raúl Castillo, Michael Cassidy, and Garret Dillahunt.
‘Seaspiracy‘ was met with a suspicious amount of criticism in the media…
Above: photo / Netflix Seaspiracy
Which, for some, can be added reason to view it anyway, with open eyes, and judge for oneself. The same goes for many of the films show here below. It’s understandable that we are all still recovering (many in a literal sense) from the year long emergency crisis related to the novel coronavirus, and “crisis fatigue” has put the climate out of mind, to a degree.
Maybe it’s just that we are all tired of being scared out of our wits? That makes sense for sure. However, the situation can only improve with increased awareness leading to action.
“Seaspiracy“, regardless of its possible shortcomings, many of which were very convenient to the industrial fishing interests that are exposed in the film, there is one theme that runs throughout that is the one that deserves more and more attention.
Forget the shocking facts and figures. That’s all obvious news by now in many areas including the challenges to the ocean and it’s ecosystem. The message is the overwhelming importance of both Industry and Government in solving a problem that has been, in essence, created primarily by those same interests and entities.
In the film there is a thread of awakening that occurred in the mind of director / author Ali Tabrizi. He explains how he was very focused on individual responsibility and issues like plastic drinking straws and how they end up polluting the ocean.
The awakening came about when he dug deeper, with hands-on research, detailed in the film, and found out that, basically, the straws were a tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the plastic destroying the ocean. The real causes, it turned out, of the huge and growing problem traced back to…. you guessed it Industry and Governments.
Likewise, the Kiss the Ground documentary (also below) presents a strong and eminently sensible case for a sure-fire way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by massive amounts. The film has been popular but there are many more “tech” based ideas that are getting a lot of attention also, and it’s easy to imagine millions being pumped into some wacko expensive high tech “solution” when the real-world solution (such as outlined in the movie) is staring us all in the face.
Why? Because to implement the Soil Regeneration systems put forth in the film would require the support of… wait for it…. The huge Industrial Agribusiness Complex and Governments. To be fair the Biden administration has put forward a plan to reward farmers that are using regenerative soil systems and that is definitely needed. But will it be enough? Will it be blocked when it hits the Senate and Congress?
In the mean time it is these films, and more certainly to come, are a lifeline to real solutions, and in particular increasing clarity regarding where the actual, devastating problems lie. And they are essential in countering the “pro-pollution propaganda” that can be so cleverly disguised by organizations that are dedicated to getting “rich” by practices that amount to planetary suicide.
Passionate about ocean life, a filmmaker sets out to document the harm that humans do to marine species — and uncovers alarming global corruption.
Kiss the Ground is a full-length documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson that sheds light on an “new, old approach” to farming called “regenerative agriculture”
In celebration of Earth Day 2021, Apple TV+ will debut “The Year Earth Changed,” an original documentary special narrated by Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning broadcaster David Attenborough. “During this most difficult year, many people have reappraised the value and beauty of the natural world and taken great comfort from it,” said Richard Attenborough. “But the lockdown also created a unique experiment that has thrown light on the impact we have on the natural world. The stories of how wildlife responded have shown that making even small changes to what we do can make a big difference.”
What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?
Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.
Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
Presented by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic and Chris Paul — a revolutionary new film about meat, protein and strength.
Cowspriacy
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill. Yet it goes on, almost entirely unchallenged.
Chasing Coral
Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.
The film took more than three years to shoot and is the result of 500+ hours of underwater footage, coral bleaching submissions from volunteers in 30 countries, as well as support from more than 500 people in various locations around the world.
A Plastic Ocean
When he discovers the world’s oceans brimming with plastic waste, a documentary filmmaker investigates the pollution’s environmental impacts. Starring:Tanya Streeter
In the center of the Pacific Ocean gyre researchers found more plastic than plankton. A Plastic Ocean documents the newest science, proving how plastics, once they enter the oceans, break up into small particulates that enter the food chain where they attract toxins like a magnet. These toxins are stored in seafood’s fatty tissues, and eventually consumed by us.
Eddie Brock played once more by Tom Hardy is back. The first “Venom” film released in 2018 only briefly introduced the audience to the character from the Marvel comics.
This time around we see Brock come to embrace his alter-ego / Venom symbiote. Hilariously, even while learning to cook breakfast, where he attempts to stave off the need for human flesh in lieu of chocolate, as seen in the trailer below.
The just over 2 minute clip is jammed packed with the absurdity, mystery, violence and gore!
On par for the pandemic course, many films, including this one “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” was originally scheduled for October 2020, then set for this summer. After multiple delays, Sony has now cemented its current release for the fall for September 24, 2021, only in theaters.
As the subtitle of the movie underscores…Real Carnage is here
Thus, enter the villain, Cletus Kasady, a crazed serial killer played by Woody Harrelson who continues where the first movie left off, imprisioned. What Eddie and Cletus have in common, don’t worry, not really a spoiler, we will most likely see the breakdown of how his character becomes a symbiote host that transforms him into Carnage. In the clip it looks like his reaction to the chemicals pumped into him, meant for his execution, play a major role.
The trailer also teases a glimpse Shriek who is being held as the Ravencroft Institute (akin to Arkham Aslym). Her mutant powers allow her to manipulate sound energy in powerful and dangerous ways, firing off blasts of sounds. And symbiote, like Venom, are vulnerable to sound, and we can presume she plays the villain in Eddie Brock’s world (and possibly Carnage).
The film also stars Michelle Williams, Reid Scott and Naomie Harrie.
In a sudden about-face Elon Musk announced that Tesla would not accept Bitcoin for its environmentally friendly electric vehicles after all. This, after the company made big news when it purchased $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency which was revealed in an SEC filing.
In the first quarter report of 2021 the company revealed that it sold a portion of its Bitcoin and netted a $101 million profit. That number represented nearly a fourth of the reported total profits for the quarter.
An even larger contributing factor to the positive news at the time was the massive sales of regulatory credits were $518 million. In other words, profit from Bitcoin and government subsidies was basically 100% of the upside. Car sales, not so much.
Enter the massive media frenzy over the energy use “wasted” on Bitcoin mining and you have a PR disaster waiting to happen for Tesla and Musk. Naturally, clever lad that he is, it was prudent to cancel, at least temporarily the policy of allowing customers to pay with Bitcoin.
Odd thing is, there are many worse things sucking up energy than Bitcoin. And the mining will not stop or slow down because Tesla is not getting any for its cars. But the perception that there’s a “great cost to the environment” from crypto-mining is enough to make this sudden announcement mandatory from a PR standpoint.
Though not mentioned in the tweet where this policy change was announced, it is unlikely that Tesla will go forward with accepting Dogecoin, which was mentioned recently by Musk also, due to the perceived similarities in the mining process.
In the statement attached to Musk’s tweet he also states that they will potentially use a crypto currency if it can be used at an energy cost of less than 1% of Bitcoin per transaction.
This is a separate issue from the mining energy usage but it has also been a criticism that the energy expended to transact using Bitcoin is very high, compared to what is a separate question. Perception is at the root, but wanting more efficient crypto is certainly a laudable goal.
This part of the statement will no doubt lead to feverish speculation as to which cryptocurrency might meet his stated requirements.
Elon Musk’s support for cryptocurrency is, like his commitment to sustainable energy, a positive stance and, before his personal success became completely overblown, a courageous one.
Taking on the fossil fuel industry, it’s easy to forget, was no easy feat in the early days. And, similarly, the inevitable upcoming clash between crypto-adherents and governments (printers of fiat currencies) will need established eminent “super-citizens” to give crypto a chance of survival.
For that reason it is good to see that this does no represent a rejection of crypto itself on Musk’s part, but a necessary response to mounting criticism based on the perception of hypocrisy.
You can bet that, if there is a way to mine with sustainable energy sources (actually in many ways already happening) he will reverse his stance yet again.
Sometimes it seems like the truth is hidden. Not just hidden but deliberately withheld while obfuscation and misdirection are everywhere. If you want to learn about how to survive, how to live and prosper, more and more it feels like the superficial sources (including “free” online articles) are pushing an agenda.
And don’t even think about social media – we all know where the interests of Facebook lie. In fitness they call it “no pain – no gain” and the mental equivalent of that is reading. Not that it has to be painful! Quite the contrary. But it is the act of digging deeper, of passing over the fist 50 google search results, or, hell, switching to a different engine, it’s the extra effort that often reveals the gold.
Based on all of the above it only makes sense to put together a list of new, hot and meaningful books you may not have seen. With so much going on in all our lives, even the proven authors and the clearly fascinating can escape our notice. Accordingly, with the help of descriptions by Bookshop.org and the various publishers, below a selection of the cream of the current crop, along with options showing where they can be procured…
So if you are a beginner an intermediate or even advanced learner that wants to know more, these are the best books to really dig into the phenomena and explosion of information and viewpoints. To make it easier they are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the various publishers), and with some links for a variety of options of where to purchase.
Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.
The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society.
A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.
Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge.
Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
Billie Eilish is a phenomenon. With distinctive visual flare and darkly poignant lyrics that are unparalleled among music icons of the 21st century, Billie is a musician who stands out from the crowd. Between her record-shattering award-winning music and her uncompromising and unapologetic attitude, it’s no surprise that her fanbase continues to grow by millions month after month. She is that rare combination of wildly popular and highly respected for her prodigious talent, a once in a generation superstar. Now in this stunning visual narrative journey through her life, she is ready to share more with her devoted audience for the first time, including hundreds of never-before-seen photos.
This gorgeous book will capture the essence of Billie inside and out, offering readers personal glimpses into her childhood, her life on tour, and more. A must-have for any fan.
The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale–from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar.
Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity. As a species, we are both far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough, a paradox that came into sharp focus as we faced a global pandemic that both separated us and bound us together. John Green’s gift for storytelling shines throughout this masterful collection. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a open-hearted exploration of the paths we forge and an unironic celebration of falling in love with the world.
From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus–how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better.
Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down-to-earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number–infinity–to tackle real-world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.
Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.
Eric Ripert is the chef and co-owner of the acclaimed restaurant Le Bernardin, and the winner of countless Michelin stars, well known for his exquisite, clean, seafood-centered cuisine. But lately, Ripert has found himself reaching for vegetables as his main food source–and doing so, as is his habit, with great intent and care. In Vegetable Simple, Ripert turns his singular culinary imagination to vegetables: their beauty, their earthiness, their nourishing qualities, and the many ways they can be prepared.
From vibrant Sweet Pea Soup to Fava Bean and Mint Salad, from warming Mushroom Bolognese to Roasted Carrots with Harissa, Eric Ripert articulates a vision for vegetables that are prepared simply, without complex steps or ingredients, allowing their essential qualities to shine and their color and flavor to remain uncompromised. Complete with gorgeous photos by renowned photographer Nigel Parry, this is a necessary guide for the way we eat today.
Already high prices hit new records, although east coast was meant to see impact first
Above: photo credit: Lynxotic
The main pipeline carrying gasoline and diesel fuel to the U.S. East Coast was shut down by its operator after being hit with a cyberattack. The attack has been attributed to DarkSide, a group of veteran cybercriminals. Colonial Pipeline Co. operates the Colonial Pipeline system that takes fuel from the refineries of the Gulf Coast to the New York metro area.
The pipeline stretches 5,500-miles, and the company learned Friday that it was the victim of the attack and “took certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations”, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Although, according to sources, the cyberattack targeted only business related computers and none involved in the system itself, there have been reports that the supply chain would likely be affected and that prices could rise.
Prices are rising, but the West is way out ahead
Indeed, Gasoline futures saw an increase 2% to $2.168 per gallon, and heating oil futures also rose 1.2% to $2.03.
Above: photo by Lynxotic
Wst Texas Intermediate crude futures, which is the U.S. oil benchmark, also jumped 56 cents to $65.46 per barrel. International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $68.95 per barrel, for a gain of 65 cents.
Leave it to California, home to the highest consumer gas prices in the nation to move fast to the upside, base on anticipated higher costs, or just to take advantage of the news? Hard to say.
Just recently, in early March, California had the highest price in the nation overall at $3.68 on average.
The station in the photos, in Escondido, California, which is near San Diego, represents a single station and not an average for the State.
However, with premium plus at this station which is branded “V-power” is actually being sold for $5.19 which, if it were an average is likely the highest ever in the US, to date, by a very wide margin.
Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson for the Biden Administration made this statement with regard to the incident:
“As the Administration works to mitigate potential disruptions to supply as a result of the Colonial Pipeline incident, @USDOT is taking action today to allow flexibility for truckers in 17 states”
As the Administration works to mitigate potential disruptions to supply as a result of the Colonial Pipeline incident, @USDOT is taking action today to allow flexibility for truckers in 17 states. https://t.co/mILRtlhjkP
The effect, if lasting, could put a damper on holiday road trips
Many in the media have been predicting a blockbuster kick-off to the summer travel season with pent up demand, particularly for road trips, set to explode after a long year of lock-downs and Tavel bans. In the west, and particularly California, if gas prices at the pump rise above $5 that prediction could be in doubt.
Of course, if demand drops enough that could mitigate the ability of the industry to continue squeezing the maximum out of every drop. Let’s hope that the price, regardless of how, will drop below $4 in time for road trips and mobility as the weather continues to improve.
Haters like Buffet and Mark Cuban’s cheerleading are off base and spreading confusion
Disclaimer first: This opinion article is not investment advice and does not advocate buying any investment vehicle or currency
There are so many misconceptions propagated far and wide these days that it’s hard to choose a place to start. First it’s important to recognize that crypto currencies are not stocks or companies, yes that’s obvious but one of the biggest “anti” argument these days is that there’s an absurdity to the aggregate total value of a “coin” being more than the market cap of the stock of a particular company.
“Ethereum is now worth more than Bank of America”, this nonsense comparison goes, as if the market cap of a stock and the price of a coin times the number of coins in existence has any meaning whatsoever.
Following this logic, however, beneath all the hype, both pro-crypto and anti-crypto, lies a hidden thread to an actual underlying truth.
Though based on obvious common sense, this thread is potentially confusing and convoluted, to say the least. But without seeing it clearly the misconceptions will just keep getting more ridiculous.
In order to illustrate the conundrum a bit of background is needed. For example:
Stocks, in the US are priced in dollars. But how are dollars priced? Isn’t just as accurate to say that when the “price” of the DJIA moves higher (3,4050 at this writing) it is the value of the dollar, in relation to the DJIA that went down?
While this requires a kind of mental gymnastics, these are only due to the constant bombardment meant to keep you from seeing this 100% valid way of viewing stock valuations based in dollars.
There’s another kind of tacit misinformation and that is stating that “inflation” is only relevant when it’s measured by the government. For example if the “bull market” that began in 2009 and continues into 2021 represented a huge increase in stock prices, that is asset inflation.
The inverse of asset inflation is a reduction in dollar value. Less shares of a given stock can be bought for the same number of dollars. The dollars are worth less.
And further, crypto, such as BitCoin is measured as having more or less value in dollars. Who is to say the massive rise in the dollar “value” of BitCoin is not representative of a decline in the “intrinsic” value of dollars.
The truth is often hidden in plain sight and that is what drives traditional markets
And that is precisely the point. BitCoin’s existence, which is locked in the mind of Satoshi Nakamoto (if he indeed exists) was indicated cryptically (no pun intended) to be a kind of answer to the instability of the global financial system as was evidence in the crisis of 2008. Taking place nearly concurrently with the birth of the idea of BitCoin.
Seeing the dollar as having a “stable” value and measuring a companies value, via it’s share price, is, let’s just say, perhaps 100 times more absurd than the Dogecoin dog.
Why? Because, for nearly a century the dollar is not backed or moored to anything but the government’s hope that it will retain value and laws that prohibit you and I from using other vehicles as “legal tender”.
The data (and opinions) on this are seemingly endless and yet absolutely critical to understanding our monetary system and where crypto may or may not fit in.
Horseshoe Nails and The Isle of Yap
Many interesting historical facts point toward the reality that money and coinage has always been just as much about the abstract belief in the system, more than any particular “intrinsic” value.
On the Micronesian Isle of Yap there was a functioning monetary system based on huge stones. A New York Times article, published in 1971 described the curious system:
“Every piece has an owner, and everyone knows who the owner is. Even when the money changes hands, it usually stays put. Yapese stone money is the largest and heaviest “coin” in the world.
In earlier days, brave islanders paddled by canoe 300 miles across open ocean to Palau where they cut slices from huge stalactites and brought them back as money. The value depended on how many men were drowned bringing them back. Nowadays, value is usually determined by measurements. We heard various versions, ranging from $10 radial inch to $42 a foot.”
Another article explains that many “wealthy” home (hut) owners displayed their money by leaving it leaning against the front of the house, where all could see the prosperity.
And, as for the prevention of fraud and corruption in any monetary system? Could any be more corrupt than the one that led to credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities imploding and all the BS that nearly brought down the world’s banking system?
And that is not new either. In the 1800s traveling bank examiners journeyed throughout the US to check on the gold reserves claimed by various banks. More often than not, they found far less gold than was claimed (in today’s fractional banking system little attempt is made to reduce the leverage in the system).
A common, clever, trick to try to “leverage” what little gold was actually on hand was to pile gold coins and ingots on top of a bed of horseshoe nails, hoping that the examiner would weigh the entire concoction only, and never notice the bogus hidden attempt to bolster the weight.
Bitcoin’s system at least attempts to circumvent this typically human brand of fraud and corruption.
In the article “What is Cryptomining” on Techspot a chart was published to illustrate how Satoshi Nakamoto tried to solve the classic trust delimma with the proof of work mining system.
“For example, if Alice has $100 at the beginning of the day, she could promise Bob, Charlie, and David independently that she’d send them each $100 by the end of the day. While Alice could show them that she owns $100 and they’d all be content and agree to the transaction, Alice only has $100. Thus, if at the end of the day, the public ledger (which once finalized is set in stone, so to speak) includes 3 transactions initiated by Alice for $100, the system would be broken and no one would want to use it.
With a centralized system such as in modern day banks, there would exist a single ledger that can validate how much money a certain individual has, and thus it can guarantee that the customer cannot spend more than they own. When talking about a decentralized, peer-to-peer system, however, who’s there to stop a clever individual from spending their money multiple times quickly before getting caught?
To address this potential issue, crypto miners enter the playing field. Essentially, miners play the role of the decentralized banker, and will perform the required gruntwork to ensure that the system is functioning as expected without double-spending. In return for their work, they will be rewarded with some cryptocurrency.”
Buffet, Cuban, Musk & Munger
In clonclusion, Buffet, Munger and The Wall Street Journal may have knowledge and experience but they have also derived benefit from a system that favors those already holding capital, one that also has a tendency to crush those trying to build it.
So, it’s fairly obvious that they are “talking their book” and data mining to produce a self-congratulatory outcome, when they expound on all the reasons that they hate crypto (Munger even called it “disgusting”).
As for Musk and Cuban, what’ve they got to lose? At least they “get it”, at least they are open to the idea of a future that has crypto as a part of the financial system. But where will they stand if there is government resistance in a big way, and if attempts to stop the entire crypto movement or “de-fang” it in ways that make it less viable as a true alternative to the status quo? That, my friend, will be the 1000 BitCoin question.
Was it really a knock on Crypto, or was there a hidden plug in the details?
Elon’s big night in NYC was awkward, as expected and he should probably keep his day job. The highlight, for pretty much everyone on earth (not sure about mars), was the Weekend Update segment where Musk appeared as Lloyd Ostertag, a crypto “expert” dressed in professorial garb.
Watch the clip below, and you will notice that, although the punchline was a dis’ on Doge, saying, or rather “admitting” that it’s a “hustle”, a detailed listening to Musk’s entire speech reveals some gems that go in the opposite direction, for those that follow crypto, and, well, money.
The dollar is just as real (or unreal) as DogeCoin
In a comedy skit looking like it was designed to avoid scrutiny by the SEC, the writers at SNL, presumably with Musk’s help, decided to put a negative spin on both mentions of DOGE during the show. First, in an exchange with his Mom, Maye, Musk sheepishly grins and nods after she says she “hopes it won’t be DogeCoin” referring to her Mother’s day gift.
He eventually capitulates and, after saying that DogeCoin is “about as real as that dollar” he “concedes” that “it’s a hustle”.
Elon Musk, as LLoyd Ostertag on Saturday Night Live, May 8th 2021
Later, in the “Weekend Update” segment Musk plays “Lloyd Ostertag” who calls himself the “DogeFather” – and the anchors ask repeatedly, in a somewhat dismissive tone, “what is DogeCoin?”. The gag is that he, as Ostertag, eventually capitulates and, after saying that DogeCoin is “about as real as that dollar”, “concedes” that “it’s a hustle”.
While the bulk of his appearance in the segment does reconfirm and support his actual views, in a smirking and slightly deprecating way, as Ostertag”, it also underscores a deeper truth that cryptocurrencies are “as real as the dollar” (some would say more real). However, in the end, the punchline is a negative way to sweep all of that away, with a nod to Buffet, Munger and the SEC, thereby toeing the line and insuring himself one less courtroom headache.
DOGE has the last laugh? Is Crypto dead? Doubtful…
As of Sunday, May 9th, DOGE is hovering around .51 cents. The Muskian peak was .74 cents on May 7th. This means that, although there was a decline on the “news” that Musk would not break the SEC rules by blatantly pumping DogeCoin on live national TV, the coin is still up approximately 33% for the week, 734% for the last month and 19,446% for the last year. And, according to Elon Musk, aka Lloyd Ostertag, aka the DogeFather, it is “about as real” as that dollar in your pocket.
Is any chosen form of “money” any more of a “hustle” than another?
Elon’s big night in NYC turned out, not surprisingly, to be less than climactic for the Shiba Inu meme crypto coin DOGE as it was seen sinking during the show and on Sunday. A wise man once said “correlation is not causation” and yet can anyone or anything be responsible for the drop in the high flying cryptocoin other than Elon and his Mom?
In stock market lingo this was what’s known as a “date certain” event. Meaning, the entire world knew that Elon would be on SNL and would, one way or another, mention DOGE, given that he has been endlessly associated with the coin in the media, and it’s a “joke” that has to be told, if only to prove to the SEC that he is really just joking. “Look guys, I am literally on a comedy show talking about this”, he seems to be saying.
“Buy the Rumor, Sell the News”
For good measure, and to avoid scrutiny by the oversight body, he, and the writers at SNL, decided to put a negative spin on both mentions of DOGE during the show. First, in an exchange with his Mom, Maye, Musk sheepishly grins and nods after she says she “hopes it won’t be DogeCoin” referring to her Mother’s day gift.
He eventually capitulates and, after saying that DogeCoin is “about as real as that dollar” he “concedes” that “it’s a hustle”.
Elon Musk, as LLoyd Ostertag on Saturday Night Live, May 8th 2021
Later, in a sketch with 100% focus on the crypto coin, the “Weekend Update” segment features Musk playing “Lloyd Ostertag” who calls himself the “DogeFather” – who is asked repeatedly “what is DogeCoin”. He eventually capitulates and, after saying that DogeCoin is “about as real as that dollar” he “concedes” that “it’s a hustle”.
While the bulk of his appearance in the segment does reconfirm and support his actual views, in a smirking and slightly deprecating way, as Ostertag”, it also underscores a deeper truth that cryptocurrencies are “as real as the dollar” (some would say more real). However, in the end, the punchline is a negative way to sweep away all of that, with a nod to Buffet, Munger and the SEC, toeing the line and insuring himself one less courtroom headache.
Was it the Day of reckoning for Dogecoin? Possible but doubtful
As of Sunday, May 9th, DOGE is hovering around .51 cents. The Muskian peak was .74 cents on May 7th. This means that, although there was a decline on the “news” that Musk would not break the SEC rules by blatantly pumping DogeCoin on live national TV, the coin is still up approximately 33% for the week, 734% for the last month and 19,446% for the last year. And, according to Elon Musk, aka Lloyd Ostertag, aka the DogeFather, it is “about as real” as that dollar in your pocket.
Sometimes, lost in all the hype and hoopla are gems that just don’t quite make it into the forefront of the mainstream. We make it our mission to keep our eyes open and be on the hunt for just those kinds of gems. Perhaps it’s an idea, or a thread of meaning, or maybe just something that is boiling under the surface about to explode like a geyser in Yellowstone Park.
Here are a few books, and the idea of a physical book itself is also one of those overlooked genius things that seems to slip past us everyday, and these are just the kind that only the eagle-eyed may have noticed previously. To make it easier they are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop, and some links for a variety of options to purchase.
Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus–how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better.
Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down-to-earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number–infinity–to tackle real-world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.
Antitrust enforcement is one of the most pressing issues facing America today–and Amy Klobuchar, the widely respected senior senator from Minnesota, is leading the charge. This fascinating history of the antitrust movement shows us what led to the present moment and offers achievable solutions to prevent monopolies, promote business competition, and encourage innovation.
In a world where Google reportedly controls 90 percent of the search engine market and Big Pharma’s drug price hikes impact healthcare accessibility, monopolies can hurt consumers and cause marketplace stagnation. Klobuchar–the much-admired former candidate for president of the United States–argues for swift, sweeping reform in economic, legislative, social welfare, and human rights policies, and describes plans, ideas, and legislative proposals designed to strengthen antitrust laws and antitrust enforcement.
Klobuchar writes of the historic and current fights against monopolies in America, from Standard Oil and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to the Progressive Era’s trust-busters; from the breakup of Ma Bell (formerly the world’s biggest company and largest private telephone system) to the pricing monopoly of Big Pharma and the future of the giant tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google.
She begins with the Gilded Age (1870s-1900), when builders of fortunes and rapacious robber barons such as J. P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt were reaping vast fortunes as industrialization swept across the American landscape, with the rich getting vastly richer and the poor, poorer.
She discusses President Theodore Roosevelt, who, during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920), busted the trusts, breaking up monopolies; the Clayton Act of 1914; the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914; and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950, which it strengthened the Clayton Act. She explores today’s Big Pharma and its price-gouging; and tech, television, content, and agriculture communities and how a marketplace with few players, or one in which one company dominates distribution, can hurt consumer prices and stifle innovation.
The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
From the man who coined the term net neutrality, author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future.
We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms — big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few.
But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the curse of bigness can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes.
In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century. In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age–but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.
The classic that launched the environmental movement
Rarely does a single book alter the course of history, but Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did exactly that.
The outrcrythat followed its publication in 1962 forced the banning of DDT and spurred the revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water.
Carson’s passionate concern for the future of our planet reverberated powerfully throughout the world, and her eloquent book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
This is without question one of the landmark books of the twentieth century. The introduction, by the acclaimed biographer Linda Lear, tells the story of Carson’s courageous defense of her truths in the face of a ruthless assault form the chemical industry following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death.
In her new book, Klobuchar tries to connect the historical roots of antitrust actions to populism and her own ancestry. That’s not all, however. Although difficult, particularly for readers who are not legal scholars, there’s an important and deeper historic thread here that she is aiming to contribute to.
That job is to find a way to illuminate how the digital age, with all its challenges and complexities, can come to terms with the simple question of how to measure damage that is being done by big tech monopolies, through sheer size, power and lack of external accountability.
Moreover, there is an issue of how antitrust law and practice veered away from the remedies and goals, first established during the Gilded Age, toward a laissez-fair, anti-regulatory stance that gained steam in the Regan years.
That shift is, in many ways, to blame for the current extreme state characterized by dangerous levels of concentrated wealth and power by big tech.
This effort may seem like one that is doomed to being ignored by all but the already long-since converted. But, make no mistake, it is a topic that will grow, reverberate and become more relevant as the current administration in Washington consolidates and comes into its own.
“People have just gotten beaten down. I wanted to show the public and elected officials that you’re not the first kids on the block with this. What do you think it was like back when trusts literally controlled everyone on the Supreme Court, or literally elected members of the Senate before they were elected by the public?”
— Amy Klobuchar, in Wired interview with Steven Levey
When President Biden recently nominated Lina M. Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, in addition to Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, who announced earlier this month he would join the National Economic Council, he set forth a clear path for an antitrust direction that has the potential to be more than just rhetoric and window dressing.
Khan is an unequivocal proponent of a new era of antitrust, one that is, not coincidentally, along the lines of what Klobuchar advocates. Likely sharing these ultra clear views from her long and celebrated research, Khan, along with Wu, is a key addition to Biden’s growing roster of Big Tech critics, and there is already a blueprint for actions and cases that will build to a crescendo over the next several years.
Biden’s call for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, meanwhile, a hotly contested and possibly flawed legal shield some feel is exploited by Internet platforms, is another indicator of the tenor of the coming actions.
In a sense, with this bestselling book [on Amazon: #1 in Political Economy, #1 in Government Management, #1 in Business Law (Books)] the gargantuan task of connecting the culpability of massive, nearly infinitely powerful behemoths, each in it’s own territory, to the social and economic catastrophes that they’ve brought down on the world.
However, while politicians like Klobuchar may not have the charisma and energy to set a fire under the population, it is the very deeds themselves that will eventually conspire to ignite an uprising and put pressure on the government and the courts to take real, substantive measures. And with young, new faces and minds such as possessed by Khan and Wu, ultimately there is a bulwark of criticism against monopolist abuses building in government and among the public at large.
“I am never saying, ‘Get rid of their products.’ But let’s have more of the products that give you more choices. You can keep one product, but it’s better to have other products, because we’re not China.”
Amy Klobuchar in Wired interview with Steven Levey
In response to Klobuchar’s quote above Steven Levey in Wired wrote; “In other words, Facebook could keep it’s main app, but the public might benefit if Instagram and WhatsApp were not Mark Zuckerberg productions.”
While this kind of “moderate” view may not be the earth shattering remedy that would turn the juggernauts around in a heartbeat, from Zuckerberg’s perspective it would not be ideal, to say the least.
And, since we have seen the unfettered and viral growth of big tech, for at least a quarter century in some cases, and since there was a aura of hero worship afforded their leaders for most of that time, a break-up, such as that could ultimately turn out to be the beginning of more sweeping changes. A welcome outcome for those that have been harmed the various monopolistic structures that rule nearly all our lives, or at least it seems, at times.
Levey then asked Klobuchar why legislators so often embarrass themselves in hearings with irrelevant partisanship, clueless technical questions, and time-wasting grandstanding. Her response;
“Welcome to my life,” she says. “I get it—there’s going to be hearings that are irritating to people who know a lot. But that’s a great argument for tech to use because they don’t want this oversight.”
Amy Klobuchar in Wired interview with Steven Levey
In defense of using the word “antitrust in the title, while also advocating its eradication in future she responded:
“Well, I thought antitrust was an interesting word”. “It’s not only about this body of law; it’s also about not trusting anyone.”
Amy Klobuchar in Wired interview with Steven Levey
Perhaps it is more the course of history that led to the current and incredibly extreme situation and obscene dominance by big tech that is what should never have be trusted to arise in the first place.
Perhaps these firms will one day be seen, looking back from future generations, as a temporarily necessary, but evil mistake of history, as was the toothless interpretation of laws that led to their rise from “scrappy underdog startups” into malignant monopolies run amok.
The bonds between fathers and sons, as seen through the eye of their mothers
The inspiration for the Duchess of Sussex’s first book started from a poem Megan wrote for Prince Harry after their son Archie was born for Father’s day. The poem then evolved into a story, the book will capture the special bond and relationship between fathers and sons from all walks of life, as described by mothers.
As news relating to the upcoming release of Markle’s debut book, reports began to surface speculating potential plagiarism with another children’s book “The Boy on the Bench” by Corrinne Averiss. The only real similarity between the two titles is they both have the word “bench”, aside from this, Averiss took to Twitter to defend the Duchess stating “I don’t see any similarities”.
“The Bench” includes illustrations by Christian Robinson, a Caldecott Award winner, who has worked with both Pixar and Sesame Street Workshop. Markle and Robinson worked together to make sure the final product was inclusive and shared a universal message every kind of family could relate to.
In a statement from Random House Children’s Books, Markle said “Christian layered in beautiful and ethereal watercolor illustrations that capture the warmth, joy, and comfort of the relationship between fathers and sons from all walks of life,” and continued to say “This representation was particularly important to me, and Christian and I worked closely to depict this special bond through an inclusive lens.
My hope is that The Bench resonates with every family, no matter the makeup, as much as it does with mine.”
The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, already holds so many titles: she is a wife, a mother, feminist, activist, and now will be adding author to her list of accomplishments.
— Random House Children's Books (@randomhousekids) May 4, 2021
“The Bench” will mark the latest venture for the Duchess after stepping back from the Royal Family and moving to the United States in 2020. Prince Harry and Meghan have also launched a podcast in partnership with Spotify Archewell Audio. The two also have plans to work on a Netflix documentary based on the Invictus Games which the Prince founded back in 2014.
A secretive algorithm that’s constantly being tweaked can turn influencers’ accounts, and their prospects, upside down
By: Dara Kerr
It was the middle of the pandemic, and Mason McClellan had just started his first semester of college in Georgia. He was stuck at home, learning remotely, and had more time than expected on his hands. So, one night he made a few short videos loosely based on small-town news stories and posted them to TikTok.
“I made five videos in the first day, went to sleep, and then ended up with 50,000 followers out of nowhere,” McClellan said. “Then I was like, ‘I gotta make more videos now.’ ”
He kept going. Over the next three days, he made several more videos and amassed one million followers—a major milestone in the world of TikTok. Views on his videos continued to tick up throughout the fall, and several million more followers streamed in. McClellan began to make money off his account, roughly $500 a week, but then, in January, it took an unexpected turn—he started hemorrhaging followers, losing roughly 200,000 in a matter of weeks.
“Since Jan. 18, I haven’t had a day that I’ve gained followers,” McClellan said. “Before late February, even my followers weren’t seeing my videos.”
McClellan hadn’t taken time off, posted taboo content, or altered the style of his videos. On his side of things, nothing had changed. And he isn’t alone: Jan. 18 was a pivotal day for many TikTok creators who say they saw inexplicable drops in followers.
No other platform can provide the explosive virality that TikTok is known for—Charli D’Amelio became famous for casual dance routines on the app and now has her own TV show, and rapper Lil Nas X credits TikTok for the meteoric rise of his song “Old Town Road.” Who goes viral is largely dictated by a discovery-based system in which TikTok’s algorithm puts together an endless “For You” feed where viewers spend most of their time picking and choosing who to follow.
Unlike YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat, which depend on creators building a network of followers, TikTok’s algorithm can put videos at the top of the For You scroll and turn people into overnight sensations. But similarly, if videos suddenly disappear from that feed, creators’ prospects can evaporate. Those people who’ve centered their lives around performing on the app can be left trying to figure out how to stay relevant on an impenetrable, constantly changing platform. The growing industry around TikTok resembles the promise and callousness of early Hollywood—burgeoning creativity, swift fame, and little by way of worker protections—except that instead of studios creating stars, it’s a faceless, inscrutable machine.
“What is so incredibly precarious is often the [algorithmic] tweaks that are unannounced. They can wreak havoc on a creator’s livelihood,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, who studies social media and digital labor. “There’s always been this unpredictability, and creators have little to no recourse.”
TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide declined to comment on questions about the company’s algorithm, specifically how often it’s changed and if creators are told about such changes.
The private company, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, arrived in the U.S. in 2018 and is estimated to be valued at around $50 billion. TikTok has acknowledged the mystery around its algorithm. Last June, it wrote a blog post about how the For You page generally works, saying it shows people videos based on their stated interests, such as pets or travel, and how they engage with certain videos and accounts.
A few months earlier, TikTok announced the launch of its Transparency and Accountability Center, saying experts would be able to observe its moderation policies in real time and examine the code that drives its algorithm.
McQuaide declined to comment on questions about the center but pointed The Markup to a September blog post that says nearly two dozen experts and lawmakers virtually visited the center and were guided through various demonstrations on TikTok’s safety and security practices.
Meanwhile, creators say they still feel largely left on their own.
“The TikTok algorithm is very opaque,” McClellan said. “You have to post O.K. content, but after that it’s really just random chance that your videos are going to blow up.”
Shadow Bans, Algorithm Tweaks, and Censorship
Jan. 18—the day many TikTok creators reported a sudden drop in followers—has gained some infamy in the networks creators use to trade complaints and insights into the mysteries of the algorithm. One Reddit forum directly discusses the “myths and questions about the Jan 18 suppression” with theories about a possible unannounced tweak to the algorithm.
Speculation also points to what creators call “shadow banning,” which is the belief that TikTok silences accounts without explanation. With shadow banning, nothing changes in what creators see, but they’re invisible to most everyone else.
Rumors around shadow banning are rife on TikTok, with nearly six billion videos hashtagged with #shadowbanned and more than 300 million with #unshadowbanme. YouTube tutorials, Quora forums, and entire websites are filled with tips and tricks for people hoping to get rid of TikTok shadow bans. The “Tiktokhelp” subreddit even has a popular topic tag titled “algorithm question/shadowbanned,” which is filled with thousands of comments about supposed shadow bans and advice on how to avoid them.
Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, studies the spread of disinformation on TikTok and other social media platforms and believes all of these sites do some sort of algorithmic downgrading. Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have also been accused of shadow bans.
“Are they shadow-banning? I’m sure of it,” Hickey said. “How do we prove it? We don’t know.”
One of the reasons shadow-banning myths have especially taken off on TikTok could be that the company appears to be more proactive in content moderation than other social media platforms.
“They are taking down individual content from creators, and we see creators constantly complaining about that. It says to me that they’re much more aggressive and they seem less beholden to a very strict set of criteria,” Hickey said. “Facebook’s default is to let stuff stay on the platform. TikTok seems to be the opposite.”
TikTok bans violent extremism, hateful behavior, adult nudity, and more. In its community guidelines, it says it enforces its rules “using a mix of technology and human moderation.” Additionally, for videos that “could be considered upsetting or depict things that may be shocking to a general audience—we may reduce discoverability, including by redirecting search results or limiting distribution in the For You feed.”
TikTok’s McQuaide declined to comment on questions about content moderation, Jan. 18, or shadow banning.
Last May, Black TikTok creators organized a protest against the company, saying their content was being shadow-banned and censored. TikTok denied those claims. Then, in late May, just after the killing of George Floyd and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter surged across all social media, TikTok admitted to a glitch in its system and made a rare apology.
“At the height of a raw and painful time, last week a technical glitch made it temporarily appear as if posts uploaded using #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd would receive 0 views,” TikTok’s U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas and director of creator community Kudzi Chikumbu wrote in a June 1 blog post. They explained the glitch was a display issue, and the posts still generated billions of views. “Nevertheless, we understand that many assumed this bug to be an intentional act.”
The incident happened just months after The Intercept got hold of internal documents from TikTok that outlined what seems to be a clear example of shadow banning. The documents instructed moderators to exclude creators with “ugly facial looks,” “abnormal body shape,” “too many wrinkles,” and other physical features from the For You feed because they could “decrease the short-term new user retention rate.” TikTok responded to The Intercept saying those guidelines were an attempt to prevent bullying and were no longer in use.
Dopamine Hits and Trying to Make It
Tinuade Oyelowo watched the conversations around Black creators feeling marginalized at the same time she was starting to get into TikTok herself. The Brooklyn-based artist’s goal was to promote her work and to come off as a body-positive Black woman and spread that vibe to others. Her first video shows her skateboarding along a river waterfront, and when she loses her balance, she flashes a thumbs up. But Oyelowo hasn’t experienced the same rapid success as McClellan.
“It felt like crawling up on my bare hands to get 500 [followers],” Oyelowo said. “To get to 500 was really really difficult. I was posting and posting videos.”
At first, she tried all the tricks to get views and followers, like a 30-day video challenge and “follow trains” in which creators promise to follow whoever follows them. She even joined a private Facebook group led by a marketer who promised to reveal the secret to success on TikTok. “And then things just naturally started to pick up without me doing anything,” Oyelowo said.
She said seeing those pings roll in on her videos gave her the dopamine hits that social media is known for. “It is definitely addictive,” Oyelowo said. “I would argue it’s not even the likes that are the addiction, it’s the validation and the feeling of being seen.”
Duffy, the associate professor at Cornell, said this idea of being seen is hardwired into the way TikTok works. “For content creators, their livelihoods depend upon their ability to get visibility,” Duffy said. “With this entire system, it extracts labor. And more specifically, it extracts labor to direct attention to the platform.”
Christian Barnes, of St. Louis, has steadily grown his TikTok audience since last summer and now has 1.5 million followers. Many of his videos involve comical skits in which a quiet school kid surprises his teacher and classmates with unexpected dance moves or musical skills. He posts about four times a week, and each video takes roughly three hours to create and upload. He shoots and edits the videos at night once he comes home from his day job waiting tables. It can be exhausting, he said. So, a couple of months ago he decided to take a three-day break.
“You definitely get tired sometimes and lose motivation,” Barnes said. “That’s why I decided to take a break that one time. I was like, ‘This is too much for me.’ ”
When he started uploading videos again, he noticed they were getting fewer views than normal. Trying everything he could think of, such as interacting with his followers and posting consistently, he got his audience back. But it took weeks. To this day, Barnes has no idea what happened.
“There are a lot of times I go out of town and I’m scared I’ll lose views if I’m not uploading videos all the time,” he said.
Despite that, Barnes said he enjoys making videos and hopes to one day parlay his work on TikTok into a full-time job. On a good week, he’ll make a couple hundred dollars from TikTok’s creator fund, which the company set up last July as a way for popular creators to earn money from video views. He’s also sponsored by a water bottle company and color contact lens maker and uses their products as props in his videos.
Chasing the Pot of Gold
Barnes doesn’t yet have an agent, but over the past year, it’s become common for Hollywood talent agencies to sign TikTok stars. They promote creators and act as middlemen in making deals with brands. D’Amelio, for example, is repped by United Talent Agency, which has managed actors like Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. A3 Artists Agency’s roster lists around 200 digital creators, including Avani Gregg, who has 33 million followers and Larray, who has 23 million. With such massive audiences, TikTok creators can be good at bringing in money.
“As an agency, we get paid when they get paid,” said Keith Bielory, an A3 partner in alternative programming, digital media, licensing, and branding. “This could be a lucrative industry for years and years to come.”
A3 helps influencers in every area except growing their TikTok fanbase. In the instances when the algorithm seems to be causing a drop in followers, Bielory said, he’ll reach out to his TikTok contacts for insight into what’s happening. Ultimately, however, it’s up to the influencers to keep up engagement.
“A lot of people can go viral, but can they back that up?” Bielory said. “The folks that we work with create content for a living. It’s a lot of pressure to keep that going.”
Tha Lights Global, a smaller talent agency that focuses on hip-hop artists, has represented influencers for years. One of the first dance memes to go viral on social media was from two Detroit rappers the agency represented, Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCal, who came out with “Juju on That Beat” in 2016. Jordan Tugrul, co-owner of Tha Lights Global, said influencers he works with can spend hours a day creating TikTok videos. One of the agency’s goals is get them to think beyond the social media platform.
“They’re going against thousands of other people their age who want to be in the spotlight as well,” Tugrul said. “TikTok might not be around forever, and you cannot rely on that.”
“The influencer space is still often referred to as the ‘wild wild west’, and it’s a place where creators can be taken advantage of,” Gabrielle Carteris, the union’s president, wrote in an email to The Markup. “This agreement is there to help empower and give self-determination to influencers, who are oftentimes trying to navigate their professional careers without much guidance—they’re true pioneers in this space.”
For now, SAG-AFTRA is focused on helping creators negotiate with brands and doesn’t yet assist in dealings with TikTok or other social media platforms. But, Carteris said, “This agreement is just a first step; we’re always exploring what is needed in this community.”
Despite their ups and downs on TikTok, McClellan and Barnes still regularly make videos and don’t plan to stop anytime soon. For Oyelowo, the novelty has worn off.
She has more than 1,000 followers and still likes making videos for fun but posts just once a week, at best. Spending hours trying to tap into what’s trending and scouring her Facebook group for advice is tiring, she said, especially given the whims of TikTok’s algorithm.
“You invest time in it because it’s this odd mystery puzzle,” Oyelowo said. “With algorithms, in theory, there is a potential solution, there is a way to figure it out—everybody is chasing that pot of gold in some way. But it’s a moving target.”
Every month Netflix ads new films and removes others. The new ones are publicized and celebrated and the ones that are going to be gone…. Well that’s not big news. Since May 1st in 2021 lands on a Saturday, the last day of April is the time for these to disappear, just as the weekend begins.
Adapted from acclaimed author Richard Matheson’s influential novelette of the same name, Constantine director Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend follows the last man on Earth as he struggles to survive while fending off the infected survivors of a devastating vampiric plague. A brilliant scientist who raced to discover a cure for the man-made virus as humanity came crumbling down all around him, Robert Neville (Will Smith) was inexplicably immune to the highly contagious superbug.
Now the entire population of New York City — and perhaps the world — has been transformed into carnivorous bloodsuckers that fear the light and live solely to spread their contagion to any remaining living creature that crosses their path. It’s been three years since civilization came to an end, and the loneliness has taken a devastating toll on Neville.
By day he scours the city for food and supplies while sending out desperate radio messages in hopes that someone might respond, and by night he attempts to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus by experimenting with his own blood.
But time is running out for Neville as the legions of infected watch his every move from the safety of the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. They, too, long to learn the secret that lurks in Neville’s blood, though they will have to take caution while attempting to procure it because Neville will sooner die attempting to slay every last one of them than willingly giving up a single drop.
Previously adapted for the screen in the 1964 Vincent Price frightener The Last Man on Earth and the 1971 Charlton Heston action film The Omega Man, Matheson’s novelette also served as the inspiration for George A. Romero’s groundbreaking zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. – Jason Buchanan, Rovi
HDTrailers: “A Los Angeles crime saga in the vein of “Heat”, Den of Thieves follows the intersecting and often personally connected lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff’s Dept. and the state’s most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank of downtown Los Angeles.”
HDTrailers: “In this sci-fi epic from director Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Mother), a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet. The final survivors board the SNOWPIERCER, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine. When cryptic messages incite the passengers to revolt, the train thrusts full-throttle towards disaster.”
Here’s the full list of what’s gone after today (April 30th, 2021):
Another “credible” leak sited by MacRumors now predicts possible new iMac color palette
According to Mac Rumors, a Reliable leaker whose twitter handle is @L0vetodream hinted, via the juxtaposition of the classic “like a rainbow” images of the, then-state of-the-art, G3 iMacs alongside the colorful “Spring Loaded” graphic that accompanied the initial announcement of the April 20th event.
The obvious implication is that Apple may debut its rumored redesigned and colorful iMac at its “Spring Loaded” event on Tuesday.
This comes after a previous story which also cited a credible source, where the new iMac were said to likely not only have an “M series” chip, which everyone by now expects, but would also be “really big”, that is, a size larger than the current max 5k versions.
In the above tweet, the leaker posted an image of Apple’s logo used for marketing the upcoming event and an image of the retro rainbow Apple logo alongside the colorful lineup of G3 iMacs.
As can be seen from the image concept render above, and the MacRumors concept for colored iMacs below, there is a lot of excitement building for this announcement in particular and the event in general.
With the additional rumor of a larger size in the mix also, it’s worth tuning in on Tuesday to get the full skinny right from Apple, in real time.
Above: Still from “Why Did You Kill Me” / Photo Credit: Netflix
New and ready to stream is this true crime documentary from Netflix
Based on the 2006 murder case and the hunt for the real events that led to 24-year-old Crystal Theobald’s 2006 murder, “Why did you kill me?” intercuts footage of the family members of the victim, the detectives that were assigned to the case and the accused, alleged gang members, that were the primary suspects in the case.
The surprises comes to this otherwise standard plot and method due to the twist related to how the truth eventually begins to come to light. Surprisingly, it is Theobald’s mother, Belinda Lane, and then-teenage cousin, Jaimie McIntyre that do the sleuthing via Myspace “cat fishing” profiles that are meant to lure the possible guilty parties into divulging incriminating data.
This bold attempt by the bereaved to ferret out the killer(s) was all the more emotionally poignant due to the use of Crystal Theobald’s actual personal photos in the profiles.
Unlike recent Netflix docs like “Red Dot” and “Crime Scene” that, while extremely suspenseful, had endings that did not offer closure or resolutions. Below is the “Why Did You Kill Me?” official trailer for more:
Nomadland was added to the AP best films and National Society of Film Critics 2020, and as well as beingan Oscar contender will now be available for viewers to watch starting February 19, 2021. Movie-goers can either visit the big screen available anywhere movie theaters are open, or opt for a stay-at-home watch.
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell and Josey McNamara, Producers
Official acknowledgement of ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ is becoming more commonplace
After a viral video was shared massively across the internet, now the Pentagon has confirmed that the footage showing what appears to be UFOs is authentic. Even more significant is the fact that the pyramid-shaped unidentified flying objects were “stalking” the guided-missile destroyer USS Russell in coastal waters near California in July 2019.
In an interview with Fox News Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough said “I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force] has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations.”
“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force] has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations.
Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough
“Whoever is operating these technologies are far more advanced than anything we have in the U.S. arsenal and that should be a warning sign. We need to find out the intent of the operators of these vehicles.”
Jeremy Corbell, UFO researcher and filmmaker interviewed on Fox News
The public acknowledgment of the incident, that happened near San Clemente Island, where five different U.S. warships were operating at the time, was a required act. This is due to the new provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2021 which requires the U.S. to disclose what it knows about UFOs.
According to the provision the director of national intelligence (DNI) must work with the secretary of defense to create a comprehensive report of what information the U.S. government has regarding unidentified flying objects. The full report is due on June 1, 2021.
A highly sophisticated aerial display leaves doubt and open questions as to the origin of the objects
The incident that is seen in the footage involved unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or “drones”. In addition to the otherworldly appearance, the UFOs were observed flying around the U.S. warships for multiple hours, longer than would be possible based on the maximum flight time of most commercial drones currently known and available.
Highly coordinated and precise movements were also noted, raising the question of what methods of control were being utilized. Further questioned were raised by the calculated range of more than 100 nautical miles that would have been required, under conditions of very low visibility, that would have been required during the time elapsed during the encounters.
Though investigations have been conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard, Nave and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the mysterious UFOs and their behavior continues to perplex.
The new openness required by the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2021 is a welcome change and more details are bound to surface regarding these phenomena. Since August 2020, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) is known to be operating and putting further official resources behind the study and analysis of UFOs and other “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena”.
Unlike what they say about missing sleep, stress can build up over weeks, months even years. True to the “silent killer” moniker it can eventually kill you. After basically the entire world has been in an extra stressful situation due to covid and the economic fallout from the preventative measures taken to stop it, we all need to begin finding ways, not only to reduce the current stress levels, which are likely high, but to work off the effects of the accumulated stress that has been building for at least a year.
And that is not accounting for the “normal” stresses we all face individually in our own worlds, lives and due to our own unique problems.
Enter the practice and lifestyle benefits of yoga. Estimates of the origins of Yoga peg the beginnings at at least five thousand years and believe the practice could have been developed as long ago as ten thousand. The study of yoga goes beyond just the familiar “pretzel poses” and encompasses a way of life and philosophy that is universal.
According to the “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” (wikipedia: Sutra in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.) there are eight “limbs” to the path of yoga:
1. yama (moral restraints) – how we relate to others 2. niyama (observances) – how we relate to ourselves 3. āsana (posture) – how we relate to our body 4. prāṇāyāma (breath extension) – how we relate to our breath or spirit
5. pratyāhāra (sensory withdrawal) – how we relate to our sense organs 6. dhāraṇā (concentration) – how we relate to our mind 7. dhyāna (meditation) – moving beyond the mind 8. samādhi (meditative absorption) – deep realization and inner union (quoted from http://ashtanga-yoga-victoria.com/what-are-the-eight-8-limbs-of-yoga/)
As can be seen from the list above there are many levels of thought and action that can all coalesce to form a bulwark against stress and to improve the enjoyment of life as a whole. Wherever you begin and at whatever level your journey brings you to, any interaction with these thoughts, actions and choices can enhance your life in some way.
Even the simplest meditation or reflection on our breathing and its connection to our inner spirit can cause an instantaneous reduction in stress and psychic pain. Below we’ve put together a variety of books that could represent a first step toward discovering how yoga, in whatever level or aspect your choose to explore, can reduce stress and help you take a huge step on the road to recovery.
Descriptions are courtesy of bookshop.org and the individual publishers:
A stand alone practice companion and beautiful coffee table book, Yoga: A Manual for Lifeis for anyone interested in yoga, mindful movement and meditation, and exploring how these practices fit within the modern world.
As well as an extensive guide to poses, this book features a number of picture-led sequences with specific targets in mind: to combat stress and fatigue, to ground, to uplift, to inspire creativity and to sleep better.
These sequences are underpinned with essays on yoga’s relationship with different aspects of life, such as yoga and discipline, yoga and self-care, and yoga and difficulty.
Peppered throughout the book are mindful life hacks–simple ways to take yoga’s message of radical self-care off the mat and into daily life. Click here to see “Yoga: a Manual for Life” also available on Amazon.
Are you seeking balance, healing, and a calmer mind? Unlike active styles of yoga that focus on stretching and movement, restorative yoga emphasizes mindful rest by using props to support your body in complete comfort and relaxation–no flexibility required!
Whether you already practice yoga or are just getting started, Restorative Yoga is your step-by-step guide to deepening the connection between your body and mind. Click here to see “Restorative Yoga” also available on Amazon.
Yoga: Relaxation, Postures, Daily Routines
Click here to see “Yoga” also available on Amazon.
Yoga is a popular physical, mental, and spiritual discipline that originated in ancient India.
Various traditions of yoga can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, and in recent years Western culture has embraced yoga’s power of simplicity, stillness and mental poise.
This accessible new book focuses on a series of exercises, body motions and self-disciplines that offer the benefits of yoga to everyone.
Featuring specially commissioned practical photography, step-by-step instruction, and an introduction to the entire scope of the system of yoga. Click here to see “Yoga” also available on Amazon.
Restorative yoga offers the body a chance to rest deeply and revitalize. Whether you are feeling weak, fatigued, stressed from daily activities, or simply need to slow down and tune into your body, this wonderfully adaptive practice is essential for well being.
Many of the practices are simple and accessible for people of all ages and in all states of health, using props that are readily available–like pillows and chairs. These deeply relaxing poses help you. Click here to see “Restore and Rebalance” also available on Amazon.
Yin yoga offer remedies to the stresses of your busy yang life. Each restorative pose targets your deeper fascia and connective tissues, helping you experience increased flexibility and improved joint health.
Yin yoga also focuses on deep breathing and longer hold times, allowing you the time and space to clear your mind and enhance your mental acuity.
These meditative poses will help you attain a renewed sense of mindfulness and physical well-being, making them the perfect complement to an active yang lifestyle and helping bring you back into balance. Click here to see “Yin Yoga” also available on Amazon.
Sleep Recovery: The Five Step Yoga Solution to Restore Your Rest
Insomnia is reaching epidemic proportions: more than half of us will suffer from a sleep problem during our lifetimes.
In this practical, compassionate guide, renowned yoga teacher and sleep specialist Lisa Sanfilippo shows how to sweep out sleep saboteurs and rest wreckers, putting in place sustainable strategies that will boost your energy during the day, and help you access a good night’s rest.
As we began this article above sleep was mentioned and, in contrast to our initial statements, recovery is also possible and yoga is one way that improvement, that so many of us desperately seek, is available. We hope you enjoyed this selection of books to help combat stress and ask that you please visit us again and also our sister sites Cherrybooks and InforMinx.
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