8 Posts found for source_day: 8

Over and over, people would overestimate the degree of control they had over events — smart people, people who excelled at many things, people who should have known better… The more they overestimated their own skill relative to luck, the less they learned from what the environment was trying to tell them, and the worse their decisions became… The illusion of control is what prevented … [ Read more ]

Authors: Maria Konnikova, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 8, 2020) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Math & Science, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And it’s as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance.

[…]

Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.

[…]

We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: … [ Read more ]

Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic (June 8, 2019) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Literature | Arts, Politics & Public Policy

Humans suck. We are impossible to please.
We have so many conflicting needs and desires, it’s a marvel that we can
even wipe the correct ass.

I’ve long written about how humans evolved to be constantly dissatisfied in some way. I’ve written about how, in life, it’s impossible to escape suffering. In fact, in one of the most popular sections of my … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Manson | Subjects: Happiness, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

You may be happy to learn that even though they are a political nightmare to pull off, U.S. tax overhauls have happened on a schedule — like clockwork, and the timer happens to go off again next year. Given that history and necessity are about to collide, Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid got curious about what tried-and-true solutions America could implement to make that next … [ Read more ]

Author: T.R. Reid | Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (September 8, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Taxation

The Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie once observed that there are “two Americas” — one at home and one abroad. The first is the America of Hollywood, work-in-progress democracy, civil rights movements and Ellis Island. The second is the America of coups and occupations, military dictators and CIA plots, economic meddling and contempt for foreign cultures. The rest of the world knows both Americas. But as … [ Read more ]

Author: Suzy Hansen | Source: The Washington Post (September 8, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

[Tim] Ferriss distinguishes between two kinds of secrets — those we keep because we fear fleeting mortification, like accounts of embarrassing things we’ve done in sub-optimal moments, and dark secrets that paralyze us with deep shame, “the shadows we keep covered for fear of unraveling our lives.”

[…]‌

“It’s easy to blow things out of proportion, to get lost in the story you tell yourself, and to … [ Read more ]

Authors: Maria Popova, Tim Ferriss | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (December 8, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?

I’d argue that we face … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: National Review (June 8, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul – and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does.

Author: Suzy Hansen | Source: The Guardian (August 8, 2017) | Subjects: America, Culture, Demographics, Excerpts, International, Life & Society, Race Relations, Sociology | Anthropology