Kids these days are anxious and incapable of "adulting" because their parents stuck them in front of screens full-time so that they'd be "safer" than Kids these days are anxious and incapable of "adulting" because their parents stuck them in front of screens full-time so that they'd be "safer" than going outdoors and possibly encountering other humans, who might (unlikely) do them harm. Instead, they have unfettered access to perverts and scammers, and relentless exposure to cyber bullies. W00t.
I feel like a reader new to Haidt would benefit from reading "The Coddling of the American Mind," and/or looking into the Let Grow movement, or other books on my Tech As Antagonist shelf. But in this book, he covers data showing how teenagedom and adolescence changed dramatically between about 2010 and 2015, when smartphones entered the market and social media apps came online, transforming the internet from a place in the corner of the living room to a place that lives in one's pocket.
Mentions social contagion theory, in the form of Dancing Sickness some centuries ago, and how it has morphed into girls having fake tics, dissociative identity disorder, gender dysphoria, and (my conjecture, not Haidt's) everyone these days self-diagnosing with autism or AuDHD. It's like the body dysmorphia and cutting that teens used to do back in the 1990s and early 2000s, when girls would post their "goal weight" on myspace and it was whatever weight would get them to a 17 BMI. We all gotta be speshul, right? And just a bit speshuler than everyone else.
Mentions how both boys and girls are experiencing fewer injuries or consequences from teenage risk taking (broken bones, pregnancies, fewer kids getting drivers licenses, etc) and also higher rates of depression among teens, and higher rates of "failing to launch" as adults.
Suggestions for improvement involve raising the legal age of "digital adulthood" to 16 from the current 13 (both easily circumvented by children who understand basic arithmetic, but hey, we tried), having schools require kids to keep their phones in locked cases ALL DAY LONG (no benefit comes from simply locking them up during class but allowing them at passing periods and lunches) and pushing for social movements to keep kids from having smartphones until 8th or 9th grade. References his work with Lenore Skenazy and the Let Grow movement and letting kids have more outdoor and move-towards-adulthood real-world experiences. Mentions how a lot of these plans are easier to execute when there are other parents also on board with the policies, like, if your kid isn't the only one not allowed on Facebook or Discord, he won't be left out from his other friends.
As an editorial note, each chapter has a fairly comprehensive summary at the end, so even if you don't feel like reading all 300 pages, it's worth a skim for today's parent. (And if you've read Haidt or Skenazy before, a fair amount of this is likely to be familiar.)...more
DNF at 75 pages because at that point we hadn't heard anything at all about American manufacturing. Author is clearly very anti free trade and pro uniDNF at 75 pages because at that point we hadn't heard anything at all about American manufacturing. Author is clearly very anti free trade and pro union, but the first 30 pages yammer on about foreign-produced shoddy goods, and then she talks about some drug addict who campaigned for Bill Bradley and John Kerry, and after more than seventy pages of loose history and opinionizing, I was tired of continuing. In fairness, I expected it to be more of a brief history of American manufacture and then some sort of documentary of trying to make textiles in the US, but I ran out of patience before she ever started the story....more
Author is in a childless same-sex relationship, and is about as in touch with the masses as Suze Orman. The book is a "change your life after doing soAuthor is in a childless same-sex relationship, and is about as in touch with the masses as Suze Orman. The book is a "change your life after doing some covid-inspired reflections on your personal goals and raison d'etre."
In the first chapter, she mentions that if you need cash for a lifestyle change, you can always consider selling your vacation home. Um. Elsewhere she talks about backdoor Roth conversions (though not in great detail), reducing your tax bill by buying a second house/apartment to use for your business and donating appreciated stock to charities, and selling your house and taking the hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity to pay off debt and buy a more modest place. Her expectation in this book is that every family has at least $150K in income, possibly rather a bit more, and that both partners are capable of earning a healthy income, or if not, that the primary breadwinner is in a high-paying industry where job opportunities are plentiful. Also, almost everyone in this book has at least a million dollars or more in real estate.
The ideas are ok, pretty basic, but it doesn't feel accessible to those of us of more modest means. (In this case, it would be anyone with a personal income of under $150K or a household income of under $200K.)...more
DNF/rapid skim at about 50% because I couldn't take the authors weird mix of progressive hand-wringing and angry cynicism any more. Even though he saiDNF/rapid skim at about 50% because I couldn't take the authors weird mix of progressive hand-wringing and angry cynicism any more. Even though he said he'd go easy on the swears, he used almost as many unnecessary ones as I do, and I'm a sailor's wife. He thinks of all relationships as transactional; and while many are, especially from people who only reach out when they want something, that's not always the case. It got tiring reading about trauma that is at least somewhat of a person's own making. --------------------
This is definitely not what I thought it would be. The author (a late bloomer) calls the pandemic "the circus" and I guess went viral for a Medium essay he published early in "the circus" about how businesses will encourage you to spend money to feel better, even as the circus goes on. (At least that's what it appeared to say, he has a paywalled Medium account and I would rather miss out on other people's bullshit than pay to see it. Maybe the book isn't targeted at me?)
The first part was the guy talking about how late-stage capitalism and the subscription model have made it really easy to forge entangling alliances with most providers of goods and services. How businesses like to slap Gay Pride flags or Breast Cancer Pink on their merchandise to entice consumers to buy more in support of [whatever cause], and that Big Brands and Big Tech and Big Media and Big Politics all work in cahoots to encourage ever more targeted consumption. A lot of this is pontificating and bloviating; there's zero neuroscience and very little other hard data or discussion with experts about anything. As I said before, I haven't read his viral essay but based on the first few chapters of this book, I can guess what he says.
Actual suggestions are as you'd expect, unsubscribe from every mailing list and social media friend, remove unneeded apps from your device, check email infrequently, etc. ...more
The book is listed as having 320 pages, but the acknowledgments begin on page 243, so not quite the formidable tome it appears.
Author's bias is clear The book is listed as having 320 pages, but the acknowledgments begin on page 243, so not quite the formidable tome it appears.
Author's bias is clear from the first few paragraphs of the "note to the reader," in that she is as mentally captive to big media and disinformation as anyone. She does care about the plight of children, but and also, she's a virtue-signaling Boomer.
The book is, admittedly, a bit of a slog and parts of it feel repetitive. Children are being marketed to by companies at an earlier and earlier age, and it's difficult to find products that aren't slapped with advertising or branding. The idea is to teach children to consume and to encourage their parents to consume. Many aspects of children's lives are curated in full or in part, by large corporations, and those corporations' decisions impact children's futures. And naturally, these are in ways that are designed to be beneficial to the corporation itself. Lots and lots of specific examples/products/marketing channels.
Issues of tech immersion aside, there are a couple of heavy virtue-signally chapters about racial bias (algorithms apparently aren't sufficiently color-blind... for example, typing "three black teenagers" into Google yields mugshots, while typing "three white teenagers" into Google yields stock photos. I tried this experiment and didn't get the same results, so YMMV) and climate change.
One thing missing was a chapter on fear as a mechanism for marketing, especially in light of covid. There was a lot of institutional terror directed towards children (and everyone else, but adults should have more discernment capabilities than children) about how "we need to stay home to keep people safe," "we need to avoid the playground to keep people safe," "summer is canceled to keep people safe," "if you go out without a mask, someone will probably die," "it's ok if you aren't doing well in virtual school; at least your grandma isn't dead." "Allowing an entire cohort of babies to grow up without seeing facial expressions is a fair tradeoff for possibly/not actually reducing covid deaths." Now, there have certainly been other childhood terrors over the decades, but none that have been so pervasively disruptive and inescapable for the modern child. And, with respect to this book, none that required such an undermining of interpersonal relationships in order to double down on technological solutions. Schools were suddenly able to provide loads of tablets or laptops for their student bodies and put children onto learning platforms that they could shirk or ignore, with scant opportunity for effective personalized instruction or interventions. [I had two children in the educational system in March 2020; the one with an IEP was absolutely neglected on that front for more than a full calendar year, the other child could not handle the virtual environment and spent the next academic year being homeschooled.] Virtual school was such a pain for everyone and the learning loss from that timeframe will prove to be the most harmful "long covid" in our society. But I'm off-topic. That wasn't in the book.
Author suggests that government can fix this problem! Campaign finance reform would help, as would updating whatever minimal legislation is in place to protect children (COPPA is the original-and-woefully-outdated law that currently exists) and other general legislation to protect privacy. Honestly, no. Nope. When the government is clearly in bed with every single big business, it will not pass effective legislation to rein in big business, nor will it provide any enforcement for whatever laws are passed (the text of which will be overseen if not explicitly written by members of the industry). She also supports grassroots movements and finding like-minded advocates to affect changes at the school district level, for example.
Last of all, she does have a chapter on how parents can reduce their own and their children's exposure to relentless brand exposure and technology. Most of it is pretty boilerplate (keep kids away from screens as long as reasonable) but with some annoying disclaimers (but yeah, if you give them unlimited screentime they might be okay anyway. Probably. Some English study said they would be). ...more
It's short, anyway. The book is like 175 pages with ten ways to improve "brain fog," most of which feel like they're missing something, or are obviousIt's short, anyway. The book is like 175 pages with ten ways to improve "brain fog," most of which feel like they're missing something, or are obvious but incomplete. For example, the "adopt healthy habits" chapter is like "take a break from alcohol, nicotine and caffeine, eat healthy food, get adequate sleep, but not too much, and exercise." Some are a bit more detailed. There's not a lot of strenuous scientific research stuck at the end to pad the length....more
Another blogger (TikToker?) who tried to write a book. There are a number of sentences that are strangely phrased, to the point that I had to read theAnother blogger (TikToker?) who tried to write a book. There are a number of sentences that are strangely phrased, to the point that I had to read them 3 or 4 times to figure them out. Lots of really short chapters (41 in a 150 page book) and illustrations, such that you could read this in an hour or two. She also has "skip to chapter x" at the ends of some of the chapters if you're pressed for time or simply don't give a shit.
A friend recommended this book because it adjusted her mindset about household tasks, but it didn't really work for me. Author says housekeeping doesn't matter, and you're not a bad person if you cannot manage to keep a clean house, and laziness does not exist, but I have to disagree to an extent. It is not ok to live in squalor if there are other people/animals who must live with you in said squalor and who aren't capable of tackling it themselves. It's also not ok to subject housemates to your mess without an expectation that they'll deal with it. In the first chapters, I had flashbacks to an old roommate who used to dirty up the kitchen (sinks and counters piled with dirty dishes) and the bathroom (clogged toilet, puddles on the floor, makeup all over the vanity) and then leave. I cannot agree with the author that that behavior was "morally neutral." It caused a lot of resentment when I had to wash a half-dozen of her dishes before I had counter space to cook dinner.
Author recommends staging laundry baskets all around the house to make laundry easier. I don't see how this helps. Maybe one laundry basket per level, or a laundry basket in the baby's room, or a laundry basket outside each bathroom, but a laundry basket in the living room? I mean, it's creating more clutter and making it harder to wrangle the laundry to actually do it. (There are a lot of other chores like this, where we add a bunch of unnecessary steps before actually doing a task that isn't that bad, like organizing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher... no wonder this author is out of spoons... double meaning intended.) I agree that folding certain clothing items is overrated, and tasks like sock matching can be skipped if you get a bunch of identical ones, and if clothing is washed in cold water, sorting doesn't matter. I don't agree that it's ok to just dump unsorted clean clothing into a pile on the floor and let people dig out what they need as they need it. Also, she makes oddball suggestions like adding a handful of dirty dishes to a clean dishwasher and running it again instead of emptying it first. Maybe she could more effectively clean the kitchen if she'd actually use the dishwasher as intended instead of as wet storage for things she's too lazy to put away.
Author acknowledges that virtue signaling is an optional behavior that may be omitted in times of stress.
This book is written very much from the privileged perspective of someone who doesn't need to work to support a family and seems to have little awareness that a working world exists. She makes passing mention of people who have to work all the time and can't luxuriate in doing nothing, and also passing mention of people who don't have children and therefore can't use them as an excuse for failing to manage household tasks. She doesn't seem to be able to relate to either of those groups, nor does she relate to people with older children (hint: they're capable of doing chores!) or any other family setup that doesn't involve diapers.
There are a couple of useless chapters, like the one where she says, "yeah, I don't know how to keep my car clean." [My two tips: 1) absolutely nobody eats in the car, and 2) toss trash/receipts when you get gasoline. Unless you literally live in your car, there shouldn't be lots of junk in there anyway.] And the chapter where she says "Exercise sucks" and includes a list of times she moved her body and enjoyed it. And the chapter where she complained about someone commenting on a Tiktok video saying that she's fat. Each of those chapters could easily be excised from the book.
Honestly, the most useful part of the entire book for me was the appendix where she summarizes several different approaches to laundry/dishes/ and cleaning. And my own (admittedly controversial) observation that if you struggled with postpartum depression after having your first child, you should not have any more. ...more
Complete garbage, but an easy read. Implausible piles upon implausible, and also all of the main characters are utterly repulsive. I sort of hoped theComplete garbage, but an easy read. Implausible piles upon implausible, and also all of the main characters are utterly repulsive. I sort of hoped they'd collectively meet a gruesome fate, and feel like the "ever after" is not going to be so great for the ones who came back down from the mountain.
I read this for a new book club, and as far as first impressions go based on book choice, this one isn't that great. ...more
I'm not sure if I like this book more or less than Glow Kids, which I read a mere month ago. It feels a lot more jumbled and internally redundant. I rI'm not sure if I like this book more or less than Glow Kids, which I read a mere month ago. It feels a lot more jumbled and internally redundant. I really can't figure out the author's purpose (maybe to encourage people to find an inner sense of purpose?).
There is a lot of alarmism, a lot of editorializing (some of which I agreed with and some of which I did not), a fair amount of neuroscience and a bit more "personal history" than I personally cared to read about. A chapter that veers into gossip territory about the motivations of Zuck/Gates/Bezos, and not too much of a call for action. The upshot is that people will be miserable without a sense of inner purpose, and social media does not provide that. Also, a strong local community is necessary for mental health, but the current push to have everything online erodes that necessary physical closeness. He tears into the mental health industry, that therapists like to pathologize everything and insist that a person cannot get better without a therapist, who is a "paid friend" at best and a "paid rat" at worst. Not sure that I agree with that entirely, but do believe that "trauma" is a bit oversold in the mental health world these days (as is "gender dysphoria" and "neurodivergence," but I digress).
His actionable suggestions are basically to become a philosopher/warrior/artist in order to internally fortify yourself, which kind of reminds me of Cal Newport's suggestions in "Digital Minimalism." I suppose he also suggested not using social media, or using less of it, but no real actionable suggestions about like, breaking up tech corps or guidance on how to recreate local community or groups that exist outside of the internet sphere. No suggestions on how to improve the ethics of creating technology products or harvesting raw materials, or now to recycle outdated equipment (though in fairness, some of that is beyond the scope of this book)....more
I'm conflicted. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 but only because of her not-often-seen section on negotiating salary and benefits package. Be advised, thereI'm conflicted. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 but only because of her not-often-seen section on negotiating salary and benefits package. Be advised, there are a lot of curse words in this book, enough of them that they lose their punch and just get annoying.
Privileged white woman bitching about how much easier white men have it. Yawn. She reminds me of Rachel Hollis and those twins that wrote Burnout, and neither comparison is flattering.
She references Dave Ramsey stylized as "D*ve R*msey," like he's a cultural taboo, which might be overselling him a bit. He is, of course, a relentless salesman, as is Suze Orman (whom the author also references), but Dunlap herself doesn't seem a whole lot different. While bashing capitalism and exploitative and unsustainable, she repeatedly mentions her seven figure business, her app, her online courses, and basically the same shit that Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman reliably shill in their books and other broadcasts. She brands herself as a "personal finance expert," but if she has any actual credentials, she never mentions them, and as someone who was, some years ago, an Accredited Financial Counselor (with the oath and the fee and the ethics and continuing education classes) I really hate to see some random chick from Seattle calling herself an expert because she managed to tuck away some money into a 401k. It's like some random insurance saleswoman with Oprah's endorsement or a failed real estate investor calling themselves experts.
But onto the book. I should be reviewing the book.
Anyway, she first discusses the psychological relationship women have with money, and points out that female financial advice is geared towards shaming women for spending, whereas advice for men is geared towards investing. (This might be true for magazine articles, but I've rarely read a personal finance book that is specifically geared towards men or women. And most of the female-geared books have been written by women, so I'm not seeing buckets of patriarchy there.) She mentions choosing areas of personal values to target your spending, not unlike Ramit Sethi's "money dials," though she doesn't describe them as fully as he does.
There are a lot of sidebars written by other people, mostly either women, people of color, or gay couples, and some of those were more helpful or enlightening than what Dunlap herself wrote. The woman recounting her time working for Victoria's Secret and being expected to push the Angel Card on every single customer brought back memories. And there were other stories about people getting in debt in order to impress others, or people being exploited because of a failure to define or exercise their personal boundaries (I was annoyed at the one woman who used covid-phobia as an excuse to work from home instead of finding another job away from her toxic workplace).
She mentions a three-bucket system of budgeting (one for essentials, one for savings, one for all non-essential spending) which seems good enough but she doesn't explain how to track it very well, so I was confused, especially since a lot of the essential expenses can vary a bit (groceries, energy bills, gasoline).
One thing I did get annoyed with was the tendency to play the victim card, like, how women *have* to spend loads of money to look attractive, buy makeup, hair care, and fashionable clothes, and included the specific case of how she had to shell out thousands of dollars on hair and makeup and lighting and shoes(??) for the cover shoot for her book. It reminded me of Rachel Hollis whining about how a woman has to look her best to feel her best, but it costs as much as a small car to look her best. Yup. Dunlap leans into how much worse this is for women of color because of institutional racism against Black hair (except the bias is strongest by white women. Damn that patriarchy!). Also the idea that a person's earnings are the one aspect of their financial lives that are least in their control because of systemic oppression. Not sure I buy that, but this is the one section of the book where she talks about tweaking work skills to fit a job listing, and how to negotiate for a worthwhile compensation package. She also points out that the interview process should be a two-way communication, where you are interviewing the company as much as they're interviewing you, and that's an important idea too often overlooked.
Also, I don't think this book is marketed to a low-income or low-skill readership. She indicates it's suitable for all women, but I'm not convinced. I think it's intended for women who have at least some college. There's precious little about people who are actually struggling due to language barriers, or limited education, or being a single parent. There's also the assumption that you have a 401K or would be making enough to tuck money into a 401K. And there is zero mention of marriage, children, or how/why/that you should protect at least some of your finances from a domestic partner.
Bottom line: Check the section on job hunting and negotiating, but otherwise, the actual personal finance stuff is pretty boilerplate. ...more
3.5. This is a coffee table book that is 250 pages long or so, comprised of photos of the covid pandemic and of the various protests and marches that 3.5. This is a coffee table book that is 250 pages long or so, comprised of photos of the covid pandemic and of the various protests and marches that occurred during that same year (and actually began in 2019 in some cases, such as Hong Kong, Iraq, and Lebanon). The photos were taken by handful of different photojournalists located in different countries. The curators intended for this book to be sort of a "time capsule" of the pandemic year, and I suppose it fits the bill. It didn't seem like there were many photos in Western Europe aside from the UK, in Eastern Asia or in Africa, but Central/South America, SE Asia, and the greater Middle East were beautifully represented. ...more
This book started out with great promise, but after 250 pages or so I found that I'd lost the plot entirely (as had the author) and got to the end notThis book started out with great promise, but after 250 pages or so I found that I'd lost the plot entirely (as had the author) and got to the end not caring about the ghost in the store and not caring about the other various minor tragedies that happened to any of the characters. I started to wonder what would had happened if she'd written the book a year or two earlier, or if the political events of 2020 Minneapolis had happened in, say, Chicago instead. Author throws in a long digressive recount of the police brutality and riots and it didn't fit with the narrative flow at all, and kind of reminded me of the book-within-a-book section of 1984 that I dislike so much.
If you're reading the book (in hardback) for the ghost plot, skip from page 235-285, and if you're reading the book as an anthology of current events, read from about page 200-290 and skip the rest. In the way back, she does include a list of topical books and reading recommendations. ...more
BLUF: Ugh. Some of what the author said was good, but his ultimate Privileged Western Liberal conclusions (view spoiler)[ specifically: abolish "surveBLUF: Ugh. Some of what the author said was good, but his ultimate Privileged Western Liberal conclusions (view spoiler)[ specifically: abolish "surveillance capitalism" and the need to focus all our resources on climate change (hide spoiler)] made a complete mockery of his earlier efforts.
Last Saturday, the internet crapped out at my house, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to start reading this book without the distraction of web or television, but then the kids started bothering me, because they lacked the diversions of web or television. And it was storming outside, so no playing outdoors. So I didn't get much beyond the introduction until Monday, long after the internet had been restored. This may or may not underscore the author's positions. It may also indicate that this book is neither compelling nor cohesive.
This is a book that was probably begun in 2018, if not earlier, and has become oddly quaint in light of covid and long term work-from-home. As a full-time SAHM since 2009, books suggesting time for Deep Focus or cutting out all distractions so you can work without interruption just smack of privilege, somehow. And yes, after more than a decade of being continuously interrupted, myself, it's *hard* to find a flow state.
That said, this book actually reads in a pretty disjointed manner (good because I never got a block of time lasting more than maybe 15-20 minutes at a shot to read it before being interrupted by a text or a child or a doorbell or a sunset), which is reader-friendly but doesn't especially lend itself to deeply pondering Hari's insights. Then again, he actually jumps all over the place, from neuroscience to flow to tech companies to sleep to lifestyle and society in general to his own three-month digital fast and there's not really an underlying theme other than "we've gotta spend less time staring at screens." Because climate change.
He thinks that tech companies should either operate on a subscription model (as this would remove the incentive for them to collect your data... one of Jaron Lanier's talking points that doesn't hold up) or become a "public good," both of which are fairly non-viable ideas. Thinks we need to unite to form a movement to rein in social media and tech company overreach.... which, ok, but how would we share information about this idea? Facebook? Twitter? Gmail? Possibly you can see the problem here.
There are a couple of really wacky ideas in here that are probably offensive, like that children who suffer from ADHD are often being traumatized or abused at home, and need therapy or state intervention instead of Ritalin. Or that a universal basic income (a la Andrew Yang) to cover necessities will reduce the stress of families whose financial situation is tenuous, because nobody ever misspends their income. Later on, he doubles down on the ADHD thing, devoting an entire chapter to it and ultimately concluding that ADHD is primarily caused by environment, and parents hugely shape their children's environment. And this somehow segues into climate change alarmism, and mandating electric vehicles, and reducing coal mining/use (please tell me how you're going to power those electric vehicles tho), and I couldn't help but think back to all the unnecessary trips this London-based author made in a pre-covid world (Provincetown, Memphis, California, St Louis, Toronto, Moscow, Australia, New York, and Boston, and I'm probably forgetting one or two). Author actually caught covid on one of those trips, so carbon hypocrisy aside, he's a disease vector, too.
Big chapter on the Free Range parenting and unschooling movements, and that hyper-curated children struggle greatly with creativity, focus, and other life skills. This isn't news to me, but for up and coming parents, there are useful insights here.
Author got covid early in the pandemic, and late in the writing of this book, and while he'd made some strides to improve his attention and work performance, the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions caused him to completely backslide in his behaviors, partly due to stress, and partly due to a lack of alternatives (what can you do when you're not allowed to go anywhere, meet with anyone, or do anything? Stare at screens and worry). His takeaways from his research feel a bit shoe-horned and not a little alarmist.
Personally, I think the algorithms that cause so much trouble in our lives are fast approaching peak inconvenience. Last fall I was locked out of my FB account multiple times for supposedly "violating community policies" in a neighborhood FB group, where I'd made such audacious posts as "if you're missing your Halloween decoration [photo], it blew into my yard." Easily enough overcome by speaking to neighbors in person and collecting their telephone numbers. More recently I was locked out again by making a long thread on my own FB page where I'd post my daily wordle result. Only a wacked-out algorithm would determine a daily comment on a post on MY OWN PAGE to be problematic enough to require a lockout. Several other friends have gone to "FB jail" for similarly arbitrary and capricious reasons, and there isn't a speedy appeal process, so it's easier to just avoid the platform, and in fact, over the past several months, FB usage has been dropping off noticeably, leading to a drop of over $200B in valuation in early February 2022. I've been getting a The Machine Stops vibe from Facebook over the past six months or so, and folks would do well to remember that they are still perfectly capable of an existence above the surface of the earth (or their screens, whatever)....more
Ow. With his other books, Lewis usually weaves a tapestry of a story of heroic underlings. This one felt disjointed, and he clearly had a thing for thOw. With his other books, Lewis usually weaves a tapestry of a story of heroic underlings. This one felt disjointed, and he clearly had a thing for the California health director who happened to also be a hot, young, and assertive blonde. There were other guys he mentioned too, who popped into the narrative here and there, but the timeline was not consistent, and by the time I got to the end I was more baffled than amazed.
There was also a lot of finger pointing. At Trump. At the CDC. At other various bureaucrats who stayed in their lane (he's particularly unkind to the woman who was the blonde's boss in the California Department of Health). The common observation: turds float. Same as in many of his other books.
I think he's trying to illustrate that there is *not* a public health infrastructure in the US, and that most people who are nominally in a position of marshaling public health on the state or national level are dull, risk-averse bureaucrats. This was mostly not-about covid, and had this pandemic not begun, he probably would not have written this particular book. ...more
3.5 stars This started out good, but got bogged down towards the middle, after the big die-off. The multiple first-person perspectives was an interesti3.5 stars This started out good, but got bogged down towards the middle, after the big die-off. The multiple first-person perspectives was an interesting approach to a book like this, and probably the best one, but a lot of the voices sounded similar and there were several times late in the book where I had to flip back because I forgot who Dawn or Elizabeth or Lisa were.
It's such crazy timing that she wrote a book about a pandemic shortly before an actual pandemic, and it looks like some of the actual covid stuff was incorporated into the book, distancing and quarantines and whatnot. Her pandemic was far more deadly, but all things considered, it didn't sound as catastrophic as it could have been. I think she did a good job in using her imagination in figuring out how things would play out. But one thing she totally omitted, and to me this was pretty stark, was what happened to the British Monarchy? The story is set in 2025, so I assume Elizabeth will no longer be running things, but would Charles and/or William succumb? Would little Charlotte become the next monarch? Would the monarchy be abolished altogether? She alludes to Scottish independence, but nothing as to the fate of the Crown....more
This book was a lot more slapdash-feeling than I thought it would be. I don't have the impression that the author really understands this topic well. This book was a lot more slapdash-feeling than I thought it would be. I don't have the impression that the author really understands this topic well. Not so much the idea of "housing alternatives" but the reality of actually implementing those alternatives. The things she discusses are absolutely NOT affordable alternatives to the current housing situation. A co-living situation (basically a glorified college dorm setup with studio apartments and shared meeting spaces) is still almost as expensive as a standard apartment, even if there are more amenities. Think of it as a very pricey boarding house. From looking at the websites and Google Reviews of the ones she mentions in this book, it sounds like they're mainly occupied by foreign nationals/international students who don't have a credit score and can't get a long-term lease.
Tiny Houses and ADUs (accessory dwelling units) are glorified backyard trailers/electrified sheds, but they cost as much to build as actual houses or RVs, and she doesn't even mention the challenges of hooking them up to the utility systems (do you use a tank? run a PVC pipe between the ADU and the house for fresh and blackwater? does it need to hook directly to the sewer itself? is usage submetered from the main house? would you run a gas line or have a propane tank, or keep it to electric-only?). Additionally, she touches on the reality that a lot of people who add ADUs to their properties either use them as a place to keep Granny or as an AirB&B unit, neither of which makes a dent in actual housing shortages. And she mentions garage conversions, but not the problems of 1) the garage being rendered useless for its intended purpose and 2) the extra automotive clutter of having a tenant who likely needs a car as well as the resident. Those of us who live in suburban wastelands understand that vehicles are unsightly, prime targets for theft, and yet necessary for survival because there are absolutely no public transit options.
She discusses intergenerational housing, which is a good idea if the family members are respectful of one another's boundaries, but most of the solutions still require more than one income earner and/or high-dollar renovation projects.
She doesn't seem to look at existing housing stock (how you can subdivide these ridiculous 3400 square feet barns that have been built in the past 20 years) or other higher-density solutions that exist already, even with their faults (townhouses/rowhouses, apartment complexes, etc), or dividing existing suburban 10000 square foot lots into two smaller lots that can accommodate something like 2-bedroom bungalows for empty-nesters. She mentions underutilized spaces in houses, but doesn't touch on the sheer amount of possessions that most people acquire.
Also, there really isn't much discussion about housing that is objectively affordable. She makes scant mention of a short-lived public housing project in St Louis (Pruitt-Igoe, similar to Chicago's Cabrini Green) but doesn't explore the shortcomings of such projects or why and how they became such spectacular failures. These insights would be very useful since there are plenty of successful urban apartments and other high-density housing that don't have the horrendous connotations of The Projects. She spends a paragraph or two discussing modular housing in India, but doesn't investigate housing standards in other parts of the world, other than to say things like "in Singapore, the government will give you a subsidy if you live within 1KM of an elderly relative." Singapore is also 725 sq km, smaller than the five boroughs of NYC.
And she doesn't look at zoning with respect to mixed-use spaces. I live in a suburban wasteland 20 miles from Washington, DC where a car is essential, because the nearest grocery store is over a mile away, the library and closest medical professionals are 1.8 miles away, the train station where you can ride into DC is 4 miles away, and the nearest Emergency Room is 6 miles away. Other than the occasional enterprising Uber driver, there aren't any taxis or buses to get you from place to place, so everyone, including the tenant in your illegal basement apartment, needs a car, and a place to store the car when it's not in use. That's a problem that isn't even hinted at in this book. I realize that it's not a book about public transit, but there's not much point in increasing housing density without also accounting for traffic density/alternatives and having something like a cold store or bodega within walking distance of most houses like they do in urban areas. You can't create urban densities without urban amenities....more
4.5. I'd give it five stars but I'm not sure how well it will age.
Almost exactly a year ago I read Hate, Inc, which has similar themes to this book b4.5. I'd give it five stars but I'm not sure how well it will age.
Almost exactly a year ago I read Hate, Inc, which has similar themes to this book but came from the left. Gutfeld is far more optimistic than Taibbi is, but there's some chilling stuff here. Gutfeld had written this manuscript prior to the covid-19 pandemic but his foreword was written in April 2020, when we were all (in some cases, reluctantly but gamely) hunkered down for weeks 3-6 of "two weeks to flatten the curve" and Gutfeld was feeling the unity.
How things have reverted to the norm, even in the midst of continued social distancing. I had to put on a sweater to get through Chapter 5, the one about cancel culture, because parts of it were positively chilling. (As I write this, the Dems have sharply turned on Emmy Winner and Time Magazine's 2020 "Person of the Year" nominee Andrew Cuomo, because you can sexually assault women or you can kill old people, but apparently doing both is a bridge too far. --Sorry, channeling Gutfeld there. I'm a method reader.)
Anyway, the main theme of the book is to contribute to the world in a positive way (the plus), and don't be a minus. Suggestions include things like avoid the mob, avoid social media (same thing), avoid the fallacy that every issue must have exactly two positions (Taibbi says the same thing in his book) and don't put yourself into one ideological camp, and don't get offended. He points out that Trump was iconoclastic in that he broke the stereotype of the Republican politician who never fights back, and also that Trump presided over a period of peace, which has allowed our current wild discourse.
Gutfeld recommends humor as a cure, and avoiding mimesis (don't do what everyone else does!). Also to avoid becoming part of a group or ideology that will inevitably turn on you and destroy you (hey there, Cuomo)....more
**I don't know what the heck, the book I'm actually reading is 325 pages long, but the longest version on Goodreads is 208 pages, so my measured progr**I don't know what the heck, the book I'm actually reading is 325 pages long, but the longest version on Goodreads is 208 pages, so my measured progress is way off, and page guide marks are useless in this review.**
I read the first 150 pages of this book and skimmed the second ~150 pages, because after 150 pages I still could not figure out the author's purpose. It was a perfect read for Festivus, because it's a 300-page Airing of Grievances. And it's perfect for illustrating logical fallacies, like post hoc ergo propter hoc and the non-sequitur argument.
I can't even figure out what her central argument is, if she has one. Some of the time it's a generational screed, sometimes it's a partisan screed, and there is a lot of blaming the Boomers for Ronald Reagan. However. Reagan was elected in 1980, when the Boomers were between age 16 and 34. I can't find age-based demographic turnout for the 1980 election (though even by attempting to do so I've put more effort into research than this author did), but I daresay Boomers were *not* responsible for the election of Reagan, nor were they responsible for many (if any) policy decisions that came out of the Reagan administration, because they were younger than the author currently is. Should she be blamed for Trump? Should Millennials be blamed for 9-11 because 3 of the 19 hijackers fit in the Millennial cohort? (Yes, neither of those assertions makes sense, but they fit well in the logical wasteland that is this book. Climate change should also be the fault of globe-trotting, carbon-spewing, selfie-taking and natural-wonder-destroying Millennials, though the author blames climate change apathy on You-Know-Who.)
Social media, while invented largely by Xennials and Millennial entrepreneurs, has made it hard for Millennials to connect and form deep relationships with others. We're getting married later, having less sex (probably on account of living with the 'rents until age 30) and with fewer partners, and consuming a lot of pornography. Marriage is becoming a class-based institution, with wealthy/educated Millennials marrying at higher rates than poorer/less-educated ones. Millennial women have fewer children than they want but (at least among wealthy people), both parents are more involved in children's lives than in earlier generations. Does not explore this particular issue through a racial lens. Boomers lived during the Civil Rights era but weren't responsible for it; they were too young, and were probably sitting in front of the Boob Tube. Same with second-wave feminism.
Citations are lacking. There are no end notes, and the in-text citations vary from "A study by [some university] said..." to "according to [highly-partisan think tank]..." to conjecture that is pulled out of thin air and masquerading as fact, as near as I can tell. There also seems to be an over-reliance on anecdotal evidence, from some friend whose [Boomer] parents overextended themselves and then lost their house and her college fund in the 2008 downturn, to a woman who moved to Montana to farm yaks and couldn't believe that the weather varied from year to year. (Perhaps she'd never read Steinbeck or Laura Ingalls Wilder?)
There are charts in this book, but they're either flatly wrong or visually confusing. There's one that compares the average number of sexual partners for Boomers (11) vs Millennials (8), but the chart shows 11 condom wrappers for the Boomer and 6 for the Millennial. Others are rendered similarly to this ridiculous Average Women's Heights chart. Honestly, it seems like most if not all of this book was written in the first few months after Covid-19 hit, and it shows. (See progress notes for issues I haven't bothered to retype for this review.)
Author's conclusion is that Boomers should give Millennials a seat at the table, and maybe Millennials and Gen Z should stop saying "OK Boomer," though that's our only recourse since the old folk hold so much power....more
Full disclosure: I didn't read the whole book, just the chapters about movies I've seen in entirety, which was about half of them. For a few, I felt lFull disclosure: I didn't read the whole book, just the chapters about movies I've seen in entirety, which was about half of them. For a few, I felt like she tried too hard to be funny. Then I got to her review of The Notebook. Do you remember the episode of Seinfeld where all of Elaine's friends love "The English Patient" and she doesn't get why, and then she's socially ostracized? That's me and The Notebook. I remember back in 2005 or so when every girl made her social media avatar a picture of McAdams and Gosling, and then I saw the movie and was like, "WTF is this crap and what was their relationship based on?" And everyone told me how I "just didn't get it." Apparently Lindy missed the message too, if there was one to miss.
There were a couple of other hilarious reviews too....more