The best Sociology books: crowd reviews

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In terms of war, corruption, oppression, unnecessary deaths, and overall human well-being, this is by far the best time to be alive in human history.

It’s really not even close.

For those that are actually interested:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250107814/ref=cm_sw_r_oth_api_i_ujXXDbDQ5PDWJ

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143111388/ref=cm_sw_r_oth_api_i_0nXXDbKSSRGA7

You’re not wrong. Even in developing countries it’s better than at any time in history. Check out the book Factfullness if you like to read. It’s pretty amazing.

> people get thrown in jail for unpaid fines/fees and other minor violations in 13 states,

So is this a space where we can discuss the excellent book The New Jim Crow because it seems highly relevant.

I recommend reading "The Millionaire Next Door", it goes it to more detail about the spending/saving/investing habits of the ~~average~~ most millionaires in America. Living in a culture that prioritizes spending it's not surprising those who do the best financially go against the grain, and are also frowned upon.

For a deeper understanding of the War on Drugs as it pertains to the U.S. putting more of its citizens in prison than any other nation: The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.

> "Collectively, the world is more stressed, worried, sad and in pain today than we've ever seen it,"

I would contend that this statement from the article is contentious. Was the world less stressed during the major wars that have plagued it? What about the cold war?

Here are multiple counterexamples of things going better: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814

Scroll down and have a look at the graphs

Lastly, this is a short time-span. Movement upwards could simply be regression toward/away from the mean

If you want to understand the thinking behind this, I highly recommend reading the book that Bill Gates just gifted to every person graduating college this year: Factfulness https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814

In fact, I recommend reading it anyway, if for no other reason than for the good tips on improving your critical thinking skills.

I’ve got politics, and almost only politics, on my mind. This is the last weekend before midterm elections on Tuesday. I am feeling a little freaked out.

I think many people are placing all of their hope on a blue wave. I know I am! But I’m worried we’ve been lulled into this false sense of security about how realistic a blue wave is. When in reality, voter suppression and gerrymandering and general lack of political involvement is going to make it REALLY hard for progressive candidates to actually win.

I think it’s really important to spread the word about voting, but merely telling people to vote can quickly turn into gaslighting for minorities (see: voter suppression, gerrymandering). A lot of people are touting the old sentiment that if you don’t vote you can’t complain, which totally glosses over the fact that for a lot of people, it’s really hard to vote. Progressive candidates are often working for those minority groups that face high levels of voter suppression, so I’m worried... We need the votes of the people that have a difficult time voting.

I really encourage everyone to take some active steps this weekend to engage in the election. I signed up to phonebank. I hate talking on the phone but it’s too important to sit back and let others do the work, so I’m making calls on behalf of Beto all day Saturday. If anyone else wants to take action, I suggest connecting with indivisible. I’m a person who posts political articles and memes on social media but is otherwise kind of quiet about politics... but moving into the last few days of the election, that feels like it is nowhere near enough.

Also I am currently reading this book and omg, I want every white person I know to read it. I am learning so much.

The Bell Curve should be required reading at every single university. Universities should lose federal funding if they don't require it and test to ensure people have read it.

Yep. Way more than you ever wanted to know about why free parking is bad here: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

Brief overview of book here: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.html

A reply to the down-votes you are getting for stating a fact:

It is distressing in particular that many people refuse to acknowledge that over 50% of murders in the US are committed by the black minority (around 13%), as if it were some kind of embarrassing chronic racial failing instead of a consequence of lack of education and the breakdown of the family dynamic - and other issues. On a related note, how ironic is it that black Americans were growing richer as a group from the 1930's until momentum slowed dramatically in the 1960's - after the civil rights era? (Am reading black scholar Thomas Sowell's book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals")

We cannot fix the problem by pretending that our reality is only racist hate-speak. This willful ignorance I find rather terrifying because it is being manifested with such vehement, unreasoning anger.

I spent this last January in the Dominican Republic which is largely black and mixed race. Was great to be around black people who felt free to just be people and without all the silent undercurrents of fear, resentment and blame that we have in the states. The Dominicans I met live in the now, take you at face value, and were just wonderful people: cheerful, kind, hugely family oriented and as a group, amazingly good looking. But they are incredibly poor. I really don't know how they do it; they were inspiring.

Edit: Excellent series of essays on origins and ramifications of southern and northern, black and white cultures, plus more:Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

>>The jets and all that other crap seem like a better value renting. > >Huh? $3 million in total wealth isn't much, especially for that. Please, don't do that. I strongly recommend that you read The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy.

Yeah, that bit made me laugh. $3m isn't even remotely close to private jet territory. Try $300m. Lol

Most people that receive a large windfall like this do not fare well OP. At all. Be extremely careful with this money and do not tell anybody. Check out the "Windfall" section in the /r/personalfinance wiki. Also check out /r/fire and /r/fatFIRE.

>Indulge me in the systemic injustices of the black community from the last 40-50 years after the civil rights movement ?

There are entire books you can read about this. Here's one: https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431

​

And then the rest of your post is just taking your incorrect premise and running with it.

Dude, hate to break it, but high school never ends.

Wait 'till you get in the workplace.

But MGTOW gives you power.

Also read 48 Laws of Power. Lots of good advice.

I do think it's wrong for you to not stop. I don't think it's wrong for you to NOT want to stop. You made the commitment to marriage and that comes first. I was married in a poly/open/sharing relationship for 16 years and the only way it works is if you put the primary partner first.

Now if you have grown and change and now want to be/stay poly, you need to talk about it. But before you go into the conversation flip it 100%. He's met an awesome attractive younger girl, built like she walked out of dreams and he's loving every minute he's spending with her to the point of making excuses so he can.

How would you feel? more so, if he continued behind your back how would you feel? Using "You wanted this now I like it" is a bit of a cop out excuse. Don't throw the fact that he shared and encouraged a fantasy with you to shame him. You will start to build up the walls of communication between you if you do as well as resentment. This will turn into a quid pro quo situation of "well I let you do X so you HAVE to let me do Y " that is not healthy.

Empathy and understanding are really critical in this kinda relationship.

I would recommend reading The Ethical Slut ( https://smile.amazon.com/Ethical-Slut-Practical-Relationships-Adventures/dp/1587613379 )

I'd highly recommend the High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup (RIP) on this subject. Great, pioneering book about how we fail to deal with the huge externalities of personal automobiles.

There's actually a decent amount of Academia dedicated to figuring out how the Irish transitioned from identifiable ethnic minority to other white people. The most famous example is about how the Irish came to become oppressors, which is oF cOuRsE synonymous with white.

But the most profound way in which they became what was... they assimilated.

> Colton said he didn't view it racially

Using racially charged terms and then saying, "No, I didn't mean it in a racist way," is the hallmark of racists (SEE: Donald Trump). No one self-identifies as a racist. They see their views as justified because they aren't against a particular race; they're against crime, poverty, drugs, etc. The main problem is, they overlook that behavior in the majority groups they belong to. White frat boys doing coke at a college party are just kids having fun, but black people doing crack in a poor neighborhood are violent criminals. Colton wouldn't have labeled a struggling white stand-up comedian as ghetto, so let's stop pretending like him calling Bill ghetto isn't racist.

tl;dr Colton is a racist.

EDIT: If anyone's interested in looking into this topic more, The New Jim Crow is a great book about how racism has evolved since the days of "Whites Only" water fountains and segregated schools.

I try to shut off the hysterics as much as possible. NEVER watch tv news and especially none of the dedicated news channels.

Also read and think about things like this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814/

Recently I got a very interesting book called White Fragility by Robin D'Angelo. Now I do not live in the US, but I was horribly surprised how many points this book raises applied directly to me.

There is a seedy underbelly within the federal prison system and this is one of the major issues. For starters I highly encourage people to read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (Amazon)

States and private state contractors rake in loads of money on prison labor, often at the expense of normal citizens who would both work these jobs, and contribute financially from their income.

[edit: careful, if you don't pay attention and type posts they'll come out retarded, like mine was - fixed]

This had been on my list of books to read for a while:

https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

"Shoup proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking – namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking."

> Nei selvfølgelig ikke. Og det er jo fordi det er politikken til folk som Obama-Biden og forgjengerne deres helt tilbake til Reagan som er grunnen til at en karakter som Trump i det hele tatt kom på banen og vant valget.

Så det at autoritære, populistiske politikere på høyresiden er på fremmarsj over hele verden, det er tilfeldig? Det er Demokratene sin feil?

>Et av endeløse problemene for liberalere som støtter den uendelige akselerasjonen til den globale teknokratiske kapitalismen er at jo raskere en økonomi endrer seg jo større del av befolkningen er det som blir kastet på dynga

Dette er fundamental feil. Det er lavere fattighet på verdensbasis i dag enn det noen gang har vært før. Globaliseringen har, uten sammenligning, gjort verden (både lokalt og verdensomspennende) bedre.

>de menneskene som blir kastet på dynga har dessverre for liberalerne fortsatt stemmerett.

Det er ingen som blir kastet på dynga. Du hadde hatt godt av å lese Hans Roslings bok <em>Factfulness</em>, det er mye du kan lære der.

Rosling's last book, Factfulness, tackles 10 common myths (or urban legends, if you wish) concerning the state of the world and how it is majorly improving, directly countering the majority view in the developed world.

Buy it at Amazon or Bookdepository (with free shipping worldwide).

Lots of Vancouverites need to understand the true cost of the government giving away so much land without user fees. I suggest reading the seminal tome The High Cost of Free Parking

>free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. Shoup proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking – namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking. Such measures, according to the Yale-trained economist and UCLA planning professor, will make parking easier and driving less necessary. Join the swelling ranks of Shoupistas by picking up this book today. You'll never look at a parking spot the same way again.

Yeah but he's black. The US criminal justice system was literally made for black men.

Most parking lots are sized for the 4th busiest day of the year. Which means 360 days of the year it's just a massive expanse of asphalt doing nothing except making people who didn't drive there walk farther.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X

Lähteeksi on mainittu Hans Roslingin tuore kirja Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

People have always been treated like shit, though. As I understand it, what's changed is our exposure. With 24/7 media/internet, we're just seeing things we wouldn't have seen before. They were still happening before. We just didn't see them. It's also much easier to focus on specific types of discourse and information and that can make it seem like such information is increasing in amount. It's not. We're just exposing ourselves to more of it. If I started following r/Malta, it'd be tempting in a couple months to slide into the thinking that shit is "suddenly" heading south there. All the bad stories. All the abuses. In reality, it was always there because people are dicks regardless. Collectively, from what I understand, though, things are overall getting better in a lot of ways. I don't know how much bias is in it, but someone recommended the book Factfulness the other day. Haven't ordered it yet, but I'm going to because personally I'd like a little positivity in my geopolitical forecasts for once.

I'm still not sure if your problem was with her actual phrasing or the phrase she probably meant to type. Try reading up, maybe. The Ethical Slut. Opening Up. It's ok if it's not for you, no need to complain about it though.

There are dozens of reasons I lose interest or let the conversation fade. Sometimes it's something innocuous that leaves a bad taste. Sometimes I realize I'm not invested at all and don't care how the person is doing/feeling/answers random questions. Often though, I just get busy and have no time to bother anymore.

One thing that has turned me off to OLD lately isn't even OLD. It's this sub and the constant barrage of people saying they've had enough of OLD. It'll never end. Forever alone. Ugh. Any kind of dating is what you make of it. Of course it gets to be much at times and people need breaks. Before OLD breaks were just being single and making yourself happy. Or being single and downing a bottle of wine during TGIF and sobbing a bit at Urkel. Now it's some big ordeal that we all have to whine about on the internet. I think I've just been spending too much time in this sub. It been a little bit daily for a while. I much more liked my once a week or less fill. /rant

Go commiserate with friends for a bit. Take the break. There's a whole ocean of people out there. But don't pick any of them, they're probably all dead.