Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday
The Carnivore Diet Handbook by K. Suzanne
Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki
Hollywood Dead: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey
A Beautiful, Terrible Thing by Jen Waite
I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant
Follow You Home by Mark Edwards
Vanished by Joseph Finder
Buried Secrets by Joseph Finder
Guilty Minds by Joseph Finder
Levon Cade Series V1-5 by Chuck Dixon
The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey
Past Tense: A Jack Reacher Nover by Lee Child
Mind's Eye by Douglas E. Richards
----
Secret Six Vol. 2: The Gauntlet by Gail Simone, Dale Eaglesham, Tom Derenick
Wolverine by Daniel Way: The Complete Collection Vol. 2, 3 & 4 by Daniel Way, Jeph Loeb, Steve Dillon, Kaare Andrews, Simone Bianchi, Jon Proctor, Marjorie Liu, Doug Braithwaite, Scot Eaton, Will Conrad, Stephen Segovia, Antonio Fuso
Captain America: Operation Rebirth by Mark Waid and Ron Garney
Wolverine: Old Man Logan Vol. 6: Days of Anger by Ed Brisson and Mike Deodato
Jungle Girl Omnibus Paperback by Frank Cho, Doug Murray, Adriano Batista
Death of Wolverine: The Complete Collection Paperback by Charles Soule, Tim Seeley, Kyle Higgins, Marguerite Bennett, Steve McNiven, Salvador Larroca, Angel Unzueta, Iban Coello
Batman: The Dark Knight: Master Race Paperback by Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello, Andy Kubert, Klaus Janson
Deadpool Vs. Old Man Logan Paperback by Declan Shalvey, Mike Henderson
Wolverine: Old Man Logan Vol. 7: Scarlet Samurai by Ed Brisson, Mike Deodato
Wolverine: Old Man Logan Vol. 8: To Kill Forby Ed Brisson, Dalibor Talajic
Deadpool by Daniel Way: The Complete Collection - Volume 1
by Daniel Way, Andy Diggle, Steve Dillon, Paco Medina, Carlo Barberi, Bong Dazo
"...recent research has offered support for the core idea behind Ulrichs’ theory, including neuroimaging studies showing that the brains of gay men and women are, respectively, partially feminized and masculinized. Research has also shown genetic underpinnings to homosexuality. Based on these findings, one would expect corresponding differences in behavior associated with sexual orientation.
Indeed, studies have shown differences in speech patterns associated with sexual orientation, which is probably one of the first things that come to mind when we think of differences between gay and straight folk... In one study from almost 20 years ago, participants listened to tape recordings of straight and openly gay men speaking. Study participants were able to correctly identify the speaker’s sexual orientation roughly 80 percent of the time, despite the fact that participants also showed a bias toward identifying speakers as straight.
There are also documented differences between homosexual and heterosexual people with regard to their physical mannerisms. For instance, research has shown that people are able to tell someone’s sexual orientation from the way they walk...
Regarding physical appearance, we can glean a huge amount of non-verbal information by looking at a person’s face, and a complex system of mechanisms in the brain have evolved to help us with this process.
This also extends to sexual orientation; despite having low confidence in their judgments, people are able to accurately identify someone’s sexual orientation within one-twentieth of a second of looking at their face.
Researchers at Brock University in Canada also found that our facial features differ according to our sexual orientation...
What does this all mean, in the bigger picture? Life is hectic and complicated, and we, as human beings, have evolved the ability to read social information quickly and reliably. Since many aspects of who we are, like sex, age and race, are quite obvious from the get-go when we take a gander at someone, it follows that sexual orientation would be, to some extent, similar. Being able to correctly identify whether someone is gay or straight helps us in our pursuit of finding a suitable mate, and research has actually shown that straight women’s gaydar improves when they are in the fertile period of their menstrual cycle.
I’ve also been hearing a lot lately about how sexual orientation and gendered behavior are two completely unrelated things, but the reality is—at least from a scientific perspective—they are interconnected and, as you’ve seen, noticeable across a wide range of measures across many different sub-disciplines within sexology. We can acknowledge that there are identifiable differences between gay and straight people without being homophobic.
Perhaps the most important thing I took away from the paper was that people with higher anti-gay prejudice have less accurate gaydar because they tend to assume that everyone is straight."
Nobody cares about it anymore because it was a million news cycles ago, but I found the whole thing kind of insane and had a bunch of notes in my queue that I'm finally getting around to organizing. The reporting on the actual content of the memo was highly disingenuous, imo.
"I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem."
No, the Google manifesto isn’t sexist or anti-diversity. It’s science - The Globe and Mail:
"Despite how it’s been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually
accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain
that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour.
As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure
to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a
preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in
adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for
people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science,
technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by
men.
We see evidence for this in girls with a genetic condition called
congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who are exposed to unusually high levels
of testosterone in the womb. When they are born, these girls prefer
male-typical, wheeled toys, such as trucks, even if their parents offer
more positive feedback when they play with female-typical toys, such as
dolls. Similarly, men who are interested in female-typical activities
were likely exposed to lower levels of testosterone.
As well, new research from the field of genetics shows that testosterone
alters the programming of neural stem cells, leading to sex differences
in the brain even before it’s finished developing in utero. This
further suggests that our interests are influenced strongly by biology,
as opposed to being learned or socially constructed.
Many people, including a former Google employee, have attempted to
refute the memo’s points, alleging that they contradict the latest
research.
I’d love to know what “research done […] for decades” he’s referring to,
because thousands of studies would suggest otherwise. A single study,
published in 2015, did claim that male and female brains existed along a
“mosaic” and that it isn’t possible to differentiate them by sex, but
this has been refuted by four – yes, four – academic studies since.
This includes a study that analyzed the exact same brain data from the
original study and found that the sex of a given brain could be
correctly identified with 69-per-cent to 77-per-cent accuracy.
Of course, differences exist at the individual level, and this doesn’t
mean environment plays no role in shaping us. But to claim that there
are no differences between the sexes when looking at group averages, or
that culture has greater influence than biology, simply isn’t true."
...In fact, research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity
have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in
these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on
what they enjoy.
As the memo suggests, seeking to fulfill a 50-per-cent quota of women in
STEM is unrealistic. As gender equity continues to improve in
developing societies, we should expect to see this gender gap widen.
This trend continues into the area of personality, as well. Contrary to
what detractors would have you believe, women are, on average, higher in
neuroticism and agreeableness, and lower in stress tolerance.
Some intentionally deny the science because they are afraid it will be
used to justify keeping women out of STEM. But sexism isn’t the result
of knowing facts; it’s the result of what people choose to do with them.
This is exactly what the mob of outrage should be mobilizing for,
instead of denying biological reality and being content to spend a
weekend doxxing a man so that he would lose his job. At this point, as
foreshadowed in Mr. Damore’s manifesto, we should be more concerned
about viewpoint diversity than diversity revolving around gender."
Gender & Toys: Monkey Study Suggests Hormonal Basis For Children's Toy Preferences | HuffPost:
"In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with
wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies
say nothing on the matter.
The monkey research, conducted with two different species in 2002 and
2008, strongly suggested a biological explanation for children’s toy
preferences. In recent years, the question has become: How and why does
biology make males (be they monkey or human) prefer trucks, and females,
dolls?
New and ongoing research suggests babies’ exposure to hormones while
they are in the womb causes their toy preferences to emerge soon after
birth. As for why evolution made this so, questions remain, but the toys
may help boys and girls develop the skills they once needed to fulfill
their ancient gender roles.
First, in 2009, Gerianne Alexander, professor of psychology at Texas
A&M University, and her colleagues found that 3- and 4-month-old
boys’ testosterone levels correlated with how much more time they spent
looking at male-typical toys such as trucks and balls compared with
female-typical toys such as dolls, as measured by an eye tracker. Their
level of exposure to the hormone androgen during gestation (which can be
estimated by their digit ratio, or the relative lengths of their index
and ring fingers) also correlated with their visual interest in
male-typical toys.
“Specifically, boys with more male-typical digit ratios showed greater
visual interest in a ball compared to a doll,” Alexander told Life’s
Little Mysteries.
Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Emory University who has studied the
gender-specific toy preferences of young rhesus monkeys, said, “The
striking thing about the looking data shows that the attraction to these
objects occurs very early in life, before it’s likely to have been
socialized.”
Further buttressing the idea that toy preferences are caused by
hormones, last year, a group of British researchers found that girls
with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who experienced
abnormally high levels of the male sex hormone androgen while in the
womb, prefer to play with male-typical toys. [Why Is Pink for Girls and
Blue for Boys?]
But why would male sex hormones make people favor wheeled vehicles and
balls? A common explanation holds that these toys facilitate more
vigorous activity, which boys are evolutionarily programmed to seek out.
But the 2009 study indicated that their affinity for balls and trucks
predates the stage when children actually start playing with toys. At
just 3 months old, the newborn boys already fixed their eyes on the toys
associated with their gender.
“Given that these babies lack physical abilities that would allow them
to ‘play’ with these toys as do older children, our finding suggests
that males preference for male-typical toys are not determined by the
activities supported by the toys (i.e., movement, rough play),”
Alexander said.
Wallen approaches the data more cautiously. “It’s hard to interpret what
the looking data mean because we don’t know why people are attracted to
specific things.
Clearly children recognize that certain objects in
their environment are appropriate for certain activities. They could be
looking at a certain toy because it facilitates an activity they like,”
he said.
The debate over why boys prefer toy vehicles and balls continues. In a
new study, Alexander and her colleagues investigated whether
19-month-olds move around when playing with trucks and balls more than
they do when playing with dolls. According to the study, they don’t.
Toddlers with higher levels of testosterone are more active than
toddlers with lower levels of the sex hormone, but the active toddlers
moved around just as much when holding a toy truck, ball or doll. “We
find no evidence to support the widely held belief that boys prefer toys
that support higher levels of activity,” she wrote in an email. A paper
detailing the work has been accepted for publication in the journal
Hormones and Behavior.
If it isn’t vigorous activity they’re after, it could be that boys
simply find balls and wheeled vehicles more interesting, while human
figures appeal more to girls.
As for why evolution would program these
toy preferences, the researchers have a few ideas. According to
Alexander, one possibility is that girls have evolved to perceive social
stimuli, such as people, as very important, while the perceived worth
of social stimuli (and thus, dolls that look like people) is weaker in
boys. [The Smarter Sex? Women’s Average IQ Overtakes Men’s]
Boys, meanwhile, tend to develop superior spatial navigation abilities.
“Multiple studies in humans and primates shows there is a substantial
male advantage in mental rotation, which is taking an object and
rotating it in the mind,” Wallen said. “It could be that manipulating
objects like balls and wheels in space is one way this mental rotation
gets more fully developed.”
This is purely speculative, Wallen said, but boys’ superior spatial
abilities have been tied to their traditional role as hunters. “The
general theory is that well-developed skills in mental rotation allowed
long distance navigation: using an egocentric system where essentially
you navigate using your perception of your location in 3D space,” he
said. “This might have facilitated long distance hunting parties.”"
By Firing the Google Memo Author, the Company Confirms His Thesis - Reason.com:
"Most of the mainstream media refers to the former Google engineer's
leaked internal memo as the "anti-diversity memo." Recode calls it
"sexist." And Google fired James Damore for "perpetuating gender
stereotypes." But in reality, the problem isn't diversity; it's that a
senior software engineer admitted, perhaps unwittingly, to pondering
three of the most scandalous thought crimes of contemporary American
society.
The first crime is proposing that a meritocracy might be healthier for a
company than bean-counting race, ethnicity and sex. The second is
pointing out that ideological diversity matters. The third and most
grievous of all is suggesting that men and women are, in general,
physiologically and psychologically different, and thus they tend to
excel at different things.
"On average," asserts Damore, "men and women biologically differ in many
ways." He then has the temerity to accuse women of generally displaying
a "stronger interest in people rather than things," of having empathy
and "openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics," and of being
less pushy and having less interest in status than male colleagues.
Women, this guy says, are "more cooperative" than men and search out
better "work-life balance."
There's much more, but I don't want to further upset any female readers.
One of the problems with this kerfuffle was that the vast majority of
the histrionic reactions on social media and elsewhere have
misrepresented not only what the memo says but also its purpose. It was
neither a screed nor anti-diversity. It was the kind of unvarnished,
dispassionate and meticulous case that I imagine many engineers offer.
It's difficult to believe anyone who read through it with an open mind
could interpret the author's notions as an attempt to consolidate the
patriarchy or make life less diverse in his field.
The other, bigger problem is the reaction to it demonstrates that the
author is completely right about the lack of ideological diversity and
the consequences of that lack.
Damore's contentions about the bias at Google is a near-perfect
summation of the dangers manifest in all close-minded institutions,
including most of the news media and many universities. He points out
that conflating "freedom from offense with psychological safety" shames
people into silence. Further, he argues that these monocultures foster
unhealthy environments where people can no longer honestly debate
important topics. Finally, and most destructively, he says that these
bubbles then promote "extreme and authoritarian elements."
We see incidents of this close-mindedness all the time. In schools. In
government. In business. Just ask Brendan Eich, who was hounded out as
CEO of Mozilla in 2013 for having the wrong opinion on gay marriage in
2008, despite zero evidence that he had ever discriminated against
anyone in his life.
Or, better yet, ask Danielle Brown, Google's new vice president of
diversity, integrity and governance. She wrote in response to the
engineer's memo, "Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our
values and the culture," and then rebuked the statement, telling
employees that she wouldn't link to the letter because everyone
disagrees with its contents. Rather than showing appreciation for
diverse thinking among her ranks, Brown even went on to insinuate that
the engineer's suggestions in the memo might undermine "discrimination
laws."
Does Brown believe that dissenting Google employees will now feel safer
sharing their opinions when they see that the company won't stand by
those making unpopular ones? Because, after all, any old VP of
diversity, integrity and governance can defend positions that confirm
the biases of the majority of their workforce.
Of course, nothing in the letter states women aren't as good as men, or
that women deserve less money, or that women aren't suited to be good at
tech jobs, or that they should be victimized by the company. The author
mostly theorized as to why self-selection might account for some of the
disparity at Google."
In Defense of the Google Manifesto – AREO:
"...you would think Damore wrote the next iteration of Mein Kampf. Gizmodo
labelled it an “anti-diversity screed.” Mashable called it a
“racist/sexist manifesto” when reporting that the author’s identity had
been revealed. Tweetstorms were fashionable, with one user even positing
that Damore was saying “Your gender means that you’re biologically
incapable of doing this job and should never have been hired.” A popular
response by a Yonatan Zunger chided the author as causing “significant
harm to people across this company,” and for being incorrect in
everything — except Damore’s points on the male gender role being
inflexible. Even the respectable Atlantic managed to pipe up with a
“Googler’s Would-Be Manifesto Reveals Tech’s Rotten Core,” by an Ian
Bogost. Another Mashable piece complained “the text of that Google
employee’s manifesto is just like every other MRA rant,” with the writer
of the piece strangely going on to say, “The biological arguments get
into some weird assumptions around gender that are also offensive for
reasons unrelated to the tech industry.”
Weird assumptions, you say? The sciences of sex differences and their
results on cognition and behavior are not the purview of a fringe group
of men operating in bunkers to prove their sexist fantasies about
subjugating women. They are established, respected fields. I’m not sure
what I can say to convince those who have reacted so adversely to
Damore’s claims about biological, developmental, and hormone related
male and female differences in behavior and personality, except to try
to marshal the relevant information — and hope that their ideological
biases don’t impinge on their willingness to accept scientifically
arrived at truths.
The reactions from hyperventilating journalists and bloggers has been
akin to: “What Damore wrote goes against everything I know and my
worldview. Which means… that he’s a sexist and racist.” "
...Prenatal and pubertal organizational hormones have an effect on
individual behavior with “good evidence that exposure to high levels of
androgens during prenatal development results in masculinization of
activity and occupational interests, sexual orientation, and some
spatial abilities.” Girls exposed to high testosterone levels in the
womb have more male-typical career interests. Men are more interested in
things, women in people. Newborn male and female children, (scientists
use newborns to rebut the objection that children are socialized to
behave in certain patterns) show a distinction in what they find
interesting. Male infants exhibit a stronger interest in the
physical-mechanical-mobile while female infants show a stronger interest
in the face (the proxy for “interest” here being the time of fixed
gaze). Men and women in 55 different countries show clustered patterns
in the big five personality traits — with women reporting higher levels
of neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness than
men do across most nations.
These sex differences are also seen in nonhuman primates in play and
grooming, and object manipulation patterns also emerge in rhesus
monkeys, with toy preference paralleling those of human children. Sex
differences in mate preferences and status-seeking have also been
studied heavily across cultures."
... "It goes without saying: noting different patterns in male and female
cognition says nothing about the moral distinction about equality or
treating people as individuals — a point Damore makes himself. But the
reactionaries don’t seem to understand this. Pointing out aggregate
differences in population does not mean we can justify discrimination.
I’ll also note that the objectors in this instance are usually the types
to say “we should trust scientists, they know best,” when it comes to
issues like climate change, but when it comes to taboo topics like sex
differences in behavior between men and women they are the first to plug
their ears and cry out: “sexism, misogyny, biological determinism!”"
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book by Dan Harris and Jeffrey Warren
Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual by Jocko Willink
The Program: A Novel by Gregg Hurwitz
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works-A True Story by Dan Harris
No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories by Lee Child
The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer
The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer
The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection by Michael A. Singer
Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness
The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes
Last Shot by Gregg Hurwitz
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar
Robert B. Parker's Old Black Magic by Ace Atkins
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Hulk: World War Hulk by Greg Pak & John Romita Jr.
Captain Marvel Vol. 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More by Kelly DeConnick and David Lopez
Frankenstein's Womb by Warren Ellis and Marek Oleksicki
Deathstroke Vol. 2: The Gospel of Slade by Christopher Priest and Carlo Pagulayan
Lazarus: X+66 by Greg Rucka, Eric Trautmann, Aaron Duran, Neal Bailey, Steve Lieber, Mack Chater, Justin Greenwood, Alitha Martinez, Bilquis Evely, Tristan Jones, Michael Lark
Aetheric Mechanics by Warren Ellis and Gianluca Pagliarani
Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler and Shaun Whiteside
The Force: A Novel by Don Winslow
Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher, Vincent Chong
Orphan X: A Novel by Gregg Hurwitz
The Nowhere Man: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz
Hellbent: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
The Kill Clause by Gregg Hurwitz
The Night Trade (A Livia Lone Novel Book 2) by Barry Eisler
Journey to Star Wars The Last Jedi: The Legends of Luke Skywalker by Ken Liu
Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours by David Mack
Black Road Volume 1: The Holy North by Brian Wood (Author), Garry Brown (Artist), Dave McCaig (Artist)
Black Road Volume 2: A Pagan Death Paperback by Brian Wood (Author), Garry Brown (Artist), Dave McCaig (Artist)
Batman: The Dark Knight: The Master Race by Frank Miller (Author, Illustrator), Brian Azzarello (Author), Andy Kubert (Illustrator), Klaus Janson (Illustrator), John Romita (Illustrator), Eduardo Risso (Illustrator)
The Dark Knight Returns: The Last Crusade by Frank Miller (Author), Brian Azzarello (Author), John Romita (Illustrator), Peter Steigerwald (Illustrator)
Batman/The Flash: The Button Deluxe Edition by Joshua Williamson (Author), Tom King (Author), Jason Fabok (Illustrator), Howard Porter (Illustrator)
Lazarus Vol. 5: Cull by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark
Happy! Deluxe Edition Paperback by Grant Morrison (Author), Darick Robertson (Artist)
James Bond Vol. 2: Eidolon by Warren Ellis and Jason Masters
The Joker by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo
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FreakAngels Vol. 1 by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield
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The King by Rich Koslowski (Author)
Star Wars: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Shattered Empire by Greg Rucka (Author), Marco Checchetto (Illustrator), Phil Noto (Illustrator)
A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted by Will Bowen
Night School: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child
The Detachment (A John Rain Novel Book 7) by Barry Eisler
Crazy Horse: A Life by Larry McMurtry
Robert B. Parker's Bull River (Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch Book 6) by Robert Knott
The Hidden School: Return of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
Robert B. Parker's Little White Lies by Ace Atkins
Embarrassing Confessions of a Marine Lieutenant: Operation Branding Iron by Donny O'Malley
Flight: A Novel by Sherman Alexie
Financial Peace Revisited: New Chapters on Marriage, Singles, Kids and Families by Dave Ramsey
MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins
Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook by Tony Robbins
The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right” by Jon Ronson
The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones: And the Less Amazing Adventures of Some Other Real-Life Superheroes by Jon Ronson
True Allegiance by Ben Shapiro
The Kill Society: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey
I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
Swing Set by Janice Weber
American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot by Craig Ferguson
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston
The Midnight Line: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child
Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams
The Wild Storm Vol. 1 Paperback by Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hunt
Wolverine by Daniel Way: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 by Daniel Way, John McCrea, Staz Johnson , Javier Saltares , Steve Dillon, Bart Sears, Ken Knudsten
The White Donkey: Terminal Lance by Maximilian Uriarte
Wolverine: Old Man Logan Vol. 1: Berzerker Paperback by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino
Cow Boy Vol. 1 A Boy and His Horse Paperback by Nate Cosby and Chris Eliopoulos
Wolverine: Origin - The Complete Collection by Bill Jemas, Paul Jenkins, Joe Quesada, Kieron Gillen, Andy Kubert, Adam Kubert
Wolverine Vol. 1: The Brotherhood by Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson
Wolverine Vol. 3: Return of the Native by Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson
So what exactly is a microaggression? First coined in the 1970s but rejuvenated in 2007 in a paper in the American Psychologist by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues, it originally referred only to racism but has expanded to a range of commonplace slights or hostility towards an oppressed group. The definition includes microinvalidations, such as being told that a negative interaction couldn’t have been due to racist motives, and microinsults, such as a teacher avoiding calling on you in class due to your gender, as well as a third class of microassaults...
It’s not just that the edges of microaggression are poorly defined: ambiguity is baked into the entire concept. Advocates see this as a key feature, and claim that more ambiguous acts of prejudice are the most damaging, because they are the hardest to deal with...
(Sue again: “The invisibility of racial microaggressions may be more harmful to people of color than hate crimes or the covert and deliberate acts of White supremacists such as the Klan and Skinheads.”)
Ambiguity can have its uses but the risk is that the concept becomes overly subjective.
For example, it could be that the experience of microaggressions is at least partially explained by a propensity to see fault or attack in statements. It could also be that the apparent impact of microaggressions on health or wellbeing is because people prone to negative emotionality (they score high on the trait of neuroticism) are more likely both to perceive microaggressions and to experience poorer health...
Personality having a hand in microaggression experience would also explain why some people from minority groups report no microaggressions when canvassed. The (limited) evidence that more ambiguous slights lead to more negative outcomes could also reflect the established psychological fact that in “weak” situations with no clear guidelines for action, people’s personality – in this case, their negative emotionality – tends to assert itself to fill in the interpretive gaps.
Lilienfeld raises a lot of other issues we simply don’t have space for here: political assumptions, no measurement of base rates of everyday slights, inclusion criteria that limits participants to those who already buy into the concept to begin with, and the need to address whether people who commit microaggressions show other signs of a prejudicial mindset (something that research into the Implicit Affect test has also struggled to demonstrate).
But he stresses that while he is not here to praise research into microaggression, nor is he here to bury it. He emphasises that many of these issues could be addressed by joining the microaggression field more closely with other more established areas of psychological research, and he offers a number of steps researchers could take to strengthen their research base.
Lilienfeld also suggests we all consider putting aside the word microaggression in favour of “perceived racial slight” – because we don’t yet understand the role of interpretation due to personality, and because it simply isn’t clear that those using microaggressions are showing aggression as we usually understand the word. Putting aside the charged term, together with the “victim and perpetrator” parlance used by advocates and researchers, would allow us to affirm that these ambiguous events have a reality of their own, while recognising that the nature of that reality needs further investigation to be understood."
The ideological opposition to biological truth « Why Evolution Is True: "One distressing characteristic of the Left, at least as far as science is concerned, is to let our ideology trump scientific data; that is, some of us ignore biological data when it’s inimical to our political preferences. This plays out in several ways: the insistence that race doesn’t exist (and before you accuse me of saying that races do exist, read about what I’ve written here before: the issue is complex), that there are no evolutionarily-based innate (e.g., genetically based) behavioral or psychological differences between ethnic groups, and that there are no such differences, either, between males and females within humans.
These claims are based not on biological data, but on ideological fears of the Left: if we admit of such differences, it could foster racism and sexism.
Thus any group differences we do observe, whether they reside in psychology, physiology, or morphology, are to be explained on first principle as resulting from culture rather than genes. (I do of course recognize that culture can interact with genes to produce behaviors.) This ideological blinkering leads to the conclusion that when we see a difference in performance between groups and genders, the obvious explanation is culture and oppression, and the remedy is equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities. Yet in areas like most sports, where everyone agrees that males are on average larger and stronger than females, it’s clear that the behavioral differences (i.e., performance) result from biological differences that are surely based on evolution. In sports like track and field or judo, nobody would think of making males compete with females.
But that’s not a good way to act. The Left has historically been characterized by respect for the facts, and the refusal to even consider that such differences could be based in part on genes is an unwelcome and unhealthy departure from our traditional embrace of rationality. Yes, phony biological data has been used to support racism and sexism, but remember that that is the fault of human prejudice, cooked data, and an inability to do proper experiments that have all resulted in terrible data being used to support human prejudices...
To claim that there are no evolutionary differences in behavior and psychology between men and women is fatuous. The data show otherwise, though of course for most traits we don’t know if it’s genetic. But the default hypothesis, based on observation of other species (especially primates) is that at least some psychological and behavioral differences will be based on genes that evolved via selection in our ancestors. Why is the brain immune to evolved, sex-specific differences but the body is not? Thus, to claim, as does P.Z. Myers in a new post, that higher testosterone levels in males have minimal influence on their aggressiveness compared to the effects of culture, is a claim based not on data—which show that he’s wrong—but on ideology. And so he and his commenters try to refute the testosterone-effect notion using anecdotes: some males aren’t aggressive, Myers himself is not aggressive (!), aggression is due “mostly” to cultural difference (the “patriarchy”) rather than to biological differences, and so on. To read the comment thread is to see a bunch of progressives desperately squirming to avoid the obvious. Well, I’m not an expert on testosterone, but what I do know is that levels of that hormone are not only correlated with aggression within and among the sexes, but that injecting it into both men and women also makes their behavior and psychology more aggressive. Thus the correlation at least partly reflects causation.
...let’s look at some data showing prima facie that there are biological differences in behavior between males and females, and that those differences reflect the working of natural selection—in the form of sexual selection—in our ancestors. To do this, we’ll use body size as an index of behavior. I’ll try to be brief. It’s well known that in virtually all species of primates (there are a few exceptions in lemurs), and in other groups such as pinnipeds, males are larger than females. That is not cultural, but genetic; if you rear gorillas in any habitat, the males are going to grow up larger than females. You can see the data among species yourself in a 2006 paper by Adam D. Gordon (reference and free link below), showing an almost universal trend for the male/female body mass to be larger than 1 in primate species (in every species there are of course some small males and large females, but we’re talking about averages). Why is this? It reflects evolved male behavior: the tendency of males to compete for females, and the advantage of large body size in that competition. Whether the advantage be in direct competition, so that the larger you are the more you can fight off other males (gorillas, elephant seals), or in female choice, so that females choosing large males can gain protection for her young from marauding males (also gorillas), the difference in size reflects something almost universal among animals: males, who have cheap gametes, must compete for females who have expensive gametes and invest more in reproduction.
And that is why, in study after study in humans, male sexual behavior shows promiscuous mating, while females are more selective. That’s not necessarily all biological, but some of it surely is given that our closest relatives show the same behaviors and that there is no such thing as The Gorilla and Chimpanzee Patriarchy. Here’s further evidence that the larger size and strength of males is reflected in their behavior—and was almost certainly promoted by sexual selection: In human societies studied by Richard Alexander, those societies that are more polygynous (in which males compete more intensively for females) show greater sexual size dimorphism than societies that are more monogamous. This was a prediction made before the data were acquired—a prediction derived from sexual selection theory. And it was fulfilled.
Among species of primates, there’s a good correlation between the polygyny of a species and sexual dimorphism: those species in which males have a higher variance in offspring number, and in which males thus compete more intensely for females, also show a greater ratio of male/female body size, even when corrected for phylogeny. (Too, in primate species in which males fight each other over females, the relative size of the canine teeth, used in battle, is larger than in species showing less direct male-male competition.) In humans, as in many other species in which males compete for females, the sex ratio at birth favors males. They then die off at a higher rate due to higher risk-taking and exploratory behavior, until at reproductive age (about 25), the sex ratio is equal. Then, as males continue to die off, the sex ratio reverses, becoming female-biased at greater ages. This is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts: if there are biological differences in mortality rates, then evolution will adjust the sex ratio so it’s equal at the time of reproduction. In line with the above, in humans and other primates, males show from the outset great exploratory and risk-taking behaviors, and as adults show many other behaviors that differ from those of females, such as greater dispersal. Is this due to the Primate Patriarchy? Probably not, given that these differences in behavior are shown in many species besides ours and make evolutionary sense.
And if all this be true, then it would be foolish to deny prima facie that there are other evolved differences in psychology between men and women, some reflected in morphology (why are men hairier than women?). The conventional wisdom should never be that men and women are biologically identical in their psychology and behavior, amiable as that may be to Leftist ideology. The primacy rests not with ideology, but with data; and while we can act against what the evolutionary data tell us (as we do when we use contraception), we should not deny that the data exist, or exercise confirmation bias so we try to dismiss data that contravene our ideology while welcoming data that support it. What we need to do is accept the data, but then adjust our society so that we realize the outcomes we want from our (partly evolved) morality. And that doesn’t mean structuring our society so that morality parallels biology. And you can bet your tuchas that the ideologues will do their best to undercut (or ignore) the data adduced above. And for similar arguments but a lot more data, see Steve Pinker’s book The Blank Slate, which has a new Afterword with a detailed update on gender."
Alarmists claim they're for "science"... - Reason.com: "1) Man's greenhouse gases contribute to warming, but scientists don't agree on how much. Of 117 climate models from the 1990s, 114 overpredicted warming. 2) Warming is harmful. Maybe. But so far it's been good: Over the last century, climates warmed, but climate-related deaths dropped. Since 1933, they fell by 98 percent. Life expectancy doubled. Much of that is thanks to prosperity created by free markets. But some is due to warming. Cold kills more people than heat. Carbon dioxide is also good for crop growth. Even The New York Times admits, "Plants have been growing at a rate far faster than at any other time in the last 54,000 years."
But what if Al Gore is right? Maybe our greenhouse gases will eventually cause Greenland's icecaps to melt and flood our cities. Shouldn't government act now? No. 3) Nothing we do today will stop global warming. The Obama regulations that Trump recently repealed, horrifying the Earth Day crowd, had a goal that amounted to a mere one percent reduction in global carbon dioxide. And that was just the goal.
Of course, some think any cut is better than nothing. But cuts are costly. They kill jobs, opportunity. All to accomplish... nothing the Earth will notice. If warming does become a problem, we're better off if our economy is very strong when the science tells us clearly that action will make a difference.
We should be especially wary of expensive government projects given how often alarmists were wrong in the past. As Cato's Pat Michaels says, "I've lived through eight environmental apocalypses... overpopulation... resource depletion... Silent Spring... global cooling... acid rain... the ozone hole... global warming... the next one is going to be ocean acidification."
In the '70s, environmentalist Paul Ehrlich won fame with his book The Population Bomb. Ehrlich predicted: "I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Oops. Ehrlich now admits: "When you predict the future, you get things wrong." But he says there's a grain of truth in his prediction, because: "If you look closely at England, what can I tell you? They're having all kinds of problems."
Climate of Complete Certainty - The New York Times: "In the final stretch of last year’s presidential race, Hillary Clinton and her team thought they were, if not 100 percent right, then very close.
Right on the merits. Confident in their methods. Sure of their chances. When Bill Clinton suggested to his wife’s advisers that, considering Brexit, they might be underestimating the strength of the populist tide, the campaign manager, Robby Mook, had a bulletproof answer: The data run counter to your anecdotes.
That detail comes from “Shattered,” Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s compulsively readable account of Clinton’s 2016 train wreck. Mook belonged to a new breed of political technologists with little time for retail campaigning and limitless faith in the power of models and algorithms to minimize uncertainty and all but predict the future.
“Mook and his ‘Moneyball’ approach to politics rankled the old order of political operatives and consultants because it made some of their work obsolete,” Allen and Parnes write about the campaign’s final days. “The memo that one Hillary adviser had sent months earlier warning that they should add three or four points to Trump’s poll position was a distant memory.”
There’s a lesson here. We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris. From Robert McNamara to Lehman Brothers to Stronger Together, cautionary tales abound.
We ought to know this by now, but we don’t. Instead, we respond to the inherent uncertainties of data by adding more data without revisiting our assumptions, creating an impression of certainty that can be lulling, misleading and often dangerous. Ask Clinton...
Last October, the Pew Research Center published a survey on the politics of climate change. Among its findings: Just 36 percent of Americans care “a great deal” about the subject. Despite 30 years of efforts by scientists, politicians and activists to raise the alarm, nearly two-thirds of Americans are either indifferent to or only somewhat bothered by the prospect of planetary calamity. Why? The science is settled. The threat is clear. Isn’t this one instance, at least, where 100 percent of the truth resides on one side of the argument?
Well, not entirely.
As Andrew Revkin wrote last year about his storied career as an environmental reporter at The Times, “I saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.” The science was generally scrupulous. The boosters who claimed its authority weren’t. Anyone who has read the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change knows that, while the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the earth since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That’s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future.
To say this isn’t to deny science. It’s to acknowledge it honestly.
By now I can almost hear the heads exploding. They shouldn’t, because there’s another lesson here — this one for anyone who wants to advance the cause of good climate policy. As Revkin wisely noted, hyperbole about climate “not only didn’t fit the science at the time but could even be counterproductive if the hope was to engage a distracted public.” Let me put it another way. Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts. None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences. But ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism. They know — as all environmentalists should — that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power."
A New Understanding of How Movement Decreases Stress - The Atlantic: "In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Pittsburgh neuroscientists showed that they have discovered a discrete, elaborate network in the cerebral cortex that controls the adrenal medulla. It seems that the connections between the brain and the adrenal medulla are much more elaborate than previously understood. Complex networks throughout the primary sensory and motor cortices are tied directly to our stress responses.
That discovery transformed Stricks’ understanding of how bodily movements influence our health. He’s starting pilates.
“This is suggesting a much more decentralized process,” said Bruno of the findings...
“Something about axial control has an impact on stress responses,” Strick reasons. “There’s all this evidence that core strengthening has an impact on stress. And when you see somebody that's depressed or stressed out, you notice changes in their posture. When you stand up straight, it has an effect on how you project yourself and how you feel. Well, lo and behold, core muscles have an impact on stress. And I suspect that if you activate core muscles inappropriately with poor posture, that’s going to have an impact on stress.”
“These neural pathways might explain our intuitive sense for why there are many different strategies for coping with stress,” said Bruno. “I like the examples they give in the paper—that maybe this is why yoga and pilates are so successful. But there are lots of other things where people talk about mental imagery and all sorts of other ways that people deal with stress. I think having so many neural pathways having direct lines to the stress control system, that’s really interesting.” Strick focused on movement, but Bruno specializes in sensory neuroscience, so he read more into the findings in the primary somatosensory cortex. Some of these tactile areas in the brain seem to be providing as much input to the adrenal medulla as the cortical areas.
“To me that's really new and interesting,” said Bruno. “It might explain why certain sensations we find very relaxing or stressful.” I thought of a good back scratch, or, for some reason, the calming sensation of putting your bare hand into a plate of fresh pasta. The idea that primary sensory and motor areas in the brain have a part in to modifying internal states in such a prominent way has caused Bruno to question the very nature of these areas of the brain.
“It's not clear to me—from our work, and from their work—that what we call motor cortex is really motor cortex,” he said. “Maybe the primary sensory cortex is doing something more than we thought. When I see results like these, I go, hm, maybe these areas aren’t so simple.” With this come implications for what’s currently known as “psychosomatic illness”—how the mind has an impact over organ functions. The name tends to have a bad connotation. The notion that this mind-body connection isn’t really real; that psychosomatic illnesses are “all in your head.”
Elaborate connections like this would explain that, yes, it is all in your head. The fact that cortical areas in the brain that have multi-synaptic connections that control organ function could strip the negative connotations. The Pitt team has previously injected the heart and seen cortical areas that are involved in controlling its rhythm. They believe that may explain cases of sudden unexpected death—from epilepsy, from brain injury, even from strong emotional stimuli (positive and negative) leading to heart attacks. There is also the emerging field of neuro-immunology, which is looking at the effects of stress on the immune system. All of this lends some credence to people who may once have been dismissed by people like Strick himself, who are skeptical of anything that isn’t borne out by a concrete mechanism. As he put it, “How we move, think, and feel have an impact on the stress response through real neural connections.”"
