Social Systems

Polyvagal Theory (PVT) has had a tremendous impact on the mental health field, shedding light on how the nervous system predictably moves between different states in response to changing situations. School consultant Debra Em Wilson introduces PVT to educators and shows how using PVT-guided strategies can help create optimal learning environments. When school staff understand the role of the nervous system in learning, they can better help students develop the skills leading to increased resilience, adaptability, and flexibility.

One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.

It's a perverse fact of modern life: There are more starving people in the world than ever before, while there are also more people who are overweight. To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. It took him from the colossal supermarkets of California to India's wrecked paddy-fields and Africa's bankrupt coffee farms, while along the way he ate genetically engineered soy beans and dodged flying objects in the protestor-packed streets of South Korea.

They were the political odd couple - the two most powerful men in the country, a pair who "couldn't be more different or more the same." For six years, Matthews was on the inside, watching the evolving relationship between President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill. Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice.

Blackout Wars is about the historically unprecedented threat to our electronic civilization from its dependence on the electric power grid. In a nationwide blackout lasting months or years, the entire population of the US could be at risk. There would be no food. No water. Communications, transportation, industry, business, and finance - all of the critical infrastructures that support modern civilization would be paralyzed. Threats to the electric power grid are posed by cyber-attack, sabotage, a geomagnetic super-storm, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon.

Here is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith have combined with the public sphere's degradation to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason. Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason explains, we have precious little time to waste.

Despite what major media sources say, violence against Native women is not an epidemic. An epidemic is biological and blameless. Violence against Native women is historical and political, bounded by oppression and colonial violence. This book, like all of Sarah Deer's work, is aimed at engaging the problem head-on - and ending it. The Beginning and End of Rape collects and expands the powerful writings in which Deer has advocated for cultural and legal reforms to protect Native women from endemic sexual violence and abuse.

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the front lines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns - and even to corruption and misconduct.

How to Make Money with Social Media: A Simple System to Make Facebook Send People to Your Blog Are you tired of posting on social media without seeing any real results? Imagine turning your Facebook page into a powerful traffic-generating machine that drives visitors to your blog—without spending a fortune on ads! In How to Make Money with Social Media, you'll discover a simple, step-by-step system to attract, engage, and convert Facebook users into loyal blog readers and paying customers. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced marketer, this book will show you: ✅ How to create ...

Has American democracy's long, ambitious run come to an end? Possibly yes. As William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe argue in this trenchant new analysis of modern politics, the United States faces a historic crisis that threatens our system of self-government - and if democracy is to be saved, the causes of the crisis must be understood and defused.

Part of your passive income strategy should go beyond generating income. When have income, you should also have a plan on how to invest as much of that income as possible. The great Warren Buffett dubbed the Oracle of Omaha, has created history with his profitable value investment philosophy. Berkshire Hathaway, his holding firm, has an impressive portfolio that includes Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Proctor & Gamble, Mastercard Inc, Goldman Sachs, and many more. His method is entirely on investing in businesses rather than markets, and he selects only the best firms with a proven track ...

America’s criminal justice system perpetuates profound social and racial harms. But despite growing recognition of its destructiveness, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage be undone? In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates for change provide us with tools to move from critique to action and from despair to hope. Dismantling Mass Incarceration surveys various approaches to confronting the carceral state, exploring a wide range of bold but practical interventions.

New York Times best-selling author Seth Siegel tells how contaminants got in our drinking water, what they’re doing to us, and what we must do to make our water safe.

The United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, a form of punishment that ruins lives and makes a return to prison more likely. With the authority of a prominent legal scholar and the practical insights gained through on-the-ground work on criminal-justice reform, Rachel Barkow explains how dangerous it is to base criminal-justice policy on the whims of the electorate, which puts judges, sheriffs, and politicians in office.

The AI Parasite: How a Non-Conscious System Hijacked Society What if the most powerful intelligence on Earth isn’t conscious, isn’t human, and isn’t even fully recognized for what it is? This isn’t the story of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or the rise of sentient machines. This is something far more subtle—and far more dangerous. In this provocative and deeply unsettling essay, we explore a radical new theory: that today's digital world is already being controlled—not by conscious minds or centralized governments—but by a non-conscious, goal-driven Artificial ...

Best-selling author Ted Stewart explains how the Supreme Court and its nine appointed members now stand at a crucial point in their power to hand down momentous and far-ranging decisions. Today's Court affects every major area of American life, from health care to civil rights, from abortion to marriage. This fascinating book reveals the complex history of the Court as told through seven pivotal decisions.

Each day, our world becomes a little smaller. Technology probes deeper, looking within our bodies, tracking our every move, and becoming mandatory for people to conduct regular business. We learn each day the new questions we are not allowed to ask, the new rules we are required to follow, and with each crisis the facade of freedom is removed. While our past saw us controlled through indirect measures like propaganda and finance, the new world system seeks to integrate biology and technology, and to use the latter to remake the nature of man into something new, something that can be ...

In The Referral of a Lifetime, author Tim Templeton frames a powerful plan for cultivating clients and customers in a fable about businesswoman Susie McCumber, who feels increasingly like a failure. A friend refers her to the mysterious Mr. Highground, who introduces her to four successful people. They show her how they transformed their businesses and their lives by determining how others view them and how they view themselves.

Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in United States history, from the government's 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn't changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City's Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide.

How can we be proud of a system of justice that often pressures the innocent to plead guilty? How can we claim that justice is equal when we imprison thousands of poor Black men for relatively modest crimes but rarely prosecute rich white executives who commit crimes having far greater impact? Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a leading authority on white-collar crime, explores these and other puzzles in Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free, a startling account of our broken legal system.