Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss My rating: 3 of 5 stars I found the narrator’s voice grating, frankly, and his manner of delivery was arrogant. That might reflect the author’s level of confidence in the material, but it was somewhat difficult for me to get past it. […]
Review: Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a wonderful book, and it will take an honored place on my short shelf of books recommended for anyone interested in an ethically non-monogamous lifestyle. That said, I’m glad I purchased the ebook as well as the Audible version, as […]
Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is an impressive tome, but it’s also clearly biased in favor of a particular political view. I suppose it isn’t possible for a human to write wholly without bias, but I found it distracting. The narrator sounded disgusted […]
Babbel Offers Free Language Courses for Ukrainian Speakers
I’ve been using Babbel to study French every day for the last few months, having taken advantage of one of their Yuletide specials to get a Lifetime membership. Tuesday morning, I received notice of a new press release from them. Babbel Launches Free Language Courses For Ukrainians On Its Platform Babbel to launch language courses for […]
Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The month is about realizing how common mental health issues are, supporting each other through them, and removing the stigma about them. A few statistics: 21% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2020 (52.9 million people). This represents 1 in 5 adults. 5.6% of U.S. adults experienced serious mental […]
Resource for Chronic Pain Sufferers
The American Chronic Pain Association site says the group has been around since 1980, but I hadn’t run across them until yesterday. I spent some time on their site and they have some really good resources as well as a long list of support groups. There aren’t any groups near me, but I think I’ll […]
Chronic Pain and Memory
This is a fascinating article with excellent sources. Chronic pain is terrible. A new way of understanding it may help. The past two centuries have produced a cascade of life-altering advances in medicine, yet we have been unable to deal with one seemingly straightforward condition: chronic pain. It affects 1 in 5 people around the world, […]
Does Anyone Remember Glyph?
I’m not one for video games, really, or games of any sort other than tabletop RPGs. But there was one game that I used to play on my iTouch, Glyph, that I still miss. It was fun and somewhat challenging. Parts were like a Match Three game, some of it was a puzzle, and some […]
Pain Stigma
Those of us who suffer chronic pain face a great deal of stigma. This paper addresses that stigma. Pain, objectivity and history: understanding pain stigma
How Chronic Pain Leads to Anxiety and Depression
Neuronal plasticity in chronic pain-induced anxiety revealed Hokkaido University researchers have shown how chronic pain leads to maladaptive anxiety in mice, with implications for treatment of chronic pain-related psychiatric disorders in humans. Chronic pain is persistent and inescapable, and can lead to maladaptive emotional states. It is often comorbid with psychiatric disorders, such as depression […]