Daryl Kulak

'Marks' and 'Tricks'

Revisado: 10-05-24

I picked up this book to guard against these things being used on me. But I didn't need to worry. The author makes it clear who the target is - extremely rich, poorly educated men, ego-driven men, working in entertainment, sports or the highest levels of business. Easy targets. I believe the ideas this author provides will help women land these men.

The author is very clear that this is a transactional situation. He calls the women 'hoes' and the men 'marks' and 'tricks." He isn't hiding anything. However, he asks a tremendous amount of women if they want to use this system. For instance, you must lie. A lot. About everything. Is that lead singer getting tired of you teasing him? Tell him a lie that you got raped by someone months ago and you're still seeing a therapist about it. That'll cool him off.

The author is right that many men, especially this target market, lie a lot and use similar tactics themselves to get what they want. As long as a woman is willing to 'go there,' she could do well financially with this game. I say, more power to her!

As ambivalent as I am to the tactics, the narrator of this audiobook is fantastic!  He animated the work like I haven't heard before. Excellent voice actor - Patrick Stevens!!

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Marvelous!

Revisado: 08-11-24

This wonderful book is like a hornier, more neurotic Eat-Pray-Love. That is high praise from me. Elizabeth Gilbert is my favorite author. Now she has competition.

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Very Exciting Sci-fi Epic

Revisado: 08-03-24

This is a well-crafted novel that also fits well into young-adult (minimal killing and violence). I like it a lot.

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Such an Important Book

Revisado: 05-07-24

I've followed Matt Taibbi for years now. This book is so important for all of us to read. It diagnoses the problems the media has with being captured by the right-left Republican-Democratic divide. Media companies profit from this business model but citizens and the country pay the price.

Taibbi has long been a person to point this out. However, he has his own foibles. The media issues he highlights with Trump's "RussiaGate" have mostly turned out to be true where Taibbi was trying to paint Trump as "not that bad." (The book came out in 2020 so hindsight is...yeah).

Taibbi was also deeply involved in Elon Musk's disgraceful "Twitter Files" which turned out to be a bunch of disinformation. This also happened years after this book.

I still think this is an important book. We need people like Taibbi who can point out the problem with reporting politics as if it were sports.

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An Explanation I Can Relate To

Revisado: 04-25-24

There is lots of data to sort through but the authors do an excellent job of telling a compelling story and backing it up with their own research and personal experience. I suggest you read this book and DO NOT read "White Rural Rage" (Schaller, Waldman), who use this same research to 'prove' rural voters are 'enraged,' a conclusion unsupported by this data. Even Krugman and other wonks are proven wrong here. This is a great book but 'okay audiobook. The voice actor messes up the pronunciation of a lot of the words (foment/ferment, etc). Still worthwhile as an audiobook because of the content.

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The Time Has Come For This Idea

Revisado: 04-21-24

I think that cancel culture has really taken over the entire spectrum of political life - right and left. I appreciate that we have academics who study these trends and look for answers.

I think there are numerous answers in this book that merit attention. Something that surprised me, though, was that there was no focus on how being a "conservative" has changed in the timeframe that they identify - basically from 2000 until the present. I think both conservatism and liberalism have changed significantly, and, perhaps, much of the shift the authors see on college campuses in the past twenty years has to do with the changes in the very definitions of the political poles.

Conservatives, for instance, in the year 2000, were interested in small government, balanced budgets, very hawkish military and traditional family values. Not my cup of tea but an understandable position to have, for sure.

Have you heard Marjorie Taylor-Greene mention a single one of these issues? No, today's conservatives are concerned with reducing transgender rights, cutting diversity programs, being anti-science, eliminating the mainstream media and, most strikingly, increasing authoritarianism. It's hard to see Bob Dole or Tip O'Neil agreeing with these ideas.

Liberals, likewise, have a different focus than they did that long ago.

That the authors did not mention these changes in their book could be an oversight. It would be surprising to me if the liberal professors they interviewed hadn't mentioned this, though. Did they interview them? Did the liberals say this but it didn't make it to the book? I don't know but it was a problem that stuck in my head as I listened to the rest of this excellent research and conclusions.

The audiobook quality is quite low. The narrator, one of the authors, rushes through the narration and speaks in a monotone.

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Great Accessible Academic Work

Revisado: 03-16-23

This psychologist lays out a coherent theory called "The Laziness Lie" and provides numerous examples from her own life as well as her's and other's patients." The whole idea hangs together and is presented in a way for laypeople to easily understand. Well done Dr. Price!

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A Broader View of Corporate Success

Revisado: 09-18-21

Excellent book!

I enjoyed how this book pulls together a broader view of what it means for a corporation to succeed, beyond the simplistic "shareholder value" that has governed things for too long. Taking all stakeholders into account - employees, suppliers, government/taxes, local communities - is how we need to view success. As citizens, we need to actually see corporations as another type of governance, parallel to our elected officials. The policies of Amazon or Walmart or Goldman Sachs affect us just as much as the policies of our own government - and those corporations have influence over many countries' citizens, not just one.

I especially like that Alec Ross frames the problem and his ideas in a fairly neutral manner; not trying to point at anyone as the villain or scapegoat. This is especially helpful because we will need everyone's help to make his suggested changes.

Personally, I think that the metric for stakeholder value might turn out to come from the Future-Fit Business Benchmark, which has been created by a cross-functional group of forward thinking people around the world.

I hope this book becomes a clarion call for all citizens and corporations and governments to flip the ground rules (i.e. legislation) to ensure that companies are taking into account their entire shareholder "portfolio."

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As Terrible As It Gets

Revisado: 07-01-21

I was hoping to gain some insights into my coming retirement from this book, but I did not. The advice is formulaic and tired. Maybe part of the problem is that the material is over ten years old. Yes - we do need a book that focused on the non-financial aspects of retirement planning. That is true. But this is not that book. There is no advice offered here that you wouldn't read in a two-page Marketwatch article. Have hobbies. Have friends. You can retire earlier than you think (the whole misguided FIRE movement came later, I think). It's awful.

Add two more insults to that injury. First, the narrator is overwraught. He emphasizes things too much, and tries to add drama to every sentence, drawing out words and adding syllables. Blecch. Audiobook narrators need to have some style, to be sure, but he makes a mess of it. And finally, enough with the damn quotations! This author cannot go more than 10 sentences without offering a vaguely related quote from some famous person, or, as I am tired of hearing, "...a wise unknown person once said..."

The book is a lazy attempt to capitalize on a subject that needs to be addressed - the non-financial planning of your retirement. A good portion of the book is the narrator reading complimentary letters written to the author. "Oh, your book is so wonderful!" "Your book confirmed everything my wife and I have learned in retirement!" blah blah blah. I had to quit half-way through. It stinks.

If you've done even modest reading on retirement topics, skip this book.

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Touching Insight into a Canadian Icon

Revisado: 07-01-21

This is a play recorded as an audiobook, not a narrated book. It is quite lovely. I remember Margaret Trudeau from my Canadian youth. Although I didn't like her husband, the prime minister, I did have a good impression of her. She went through a lot being so young and thrust into the spotlight like she was. She is very honest and self-effacing in this performance. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It would be fun to sit and have coffee with her, I think.

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