Hello! I work for a nonprofit heavily involved with local food access. We do lots of work with the food bank, food pantries, local social justice centers, community gardens, nutrition education organizations, etc.

My question is- what sites are y'all using to find info about cool stuff that's happening around Food Access in the world? Does something like this exist? I'm talking anything- subreddits, blogs, media sites, whatever. I already follow a handful of food-politics blogs, which tend to focus on food-related injustices, but I'm looking more for a place that aggregates the good work being done in the food access realm.

Any thoughts? Hit me with them recommendations.

If this kind of question is allowed here — what are some nonfiction books within the realm of social science that cover a fascinating topic, and that you really learned a lot from?

I really enjoyed reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond this year and Uneasy Street by Rachel Sherman back to back. They deal with the topics of poverty and wealth respectively and were quite fascinating to me.

If this kind of question is allowed here — what are some nonfiction books within the realm of social science that cover a fascinating topic, and that you really learned a lot from?

I really enjoyed reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond this year and Uneasy Street by Rachel Sherman back to back. They deal with the topics of poverty and wealth respectively and were quite fascinating to me.

I got ghosted by a guy I was dating for 2 months. He messed up and we were supposed to talk about it on Saturday but he’s blocked my number and on instagram. He knows it would have hurt me deeply. Why do people do this and how do they process it mentally?

Greetings, as I understand it Identity can be broken into 4 parts: sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

Current language normally only encodes sex, but are there ideas about encoding the rest? A similar question is do we have an idea of what level of complexity is required to encapsulate the desired percent of the population? Lastly I understand that our current verbage for describing sexual and romantic attraction is in flux but what are some current ideas for describing this.

TLDR: Is there a better encoding scheme for the identity spectrum?

Can someone define/describe the differences between the two?

What do you think of Nassim Taleb's ideas , particularly his critique of the social sciences. Taleb is a big fan of Kahneman who wrote thinking fast and slow. Taleb's essential points are that world is too complex for us to understand it and we understand it in hindsight. And that we are much better at doing things than understanding them. And grandmother and ancient wisdom such as from stoics is much more useful than complex data driven decision making.

I also really liked his ideas in Antifragile. I just started reading that book.

I was watching a video of Jordan Peterson where he talks about how gender differences increase in counties like Denmark, Finland, Norway etc.. as they became more and more egalitarian.

I want to know how genuine this claim is and if there are sources to verify this.

I am interested in if there is an agreed set of metrics that can be objectively used to decide if a society is a patriarchy or not.

I was watching some reels and ended up on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWr-qjauKa0

Literally every girl in the video says they have a kid and are no longer in contact with the father, one girl having 3 kids from 3 different fathers at age 34.

It was a point that was casually being discussed among the participants, with some men asking upfront how many of them have kids. It honestly blew my mind how nonchalant the discussion was. This got me more interested and I started looking up on "babymama", turns out pretty much all famous black celebs have a babymama and a NBA star Anthony Edwards has 4 kids with 4 different women before the age of 25.

What are the reasons for the prevalence of babymamas in black culture, and how did this get normalized to the point that people discuss it as a normal talking point before getting in a relationship

PS - I don't want to come across as ignorant, I used to think this was more a celeb phenomenon given their lifestyle but after watching this video I was shocked to find out that it happens outside of celeb circles and frequently.

Election from Sexual Appeal(?)

Historically; including the contemporary, was there ever an instance or a near instance of a leader being elected on sexual appeal or associated directly with government due to relation with their sexual appeal?

Has there ever been governments that have went off of this?

I saw a post recently asking about whether men preferred working with 'things' and women with 'people' and it got me thinking about how useful this dichotomy actually is. What is it actually rooted in as almost all jobs involve both working with things and with people? For example a tech consultant who taps on a keyboard is working with things but so do people who do admin work and most of them are women. And techies also work with colleagues and interact with clients. Likewise a woman in a 'caring' profession could work with syringes, sonograph machines, wheelchairs and any number of other 'things'.

(I could only think of a few examples of those who work to an extent exclusively with people, actors, life coaches etc but these are hardly a significant part of the economy. And when it comes to the other way around, those who run businesses online from home may well be able to work with things and avoid contact with people but it's interesting that women run a large percentage of these very small businesses, e.g. selling on etsy).

So is this distinction not meaningless, or does it need more nuance to give it explanatory power? After all there are obvious gender gaps in the job market. Do we need a more sophisticated way of thinking about things/people, like the relative importance within the job role, but how would something like 'importance' be measured?

Hello fellow readers,

I am an history undergrad from Bogazici Uni. I just started to read the classic Orientalism from its Turkish translation and I will most probably read other works of Said because as things go he may end up being my favorite non-fiction author by the end of the book.

There are many reasonings for that but I will try to list four of them: i) His life and personal experiences connect to a point where he is characteristically and academically impressive. ii) His arguments are truly convincing. His structural way of presenting ideas and judgements makes him an understandable and authentic thinker. iii) His language is easy to follow but as much as that intellectually concentrated on a solid level. He manages to be scientifically reasonable and fairly plain at the same time. iv) He has bespoke to a very sensitive place of my heart and mind personally. At least for now, I am developing geographically, historically and emotionally deep connection with his writing in a confused stage of life in terms of ideology and understanding of life.

There are two questions I would like to ask and from there on I may add a few more. Firstly, how the issue of translation should be evaluated in the specific conditions of Said’s work? I am reading the book’s Turkish translation and so far there are some old words I am not quite familiar with Arabic or Farsi origins. Should I read it from the original English version? As I see, there are not many special conceptions or a detailed terminology that may have be better to learn in original words. But I would love to hear your opinions anyway.

Secondly, the book I am considering to move on after Orientalism may have different versions in Turkish. There is some prints with the title “Yersiz Yurtsuz”. The publisher says the original name for this text is “Out of Place”. But there is also “Reflections on Exile”. How is these two books’ comparison in terms of content? Do you recommend one of these two after Orientalism or another book?

Many thanks in advance. I would be extremely happy for any kind of comment, answer or direction.

Humans have never cared much about murder in the whole history of humans. We’ve been slaughtering each other for land, war, differences, etc. since the beginning of time. So why is abortion seen as such a big deal right now? When the era of murder has in fact been committed against humans no one debates the status of. Really curious what the human response is here. Not looking for hate. Thanks.

What is the best thing that can be done to create strong institutions ?

I had an argument with a black guy and he brought this up … ( I always understood racism as stopping or preventing a entire race of people from development or advancement, legally and systematically with actual laws and legislation that enables and supports it. for example Jim Crow laws, The holocaust, Slavery, Eugenics. A single person in todays time does not have the power, control or authority to act out REAL racism, and there is almost no examples in human history of Black people being in such positions and using racist legislation. Its important to make the clear distinction, because watering down the real definition of racism washes away and minimizes its impact on history, society and our ancestors. Black people think they can’t be racist against white people💀

I'm looking for either classic or contemporary readings on the nature of Dogmatism, hopefully with sufficient depth and rigour.

Or is such an autocratic government running like a cartel..??? I know the biggest baddest cartel faction is no match to something like North Korea but if they really run almost (for example) one third of the Mexican government, how are they different from autocracy? I read that some factions would have a bracket type of leadership, where each group will have a leader acting as a leader for another group with a leader. But if places like Russia cause window accidents, what makes them simply similar to just like the Cartel? I know a whole autocratic nation will have a whole forever poor working class workforce, maybe a cartel would form within, is it just like an ouroboros? Or are empires basically run like how cartels are? Minus having to be cloak and dagger about it.

I’m not an expert at all and this is a half baked thought but I just recently read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and those of you who are familiar — what are your thoughts on how this might apply to Trump’s election and subsequent taking of office in 2025? I know it’s not a natural disaster which is much of what the book focuses on but it’s a shocking event to 50% of the country and I feel like the players and motives are there — and I know there has been talk of immediate mass deportation, devaluing the US dollar, increase in tariffs, “I’ll only be a dictator on day one”, etc. Is the US about to be treated to shock therapy? It seems counterintuitive but if people in power are corrupt then why wouldn’t they shock the system for their own gain (or if you want to apply the altruistic version, pain now to get to results later…) even if it harms the country.

I'm aware of the broader literature on things like the social construction of mental illness or the medicalization of neurodiversity, but I'd like to find a short science-news type article or essay or excerpt along those lines, and I'm having a hard time finding one. I'd really love to find something on the relationship between the stressors and demands of modern society and the rise of anxiety and depression. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!!!

The idea being rural voters may be disincentivized to move to urban areas where their vote matters less.

What is your opinion term “minor attracted persons” or MAPs? It’s has stated to be used in academic research literature to describe people who attracted the people under the age of consent more broadly.

While I understand the usage of this term, a lot of people are afraid of it as a slippery slope and there have been people who use it in their political agendas as well. I think the Dunklefeld-project in Germany is a good idea for example.

What do the psychologists

Below are examples of it’s usage in academic literature:

Walker, Allyn. A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity. University of California Press, 2021.

Levitan, Julia A., Frederica M. Martijn, Maria Santaguida, and Michael C. Seto. "Minor-Attracted Men’s Lived Experiences of Romantic Attraction." Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 50, no. 7 (2024): 811-824.

I am trying to find the statistic for the number of unique people who attempt suicide, categorized by gender. This is difficult because the sources I find either:

Consider suicide rates only (meaning unsuccessful attempts are not tallied). Or look at attempt rates only (meaning that if a person attempts suicide multiple times without succeeding they get counted multiple times).

Ideally I would like the statistic of, in the last 10 years, how many individual people, sorted by gender, have attempted suicide, regardless of outcome and regardless of the number of times each individual tried it.

If this is not a good place to ask, please direct me.

I was talking with a friend in a red border state who described the border crossing situation in a way that is very different than reports I've heard in my Northern blue state. The descriptions are SO different that it's clear that neither of us has all the information.

How does one go about finding out what the "reality" is. Asylum seeking, illegal crossings, detentions, "lost" people that disappear into the underground economy once here, seperated children, what supports/costs associated per person, deportations, etc. It's clearly messy, but is there any actual trustworthy data on what's happening and if so, how do ordinary voters get access?

Hello, I wasn’t too sure if this would be the correct sub to post this question in or if it would be better posted to a more general one such r/sociology, so feel free to take this down if it doesn’t fit into the criteria of this subreddit.

Now, for the question. It is essentially the title. When I was looking for books dealing with the role misinformation and propaganda play in various forms of subject formation, I often came across the recommendation of Bernays and Ellul, but, though I am willing to check them out, I couldn’t help but notice that they are relatively old, with Bernays book on propaganda being nearly 100 years old. So, I was interested in more recent studies that take into account the way the internet has uniquely shaped the form of propaganda and misinformation, along with the unique effects that this form has. I came here to find some reliable recommendations since I’m highly skeptical of just typing my query into Google.

Anyway, thanks in advance if you are able to help.

I recall reading Kimberle Crenshaw's original paper on intersectionality several years ago. There, she seemed to use the term to describe how broad social forces affect individuals differently based on our unique stories: racism manifests for e.g. black women differently than black men, and sexism looks different for black women vs. white women.

Today, though, 'intersectionality' seems to only be used to call people race/class traitors if they don't align with progressive orthodoxy on every issue. I don't see how this current sense of the word relates at all to how Crenshaw used it, not all that long ago. Has Crenshaw herself used 'intersectionality' in this newer sense? How and why did the meaning of the term shift over time?

Hi all. I will be graduating with a BA in Sociology, but always had a knack for languages, logic, language structure etc. I have taken an intro survey course on linguistics, which included applied weekly problem sets. Is this enough to qualify me for applying to a Linguistics MA/MS? Maybe Sociolinguistics?

Thanks!

I have a relative that is a renowned surgeon, and he is able to do things that you don't see other people even trying to do. Not illegal things, but he seems to thrive outside the normal social norms that the rest of the world follows. He is very engaging socially and also very smart. One of my favorite stories is when he was able to get a private tour of the Vatican and was able to try on the Pope's vestments and sit in his chair. It just seems that he flies outside the normal flow of society. I have met a few people like that during my life (I call them characters, for some reason). Is there any sort of investigation or research papers that discuss this phenomenon?

I mean LOOK at this https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/guns-per-capita

I mean that can't be chance ya?