Grain Brain. The surprising truth about Wheat, Carbs and Sugars - Your brain's silent killers by Dr David Perlmutter

Informative, easy to read and to the point. Explains the truths about some "healthy" foods that intoxicate and damage our health. It explains how our bodies can become insulin resistant and how from there we can get a series of chronic, degenerative diseases, some of which affect the brain: think anxiety, depression, ADHD, Parkinson's and dementia. Moreover, the author believes our brains are definitely sensitive to gluten, which carry a lot of health problems intersecting with insulin resistance. Most of these issues can be reversed or at least improved. We only need to stop eating grains, breads, pastas, etc. and start eating more saturated fats because that is what the brain needs to function and repair itself. Sugars/carbs are bad, cholesterol is good. 

Recommend.

Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling

👍👍👍 A cyberpunk novel without cyberspace. I found it a bit difficult to read, and while the reading experience itself wasn’t especially enjoyable (except from the final chapter) I’m still glad I read it. Chapter and chapter sections are fragmented and discontinuous with abrupt time jumps and with characters who randomly appear and disappear. The book offers a lot to think about though, particularly regarding posthumanism, evolution, and immortality. The protagonist, who survives across decades (even centuries) undergoes numerous cybernetic and genetic rejuvenation treatments. His natural biology is repeatedly altered, disrupting the normal ageing process and turning his life into a continual cycle of self-reconstruction aimed at extending his life. Yet despite these enhancements and renewals, there remains a persistent sense of physical decline and mental exhaustion accumulating over time. As his body and identity were repeatedly transformed, I wondered if he would still call himself human. There was much more in Schismatrix. The world building is interesting mainly based on politics, political factions, and war. The edition in the photo includes Schismatrix, the novel, and 5 short stories based in the same universe. I only read the novel.

Contrapaso. Mayores, con reparo by Teresa Valero.

(Contrapaso, elders, with reservations) 

🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎 Beautiful, gripping. This is the second part following Contrapaso, the children of others. Part 2 does not disappoint. We meet again Leon Lenoir, Emilio Sanz and Paloma Rios, the main Journalists/Investigators. The story takes place in Madrid in October 1956, once again delving into the bleak and oppressive atmosphere of Franco’s dictatorship. The protagonists investigate a string of murders linked to the Spanish film industry. Both the artwork and the graphic storytelling are exceptional. Valero vividly transports the reader to 1950s Spain, fully immersing us in the analogue, pre-digital world of newspapers and police work. There is so much worth mentioning, but one standout character is Charo, the teenage daughter of a forensic doctor, who skips school to assist her father in examining murder scenes. 😎 

Perfect comic. 

Recommend.

The Web of Life. A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra

👍👍👍👍👍 In this book Capra argues for a new perspective to understand living systems. Instead of dividing and isolating the parts of a system to study it, systems should be studied as wholes. The system is much more than the sum of its parts, and according to Capra (and the cyberneticists and systems thinkers he bases his proposal on) the qualities that make up a system are not embedded in its parts but they emerge as networks of relationships and interdependent processes when the system is all put together. Capra advocates for an ecological worldview that recognizes interdependence, feedback loops, cooperation, and sustainability as fundamental principles of both nature and human society. 

The Web of Life is an interesting and thought provoking idea but is complex to understand. Capra grounds his work on so many models and theories it felt a bit overwhelming. I can highlight though a couple. The Models of Self-organisation which Capra defines as open systems far from equilibrium, systems that remain stable not by being static, but by continuously transforming energy and adapting and The Mathematics of Complexity where Capra turns to non-linear mathematical tools to model and explain living systems. These mathematical models show how Life is not a random process or phenomenon but a result of complex patterns. 

What struck me most is the way Capra moves from the small to the large scale, beginning with studies of self-organising chemical systems and showing how these systems display remarkable life-like properties that may help explain the origins of life. He then expands the discussion to a range of influential theories, including Maturana and Varela’s Theory of Autopoiesis and Margulis and Lovelock’s Gaia Theory. 

The Web of Life is built upon these ideas to construct a model of the world founded on principles such as interdependence, cooperation, recycling, partnership, flexibility, diversity, and sustainability. This model emphasizes spirituality and interconnectedness, reminding us that human beings are not separate from or above nature, but are themselves part of it.