#@ddc dump

[blondebrainpowered]

The artist: https://www.instagram.com/gottehamham/

[24-stock-market-news]

Did Hari Shankar Tibrewala crash the stock market???

Penny stocks (ones trading under ₹10 a share) and small-cap stocks are being punished. And there’s one name cropping up as a probable cause for a part of this mayhem — Hari Shankar Tibrewala.

But who’s this shadowy figure, you wonder?

Well, does the name Mahadev betting scam ring a bell?

No?

Okay. The details are a little murky, but we’ve tried to piece everything together. So let’s take it from the top.

It all started in the mid-2010s in a town in Chhattisgarh. A young man named Saurabh Chandrakar had decided to set up a juice stall. He called it Mahadev Juice Centre and he had his fingers crossed for this to be successful. The problem was that he’d not had much luck with previous business ideas and to make things worse, Chandrakar had already racked up a few lakhs in losses due to an ugly gambling habit.

That’s when he bumped into a fellow gambler and businessman named Ravi Uppal. And maybe they decided that they couldn’t keep losing money to these betting schemes. So they decided it made sense for them to be the ‘house’. Together the two of them decided to set up a betting website.

And in 2017, they set up their gambling app named after the juice centre — Mahadev Book. They wanted people to place live bets on sporting events such as cricket and football.

And since they really didn’t have any experience creating something that would scale, as per some reports, they managed to get an introduction to the folks who already ran a pretty successful betting app called Reddy Anna.

Apparently, that technical know-how changed their fortunes.

By 2019, Uppal and Chandrakar migrated to Dubai and their families followed soon after. They began advertising to lure in the millions of users and soon began raking in crores of rupees a day. They set up over 10,000 bank accounts across the world to receive all this money.

Either way, when Chandrakar decided to flaunt his newfound wealth by splashing ₹200 crores on an opulent wedding in 2023, India’s Enforcement Directorate woke up.

“Who on earth was this guy who suddenly had Bollywood A-listers attending his wedding in Dubai?”, they thought.

So they investigated. They found that everything about the app and the money it made was illegal. And then worked with the UAE law enforcement to arrest Chandrakar and Uppal.

Anyway, that’s the short version of this scam that’s allegedly worth a mammoth ₹6,000 crores!

Okay. But how does Hari Shankar Tibrewala fit into all this, you ask?

Ah, so Tibrewala is a Dubai-based ‘businessman’ who allegedly teamed up with Chandrakar and Uppal. He ran a variant of the Mahadev Book app called 'Skyexchange'.

And his modus operandi was pretty simple. He took money from customers and then handed it over to a clandestine network of money operators. These folks would find ways to park it surreptitiously into bank accounts. And these bank accounts would be controlled by Indian or foreign entities.

What would they do with this money?

Well, as per the Enforcement Directorate, the money eventually wound up in the Indian stock markets — a whopping ₹1,100 crores worth of it. And most of it would be in the stocks of smaller companies such as Tiger Logistics, Toyam Sports, and Gogia 24-ddc-news Services. In fact, around 30 listed stocks are suspected to have investments from one of Tibrewala’s many dummy companies.

Now the reason for choosing smaller companies was simple. Hardly anyone would trade in these shares. And that meant it would be easier to manipulate the prices. He could quite easily play the pump-and-dump game  - drive up the prices, fool retail investors into thinking the stock is the next big thing and then exit it at a hefty profit.

And since this dubious practice worried the folks at the ED, they jumped right in and have frozen shares worth a whopping ₹1,100 crores in demat accounts linked to Tibrewala.

But wait…does it mean that all 30 stocks are being manipulated, you ask?

Probably not. Anyone can buy stocks from the open market, right? And it’s not necessary that Tibrewala has a direct connection with the promoters of the companies. In fact, at least 6 of these companies have issued public clarifications saying that they have no direct connection to Tibrewala.

But here’s the thing. It may not be enough to assuage investor fears that their beloved stock is being manipulated.

Take, for instance, a solar utility company called Gensol Engineering. The Morning Context points out that one of Tibrewala’s companies Zenith Multi Trading DMCC has a stake in the firm. And for a period after Zenith took its spot as an investor, the stock had a meteoric rise.

Now that might be true. But you don’t need to have decision-making rights to drive up an illiquid stock’s price, no? And that could mean the Tibrewala connection could still optically look quite bad for Gensol.

In fact, companies with links to Tibrewala have all fallen by 10–30% in just this month. And that’s why people are laying blame on Tibrewala’s doorstep for the recent rout.

Finshots is also on WhatsApp Channels. Click here to follow us and get your daily financial fix in just 3 minutes.

PS: Of course, it’s foolish to attribute a broader market crash to just Tibrewala. There’s a whole host of things at play here — SEBI’s warning on market manipulation, the regulator asking mutual funds to be cognizant of the risks in smaller companies, and even some global stock market weakness. But we just wanted to talk about the Dubai-based operator’s connection to certain Indian stocks.

[24-ddc-news]

Did Hari Shankar Tibrewala crash the stock market?

The Story

Penny stocks (ones trading under ₹10 a share) and small-cap stocks are being punished. And there’s one name cropping up as a probable cause for a part of this mayhem — Hari Shankar Tibrewala.

But who’s this shadowy figure, you wonder?

Well, does the name Mahadev betting scam ring a bell?

No?

Okay. The details are a little murky, but we’ve tried to piece everything together. So let’s take it from the top.

It all started in the mid-2010s in a town in Chhattisgarh. A young man named Saurabh Chandrakar had decided to set up a juice stall. He called it Mahadev Juice Centre and he had his fingers crossed for this to be successful. The problem was that he’d not had much luck with previous business ideas and to make things worse, Chandrakar had already racked up a few lakhs in losses due to an ugly gambling habit.

That’s when he bumped into a fellow gambler and businessman named Ravi Uppal. And maybe they decided that they couldn’t keep losing money to these betting schemes. So they decided it made sense for them to be the ‘house’. Together the two of them decided to set up a betting website.

And in 2017, they set up their gambling app named after the juice centre — Mahadev Book. They wanted people to place live bets on sporting events such as cricket and football.

And since they really didn’t have any experience creating something that would scale, as per some reports, they managed to get an introduction to the folks who already ran a pretty successful betting app called Reddy Anna.

Apparently, that technical know-how changed their fortunes.

By 2019, Uppal and Chandrakar migrated to Dubai and their families followed soon after. They began advertising to lure in the millions of users and soon began raking in crores of rupees a day. They set up over 10,000 bank accounts across the world to receive all this money.

Either way, when Chandrakar decided to flaunt his newfound wealth by splashing ₹200 crores on an opulent wedding in 2023, India’s Enforcement Directorate woke up.

“Who on earth was this guy who suddenly had Bollywood A-listers attending his wedding in Dubai?”, they thought.

So they investigated. They found that everything about the app and the money it made was illegal. And then worked with the UAE law enforcement to arrest Chandrakar and Uppal.

Anyway, that’s the short version of this scam that’s allegedly worth a mammoth ₹6,000 crores!

Okay. But how does Hari Shankar Tibrewala fit into all this, you ask?

Ah, so Tibrewala is a Dubai-based ‘businessman’ who allegedly teamed up with Chandrakar and Uppal. He ran a variant of the Mahadev Book app called 'Skyexchange'.

And his modus operandi was pretty simple. He took money from customers and then handed it over to a clandestine network of money operators. These folks would find ways to park it surreptitiously into bank accounts. And these bank accounts would be controlled by Indian or foreign entities.

What would they do with this money?

Well, as per the Enforcement Directorate, the money eventually wound up in the Indian stock markets — a whopping ₹1,100 crores worth of it. And most of it would be in the stocks of smaller companies such as Tiger Logistics, Toyam Sports, and Gogia 24-ddc-news Services. In fact, around 30 listed stocks are suspected to have investments from one of Tibrewala’s many dummy companies.

Now the reason for choosing smaller companies was simple. Hardly anyone would trade in these shares. And that meant it would be easier to manipulate the prices. He could quite easily play the pump-and-dump game — drive up the prices, fool retail investors into thinking the stock is the next big thing and then exit it at a hefty profit.

And since this dubious practice worried the folks at the ED, they jumped right in and have frozen shares worth a whopping ₹1,100 crores in demat accounts linked to Tibrewala.

But wait…does it mean that all 30 stocks are being manipulated, you ask?

Probably not. Anyone can buy stocks from the open market, right? And it’s not necessary that Tibrewala has a direct connection with the promoters of the companies. In fact, at least 6 of these companies have issued public clarifications saying that they have no direct connection to Tibrewala.

But here’s the thing. It may not be enough to assuage investor fears that their beloved stock is being manipulated.

Take, for instance, a solar utility company called Gensol Engineering. The Morning Context points out that one of Tibrewala’s companies Zenith Multi Trading DMCC has a stake in the firm. And for a period after Zenith took its spot as an investor, the stock had a meteoric rise.

Now that might be true. But you don’t need to have decision-making rights to drive up an illiquid stock’s price, no? And that could mean the Tibrewala connection could still optically look quite bad for Gensol.

In fact, companies with links to Tibrewala have all fallen by 10–30% in just this month. And that’s why people are laying blame on Tibrewala’s doorstep for the recent rout.

Finshots is also on WhatsApp Channels. Click here to follow us and get your daily financial fix in just 3 minutes.

PS: Of course, it’s foolish to attribute a broader market crash to just Tibrewala. There’s a whole host of things at play here — SEBI’s warning on market manipulation, the regulator asking mutual funds to be cognizant of the risks in smaller companies, and even some global stock market weakness. But we just wanted to talk about the Dubai-based operator’s connection to certain Indian stocks.

[swirlmup]

follow-up from the last doodle dump, i’m kinda feelin’ this outfit :0

[universallywriting]

Told you all I'd get to it eventually, lol.

-------

Title: Info Dump

Summary: Peridot explains.

Preview:

Diamond Days Cafe Incorporated was technically just a coffee corporation. Unfortunately, with coffee being one of the most popular medicines in the United States, becoming a coffee corporation with near infinite power wasn’t particularly difficult. Peridot hadn’t really thought much of it when she was headhunted right out of school by them. DDC was one of Empire State U’s biggest donors, and although no company could get that large without stepping on some toes, it wasn’t as if she was doing anything illegal. None of it was out of the ordinary. She was offered an entry level job of tech support with a promise of advancement opportunities, and she took it. Why not?

That was why, as she kept repeatedly saying to the massive fusion in front of her, “I didn’t know anything until I got promoted! It was just a job!”

Despite her desperate protestations, no one responded. Even Lazuli sat there, still as a statue. So she kept explaining.

The first few years on the job weren’t even a little suspicious. She lived in Empire and made an okay amount of pay, but the office she was in was a tertiary campus at best. The Diamonds were technically her bosses, but it’s not like she ever saw them. How many people working at grocery stores ever met their CEO? It was organized like any other company with everything filtered down through a chain of middle management.

Admittedly, she didn’t think it was an especially pleasant work environment. The lead manager who had to deal with the executives scampered around the office like a terrified pup. Peridot shrugged, “But, you know, that’s not that weird. Most big companies have a few assholes in charge.”

“Skip to when you were promoted,” Stevonnie prompted, looking back and forth between their sword and Peridot’s face. It hadn’t glowed once, and Peridot was very keen on making sure it stayed that way.

[silver-wield]

There seems to be people camping in your Twitter? If I was you I would RT every disgusting shit the DDC did so they can eat their own shit for being the bullies they usually are while camping in somebody elses Twitter account.

Yeah, I don't wanna do that. They always talk shit about me anyway calling me toxic and whatever like that's totally okay but if I point out they're being assholes I'm the problem 🤦‍♀️

It's not like anything is different than before, so I'll just keep doing what I want and those assholes will keep being bullies. Whether it's towards me or someone else, it really doesn't make any difference who the target is. The point is they target people and thrive off it like the toxic waste dump they all are.

[truthbeetoldmedia]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine 6x03 “The Tattler” Review

If last week’s episode was Hitchcock and Scully’s origin story, then this week’s episode is Jake and Gina’s. We’ve known since the beginning of the series that Jake and Gina grew up together (their friendship is little-boy-holding-little-girl’s-hand) and that Jake got Gina her job at the Nine-Nine, but in “The Tattler” we see deeper into that relationship than we ever have before, as they attend their twenty year high school reunion.

They were the only two members of the DDC (Dope Denim Crew)! They both had long hair and an earring! They were in a ska band together! They were best friends!

For Gina, the reunion is an opportunity for her to make up a new story about what she’s been up to for everyone she meets (“It’s going to be Fib City, population: Gina Clooney”), but Jake worries that a nickname that ruined his entire senior year will come back to haunt him twenty years later. And he’s right; despite his awesome job and super-smart wife, everyone still remembers him as “the Tattler.”

You see, in Jake’s junior year he was becoming friends with the coolest, hottest kid in school, Brandon Bliss. Brandon asked Jake to skip school with him and his friends, steal a van, and get drunk at his parents’ cabin, but the day they were supposed to leave someone tattled on Brandon, he got suspended, and the whole school believed it was Jake who had told.

Jake is obviously still bothered by the fact that everyone remembers him for something he didn’t do twenty years ago, so Amy suggests they find out who the tattler really was and clear Jake’s name. This leads to the two of them breaking into admin and looking up old class schedules to figure out which member of the football team shared third period with Brandon Bliss and could have told him that Jake was the tattler, all while Gina sells an app she just made up (“Todddddler”, Tinder for toddlers) to an old classmate who has become a tech mogul.

Jake and Amy successfully track down the only football player who could have started the rumour, and are told that he did see Jake tattling on Brandon to the principal. Or at least, he saw someone with Jake’s long hair, earring, and denim jacket talking to the principal.

Realizing that Gina was the one who ruined his senior year, Jake confronts her. Although he’s rightfully angry that his best friend would betray him and then lie about it for two decades, Gina soon makes him see that what she did was for his own good; he was heading down a dark path with Brandon, and if he had gotten in trouble for stealing a van, or worse, he never would have been able to become a cop.

Gina was Jake’s origin story (the radioactive spider to his Spiderman) and in return, Jake wants to be hers (the dead parents to her Batman). Gina’s attempt at pitching Todddddler didn’t end well, mostly because their old classmate was also lying about what he’d been doing since graduating, but it did make her realize that building her own business is something she’s always wanted to pursue, she just doesn’t have time between working at the Nine-Nine and raising her baby.

So Jake tells her that maybe it’s time for her to move on. He was the one who got her the job at the Nine-Nine, and he’s the one giving the support she needs to leave it. We’ve known for several months now that Chelsea Peretti was leaving the show and that Gina would have to be written off, and I think they chose the perfect way to do it: with a story that focuses on hers and Jake’s origins, as Gina looks towards a new beginning.

Back at the Nine-Nine, Rosa approaches Charles about her dating issues; she’s been seeing two people, both of whom she really likes, but they found out about each other and now she has to decide which one she wants to pursue.

(I love how Rosa has slowly started opening up to the squad over the last couple of years, but is still a deeply private person; Charles’ flabbergasted expression as she dumps a bunch of previously unknown information on him is priceless.)

Charles probably isn’t the best person to approach when you need help making a decision — or maybe he’s the perfect person, as he has an entire binder dedicated to choosing between two things. Rosa remains undecided through all of Charles’ strategies, including answering a 312-question questionnaire and hanging from the ceiling like a bat, only to have the decision made for her when one of the people she’s dating texts her to break it off, because she took too long to respond.

And thus we learn Charles’ true strategy: to avoid actively making any decision and allow the universe to make them for you. “That way you never make the wrong choice.”

Isn’t it cool how Charles and Rosa’s relationship has developed from him having a creepy, unreciprocated crush on her in Season 1 to him being the one she goes to first about dating problems? Although this subplot didn’t have much going on (it would have ended the exact same way whether Rosa had gone to Charles for help or not), I love watching these two together; despite her stoic exterior, Rosa often plays along with Charles’ quirks in a way no one else does, and despite needing to know everything about everyone, Charles respects Rosa’s boundaries.

Footnotes:

It’s been awhile since Gina was in the main plot of an episode, I’d forgotten how much she can bring to the show — and how well she and Jake play off of each other. Nice of them to remind me right before she leaves.

Seeing Amy back in a high school environment was an absolute delight.

Was anyone else surprised and then not-so-surprised at Jake’s perfect attendance record and community service? Despite his cavalier attitude towards some things, there’s a reason Jake’s a really good cop.

Holt’s attitude towards the radio contest reminds me of how he is during the Halloween heists, AKA “it’s not fun and games until there’s a competition to be won.” (Also, I used to attempt to win that exact same type of radio contest with my coworkers. We never were able to guess the sound.)

Brooklyn Nine-Nine airs Thursdays at 9/8c on NBC.

Sam’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

[jknewsinfo]

*DC Reasi visited far flung area of Gulabgarh,holds a public grievances redressal camp at Govt.High School Lar,took review of the certain development projects*. As part of ongoing Public Outreach Programne,Deputy Commissioner Reasi Charandeep Singh today visited Gulabgarh and conducted a public darbar at Govt High School Lar to listen to public grievances and onspot issued directions to the concerned authorities for early redressal of the raised grievances. The PRIs, Public put forth their demands seeking improved road connectivity to whole Gulabgarh ,damaged water pipes /no water connectivity in many areas, electricity issue at Dewal Dogga, Vandara, Painaad,Baransal, Shabrass and their adjoining areas, demand for Ambulance and medical staff especially Gynecologist doctor, Ration dumping for winter season in advance for 3 months including domestic gas depot type, upgradation of Govt High school Lar to Higher sec. School Lar,Examination center needs to be established for upcoming exams,Golden card old age pension and ujjwala yojna cook top and connection have been distributed. Scores of issues of Water, Power, Road, Transport, Ration, Nutrition, Education, Health were resolved on the spot after face to face delibration with District Officers and for several other issues DDC fixed timeline for their resolution. https://www.instagram.com/p/CWYp5m2Bt61/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nestordiazdevillegas]

"Collecting Dust/Coleccionar el polvo", un poema inmoral en DDC

“Collecting Dust/Coleccionar el polvo”, un poema inmoral en DDC

Collecting Dust / Coleccionar el polvo

  Dust collects everything

hoards dandruff as poetry

each letter a little speck of

dander snow, the pecking order of

the tiny termites, the pecking order

of dust mites.

  Huge garbage trucks collect the dust

of humanity, dumping trucks drive

far away into the night and discharge their cargo

of nothingness, nothingness that was once

something, nothingness…

[jeki2011-blog]

8 Ways to Read the Books You Wish You Had Time For

Neil Pasricha

When I tell people this, most say, “Oh, yes, for sure, yes.” But then two seconds later, they say “I just wish I had the time.”

Well, you know what? I’m calling shenanigans on that excuse. Because the truth is we do have the time.  A University of California report shows we’re consuming more information now than we ever have before — more than 100,000 words per day. Think about how many texts and alerts and notifications and work emails and personal emails and news headlines and fly-by tickers and blog feeds and Twitter spews and Instagram comments you’re reading each day.

With all that garbage reading, who has time for books anymore?

In an earlier HBR piece called “8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year,” I shared how for most of my adult life I read five books a year, tops. I had a few slow burners on my nightstand, and read a couple of books on vacation if I was lucky. But then three years ago, I read fifty. Fifty books! In one year. I couldn’t believe it. I could suddenly feel books becoming this lead domino towards being a better husband, a better father, and a better writer.

Since then, I’ve tried doubling down on reading. I’m now reading somewhere above 100 books a year. Sure, I sometimes hit slow patches, and bare patches, and slip into social media black holes. But here are eight more things I do to get back on track:

1. Live inside a world of books. Most people have a bookshelf “over there,” where the books live. But one day last year, my wife just dumped a pile of about ten picture books in the middle of our coffee table. What happened? Our kids started flipping through them all the time. So now we just rotate them and leave them there. It’s a path-of-least-resistance principle, much like how Google leaves healthy snacks on the counter for employees, while chocolates are hidden away in cookie jars. We’ve put the TV in the basement, installed a bookshelf near our front door, and slipped books into car seat pouches and various nooks around the house. Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges said: “I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.” This is how we now choose to live. (Even if you’re trying to declutter, or don’t have a lot of space to store books, you can always visit your local library for books and return them when you’re done.)

2. Go “red” in bed. My wife generally falls asleep before I do, and that’s when I strap my red reading light on my forehead. Why red? Michael Breus, author of The Power of When says the theory is that red light aids melatonin production. And bright lights have the opposite effect, according to The Sleep Health Foundation of Australia. Too-bright lights, or a bright screen, can make you feel more alert. Bedtime reading should help you wind down, not wind you up.

3. Make your phone less addictive. Cell phones are a distraction machine. Our cell phones are designed to be smooth, sexy, and irresistible. Don’t believe me? The book Irresistible by Stern School of Business associate professor Adam Alter will quickly raise your awareness of the addictive designs going into smartphones. They’re like pocket slot machines. So how do you resist the urge to reach for it? Make it less appealing. Move all of the apps off the main screen so it’s blank when you open it. Leave your cracked screen cracked. Move your charger to the basement so it’s an extra step in your low-resilience nighttime and morning moments. If you must have your phone in the room while you sleep, enable “Do Not Disturb” mode to automatically block calls and texts after 7 p.m. Slowly, slowly, slowly, you can prevent your phone from becoming so seductive.

4. Use the Dewey Decimal System. How do you organize your books? By color? By when you bought them? By big random piles everywhere? There’s a reason every library uses the Dewey Decimal System. It makes sense. Books fall neatly into ever-more-thinly-sliced categories around psychology and religion and science and art and…everything. What’s the benefit? You make connections. You see where your big gaps are. I spent one Saturday organizing my books according to the Dewey Decimal System and, in addition to scratching an incredibly deep organizational itch, I now find books faster, feel like my reading is more purposeful, and am more engaged in what I read, because I can sort of feel how it snaps into my brain. What tools do you need to do this? Just two: I bookmarked classify.oclc.org to look up Dewey Decimal Numbers for any books which don’t have a DDC code on the inside jacket, and I use the Decimator app to look up what that number means. Oh, and I use a pencil to write the Dewey Decimal code and the category on the inside jacket of each book before putting it on the shelf.

5. Use podcasts and BookTube to solve the “next book” dilemma. As you start ramping up your reading rate, the biggest problem soon becomes “Well, what should I read next?” Going beyond piles in airport bookstores and what’s trending on bestseller lists means plunging into backlists and bookstore side-shelves to get intentional about finding the books that really change your life. In an era of infinite choice, the value of curation skyrockets. Podcasts and BookTubers (a subset of YouTubers focused on books) are now a reader’s curation dream machine. Where to start? In podcasts, “What Should I Read Next?” by Modern Mrs. Darcy tackles the problem head on and “Get Booked” by Amanda Nelson at BookRiot offers custom book recommendations. I also have my own show “3 Books,” during which we ask guests like Chris Anderson of TED, Judy Blume, or Chip Wilson to share three books that most shaped their lives. And: BookTube? Yes, BookTube. There’s a great overview of it here, and some starter channels to get you hooked are Ariel Bissett and polandbananasBOOKS.

6. Unfollow all news. Sure, sure, I preached before about how I cancelled my five magazine and two newspaper subscriptions to focus solely on books. But you know where the news followed me? Online. That’s where you need to go hardcore: Unfollow every news site on social media, and remove all bookmarks to news sites (remove all passwords, too). Remember what political scientist Herbert Simon said: “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” (Want to go deeper here? I recommend reading “Why You Should Stop Reading News” on Farnam Street and “Five Things You Notice When You Quit The News” on Raptitude.)

7. Read on something that doesn’t do anything else. As author Seth Godin told me in an interview, “People rarely read a book in iBooks because you’re one click away from checking your email.” If we can be interrupted, alerted, or notified, we will. That’s not good for diving deep into new worlds. So what do I suggest? Real books. Real pages. On real paper. Yes, I’m OK with killing trees if it means gaining the ability to disappear into your own mind. Only real books let you be the full director of the show, after all. No voice replaces your mental voice, no formatting or display screen affects the artistic intentions of the writer. Sure, I get it if you need bigger fonts, or if you drive all day and prefer audiobooks, but I’m just saying that if you want to be a real book snob for the rest of your life just like me, actual books are where it’s at. And, if you must use a device, just make sure that e-reader can’t receive texts.

8. Talk to your local booksellers. My favorite bookseller of all-time is Sarah Ramsey of Another Story Books in Toronto. I walk in, I start blabbering, I start confessing, I share what I’m struggling with, and she hmms and hahs and sizes me up as we wander around the store talking for half an hour. She finds: a good book after my divorce, a good book before my trip to Australia, a good book as I struggle with my kids. And then I walk out with an armload of books that completely fit my emotional state, where I want or need to grow, and those that resonate with me on a deeper level. If you believe humans are the best algorithm (as I do), then walking into your local independent bookstore, sizing up the Staff Picks wall to see who’s interests align with yours, and then asking them for personal picks is a great way to find books you’ll love faster. (Here’s a list of indie bookstores in the U.S. if you want a place to start.)

So are you ready to read? Raring to go? Or are you one of those people who first needs to hear some rock-solid science to help change your behavior? If you need another couple of reasons: In 2011, The Annual Review of Psychology said that reading triggers our mirror neurons and opens up the parts of our brains responsible for developing empathy, compassion, and understanding. Reading makes you a better leader, teacher, parent, and sibling. Another study published in Science Magazine found that reading literary fiction helps us improve our empathy and social functioning. And, finally, an incredible 2013 study at Emory University found that MRIs taken the morning after test subjects were asked to read sections of a novel showed an increase in connectivity in the left temporal cortex — the area of the brain associated with receptivity for language. Just imagine the long-term benefits of cracking open a book every day.

https://hbr.org/2019/04/8-ways-to-read-the-books-you-wish-you-had-time-for?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social