2026-10-31 00:00:00
Get The Social Construction of Reality
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966) argues that the social world around us, and our understanding of it, is something people fabricated together. Even though we made it, it feels as solid and real as nature, and we usually don’t remember making it.
It reminds me of the “imagined orders” Yuval Noah Harari describes in Sapiens. Enough people believe in money, nations, companies, and human rights that we treat them as real things instead of agreements. The International Sociological Association named it the fifth most influential sociology book of the century.
People make the social world, then experience it as a fact outside themselves, then absorb it.
“It is important to keep in mind that the objectivity of the institutional world, however massive it may appear to the individual, is a humanly produced, constructed objectivity. The process by which the externalized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity is objectivation. The institutional world is objectivated human activity, and so is every single institution.”
“It is already possible, however, to see the fundamental relationship of these three dialectical moments in social reality. Each of them corresponds to an essential characterization of the social world. Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product. It may also already be evident that an analysis of the social world that leaves out any one of these three moments will be distortive.”
It starts with routine.
“All human activity is subject to habitualization. Any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort and which, ipso facto, is apprehended by its performer as that pattern. … Even the solitary individual on the proverbial desert island habitualizes his activity. When he wakes up in the morning and resumes his attempts to construct a canoe out of matchsticks, he may mumble to himself, ‘There I go again,’ as he starts on step one of an operating procedure consisting of, say, ten steps. In other words, even solitary man has at least the company of his operating procedures.”
Once people share habits and pass them down, they become institutions.
“The institutions, as historical and objective facticities, confront the individual as undeniable facts. The institutions are there, external to him, persistent in their reality, whether he likes it or not. He cannot wish them away. They resist his attempts to change or evade them.”
“In the early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena and the objectivity of the social formations. To take the most important item of socialization, language appears to the child as inherent in the nature of things, and he cannot grasp the notion of its conventionality. A thing is what it is called, and it could not be called anything else. All institutions appear in the same way, as given, unalterable and self-evident.”
Teaching it to children makes it more real to the parents, too.
“The process of transmission simply strengthens the parents’ sense of reality, if only because, to put it crudely, if one says, ‘This is how these things are done,’ often enough one believes it oneself.”
“Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms. Another way of saying this is that reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products—such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness.”
“As soon as an objective social world is established, the possibility of reification is never far away. The objectivity of the social world means that it confronts man as something outside of himself. The decisive question is whether he still retains the awareness that, however objectivated, the social world was made by men—and, therefore, can be remade by them.”
“Social order is not part of the ‘nature of things,’ and it cannot be derived from the ‘laws of nature.’ Social order exists only as a product of human activity.”
Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.
2026-10-30 00:00:00
I left home with a carry-on suitcase full of clothing two months ago, which means heavy rotation for what I’m wearing. I’ve been especially happy with the Merino.Tech polo shirt I got as a birthday present earlier this year: it doesn’t get stinky, or wrinkled, or itchy and it still looks new. I’m a fan of more expensive brands like Ibex and Icebreaker, but at $60 on Amazon, this one is punching above its price tag.
If you’ve been sitting on some hotel points that don’t seem to get you much in the USA, Canada, or Europe, you might want to plan your next vacation to some destination where you can do better. Since point requirements roughly track room rates for most programs now, you can find great deals in bargain destinations. I recently scored two nights at a Small Luxury Hotel of the World in Malaysia for 50K points total via Hilton. (Their Surpass card from Amex is a great deal.) The 50K cap on the free nights credits from a Marriott Bonvoy card was no problem: a Westin on a tropical island, with a terrific view, was only 35K points per night. Same with IHG in Saigon for my annual free night through their card. I’ve found similar points bargains from Mexico down to Santiago in the Americas.
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If you’re renting a car frequently in the USA, you might want to lean toward Enterprise and their associated brands. The latest JD Power & Associates survey scored Enterprise at the top, with sister brand National scoring second and its leisure brand Alamo coming in at #4. The others to score above the industry average were Advantage, Sixt, and Hertz.
International flight prices are all over the map, but distance does play a big part in it: you’ll pay more to fly across an ocean usually than to go two hours away. For flights within a country though, it’s more about competition. Some countries have lots of cheap flights criss-crossing their nation, while others have one choice only. I just posted this article on countries with the cheapest domestic flights and found that distances and wealth have very little correlation. You will find great flight deals in India, Thailand, and Mexico, but also in Japan, Norway, Australia, and the USA.
* Editor’s note: We’re going to release The Best of Nomadico, the First 4 Years e-book in November and paid subscribers will get it for free. We’re also going to start restricting some content to subscribers only, so if you’ve just been lurking on the app, please join us for real as a free or paid subscriber if you like what you see here. We appreciate it!
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
2026-10-29 00:00:00
Rob van den Brand lives in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. He loves to read, think, take walks, cook meals with his wife, and travel. His main skill is optimizing systems, which he applies in his work as a bookkeeper and financial advisor. He also has many thoughts about societal systems and how to improve them. He might write them down one day.
Goals, plans, vision documents, mission statements…I get what they are about, but somehow these have never worked for me. I can write one, sure. But then I just go about my life and some things happen and others don’t. Still, I do like to reflect about my life and the direction it could take. That’s why I’m experimenting with this question:
What wants to happen?
My theory is that if I align with what the universe wants to happen, the actions/projects that come up in my mind can be completed with ease and flow, having the support of invisible but real forces. And that has been my experience so far. It does mean I have to bypass my rational thinking brain, but that’s working overtime anyway. It’s lovely to be able to trust this question.
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2026-10-28 00:00:00
Big Kids
by Michael DeForge
Drawn & Quarterly
2016, 96 pages, 5 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
I have been fascinated by the work of Canadian comic artist Michael DeForge for a while now. If you like unvarnished explorations of the human psyche and the high weirdness that an unhinged mind and a free hand can render, check out Michael’s Lose series, Very Casual, and Dressing, all from Toronto-based comics publisher of note Koyama Press.
Big Kids is something of a departure for DeForge, or at least it starts off seeming that way. On the surface, Big Kids is a dark and mopey coming-of-age tale. It concerns a troubled teen boy who lives with his parents and a recalcitrant uncle in the basement and has awkward, restless sex with his best friend, in-between dangerous dares, bullying, bouts of petty vandalism, and other adolescent antics.
When the boy’s uncle gets kicked out of the house and a female college student moves in – a girl with a very different take on life who hangs with a group of more sophisticated, less juvenile delinquent friends – something extraordinary happens. Too many other reviews of this book spoil what comes next, which I think is a shame. I knew nothing of what was about to happen and was really stunned by the whole thing as a result. The book is obviously meant to be a meditation on the profound transformations we go through at different stages in our lives (especially in becoming a teen), and how strange, terrifying, and wondrous those changes can be. But this is done in a unique way that you could never guess is coming.
Michael DeForge’s work seems to be all about challenging our perceptions of identity, reality, and the comic form itself. Every time you delve into one of his pieces, you have no idea where you’re going to end up. Or just how splintered your mind will be by the time you get there. Big Kids manages to do all this while still delivering a touching, if somewhat disturbed, take on a classic tale of adolescent angst. – Gareth Branwyn
Pride & Preju-knits: Twelve Genteel Knitting Projects Inspired by Jane Austen
by Trixie von Purl
Harper Design
2015, 112 pages, 8.6 x 6.6 x 0.4 inches (paperback)
What’s the perfect book for a crafty, British literature fan with a sense of humor? It’s Pride & Preju-Knits of course! “This book is my life!” my 20-year-old daughter exclaimed when she opened up this adorable do-it-yourself paperback. “I love the fact that they give you just a few simple figures to make, and then so, so many clothing options.”
Pride & Preju-Knits contains 12 knitting projects (scenes) based on Austen’s six novels. Every element in these scenes can be knit, including main characters, accessories, animals and furniture. There are detailed instructions on how to knit Regency ladies and gentlemen, how to knit Elizabeth Bennet’s dress and Mr. Darcy’s trousers from Pride and Prejudice, and even how to knit the pianoforte played by Anne Elliot in Persuasion. You can also learn to knit sheep from Sense and Sensibility and for Emma Woodhouse’s wedding dress from Emma. Instructions include the materials, the gauge and how to finish off the piece. Trixie von Purl (aka Geraldine Warner) briefly recaps each Austen novel as well. Although these are very intricate projects, anyone can appreciate the imaginative handiwork and enjoy this charming little book. – Carole Rosner
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
2026-10-27 00:00:00
When I saw this cheap trap at Logan’s Trading Post three years ago, I figured what-the-heck, but we’ve been amazed at how effective they are. About three fourths of the way up from the bottom of the jug a tube runs through a hole in each side. Fill the jug with water up to the bottom of the transverse tube, add a pheromone pack, let it sit for a week with the top off (to make sure it gets the right attention), then close it after topping the water off. The mosquitoes fly into the tube and lay their eggs. When they hatch, the little mosquitoes can’t figure out how to get out. With luck, in about three weeks the trap will literally be swarming with skeeters.
We empty ours once a year and add new water once a month or so; as long as you break the breeding cycle early enough in the spring it’s not a big deal if you forget to water them later in the season. On our quarter-acre lot, I’ve found that three traps is plenty. So far this season, I haven’t seen a single mosquito (except for the two or three I let out when I opened up one of the traps to top it off w/water). Only one of the three traps have looked really busy this year (last year, it was two of three).
We don’t get many bugs inside. We live in an 1872 farmhouse, so we do get the occasional palmetto bug, but never up so high as to need the Bugzooka. However, living as we do, in the North Carolina piedmont, we’re plagued by mosquitoes; particularly the new “Asian Tiger” mosquitoes, which leave me and my sweetheart itching and inflamed for days after working in the garden or yard. We tried the “propane to human breath” machine (the Mosquito Magnet) for a year or so, and it simply didn’t catch any mosquitoes. The fan was not powerful enough to suck in the little buggers, so the mesh bag they said would be full of bugs was full of dust and pollen. We tried the doughnuts you’re supposed to dunk in places (like gutters) where water stands from time to time, and they didn’t help. We drilled holes in all of our trashcans and recycling bins, but they still bred mosquitoes. We heard about services that will spray some sort of natural insecticide all summer long, but they were too expensive.
With these traps, we can now work in the yard or garden or sit on our porch — one of the small joys that defines Southern living — without fear. — Steven Champeon
The Bug Blaster is a great insect control tool for the garden. It is completely organic–it only uses the force of water. I have used the tool for three years and love it. You just attach it to your hose and turn it on. The water is forced out a tiny hole and guided in such a way that it comes out in a fine spray that is a flat circle. Stick the nozzle in your plants and it knocks all the insects and eggs off, those below the leaves and those above.
Every gardener knows you can remove aphids by hosing the plant, but it is difficult to get the ones under the leaves. On delicate new growth, the hosing can injure the plants. But the Bug Blaster has such a fine, controllable spray that it cleans the plants of all the pests and doesn’t harm the plants. The good insects are usually hard shelled and aren’t injured. Since I bought this tool I haven’t used any other pest control method. — Terry Powell
In the 1970s British bus driver Ken Fern went back to the land. Twenty-five years later he published the first edition of this now-revised compendium, a catalog and guide to a staggering number of mostly-perennial plants that can be harvested for food and other uses. Literally, thousands of seed, root, fruit, flower and leaf crops from a range of bulbs, trees, shrubs, climbers, bamboos, water plants and more. Beyond climatic needs and appearance, plants are described in terms of their taste and, often, highly-specific use (e.g. Asarum canadense. SNAKE ROOT: “a ginger substitute in flavouring cooked foods.”). The index is conveniently broken up into edible uses, like condiments and egg and salt substitutes, and non-edible uses, like basketry, disinfectant, and tooth care; For more, check out 100 Other Uses. And actually, the Plants for a Future web site offers a searchable database of 7,000 plants. While much of the info from the book is available online, the printed format can be easier to parse and digest. There are sections on “green manures” and how to mulch with cardboard boxes or newspaper and straw, as well as how to make a pond. Despite all the ideas and potential outlined in the book, the final chapter, “Future Possibilities,” truly emphasizes the magical allure of cultivation and experimentation. — Steven Leckart
Do plants have ideas? Yes.
I use this monthly to troll for the best in the art and science of gardening. Each month editors Greg and Pat Williams extract the meatiest, handiest, most practical innovations in vegetable, fruit and flower horticulture. They tirelessly glean material from obscure ag-extension bulletins, garden club newsletters, seed catalogs and dusty journals, reading it all so you don’t have to, and translating it into clear English so you can use it. They run no pictures, no ads; only concepts, tools, and techniques. It’s sort of like a Cook’s Illustrated for your garden — the advice is based on scientific testing, and the tools born out of genuine need.
The newsletter is emailed as a PDF file. Because HortIdeas reports “news that stays new”, I recommend the nifty CD of all their back issues. This humble yet intelligent newsletter is an amazing service which should appeal to anyone with a love of perfecting what is possible. — KK
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
2026-10-26 00:00:00
The key premise of Recomendo is that everything we have suggested weekly in the past 10 years has been a personal recommendation based on our own experiences. It is something we have seen, heard, visited, or used ourselves. For this Christmas, we’d like to deviate from that principle slightly (and temporarily) to provide you with a dozen of recommendations from our subscribers. That is you. For our brand new Annual Christmas Reader Recommendations issue we will select the best personal recommendations submitted within the next 2 weeks by October 25. To keep it sane, just one recommendation per subscriber. Keep it short and personal. Suggest a product, tool, app, place, book, documentary, podcast, follow—anything—that you genuinely love, and few know about. No self-promotion. Beyond the dozen we share in the newsletter, we will post all of the vetted submissions on our website.
I needed a new bedside clock, so I got this Hotmoon Cocoon Pro 3 sound machine. Besides the dimmable clock display, it has 117 sounds, including 3 kinds of brown noise, my favorite. If you don’t like brown noise, try white, pink, green, blue, red, or gray. Once you set it up with the phone app, you don’t need the app unless you want to stream some of its regularly updated sounds. No subscription is required. It also has a night-light ring with adjustable color and brightness, works as a Bluetooth speaker, and has clearly labeled buttons on top. — MF
Recreate the entire ritual of online shopping on Dopamine Shop, or on Food Never Comes: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery. That was fun! Then … nothing happens. No package arrives. No money changes hands. The food never comes. Nothing to return or clean up. You consumed nothing, yet you are an ace shopper. If shopping is your comfort scroll, this is very satisfying late at night. (This trend is big in Korea.) — KK
I recently attended an in-person event with visionary Alana Fairchild, where she led us through a guided imagery meditation to meet Great Mother archetypes like the Black Madonna and Kuan Yin. I was especially moved by her chanting and singing. I own many of her oracle decks, but this recommendation is for her voice. You can experience her meditations and sacred music for free on Spotify. — CD
Gossip Goblin is an Instagram channel of short AI-generated films set in a world that looks like a combination of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Mad Max. It explores themes of artificial intelligence, biohacking, and the merging of humans and machines. The artwork is incredible, as are the acting, stories, and characters. It’s the first time I’ve watched an AI video without thinking “this is AI slop. The Hollywood Reporter interviewed the creator, Zack London. His feature-length film, Gods Don’t Give Gifts, opens in US theaters October 30. — MF
Kids Trends is a directory of more than 100 million children’s drawings and paintings that you can search by any keyword. Exploring how children picture the world opens up imaginal portals in my mind. — CD
AI-musicals are becoming memes – and the new way to debate ideas. Not a normal debate highlights the debate about whether AI is a “normal technology” which has been spun into overdrive with AI-generated musicals defending each side. One musical refutes two academics scholarly paper arguing that AI is a normal technology, and the other AI musical by the two scholars refutes the first musical. Both music
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