Blech. Nothing here that's obscure or likely to alter the path of some one's knowledge. No philosophy, no history, and the list includes Gladwell. Actually, the inclusion of Gladwell probably distinctly colors my thinking on the subject.
Maybe "How to read a book" or "The Alchemist" or I don't know, something that's not just so totally typical.
I recently bought some dry cat food from Amazon. One of my cats immediately got a massive skin infection that cost >$400 to cure. I can't prove it was from that but this is an indoor cat who has no real exposure to anything else that would have been different.
Needless to say, I totally agree with not buying anything that goes on or in a living thing.
Unrelated, but you're the first person I've ever heard who had optical migraines, which I have too. I experience them as shooting lights followed by essentially a shut down in vision in the affected eye. Never thought about Lasik making it worse but glad to never have done it if that's the same experience. It's miserable when it happens.
The manager's schedule is built around Taylorism and the idea that if she (the manager) just figures out the exact mechanistic steps for squeezing all the productivity out of the worker, everything will operate smoothly.
Unfortunately, that's not particularly useful in knowledge work where most of the time, we're dealing with a non-deterministic relationships and creatively figuring out a problem. The expression of the symptom is the manager's schedule but the actual disease is the outdated idea of command and control as a way to manage knowledge workers.
I guess we'll never learn from things like margarine and other lab invented foods. Beyond Meat is heavily dependent on seed oils which are terrible for us (expeller pressed canola oil is ingredient #2). Red Meat actually isn't unhealthy at the levels most people currently eat it. While it wouldn't surprise me if more people ate Beyond meat and its ilk in the future, it doesn't make it better for us and will likely just make us sicker.
What they learned is that solving problems with debt is bad. So they try to not have debt by saving a lot. The fact they do it with the same fiat currency system is another matter. But that history lesson is one the OP seems to be ignorant of.
I'm 46 with a 3 year old I spend a lot of time with (21-24 hours a week). I love that time but it's a little depressing to only have 5 years of free time left.