50 Cents Quotes

Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.

If I had a dollar for every time a random woman walked up to me and tried to seduce me, I'd have 50 cents. That's assuming drag queens are half price.

You shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house and if you got a glass jaw, you should watch yo mouth: cause I'll break yo face.

If you die in an elevator make sure you press the UP button.

Show No Love , Cus Love Can Get U killed

I love you like a fat kid loves cake

what comes around goes around.

Get rich or die tryin'.

Understand: people judge you by appearances, the image you project through your actions, words, and style. If you do not take control of this process, then people will see and define you the way they want to, often to your detriment. You might think that being consistent with this image will make others respect and trust you, but in fact it is the opposite—over time you seem predictable and weak. Consistency is an illusion anyway—each passing day brings changes within you. You must not be afraid to express these evolutions. The powerful learn early in life that they have the freedom to mold their image, fitting the needs and moods of the moment. In this way, they keep others off balance and maintain an air of mystery. You must follow this path and find great pleasure in reinventing yourself, as if you were the author writing your own drama

Reality has its own power—you can turn your back on it, but it will find you in the end, and your inability to cope with it will be your ruin.

WHEN YOU WORK FOR OTHERS, YOU ARE AT THEIR MERCY. THEY OWN YOUR WORK; THEY OWN YOU. YOUR CREATIVE SPIRIT IS SQUASHED. WHAT KEEPS YOU IN SUCH POSITIONS IS A FEAR OF HAVING TO SINK OR SWIM ON YOUR OWN. INSTEAD YOU SHOULD HAVE A GREATER FEAR OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU REMAIN DEPENDENT ON OTHERS FOR POWER. YOUR GOAL IN EVERY MANEUVER IN LIFE MUST BE OWNERSHIP, WORKING THE CORNER FOR YOURSELF. WHEN IT IS YOURS TO LOSE-YOU ARE MORE MOTIVATED, MORE CREATIVE, MORE ALIVE. THE ULTIMATE POWER IN LIFE IS TO BE COMPLETELY SELF-RELIANT, COMPLETELY YOURSELF.

What separates those who go under and those who rise above adversity is the strength of their will and their hunger for power.

There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

I've made so many mistakes, so many corrections. I'm so far from perfect so many imperfections. But I'm a go getta I get up and go get it, so if you preaching prosperity, i wanna hit it....

its not about the dog in the fight, its about the fight in the dog!

Love your enemies and hate your friends, your enemies remain the same your friends always change

Every negative is a positive. The bad things that happen to me, I somehow make them good. That means you can’t do anything to hurt me.

50 bucks sounds fair to me. Especially since I’m not doing anything to earn it.

Now is the time to stop drifting and wake up—to assess yourself, the people around you, and the direction in which you are headed in as cold and brutal a light as possible. Without fear.

We drive down the road in complete silence for a few miles listening to 50 Cent. As soon as he tells us that he's into having sex, he ain't into making love, Casey turns the volume down and begins telling me the following information: " I love you so much. We're going to have the best life together. I can't wait." Every word she says makes me feel a little more like faking a stroke and pretending to lose all memory of who I was, but it's not until she looks me in the eye and says in all seriousness, "You're my soul mate," that I realize I am not going to marry her.

live on the edge. I’m only free because I’m not afraid. Everything I was afraid of already happened to me.

mental alchemy you can effect by thinking of any adversity as an opportunity for power.

I'm a trackstar running through life, chasing my dream"50 Cent

IN MY VIEW…IT IS BETTER TO BE IMPETUOUS THAN CAUTIOUS, BECAUSE FORTUNE IS A WOMAN, AND IF YOU WISH TO DOMINATE HER YOU MUST BEAT HER AND BATTER HER. IT IS CLEAR THAT SHE WILL LET HERSELF BE WON BY MEN WHO ARE IMPETUOUS RATHER THAN BY THOSE WHO STEP CAUTIOUSLY. —Niccolò Machiabelli

THIS PAST, THE NEGRO’S PAST, OF ROPE, FIRE, TORTURE…DEATH AND HUMILIATION; FEAR BY DAY AND NIGHT, FEAR AS DEEP AS THE MARROW OF THE BONE…THIS PAST, THIS ENDLESS STRUGGLE TO ACHIEVE AND CONFIRM A HUMAN IDENTITY…YET CONTAINS, FOR ALL ITS HORROR, SOMETHING VERY BEAUTIFUL…. PEOPLE WHO CANNOT SUFFER CAN NEVER GROW UP, CAN NEVER DISCOVER WHO THEY ARE…. —James Baldwin

The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English, the French and the Russian -- all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world.

Fear dominates most people’s lives. Fear of loss. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Fear of loneliness.

the greatest danger you face is your mind growing soft and your eye getting dull.

That's when I realized that as long as you don't broadcast your beefs, you can get away cold with murder. It's even better if you don't allow the beef to take place. If someone disrespects you, you can know in your heard that you're going to get him, but you don't have to show him there's a beef. You can just look at it like, Okay, this nigga must not know. And then you fall back and you put it down.

slavery was a system that depended on the creation of deep levels of fear.

Get rich or Die tryin

THE FIRMER YOUR GRASP ON REALITY, THE MORE POWER YOU WILL HAVE TO ALTER IT FOR YOUR PURPOSES.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different.

i love you like a fat kid loves cake!

the knife’s edge that separates failure from success in life. That edge is your attitude, which has the power to help shape your reality.

fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.

Never be a minion, always be an owner.

My own diagnosis of my problem is a simpler one. It’s that I share 50 per cent of my genome with a banana and 98 per cent with a chimpanzee. Banana’s don’t do psychological consistency. And the tiny part of us that’s different - the special Homo sapiens bit - is faulty. It doesn’t work. Sorry about that.

That is the physics that all fearless types discover at some point—an appropriate ratcheting up of self-belief and energy when facing negative or even impossible circumstances. Fearless

To the Greeks, the most basic energy in the world was a battle between two forces. A debate was a fight between two people over an idea. Exercise is a fight between energy and fatigue. Study is a fight between you and the material. Every new day is a fight between light and darkness.

affectation

Fear Nothing

From the streets to stardom.

From your top lieutenant to the lowest person on the totem pole, you need to be able to articulate not only where you need that person to go, but also the steps they should follow to get there.

Keep in mind the following: what you really value in life is ownership, not money. If ever there is a choice—more money or more responsibility—you must always opt for the latter. A lower-paying position that offers more room to make decisions and carve out little empires is infinitely preferable to something that pays well but constricts your movements.

If I lost it wasn't because I was backed into a corner and beaten down. It would be because I'd gone for what I wanted, and simply come up against someone with more skill.

Your goal in life must be to always move higher and higher up the food chain, where you alone control the direction of your enterprise and depend on no one.

The public is never wrong. When people don’t respond to what you do, they’re telling you something loud and clear. You’re just not listening.

world will see you the way you see you. And treat you the way you treat yourself.

SO OVER YOU IS THE GREATEST ENEMY A MAN CAN HAVE AND THAT IS FEAR.

Events in life are not negative or positive. They are completely neutral. The universe does not care about your fate; it is indifferent to the violence that may hit you or to death itself. Things merely happen to you. It is your mind that chooses to interpret them as negative or positive.

The grandmothers decided on William’s eighth birthday that the time had come for the boy to learn the value of money. With this in mind, they allocated him one dollar a week as pocket money, but insisted that he keep an inventory accounting for every cent he spent. Grandmother Kane presented him with a green leather-bound ledger, at a cost of 95 cents, which she deducted from his first week’s allowance. From then on the grandmothers divided the dollar up every Saturday morning. William could invest 50 cents, spend 20 cents, give 10 cents to charity and keep 20 cents in reserve. At the end of each quarter they would inspect the ledger and his written report on any unusual transactions.

extremely serious about the value of hard work. I believe it creates not only success but happiness, too. You can never feel satisfied if you’re not applying yourself to something you’re passionate about.

Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $1 a year in pay and no stock options. “I make 50 cents for showing up,” he liked to joke, “and the other 50 cents is based on performance.

Thus it is awkward to call motion-sickness a migraine attack, but we may very conveniently term it a migranoid reaction, and note, in support of its affinities, that a large minority (almost 50 per cent, according to Selby and Lance) of adult migraine sufferers experienced severe motion-sickness in

If you’ve put in the work, and know your shit, raise your damn hand!

you can build a lifestyle for yourself that doesn’t need to be fueled by booze and drugs to get things done.

Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving. . . . You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant. —STEVE MARABOLI

You can only get true fulfillment and happiness from enjoying the achievement you made happen yourself.

absorb a massive amount of detail and organize it in his mind.

I hate a liar more than I hate thief. A thief is only after my salary, a liar is after my reality.

Be fearless. Most people run from what they’re afraid of. I run toward it. That doesn’t mean I think I’m bulletproof (I’ve learned the hard way that I’m not) or that I’m unaware of danger. I experience fear as much as the next man. But one of the greatest mistakes people can make is becoming comfortable with their fears. Whatever is worrying me, I meet it head-on and engage it until the situation is resolved. My refusal to become comfortable with fear gives me an advantage in almost every situation.

I remind myself that while it’s okay to feel conflicted about a situation, depression is a luxury that I can’t afford. I cannot allow another person’s lack of success to start undermining my own.

Silence descended on us. I turned the music on, my favorite playlist. The pounding bass of “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent filled the car. I drummed my fingers in rhythm to the sound. Gemma frowned. “This song doesn’t make sense. Why does a rapper sing about lollipops and rodeos?

Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes around the world. A third are male. One study revealed that over 50 per cent of prostitutes are the children of alcoholics or substance abusers, and 90 per cent are deflowered through incest or rape. Ninety-one per cent of prostitutes do not speak of the abuse. (The truth of life is told through the language of behavior.) Abused children suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, guilt, self-destructive impulses, suspicion, fear. Seventy-five per cent of prostitutes attempt suicide. (Imagine their scrapbook of memories.)

Modern barber college, Smith eyes closed suffers a haircut fearing its ugliness 50 cents, a barber student olive-skinned 'Garcia' on his coat, two blond small boys one with feared face and big ears watching from seats, tell him 'You're ugly little boy & you've got big ears' he'd weep and suffer and it wouldn't even be true, the other thinfaced conscious concentrated patched bluejeans and scuffed shoes who watches me delicate, suffering child that grows hard and greedy with puberty.

They’re all pretty wasted by now and, besides, they’ve abandoned the tables for the dance floor. It’s absolutely crammed in there. There are all these thirty-somethings slut-dropping and grinding on each other as though they’re in some shit noughties club dancing to 50 Cent, not a marquee on a deserted island with some guys playing fiddles.

No matter what I see, I always think, “They just don’t make them like they used to.” Well, except for kids. People still make children the way they always have, though I am working on a product that’ll make the process 100% more efficient. It’ll work by eliminating 50% of the people required to make one kid. My target market will be asexuals.

In summary, parents matter, schools matter and life experiences matter, but they don't make a difference in shaping who we are. DNA is the only thing that makes a substantial systematic difference, accounting for 50 per cent of the variance in psychological traits. The rest comes down to chance environmental experiences that do not have long-term effects.

The best way to get past a fear that’s holding you back is first to acknowledge it and then come up with a plan to get past it.

Comfort, I've learned, is a dream killer. It saps our ambition. Blinds our vision. Promotes complacency. What you cannot do is become complacent with any of those fears

propitious

You’re only going to be as strong as the weakest person in your crew.

Would any one of you step onto a plane if you knew it had more than a 50 per cent chance of crashing? More to the point: would you put your children on that flight?

The driver turned up a rap tune. Loud. With more bass than a barrage of howitzers. Something by 50 Cent. Or Two-Bits. Shiny Penny. What the hell did I know about rap music?

50 Cent is a master player at power, a kind of hip-hop Napoleon Bonaparte.

Do you know what it’s like to date the daughter of a big, burly black guy who has 50 Cent on speed dial? High stress, man—that’s what it’s like.

Allegedly, 50 per cent of Americans believe that the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, which if true says something rather sad about the most expensive education system in the world.

It is true that my rent is but 50 cents a week. It is true that my clothes were a gift from the city council. I exchange federal currency for my own, and thus I live. Many restaurants and eating houses now accept my scrip. This is my city, in my country. They treat me well here. I am the Emperor of the United States, Pain. I am content to be what I am. What more than that could any man desire?

When you open yourself up to someone, either financially or emotionally, and they go left on you, it’s a different kind of pain, even more dramatic than a stickup kid physically taking something from you.

[Dan] Brown states that five million women were killed by the Church as witches. In fact, modern research has shown that the witch hunts began in the sixteenth century in Europe and that between 30,000 and 50,000 men and women were burned to death for the crime of witchcraft. However, 90 per cent of those trials took place before secular tribunals in countries such as Germany and France where by the 1500s the Church had lost most of its influence in judicial matters. Indeed, it was precisely in countries like Spain and Italy where the Catholic Church still had influence that there were almost no witchcraft trials.

Between the first case recorded on 4 March 1918, and the last sometime in March 1920, it killed 50–100 million people, or between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the global population–a range that reflects the uncertainty that still surrounds it.

Having a brush with death, or being reminded in a dramatic way of the shortness of our lives, can have a positive, therapeutic effect. Our days are numbered and so it is best to make every moment count, to have a sense of urgency about life.

Aoife also offered a 50 per cent discount if I held it here. She might look dowdy but she’s savvy. That’s how she clinched it. She knows I’ll feature it in the magazine now, knows it’ll get press because of Will. It’ll pay dividends in the end.

Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man. The love of God means wasted love. 'For God and Country' means a divided allegiance—a 50 per cent patriot. The most abused word in the language of man is the word 'God.' The reason for this is that it is subject to so much abuse. There is no other word in the human language that is as meaningless and incapable of explanation as is the word 'God.' It is the beginning and end of nothing. It is the Alpha and Omega of Ignorance. It has as many meanings as there are minds. And as each person has an opinion of what the word God ought to mean, it is a word without premise, without foundation, and without substance. It is without validity. It is all things to all people, and is as meaningless as it is indefinable. It is the most dangerous in the hands of the unscrupulous, and is the joker that trumps the ace. It is the poisoned word that has paralyzed the brain of man. 'The fear of the Lord' is not the beginning of wisdom; on the contrary, it has made man a groveling slave; it has made raving lunatics of those who have attempted to interpret what God 'is' and what is supposed to be our 'duty' to God. It has made man prostitute the most precious things of life—it has made him sacrifice wife, and child, and home. 'In the name of God' means in the name of nothing—it has caused man to be a wastrel with the precious elixir of life, because there is no God.

The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers.

One 2007 study showed that public health measures such as banning mass gatherings and imposing the wearing of masks collectively cut the death toll in some American cities by up to 50 per cent (the US was much better at imposing such measures than Europe). The timing of the measures was critical, however. They had to be introduced early, and kept in place until after the danger had passed. If they were lifted too soon, the virus was presented with a fresh supply of immunologically naive hosts, and the city experienced a second peak of death.9

As a psychologist I am deeply interested in mental disturbances, particularly when they infect whole nations. I want to emphasize that I despise politics wholeheartedly: thus I am neither a Bolshevik, nor a National Socialist, nor an Anti-Semite. I am a neutral Swiss and even in my own country I am uninterested in politics, because I am convinced that 99 per cent of politics are mere symptoms and anything but a cure for social evils. About 50 per cent of politics is definitely obnoxious inasmuch as it poisons the utterly incompetent mind of the masses. We are on guard against contagious diseases of the body, but we are exasperatingly careless when it comes to the even more dangerous collective diseases of the mind.

The truth is that I work much harder than I play, because I enjoy the work more. My attitude towards my career is whistle while you work. Every 18 hour day on a set is fun for me. Every all nighter in the studio is a joy. Every 4:30 wake up call is a blessing. I have places I like to go while on vacation, but the first thing I pack isnt my swimsuit, its always my computer. I know after the first day of jet skiing or hanging in the spa, im going to be ready to go back to work.

Well, that night we had our show; but there warn’t only about twelve people there – just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy – and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said: AT THE COURT HOUSE! FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY! The World-Renowned Tragedians DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER! AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER! Of the London and Continental Theatres, In their Thrilling Tragedy of THE KING’S CAMELEOPARD, OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! ! Admission 50 cents. Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said: LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED. “There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!

A lot of rappers have tried to become stars by taking on the thug persona—Ja Rule, for example—but they just weren’t as committed as ’Pac.

In a recent experiment a computer algorithm correctly diagnosed 90 per cent of lung cancer cases presented to it, while human doctors had a success rate of only 50 per cent.

I was just a 50-cent turd floating around in the green ocean of life.

More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly,

In Ecuador, perhaps 50 per cent of adult Waoranis meet a violent death at the hands of another human!

An army equal to its enemy in fighting power but 50 per cent more mobile can do what it pleases with its enemy.

Get rich or die trying

The goal is not just to be successful. It’s about learning how to sustain that success, too.

I’m secure that as long as I’m betting on myself, I’m always going to win.

In a relationship, I’m committed to giving her 100% of 50%.

but he should fear never beginning to live.

Comfort, I’ve learned, is a dream killer. It saps our ambition. Blinds our vision. Promotes complacency.

50 per cent of the people died before the age of thirty, and 90 per cent before the age of fifty.

Oh you mad? I thought that you'd be happy I made it.

The empire fell well before the invasion of the barbarians. It collapsed from the collective softness of its citizens’ minds and the turning of their back on reality.

If all other emissions stopped immediately, it would take converting about 50 per cent of all the world’s croplands to forest to reduce carbon dioxide levels to 350 ppm by 2100.

In 1950 the United States—with just 9.5 per cent of the world’s population—was consuming 50 per cent of the world’s raw materials.

more room to make decisions and carve out little empires is infinitely preferable to something that pays well but constricts your movements.

There are no Alps and no obstacles that can stand in the way of a person without fears.

The only way to survive was to admit you were on your own, learn to make your own decisions, and trust your judgment. Do not ask for what you need but take it. Depend only on your wits.

You can’t have a one-size-fits-all mind-set when it comes to effective leadership. You need to tailor a specific approach to every single person on your team in order to get the most out of them.

About 50 per cent of children with Asperger’s syndrome have relatively advanced verbal reasoning skills, and may be colloquially described as ‘verbalizers’. If such a child has difficulty acquiring a particular academic ability in the social ‘theatre’ of the classroom, then his or her knowledge and understanding may be improved by reading about the concept or engaging in a one-to-one discussion.

In King Leopold’s days the world wanted the region’s rubber for the expanding motor car industry; now China buys more than 50 per cent of the DRC’s exports, but still the population lives in poverty.

Thank you for raising our children and running our house and taking care of all the emotional labour, which enabled me to work without distraction. It’s time for something new now but here is 50 per cent of everything we built together.’ No. They lawyer up and try to shaft you, hiding their money offshore, pleading poverty, arguing that you never contributed in any way, protesting that the kids don’t need that much.

If we could shrink the Earth's population to a village of 100 people, with all existing human ratios staying the same, it would look like this: There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Americas and 8 Africans. 80 would live in substandard housing. 70 would be unable to read. 50 would suffer from malnutrition. 50 per cent of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people. And all 6 would be citizens of the United States.

SO OVER YOU IS THE GREATEST ENEMY A MAN CAN HAVE AND THAT IS FEAR. I KNOW SOME OF YOU ARE AFRAID TO LISTEN TO THE TRUTH—YOU HAVE BEEN RAISED ON FEAR AND LIES. BUT I AM GOING TO PREACH TO YOU THE TRUTH UNTIL YOU ARE FREE OF THAT FEAR. . . . —Malcolm X

The 50th Law THE GREATEST FEAR PEOPLE HAVE IS THAT OF BEING THEMSELVES. THEY WANT TO BE 50 CENT OR SOMEONE ELSE. THEY DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES EVEN IF IT DOESN’T FIT WHERE AND WHO THEY ARE. BUT YOU GET NOWHERE THAT WAY; YOUR ENERGY IS WEAK AND NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION TO YOU. YOU’RE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE ONE THING THAT YOU OWN—WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT. I LOST THAT FEAR. AND ONCE I FELT THE POWER THAT I HAD BY SHOWING THE WORLD I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT BEING LIKE OTHER PEOPLE, I COULD NEVER GO BACK. —50 Cent

New Guinea, violence accounts for 30 per cent of male deaths in one agricultural tribal society, the Dani, and 35 per cent in another, the Enga. In Ecuador, perhaps 50 per cent of adult Waoranis meet a violent death at the hands of another human!3 In time, human

One 2007 study showed that public health measures such as banning mass gatherings and imposing the wearing of masks collectively cut the death toll in some American cities by up to 50 per cent (the US was much better at imposing such measures than Europe). The timing of the measures was critical, however. They had to be introduced early, and kept in place until after the danger had passed. If they were lifted too soon, the virus was presented with a fresh supply of immunologically naive hosts, and the city experienced a second peak of death.

When you settle, you're demonstrating a lack of confidence. If your journey hasn't been easy, you might start to question the value of what you're doing. Maybe you better grab the next thing you're offered, before you never get offered anything again. When you begin to think like that, you've lost the hustler spirit.

None of those measures, which brought so much change to civilization, altered the basic nature of the water involved. The only thing they changed was how it was utilized. Try to view harnessing the energy of how you are perceived in the same way. The fundamental essence of who you are doesn’t change—you’re just using its innate power in a smarter way.

Two large trials of antioxidants were set up after Peto’s paper (which rather gives the lie to nutritionists’ claims that vitamins are never studied because they cannot be patented: in fact there have been a great many such trials, although the food supplement industry, estimated by one report to be worth over $50 billion globally, rarely deigns to fund them). One was in Finland, where 30,000 participants at high risk of lung cancer were recruited, and randomised to receive either ß-carotene, vitamin E, or both, or neither. Not only were there more lung cancers among the people receiving the supposedly protective ß-carotene supplements, compared with placebo, but this vitamin group also had more deaths overall, from both lung cancer and heart disease. The results of the other trial were almost worse. It was called the ‘Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial’, or ‘CARET’, in honour of the high p-carotene content of carrots. It’s interesting to note, while we’re here, that carrots were the source of one of the great disinformation coups of World War II, when the Germans couldn’t understand how our pilots could see their planes coming from huge distances, even in the dark. To stop them trying to work out if we’d invented anything clever like radar (which we had), the British instead started an elaborate and entirely made-up nutritionist rumour. Carotenes in carrots, they explained, are transported to the eye and converted to retinal, which is the molecule that detects light in the eye (this is basically true, and is a plausible mechanism, like those we’ve already dealt with): so, went the story, doubtless with much chortling behind their excellent RAF moustaches, we have been feeding our chaps huge plates of carrots, to jolly good effect. Anyway. Two groups of people at high risk of lung cancer were studied: smokers, and people who had been exposed to asbestos at work. Half were given 3-carotene and vitamin A, while the other half got placebo. Eighteen thousand participants were due to be recruited throughout its course, and the intention was that they would be followed up for an average of six years; but in fact the trial was terminated early, because it was considered unethical to continue it. Why? The people having the antioxidant tablets were 46 per cent more likely to die from lung cancer, and 17 per cent more likely to die of any cause,* than the people taking placebo pills. This is not news, hot off the presses: it happened well over a decade ago.

In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash. Only a criminal buys a house, for example, by handing over a suitcase full of banknotes. As long as people are willing to trade goods and services in exchange for electronic data, it’s even better than shiny coins and crisp banknotes – lighter, less bulky, and easier to keep track of. For

The half-life of caffeine -- that is, the time taken for the concentration in your bloodstream to drop by 50 per cent -- is between three and seven hours, with an average of about four hours. Therefore, if you drink several cups of strong coffee during your harassed working day, your blood will still contain substantial amounts of caffeine when you go to bed several hours later.

If we try to dominate a situation with some kind of aggressive action, this becomes our only option. We cannot give in, or adapt, or bide our time—that would mean letting go of our grip, and we fear that. Having such narrow options makes it hard to solve problems. Forcing people to do what we want makes them resentful—inevitably they sabotage us or assert themselves against our will.

Over 50 per cent of all American crime over the last 75 years has been blamed on drugs, because drugs are the single most convenient scapegoat for a society that is unable to blame itself. When it comes to explaining the presence of those drugs themselves, blame is still not placed on American consumers, but on the foreign supplies who grow the stuff. In America, there are no villains - only victims.

Basically, Graham breaks the art of investing down into two simple variables – price and value. Value is what a business is worth. Price is what you have to pay to get it. Given the stock market’s manic-depressive behavior, numerous occasions arise where a business’ market price is distinctly out of line with its true business value. In such instances, an investor may be able to purchase a dollar of value for just 50 cents. Note that there is no mention here of interest rates, economic forecasts, technical charts, market cycles, etc. The only issues are price and value. I should also note that Graham emphasizes a large margin of safety. The strategy is not to buy a dollar of value for 97 cents. Rather, the gap should be dramatic so as to absorb the effects of miscalculation and worse-than-average luck.

Ed Woolard, his mentor on the Apple board, pressed Jobs for more than two years to drop the interim in front of his CEO title. Not only was Jobs refusing to commit himself, but he was baffling everyone by taking only $1 a year in pay and no stock options. “I make 50 cents for showing up,” he liked to joke, “and the other 50 cents is based on performance.” Since his return in July 1997, Apple stock had gone from just under $14 to just over $102 at the peak of the Internet bubble at the beginning of 2000. Woolard had begged him to take at least a modest stock grant back in 1997, but Jobs had declined, saying, “I don’t want the people I work with at Apple to think I am coming back to get rich.” Had he accepted that modest grant, it would have been worth $400 million. Instead he made $2.50 during that period.

Consequently, in 1958 the Chinese government was informed that annual grain production was 50 per cent more than it actually was. Believing the reports, the government sold millions of tons of rice to foreign countries in exchange for weapons and heavy machinery, assuming that enough was left to feed the Chinese population. The result was the worst famine in history and the death of tens of millions of Chinese.3

We have documented in this book that: • Cost overruns of 50 per cent to 100 per cent in real terms are common in megaprojects; overruns above 100 per cent are not uncommon; • Demand forecasts that are wrong by 20 per cent to 70 per cent compared with actual developments are common; • The extent and magnitude of actual environmental impacts of projects are often very different from forecast impacts. Post-auditing is neglected;

Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic—as people give in to it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on. “So, first of all,” he told the audience, “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Consequently, in 1958 the Chinese government was informed that annual grain production was 50 per cent more than it actually was. Believing the reports, the government sold millions of tons of rice to foreign countries in exchange for weapons and heavy machinery, assuming that enough was left to feed the Chinese population. The result was the worst famine in history and the death of tens of millions of Chinese.3 Meanwhile, enthusiastic reports of China’s farming miracle reached audiences throughout the world. Julius Nyerere, the idealistic president of Tanzania, was deeply impressed by the Chinese success. In order to modernise Tanzanian agriculture, Nyerere resolved to establish collective farms on the Chinese model. When peasants objected to the plan, Nyerere sent the army and police to destroy traditional villages and forcibly relocate hundreds of thousands of peasants onto the new collective farms. Government propaganda depicted the farms as miniature paradises, but many of them existed only in government documents. The protocols and reports written in the capital Dar es Salaam said that on such-and-such a date the inhabitants of such-and-such village were relocated to such-and-such farm. In reality, when the villagers reached their destination, they found absolutely nothing there. No houses, no fields, no tools. Officials nevertheless reported great successes to themselves and to President Nyerere. In fact, within less than ten years Tanzania was transformed from Africa’s biggest food exporter into a net food importer that could not feed itself without external assistance. In 1979, 90 per cent of Tanzanian farmers lived on collective farms, but they generated only 5 per cent of the country’s agricultural output.4

This attitude is what we shall call “opportunism.” True opportunists do not require urgent, stressful circumstances to become alert and inventive. They operate this way on a daily basis. They channel their aggressive energy into hunting down possibilities for expansion in the most banal and insignificant events. Everything is an instrument in their hands, and with this enlarged notion of opportunity, they create more of it in their lives and gain great power.

A horror story. Patient GL, whose genetic make-up appears to be 50 per cent goji berry recipes and 50 per cent Mumsnet posts, has announced she wants to eat her placenta. The midwife and I both pretend not to hear this – firstly because we don’t know what the hospital protocol is, and secondly because it’s completely revolting. GL calls it ‘placentophagia’ to make it sound more official, which doesn’t particularly wash; you can make anything sound official by translating it into the ancient Greek.*

It was general knowledge, then, that whales were overhunted in whaling’s so-called golden age, their populations declining. The US whaling fleet had reached its maximum extent in 1846, with 736 ships totaling more than 233,000 tons burden.2 Whale oils were a depleting asset, inherently limited by their limited source: far more gallons of camphene and burning fluids than of whale oils were produced for lighting in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Castor, rape, and peanut oils, tallow and lard were widely used as well, as were wood and grain alcohol. But camphene, at 50 cents a gallon, was cheaper than whale oil at $1.30 to $2.50 a gallon, and cheaper even than lard oil at 90 cents a gallon. Burning fluids included naphtha and benzene, both distilled from coal. Camphene was distilled turpentine. The most common burning fluid was a mixture of high-proof grain alcohol blended with 20 percent to 50 percent camphene to color the flame and deodorized with a few drops of camphor oil.

IN THE PRESENT THERE IS CONSTANT CHANGE AND SO MUCH WE CANNOT CONTROL. IF YOU TRY TO MICROMANAGE IT ALL, YOU LOSE EVEN GREATER CONTROL IN THE LONG RUN. THE ANSWER IS TO LET GO AND MOVE WITH THE CHAOS THAT PRESENTS ITSELF TO YOU—FROM WITHIN IT, YOU WILL FIND ENDLESS OPPORTUNITIES THAT ELUDE MOST PEOPLE. DON’T GIVE OTHERS THE CHANCE TO PIN YOU DOWN; KEEP MOVING AND CHANGING YOUR APPEARANCES TO FIT THE ENVIRONMENT. IF YOU ENCOUNTER WALLS OR BOUNDARIES, SLIP AROUND THEM. DO NOT LET ANYTHING DISRUPT YOUR FLOW.

Stone Age ancestors spread from East Africa to the four corners of the earth, they changed the flora and fauna of every continent and island on which they settled. They drove to extinction all the other human species of the world, 90 per cent of the large animals of Australia, 75 per cent of the large mammals of America and about 50 per cent of all the large land mammals of the planet – and all before they planted the first wheat field, shaped the first metal tool, wrote the first text or struck the first coin.

The most destructive of these was a “duty of twenty cents on each and every gallon” of grain alcohol, collectible at the distillery. The duty increased across the Civil War to a final level in 1864 of some $2 per gallon, or $30 today.14 The alcohol tax was intended to assess beverage alcohol, but it failed to exclude industrial and illuminating alcohol. The high tax, raising the price of those alcohols to about $2.50 per gallon, drove the fuel out of the market just as petroleum-derived kerosene was entering it.

The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash. Only a criminal buys a house, for example, by handing over a suitcase full of banknotes. As long as people are willing to trade

50,000 workers at the Yue Yen Nike Factory in China would have to work for nineteen years to earn what Nike spends on advertising in one year. Wal-Mart's annual sales are worth 120 times more than Haiti's entire annual budget; Disney CEO Michael Eisner earns $9,783 an hour while a Haitian worker earns 28 cents an hour; it would take a Haitian worker 16.8 years to earn Eisner's hourly income; the $181 million in stock options Eisner exercised in 1996 is enough to take care of his 19,000 Haitian workers and their families for fourteen years.

A Letter To Say, "I'll See You Later" I remember just like it was yesterday the grapevine, clothesline, lilacs and peonies. I remember the secret hiding place for 50-cent pieces. I remember just like it was yesterday the color wheel Christmas Tree, The Honeymooner’s, The Dukes of Hazzard and Jeopardy! I remember just like it was yesterday the house was full of children, but I was your only and your favorite. You always made time for me, even when I deserved the fly swatter. I remember just like it was yesterday falling asleep to the scent of Dove soap on your pillow, you lying for me so I wouldn’t be abused again. I remember just like it was yesterday your big “Black Cat” and the late, dark nights driving to IFP and knowing there was “No Place Like Home.” I remember just like it was yesterday the “horns” in your ‘do and the smell of Raffinee wafting through the house and Listerine in the bathroom. I remember your bows and polka dots and “just a few fries.” I remember the green blanket. I remember just like it was yesterday the way it felt to sit on your lap and have you sing “She’s Grandma’s Little Baby.” I remember just like it was yesterday the day you told me I could “Shit in the sugar bowl.” I remember just like it was yesterday telling you that you were going to be a great-grandma…for the first time. I remember just like it was yesterday the 1st time you held him in your arms; you helped me raise him. Your house was always our home. I remember just like it was yesterday having my heart broken but you helped me mend it. I remember just like it was yesterday asking for your help when I couldn’t do it on my own; you’ve always been my rock. I remember just like it was yesterday confiding my secrets to you – you were the first to know another baby was on the way, this time a girl. I remember just like it was yesterday the joy they brought to your life; they were the reason you didn’t give up. I remember just like it was yesterday saying words I never meant, not spending more time with you because my life got in the way. I remember just like it was yesterday you loving on me, your strength and vitality, your faith, hope and kindness. I remember just like it was yesterday wishing for more tomorrows so I could tell you that I love you another time. I remember just like it was yesterday having you tell me you love me, “more than anyone will ever know.” I remember just like it was yesterday you taught me to never say good-bye, just say “I’ll see you later.

take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way.   Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know! Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’ Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’ Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’ Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I don’t know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’ Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’ Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung “knows” there is one.

Let us, then, take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way.   Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know! Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’ Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’ Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’ Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I don’t know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’ Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’ Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung “knows” there is one.

But the Anthropocene isn’t a novel phenomenon of the last few centuries. Already tens of thousands of years ago, when our Stone Age ancestors spread from East Africa to the four corners of the earth, they changed the flora and fauna of every continent and island on which they settled. They drove to extinction all the other human species of the world, 90 per cent of the large animals of Australia, 75 per cent of the large mammals of America and about 50 per cent of all the large land mammals of the planet – and all before they planted the first wheat field, shaped the first metal tool, wrote the first text or struck the first coin.

The statistics are unequivocal: up until the end of 1944, on a man-for-man basis, the Germans inflicted between 20 and 50 per cent higher casualties on the British and Americans than they suffered, and far higher than that on the Russians, under almost all military conditions. Although they lost because of their Führer’s domination of grand strategy as well as the sheer size of the populations and economies ranged against them, it is indisputable that the Germans were the best fighting men of the Second World War for all but the last few months of the struggle, when they suffered a massive dearth of equipment, petrol, reinforcements and air cover.

Altogether about 200,000 wild wolves still roam the earth, but there are more than 400 million domesticated dogs.1 The world contains 40,000 lions compared to 600 million house cats; 900,000 African buffalo versus 1.5 billion domesticated cows; 50 million penguins and 20 billion chickens.2 Since 1970, despite growing ecological awareness, wildlife populations have halved (not that they were prospering in 1970).3 In 1980 there were 2 billion wild birds in Europe. In 2009 only 1.6 billion were left. In the same year, Europeans raised 1.9 billion chickens for meat and eggs.4 At present, more than 90 per cent of the large animals of the world (i.e., those weighing more than a few pounds) are either humans or domesticated animals.

Creating value is not enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create. This means that even very big businesses can be bad businesses. For example, U.S. airline companies serve millions of passengers and create hundreds of billions of dollars of value each year. But in 2012, when the average airfare each way was $ 178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google, which creates less value but captures far more. Google brought in $ 50 billion in 2012 (versus $ 160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits—more than 100 times the airline industry’s profit margin that year. Google makes so much money that it’s now worth three times more than every U.S. airline combined.

In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash. Only a criminal buys a house, for example, by handing over a suitcase full of banknotes. As long as people are willing to trade goods and services in exchange for electronic data, it’s even better than shiny coins and crisp banknotes – lighter, less bulky, and easier to keep track of.

The sex difference in Agreeableness puts the debate about sex discrimination in society into an interesting light. The media tends to decry the fact that the prevalence of women chief executives of large corporations is very much lower than 50 per cent. But is this really evidence that discrimination is operating? It could equally well be the case that there is no discrimination, but that fewer women want to emphasize status gain at the expense of social connectedness. Given the known relationships between Agreeableness and career success, and the known sex differences in Agreeableness, you could actually work out the expected number of women in top positions if the market is blind to sex. It would not be zero, but it would be not be 50 per cent either.

Moving towards such self-belief does not mean you cut yourself off from others and their opinions of your actions. You must take constant measure of how people receive your work, and use to maximum effect their feedback (see chapter 7). But this process must begin from a position of inner strength. If you are dependent on their judgments for your sense of worth, then your ego will always be weak and fragile. You will have no center or sense of balance. You will wilt under criticisms and soar too high with any praise. Their opinions are merely helping you shape your work, not your self-image. If you make mistakes, if the public judges you negatively, you have an unshakable inner core that can accept such judgments, but you remain convinced of your own worth.

RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION: SOLAR + WIND + BATTERIES In addition to AI, we are on the cusp of another important technological revolution—renewable energy. Together, solar photovoltaic, wind power, and lithium-ion battery storage technologies will create the capability of replacing most if not all of our energy infrastructure with renewable clean energy. By 2041, much of the developed world and some developing countries will be primarily powered by solar and wind. The cost of solar energy dropped 82 percent from 2010 to 2020, while the cost of wind energy dropped 46 percent. Solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of electricity. In addition, lithium-ion battery storage cost has dropped 87 percent from 2010 to 2020. It will drop further thanks to the massive production of batteries for electrical vehicles. This rapid drop in the price of battery storage will make it possible to store the solar/wind energy from sunny and windy days for future use. Think tank RethinkX estimates that with a $2 trillion investment through 2030, the cost of energy in the United States will drop to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than one-quarter of today’s cost. By 2041, it should be even lower, as the prices of these three components continue to descend. What happens on days when a given area’s battery energy storage is full—will any generated energy left unused be wasted? RethinkX predicts that these circumstances will create a new class of energy called “super power” at essentially zero cost, usually during the sunniest or most windy days. With intelligent scheduling, this “super power” can be used for non-time-sensitive applications such as charging batteries of idle cars, water desalination and treatment, waste recycling, metal refining, carbon removal, blockchain consensus algorithms, AI drug discovery, and manufacturing activities whose costs are energy-driven. Such a system would not only dramatically decrease energy cost, but also power new applications and inventions that were previously too expensive to pursue. As the cost of energy plummets, the cost of water, materials, manufacturing, computation, and anything that has a major energy component will drop, too. The solar + wind + batteries approach to new energy will also be 100-percent clean energy. Switching to this form of energy can eliminate more than 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is by far the largest culprit of climate change.

One way to protect against this is simply to add a 50 per cent buffer to the amount of time we estimate it will take to complete a task or project (if 50 per cent seems overly generous, consider how frequently things actually do take us 50 per cent longer than expected). So if you have an hour set aside for a conference call, block off an additional thirty minutes. If you’ve estimated it will take ten minutes to get your son to football practice, leave the house fifteen minutes before practice begins. Not only does this relieve the stress we feel about being late (imagine how much less stressful sitting in traffic would feel if we weren’t running late), but if we do find that the task was faster and easier to execute than we expected (though this is a rare experience for most of us), the extra found time feels like a bonus.

It was perhaps, then, not surprising that it was Colonel Beppo Schmid, not General Martini, who on 16 July submitted to Göring the principal intelligence appreciation of the RAF, which became the basis for the Luftwaffe General Staff’s plans. He underestimated the strength of squadrons, claiming they were eighteen aircraft strong, when in fact they had between twenty-two and twenty-four aircraft. He also stated that only a limited number of airfields could be considered operational with modern maintenance and supply installations, which was nonsense. He badly underestimated current aircraft production figures to the tune of about 50 per cent and claimed there was ‘little strategic flexibility’, when, in fact, Dowding’s air defence system provided exactly the opposite. The Me110, he claimed, was a superior fighter to the Hurricane. Even more glaring were the omissions. The Luftwaffe had no concept of how the air defence system worked, no concept of there being three different commands – Fighter, Coastal and Bomber – and no understanding of how repairs were organized. ‘The Luftwaffe is clearly superior to the RAF,’ he concluded, ‘as regards strength, equipment, training, command and location of bases.’7 He was correct in terms of strength only. The rest of his claims were utter twaddle. On the eve of Adlertag, Schmid further reassured the Luftwaffe General Staff that some 350 British fighters had been destroyed since the beginning of July and that they were already being shot down faster than they could be produced. In fact, up to 12 August, 181 had been destroyed and more than 700 new fighter aircraft built.8 The gulf between fact and fiction was quite startling.

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it looks like W.H. Auden in his old age; when it's hot, it flops and dangles about in a ridiculous way; when it's excited, it looks so pained and earnest you'd think it was going to burst into tears. And the scrotum! To think that something so vital to the survival of the species, fully responsible for 50 per cent of the ingredients--though none of the work--should hang freely from the body in a tiny, defenceless bag of skin. One whack, one bite, one paw-scratch--and it's just the right level, too, for your average animal, a dog, a lion, a sabre-tooth tiger--and that's it, end of story. Don't you think it should get better protection? Behind some bone, for example, like us? What could be better than our nicely tapered entrance? It's discreet and stylish, everything is cleverly and compactly encased in the body, with nothing hanging out within easy reach of a closing subway door, there's a neat triangle of hair above it, like a road sign, should you lose your way--it's perfect. The penis is just such a lousy design. It's pre-Scandinavian. Pre-Bauhaus, even.

Real Quick" [Intro:] Valuable lesson, man I had to grow up That's why I never ask for help I'll do it for you niggaz and do it for myself [Chorus:] I go 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga! [50 Cent:] I'll run my blade 'cross a nigga ass {"real quick"} I'm so for real I'm on some real real nigga shit You playin boy I'll get you hit {"real quick"} You better hope the parademics come {"real quick"} Got me fucked up you think it's different now a nigga rich Before I get to cuttin know you niggaz better cut the shit Boy, you gon' have ya head popped, pull a trigger for me And my lil' niggaz trigger op' like it's legal homie No game when I bang, boy I empty the clip You run like a bitch, you ain't 'bout that shit Hey hey hey hey, I'll catch you another day day day day It's the Unit back to the bullshit [Tony Yayo:] Yeah! Nothin in life is out of bounds AK hold about a hundred rounds 60 shots like K.D. at the Rucker's Okay! When I see you on respirators Southside nigga 'til the day I'm gone Indulge in the violence when the drama on Yeah, these rap niggaz lukewarm I'm two sleeves of dope, when the mic on [Chorus] [Kidd Kidd:] Real quick, Rida Gang fuck nigga, huh! Don't Tweet me, see me when you see me Down to make the news just to say that I'm on TV (Kidd Kidd) This clip rated R, niggaz PG Them shells burn like a bootleg CD (huh?) Fuck love, I want the money When you get too much of it they gon' say you actin funny "Kidd, how you feel now that the Unit's back?" Like a million bucks, muh'fucker do the math! [Young Buck:] Cold-blooded, boy my heart don't feel shit Get with me, ask 50, I'll take the hit {"real quick"} Balenciagas, you can still get ya ass kicked Take a rapper nigga bitch and make a real flick I know I'm different from what you usually be dealin with Don't need a mic, give me some white to make a million with Single borough, six shots on the Brooklyn Bridge I'll let the nigga Drake tell you what I just did (yeah) [Chorus] [Lloyd Banks:] Nigga gettin money new to you (uh) I give a fuck if shit get ugly, there'll be a beautiful funeral You fit the script I'm gon' assume it's true Can't manuever through the street without a strategy, ain't nobody to tutor you And man was lucky Unit's through, you know why he flows 15 years, switchin dealers like casinos And my goon'll clip you on the arm (uhh) I'm out the country every week and dumpin ash out on the Autobahn Auto-pilot's always on Rather better livin, I've been [?] green bills callin me all day long This is homicide, more tears in your mama eyes More reason to wake up, real niggaz arrive [Chorus]

she feels lucky to have a job, but she is pretty blunt about what it is like to work at Walmart: she hates it. She’s worked at the local Walmart for nine years now, spending long hours on her feet waiting on customers and wrestling heavy merchandise around the store. But that’s not the part that galls her. Last year, management told the employees that they would get a significant raise. While driving to work or sorting laundry, Gina thought about how she could spend that extra money. Do some repairs around the house. Or set aside a few dollars in case of an emergency. Or help her sons, because “that’s what moms do.” And just before drifting off to sleep, she’d think about how she hadn’t had any new clothes in years. Maybe, just maybe. For weeks, she smiled at the notion. She thought about how Walmart was finally going to show some sign of respect for the work she and her coworkers did. She rolled the phrase over in her mind: “significant raise.” She imagined what that might mean. Maybe $2.00 more an hour? Or $2.50? That could add up to $80 a week, even $100. The thought was delicious. Then the day arrived when she received the letter informing her of the raise: 21 cents an hour. A whopping 21 cents. For a grand total of $1.68 a day, $8.40 a week. Gina described holding the letter and looking at it and feeling like it was “a spit in the face.” As she talked about the minuscule raise, her voice filled with anger. Anger, tinged with fear. Walmart could dump all over her, but she knew she would take it. She still needed this job. They could treat her like dirt, and she would still have to show up. And that’s exactly what they did. In 2015, Walmart made $14.69 billion in profits, and Walmart’s investors pocketed $10.4 billion from dividends and share repurchases—and Gina got 21 cents an hour more. This isn’t a story of shared sacrifice. It’s not a story about a company that is struggling to keep its doors open in tough times. This isn’t a small business that can’t afford generous raises. Just the opposite: this is a fabulously wealthy company making big bucks off the Ginas of the world. There are seven members of the Walton family, Walmart’s major shareholders, on the Forbes list of the country’s four hundred richest people, and together these seven Waltons have as much wealth as about 130 million other Americans. Seven people—not enough to fill the lineup of a softball team—and they have more money than 40 percent of our nation’s population put together. Walmart routinely squeezes its workers, not because it has to, but because it can. The idea that when the company does well, the employees do well, too, clearly doesn’t apply to giants like this one. Walmart is the largest employer in the country. More than a million and a half Americans are working to make this corporation among the most profitable in the world. Meanwhile, Gina points out that at her store, “almost all the young people are on food stamps.” And it’s not just her store. Across the country, Walmart pays such low wages that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, Medicaid, and a mix of other government benefits, just to stay out of poverty. The

With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. We don’t like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods. If you watch the National Geographic channel, go to a Disney film or read a book of fairy tales, you might easily get the impression that planet Earth is populated mainly by lions, wolves and tigers who are an equal match for us humans. Simba the lion king holds sway over the forest animals; Little Red Riding Hood tries to evade the Big Bad Wolf; and little Mowgli bravely confronts Shere Khan the tiger. But in reality, they are no longer there. Our televisions, books, fantasies and nightmares are still full of them, but the Simbas, Shere Khans and Big Bad Wolves of our planet are disappearing. The world is populated mainly by humans and their domesticated animals. How many wolves live today in Germany, the land of the Grimm brothers, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf? Less than a hundred. (And even these are mostly Polish wolves that stole over the border in recent years.) In contrast, Germany is home to 5 million domesticated dogs. Altogether about 200,000 wild wolves still roam the earth, but there are more than 400 million domesticated dogs.1 The world contains 40,000 lions compared to 600 million house cats; 900,000 African buffalo versus 1.5 billion domesticated cows; 50 million penguins and 20 billion chickens.2 Since 1970, despite growing ecological awareness, wildlife populations have halved (not that they were prospering in 1970).3 In 1980 there were 2 billion wild birds in Europe. In 2009 only 1.6 billion were left. In the same year, Europeans raised 1.9 billion chickens for meat and eggs.4 At present, more than 90 per cent of the large animals of the world (i.e., those weighing more than a few pounds) are either humans or domesticated animals.

The notion that property is the means to all other means was ruled out by the new radicals. The deep seated ressentiment towards private property, indeed towards anything private, blocked the conclusion that follows from any impartial examination of wealth-producing and freedom-favouring mechanisms: an effective world improvement would call for the most general possible propertization. Instead, the political metanoeticians enthused over general dispossession, akin to the founders of Christian orders who wanted to own everything communally and nothing individually. The most important insight into the dynamics of economic modernization remained inaccessible to them: money created by lending on property is the universal means of world improvement. They are all the blinder to the fact that for the meantime, only the modern tax state, the anonymous hyper-billionaire, can act as a general world-improver, naturally in alliance with the local meliorists - not only because of its traditional school power, but most of all thanks to its redistributive power, which took on unbelievable proportions in the course of the twentieth century. The current tax state, for its part, can only survive as long as it is based on a property economy whose actors put up no resistance when half of their total product is taken away, year after year, by the very visible hand of the national treasury for the sake of communal tasks. What the un-calm understands least of all is the simple fact that when government expenditures constitute almost 50 per cent of the gross national product, this fulfills the requirements of actually existing liberal-fiscal semi-socialism, regardless of what label is used to describe this situation - whether people call it the New Deal, 'social market economy' or 'neoliberalism'. What the system lacks for total perfection is a homogeneous worldwide tax sphere and the long-overdue propertization of the impoverished world.

Broadway lit up just as crazy as ever, and the crowd thick as molasses. Just fling yourself into it like an ant and let yourself get pushed along. Everybody doing it, some for a good reason, and some for no reason at all. All this push and movement representing action, success, get ahead. Stop and look at shoes, or fancy shirts. The new fall overcoat, wedding rings at 98 cents a piece. Every other joint a food emporium. Everytime I hit that runway toward dinner hour, a fever of expectancy seized me. It's only a stretch of a few blocks from Time Square to 50th street, and when one says 'Broadway', that's all that's really meant. And it's really nothing, just a chicken run, and a lousy one at that. But at 7 in the evening, when everybody's rushing for a table, there is a sort of electrical crackle in the air. And your hair stands on end like antennae, and if you're receptive, you not only get every flash and flicker, but you get the statistical itch. The quid pro quo of the interactive, interstitial, ectoplasmatic quantum of bodies jostling in space like the stars which compose the Milky Way. Only, this is the gay white way. The top of the world with no roof above and not even a crack or a hole under your feet to fall through and say it's a lie. The absolute impersonality of it brings you to a pitch of warm human delirium, which makes you run forward like a blind nag, and wag your delirious ears. Everyone is so utterly, confoundedly not himself, that you become automatically the personification of the whole human race. Shaking hands with a thousand human hands, cackling with a thousand different human tongues, cursing, applauding, whistling, crooning, soliloquizing, orating, gesticulating, urinating, fecundating, wheedling, cajoling, whimpering, bartering, pimping, caterwauling, and so on and so forth. You are all the men who ever lived up until Moses, and beyond that, you are a woman buying a bird cage, or just a mouse trap.

Bitcoin is not a currency. Bitcoin is the internet of money. As a technology, it can bring economic inclusion and empowerment to billions of people in the world. I’ll give you one example of a specific application that is going to fundamentally change the lives of more than a billion people in the next five to ten years. ​ Every day, an immigrant somewhere cashes their paycheck and stands in line to wire 50 percent of that paycheck back to their home country to feed their extended family. Here in the US, 60 million people have no bank accounts, yet they cash their paychecks and send them abroad. Overall in the world, $550 billion is transmitted every year as remittances from first-world countries. Much of that money is sent to five major destinations: Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China. In some of these places, remittances represent up to 40 percent of the local economy. Sitting on top of that flow of $550 billion are companies like Western Union, and they take, on average, a cut of 9 percent of every single one of these transactions out of the pockets of the poorest people of the world. Imagine what happens when one day one of these immigrants figures out they can do the same thing with bitcoin — not for 15 percent, not 10 percent, not 5 percent, but for 5 cents. Not a percentage; a flat fee. What happens when they can do that? They can, right now. There is a startup company that is handling remittances between the US and the Philippines. They’re doing a few million dollars right now, but they’re going to start growing. There’s $500 billion sitting behind that dam. When you’re an immigrant and you can change your financial future by not paying 9 percent to send money home, imagine what happens if every month, instead of sending 91 dollars home, you send 100 dollars home. That makes a difference. There are a billion people, right now, with access to the internet and feature phones who could use bitcoin as an international wire-transfer service.

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books. Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

There were other reasons you liked him, some actually quite pure, e.g. his dry humour and his shared assessment that you were both a great deal smarter than anyone else you knew. All couples thought things like that about themselves, but you hoped for their sake that the rest of your relationship was nothing they saw in their own, because you didn’t want to identify with most of it and you were one half of that actual couple. Mathematically if you didn’t want to be ‘most’ of a couple, as in over 50 per cent of an entity of two, then that did not commend your practice of self-love. You were twisted individuals successfully mated, like Noah’s Ark for sociopaths. Alternatively, you were well-meaning albeit imperfect humans with uncommonly scarce emotional resources at their disposal.

Share of Shudras in Schools Percentage Tamil-speaking areas 70-80 per cent Oriya-speaking areas 62 per cent Malayalam-speaking areas 54 per cent Telugu-speaking areas 35-50 per cent Share of Brahmins in Tamil-speaking Areas South Arcot 13 per cent Madras 23 per cent

4“Blessed are you when you seek the riches of God and kingdom of heaven and not the poorness of the earth for you will be filled with the spirit of Pentecost and my second coming and all that will last, be accounted for in the day of judgement and payed back to all by the spirit of God according to what they have done in the final day and hour of the rapture in the law, gospel, and rapture of 50 cent.

We have been controlling the price of agricultural commodities, so that a larger number of people get cheaper grains. This has affected the farmers badly. The erstwhile finance minister Arun Jaitley said that the number of people involved in farming has to reduce like in other countries. They cite the USA as an example—only 2 per cent of the people are involved in farming, why should 50 per cent of the people do it here? But our country is different. Farming alone is going to get you food. Tomorrow, if there is an even bigger crisis and we become dependent—that is what WTO [World Trade Organisation] wants—the solution is to import, as it’s cheaper. But the moment you become an importer, the prices will keep changing and there will be another crisis.

The international press does not discuss the issue — it is taboo — but, since the end of apartheid and the establishment of a Black government, South Africa is slowly sinking into barbarism. The first to suffer from it are, of course, the Blacks themselves. Some of them (as happened in Rhodesia, Algeria and elsewhere) are beginning to miss ‘White power’ . . . Unemployment has tripled since the abolition of apartheid and crime rates are today the highest in the world: 12,000 murders and 50,000 rapes a year. 95 per cent of the victims are Black. Heavily guarded by militias, the wealthy Whites live in the cities, surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences. The situation is paradoxical but explicable. Since the inauguration of Black power the difference in the standard of living between Blacks and Whites has increased by 10 per cent to the advantage of the Whites and de facto apartheid has become much more marked than under the old de jure apartheid.

came across this comment by Christian Saint-Étienne, an economics professor at Paris-Dauphine, which was published in an interview in Le Figaro Magazine (28 February 1998), on the subject of the departure of young French college graduates: ‘The phenomenon is extremely alarming in terms of the demographic balance sheet. We are witnessing simultaneously the emigration of 40,000 to 50,000 highly skilled persons a year, while France attracts to her territory each year 100,000 foreigners, of whom 80 per cent to 90 per cent are absolutely unskilled.’ What do they want? ‘To take advantage of our social security system and not to produce in an efficient manner.’ More precisely, ‘If the phenomenon continues, in ten years, our country will have accepted a million unskilled immigrants while a half-million educated French will have left!

If you’re feeling even a little bit of uncertainty about what you want, take the time to make a vision board.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker calculates the average homicide rate among eight primitive societies, arriving at an alarming 14 per cent. This figure appeared in respected journals like Science and was endlessly regurgitated by newspapers and on TV. When other scientists took a look at his source material, however, they discovered that Pinker mixed up some things. This may get a little technical, but we need to understand where he went wrong. The question we want to answer is: which peoples still hunting and gathering today are representative of how humans lived 50,000 years ago? After all, we were nomads for 95 per cent of human history, roving the world in small, relatively egalitarian groups. Pinker chose to focus almost exclusively on hybrid cultures. These are people who hunt and gather, but who also ride horses or live together in settlements or engage in farming on the side. Now these activities are all relatively recent. Humans didn’t start farming until 10,000 years ago and horses weren’t domesticated until 5,000 years ago. If you want to figure out how our distant ancestors lived 50,000 years ago, it doesn’t make sense to extrapolate from people who keep horses and tend vegetable plots. But even if we get on board with Pinker’s methods, the data is problematic. According to the psychologist, 30 per cent of deaths among the Aché in Paraguay (tribe 1 on his list) and 21 per cent of deaths among the Hiwi in Venezuela and Colombia (tribe 3) are attributable to warfare. These people are out for blood, it would seem. The anthropologist Douglas Fry was sceptical, however. Reviewing the original sources, he discovered that all forty-six cases of what Pinker categorised as Aché ‘war mortality’ actually concerned a tribe member listed as ‘shot by Paraguayan’. The Aché were in fact not killing each other, but being ‘relentlessly pursued by slave traders and attacked by Paraguayan frontiersmen’, reads the original source, whereas they themselves ‘desire a peaceful relationship with their more powerful neighbors’. It was the same with the Hiwi. All the men, women and children enumerated by Pinker as war deaths were murdered in 1968 by local cattle ranchers.40 There go the iron-clad homicide rates. Far from habitually slaughtering one another, these nomadic foragers were the victims of ‘civilised’ farmers wielding advanced weaponry. ‘Bar charts and numeric tables depicting percentages […] convey an air of scientific objectivity,’ Fry writes. ‘But in this case it is all an illusion.

Il faut découvrir le visage de cette bourgeoisie française dont Le Jour et Gringoire ont été, pendant la crise, les porte-paroles. Il ne s'agit plus, avec elle, de soumission inconsciente. Très lucidement, bien qu'ils se couvrent encore de formes bienséantes, ils admirent. Bourgeois, ils admirent la puissance et le succès. Décadents, ils frémissent sous les manières brutales. Petits-bourgeois par le coeur, ils s'extasient sur les alignements, la pompe, la parade, sur ce comédien mystique qui devant cent mille hommes, quand les dieux le saisissent, pousse un bouton pour faire converger sur lui une batterie de propriétaires en alarmes, ils voient dans ces masses compactes, dans cette police insinuée jusqu'aux ramures de la vie privée, dans cet ordre de fer, la garde prétorienne qu'ils n'osent demander aux démocraties contre les menaces "du communisme". Toute leur pensée internationale s'est épuisée à creuser une ligne Maginot en marge des dynamismes européens. Toute leur pensée politique se réduit à préparer, avec un béton humain, une ligne Maginot inviolable contre les dynamismes révolutionnaires. Ils se trompent sans doute radicalement sur le sens des fascismes, qui n'utilisent la force bourgeoise que comme une plaque tournante. Mais ils pensent avec celui d'entre eux qui disait il y a 50 ans se sentir plus près d'un hobereau prussien que d'un ouvrier français. On ne comprendra rien au comportement de cette fraction de la bourgeoisie française si on ne l'entend murmurer à mi-voix : « Plutôt Hitler que Blum ». Une bourgeoisie aux abois ; une politique sans foi ni loi ; un peuple usé de déceptions et de divertissements, voilà les responsables de la démission de la France. Puisque ce n'est pas la première fois que nous prenons position sur le problème qui lui a offert l'occasion, il nous faut maintenant montrer où elle a pu s'inscrire.

Those who follow the 50th Law are not afraid of change or chaos; they embrace it by being as fluid as possible. They move with the flow of events and then gently channel them in the direction of their choice, exploiting the moment. Through their mind-set, they convert a negative (unexpected events) into a positive (an opportunity).

REALITY CAN BE RATHER HARSH. YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED. IT TAKES CONSTANT EFFORT TO CARVE A PLACE FOR YOURSELF IN THIS RUTHLESSLY COMPETITIVE WORLD AND HOLD ON TO IT. PEOPLE CAN BE TREACHEROUS. THEY BRING ENDLESS BATTLES INTO YOUR LIFE. YOUR TASK IS TO RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO WISH IT WERE ALL DIFFERENT; INSTEAD YOU MUST FEARLESSLY ACCEPT THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, EVEN EMBRACE THEM. BY FOCUSING YOUR ATTENTION ON WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND YOU, YOU WILL GAIN A SHARP APPRECIATION FOR WHAT MAKES SOME PEOPLE ADVANCE AND OTHER FALL BEHIND. BY SEEING THROUGH PEOPLE’S MANIPULATIONS, YOU CAN TURN THEM AROUND. THE FIRMER YOUR GRASP ON REALITY, THE MORE POWER YOU WILL HAVE TO ALTER IT FOR YOUR PURPOSES.

The Hustler’s Eye THIS IS LIFE, NEW AND STRANGE; STRANGE, BECAUSE WE FEAR IT; NEW, BECAUSE WE HAVE KEPT OUR EYES TURNED FROM IT…. MEN ARE MEN AND LIFE IS LIFE, AND WE MUST DEAL WITH THEM AS THEY ARE; AND IF WE WANT TO CHANGE THEM, WE MUST DEAL WITH THEM IN THE FORM IN WHICH THEY EXIST. –Richard Wright

Até então, quem usava a freebase eram principalmente os brancos, que queimavam coca em colheres ou pedaços de papel alumínio. Eles cozinhavam com água sanitária, amônia, ou qualquer outra merda fedorenta que se usa para limpar a casa. O problema era que isso poderia fritar a cara de um filho da puta. Foi assim que Richard Pryor se incendiou, cara.

Keys to Fearlessness KNOW THE OTHER, KNOW YOURSELF, AND THE VICTORY WILL NOT BE AT RISK; KNOW THE GROUND, KNOW THE NATURAL CONDITIONS, AND THE VICTORY WILL BE TOTAL. –Sun Tzu

Também disse que só podia confiar em um homem que estava disposto a servir outro homem.

your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.

The key is applying the touch properly. First off, you can’t touch people anywhere other than between their elbow and their wrist. This is especially true if you’re a man interacting with a woman. Don’t touch someone’s shoulder, biceps, or face, and definitely not anywhere below their waist. Don’t go out there and do some dumb shit and then try to say, “50 told me to do that!

You have to remember they’re around you every day and see things that you might miss, which means that they might be able to identify certain mistakes before you do. Empower them to express those opinions to you. If you can promote dialogue and encourage feedback, you might gain some valuable information that could help you avoid obstacles before you hit them yourself.

But pretending that sex does not exist has serious consequences. Surveys establish that 50 per cent of children in India are exposed to some form of sexual abuse and 20 per cent to extreme forms. Fearful parents unwilling to deal with the widespread presence of sexual predators amongst us expose their uneducated and therefore unprotected children to sexual danger.

When you have a massive shift like that, you almost always have a Wild West period, followed by a big correction or consolidation. For years, I warned my listeners and followers to use the opportunities on Amazon to build a real brand. Those who did made millions of dollars. Those who did not got swallowed up when bigger players came onto the scene selling spatulas for 50 cents cheaper than they were.

You'll be successful as the mother fu*kers you talk to no reason

At .50 per cent, you have imbibed a lethal amount of good fellowship.

Somehow I was going to have to get my money back, whatever it took. I didn’t care if I had to make my bed for a month, force lemonade down the throats of every hapless neighbor that happened to walk their dog past our front yard, shamelessly prostitute myself to my grandparents’ creepy friend Norman who would give you 50 cents for sitting on his lap and a dollar for every time you let him kiss you—and there was no turning your head so his slobbery old-man lips landed harmlessly on your hair, either; Norman had paid for skin-to-skin contact with young, firm flesh, and he was determined to get his money’s worth. (Why anyone thought that this behavior was remotely appropriate or that this man should be allowed around small children remains a mystery to me and is a story for another time, or perhaps another Kindle Single. Suffice it to say, all the relevant parties are now long dead, and as I have had no problems throughout adolescence and adulthood having

The hobby scientists flourished under laissez faire, but laissez-faire Britain came to an end in 1914. Before 1914 the Government sequestered less than 10 per cent of the nation's wealth in taxes, but between 1918 and 1939 the Government increased this to about 25 per cent of GNP, and since 1945 the Government has spent between 40-50 per cent GNP. Because of the attrition of inherited wealth and of private means, the hobby scientist is now practically extinct.

When Hitler purged German universities of Jews it was like bombing his own armoury of knowledge and science. The dismissed represented not only 16 per cent of all Germany’s physicists, chemists and mathematicians, but as much as 50 per cent of all the citations to papers published before 1933. Eleven of the dismissed scholars were past or future Nobel Prize winners.44

REALITY CAN BE RATHER HARSH. YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED. IT TAKES CONSTANT EFFORT TO CARVE A PLACE FOR YOURSELF IN THIS RUTHLESSLY COMPETITIVE WORLD AND HOLD ON TO IT. PEOPLE CAN BE TREACHEROUS. THEY BRING ENDLESS BATTLES INTO YOUR LIFE. YOUR TASK IS TO RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO WISH IT WERE ALL DIFFERENT; INSTEAD YOU MUST FEARLESSLY ACCEPT THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, EVEN EMBRACE THEM. BY FOCUSING YOUR ATTENTION ON WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND YOU, YOU WILL GAIN A SHARP APPRECIATION FOR WHAT MAKES SOME PEOPLE ADVANCE AND OTHERS FALL BEHIND. BY SEEING THROUGH PEOPLE’S MANIPULATIONS, YOU CAN TURN THEM AROUND. THE FIRMER YOUR GRASP ON REALITY, THE MORE POWER YOU WILL HAVE TO ALTER IT FOR YOUR PURPOSES.

Don’t complain about the difficult circumstances, he said. In fact, the hard life of these streets is a blessing if you know what you’re doing. Because it is such a dangerous world, a hustler has to focus intensely on what’s going on around him.

If you go to work tomorrow and set to with only 50 per cent of the information you would normally get, you’re going to start making some pretty rubbish decisions.

It is a law of power, however, that the further and deeper we contemplate the future, the greater our capacity to shape it according to our desires.

PEOPLE WHO CLING TO THEIR DELUSIONS FIND IT DIFFICULT, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE, TO LEARN ANYTHING WORTH LEARNING: A PEOPLE UNDER THE NECESSITY OF CREATING THEMSELVES MUST EXAMINE EVERYTHING, AND SOAK UP LEARNING THE WAY THE ROOTS OF A TREE SOAK UP WATER.

If only National Socialism hadn’t become so depraved! In itself it was the right thing for the German people,’ the view expressed by a German officer in British captivity just after the capitulation, was not an uncommon one.149 According to Allied opinion surveys in the immediate post-war years, about 50 per cent of Germans still thought National Socialism had been in essence a good idea that had been badly carried out.

Use Resistance and Negative Spurs Every negative is a positive. The bad things that happen to me, I somehow make them good. —50 Cent

A child of the ghetto, nobody explain it to me, Livin the scripture the picture they painted for me.

1.​Textile production produces an estimated 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2e per year, which is more than international flights and maritime shipping combined.47 2.​The average person buys 60 per cent more items of clothing than they did just fifteen years ago, and keeps them for about half as long.48 3.​By 2030, global clothing consumption is projected to rise by 63 per cent, from 62 million tonnes to 102 million tonnes. That’s equivalent to more than 500 billion extra T-shirts.49 4.​By 2050, the equivalent of almost three earths could be required to provide the natural resources it would take to sustain our current lifestyles.50 5.​A polyester shirt has more than double the carbon footprint of a cotton shirt.51 And yet the cotton needed to make a single T-shirt can take 2,700 litres of water to grow – that’s enough drinking water to last a person three years.52 6.​At its current rate, the fashion industry is projected to use 35 per cent more land to grow fibres by 2030. That’s an extra 115 million hectares of land that could otherwise be used to grow food, or left to protect biodiversity.53 7.​Approximately 80 per cent of workers in the global garment industry are women aged 18–35.54 But only 12.5 per cent of clothing companies have a female CEO.55 8.​Among seventy-one leading retailers in the UK, 77 per cent believe there is a likelihood of modern slavery (forced labour) occurring at some stage in their supply chains.56 9.​More than 90 per cent of workers in the global garment industry have no possibility of negotiating their wages and conditions.57 10.​Increasing the price of a garment in the shop by 1 per cent could be enough to pay the workers who made it a living wage.58

The government had no response to this finding, just as it had none when India fell in GDP per capita behind Bangladesh. In 2014, India’s per capita GDP ($1573) was about 50 per cent ahead of Bangladesh’s ($1118).179 At the end of the financial year 2020–21, Bangladesh was at $2227 and India at $1947.180 In the Modi years, Bangladesh has quietly doubled its income while India has produced much bluster without performance.

TENCEL™ The brand name for lyocell or modal fibres, TENCEL™ is made from wood pulp, like viscose, and shares the same smooth, slippy properties. But unlike most viscose, it uses trees from sustainably managed plantations and a closed-loop method in which solvents are recycled again and again with as little as 1 per cent wasted. TENCEL™ uses less water to produce than cotton, and is 50 per cent more absorbent too, making it ideal for sportswear or any other potentially sweaty situations.

The death rates were astonishing – 50 per cent of England’s six million people; 75 per cent of Venice’s population; 98 per cent of parts of Egypt – ultimately killing a third to a half of Eurasia and north Africa. Out of seventy-five million Europeans, twenty-five million died. The virus also reached west and central Africa, where villages have been found abandoned. Worldwide, the total number of deaths was somewhere between 75 and 200 million. And nor was this the end: pandemics always return, and the plague struck repeatedly over the next centuries. Finally in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), the Venetian authorities ordered sailors to stay on their ships for thirty days (trentino), later raised to forty (quarantino) – a system that started to work. But, for most, it was too late. The ultimate super-propellent, the Great Mortality changed everything.

The company claimed to have interviewed some 2,210 “experts,” of whom it said 1,184 were exclusive Luckies smokers. Of these, federal investigators tracked down 440 and discovered that more than 100 denied smoking Luckies exclusively, 50 did not smoke at all, and some smoked other brands exclusively, some did not recall having ever been interviewed on the subject by American Tobacco, and some had no connection with the tobacco industry. Such details aside, the campaign and the company’s new media-buying strategy were hugely successful, and by 1941 Lucky Strike would narrowly reclaim the market share lead from Camel and widen it dramatically in ensuing years. “He was a dictator, of course,” Pat Weaver recalled of the newly triumphant George Hill of this period, but now he invited the input of others. “His strength,” said Weaver, “was his tremendous conviction about the importance of the business he was in. His weakness was tunnel vision—he was really obsessed with Lucky Strike, I’m afraid.” But not to such a degree that he failed to recognize the danger of his company’s dependence on a single brand amid the vicissitudes of a fickle marketplace. “One day, I came into his office,” Weaver remembered, “and I said, ‘Mr. Hill, I have a good idea.’ He said, ‘Great, what is it?’—he loved ideas.” Weaver’s was a not entirely harebrained scheme to get around the federal excise tax of six cents per pack of twenty cigarettes by putting out a brand in which each smoke was twice the normal length and the package would include a razor blade for slicing each one in two, thereby saving the customer the equivalent of three cents a pack. Hill listened and nodded,

The minority nationalities in our country number more than thirty million. Although they constitute only 6 per cent of the total population, they inhabit extensive regions which comprise 50 to 60 per cent of China's total area. It is thus imperative to foster good relation between the Han people and the minority nationalities. The key to this question lies in overcoming Han chauvinism. At the same time, efforts should also be made to overcome local-nationality chauvinism, wherever it exists among the minority nationalities. Both Hanchauvinism and local-nationality chauvinism are harmful to the unity of the nationalities; they represent one kind of contradiction among the people which should be resolved.