Agent Stone Quotes

Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones.

Knives and bombs do not themselves decide whom to kill. They are dumb tools, lacking the intelligence necessary to process information and make independent decisions. In contrast, AI can process information by itself, and thereby replace humans in decision making. AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.

We're free agents. We can do what we want." Free agents. When my mother used those words she'd wave her keys. "We're like two bachelorettes," she'd say as we backed out of the drive. The road she took was always by the sea. Floods never put her off. "It'll pass" she'd say when I braced myself in the seat. If a wave hit the car, she'd drive on, floating sometimes for seconds. The wipers could clear off the sand and small stones. Seaweed was the problem. Not the one with poppers. That landed with a thud and rolled like a body off the windscreens. No, the problem was the smaller stuff, bright green and fine that wrapped itself like a feather boa around the side mirror. Usually, with one hand, she could throw it off. But sometimes, it took both her hands as if it were a scarf around Isadora Duncan's neck.

Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type. When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will condemn - at least in words. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.

AI can process information by itself, and thereby replace humans in decision making. AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.

Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about. Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found that what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions. Only inwardness remained to be explored. Only the human soul remain terra incognita. This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.

For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our daughters and our earth. It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless we meet it with what we have, our power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices.

Of all the intoxicants you can find on the road (including a "national beer" for nearly every country in the world), marijuana deserves a particular mention here, primarily because it's so popular with travelers. Much of this popularity is due to the fact that marijuana is a relatively harmless diversion (again, provided you don't get caught with it) that can intensify certain impressions and sensations of travel. The problem with marijuana, however, is that it's the travel equivalent of watching television: It replaces real sensations with artificially enhanced ones. Because it doesn't force you to work for a feeling, it creates passive experiences that are only vaguely connected to the rest of your life. "The drug vision remains a sort of dream that cannot be brought over into daily life," wrote Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard. "Old mists may be banished, that is true, but the alien chemical agent forms another mist, maintaining the separation of the 'I' from the true experience of the 'One.'" Moreover, chemical highs have a way of distracting you from the utterly stoning natural high of travel itself. After all, roasting a bowl might spice up a random afternoon in Dayton, Ohio, but is it really all that necessary along the Sumatran shores of Lake Toba, the mountain basins of Nepal, or the desert plateaus of Patagonia? As Salvador Dali quipped, "I never took drugs because I am drugs." With this in mind, strive to be drugs as you travel, to patiently embrace the raw, personal sensation of unmediated reality--an experience for more affecting than any intoxicant can promise.

Fear is a poison that binds the minds of men and women to the same stone where Prometheus' liver is devoured forever by the cruel beaks of hungry birds.

Lucien bent and searched through the scraps of paper at Loki’s stone feet for the blood-kissed prayer Dante had placed among them. Finding it, he plucked it from the pile and straightened. The fading essence of creawdwr blood magic tingled against his fingers. Unfolding the liquor store receipt, he read the words scrawled in Dante’s lefty slant: Watch over her, ma mère. S’il te plaît, keep her safe. Even from me. Lucien reread the prayer until the words blurred. He closed his fingers around the receipt, the paper crinkling against his palm. He had no doubt who she was — Special Agent Heather Wallace. Wounded, his child, yes. Damaged, yes. But Dante’s heart was whole and in love, it seemed, with a mortal. Perhaps Heather Wallace could bind Dante and help keep his sanity from unraveling. Insanity. The fate of an unbound creawdwr.

What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked. She looked nervously down at the papers in her hand even though I knew for a fact she had memorized every word. “When I was eleven I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when the recruiters came to see me. They showed me brochures and told me they were impressed by my test scores and asked if I was ready to be challenged. And I said yes. Because that was what a Gallagher Girl was to me then, a student at the toughest school in the world.” She took a deep breath and talked on. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked again. “When I was thirteen I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when Dr. Fibs allowed me to start doing my own experiments in the lab. I could go anywhere—make anything. Do anything my mind could dream up. Because I was a Gallagher Girl. And, to me, that meant I was the future.” Liz took another deep breath. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” This time, when Liz asked it, her voice cracked. “When I was seventeen I stood on a dark street in Washington, D.C., and watched one Gallagher Girl literally jump in front of a bullet to save the life of another. I saw a group of women gather around a girl whom they had never met, telling the world that if any harm was to come to their sister, it had to go through them first.” Liz straightened. She no longer had to look down at her paper as she said, “What is a Gallagher Girl? I’m eighteen now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t really know the answer to that question. Maybe she is destined to be our first international graduate and take her rightful place among Her Majesty’s Secret Service with MI6.” I glanced to my right and, call me crazy, but I could have sworn Rebecca Baxter was crying. “Maybe she is someone who chooses to give back, to serve her life protecting others just as someone once protected her.” Macey smirked but didn’t cry. I got the feeling that Macey McHenry might never cry again. “Who knows?” Liz asked. “Maybe she’s an undercover journalist.” I glanced at Tina Walters. “An FBI agent.” Eva Alvarez beamed. “A code breaker.” Kim Lee smiled. “A queen.” I thought of little Amirah and knew somehow that she’d be okay. “Maybe she’s even a college student.” Liz looked right at me. “Or maybe she’s so much more.” Then Liz went quiet for a moment. She too looked up at the place where the mansion used to stand. “You know, there was a time when I thought that the Gallagher Academy was made of stone and wood, Grand Halls and high-tech labs. When I thought it was bulletproof, hack-proof, and…yes…fireproof. And I stand before you today happy for the reminder that none of those things are true. Yes, I really am. Because I know now that a Gallagher Girl is not someone who draws her power from that building. I know now with scientific certainty that it is the other way around.” A hushed awe descended over the already quiet crowd as she said this. Maybe it was the gravity of her words and what they meant, but for me personally, I like to think it was Gilly looking down, smiling at us all. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked one final time. “She’s a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: A Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.” Thunderous, raucous applause filled the student section. Liz smiled and wiped her eyes. She leaned close to the microphone. “And, most of all, she is my sister.

...her other paramour was a student at the UASD -- one of those City College types who's been in school eleven years and is always five credits shy of a degree. Students today don't mean na; but in Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the fall of Arbenz, by the stoning of Nixon, by the Guerillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs -- in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of Guerilla -- a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. Such a student was Arquimedes. He also listened to the shortwave, but not for Dodgers scores; what he risked his life for was the news leaking out of Havana, news of the future. Arquemides was, therefore, a student, the son of a Zapatero and a midwife, a tirapiedra and a quemagoma for life. Being a student wasn't a joke, not with Trujillo and Johnny Abbes scooping up everybody following the foiled Cuban Invasion of 1959.

Malaria, presently among the most deadly infectious agents on the planet, is arguably the greatest mass murderer of all time. Experts estimate the disease has killed half of all people who have roamed the planet since the Stone Age.

Man's potentialities are still more important, infinitely more important, than all his present achievements. This was so at the beginning and it still holds. His greatest problem has been how to selectively organize and consciously direct both the internal and external agents of the mind, so that they form more coherent and more intelligible wholes. Technics played a constructive part in solving this problem; but instruments of stone and wood and fiber could not be put to work on a sufficient scale until man had succeeded in inventing other impalpable tools wrought out of the very stuff of his own body, and not visible in any other form.

Believers, look up—take courage. The angels are nearer than you think. For after all (as we have already noted), God has given “his angels charge of you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:11–12 RSV).

My mission doesn't matter anymore. Patriotism drives my work ethic. Love drives my soul. - Ernest Stone

Only after the people get involved and support the politicians who want to move this country forward—with our founding principles as a stepping-stone—will our government be returned to its rightful owner: you.

Student today don’t mean na’, but in a Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the Fall of Arbenz, by the Stoning of Nixon, by the Guerrillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs—in a Latin America already a year and half into the Decade of the Guerrilla—a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe.

In result of that weird interview, the numbness of my soul was for a moment resolved. And no wonder! I had actually seen the agent of fate. I had palpated the very flesh of fate--and its padded shoulder. A brilliant and monstrous mutation had suddenly taken place, and here was the instrument. Within the intricacies of the pattern (hurrying housewife, slippery pavement, a pest of a dog, steep grade, big car, baboon at its wheel), I could dimly distinguish my own vile contribution. Had I not been such a fool--or such an intuitive genius--to preserve that journal, fluids produced by vindictive anger and hot shame would not have blinded Charlotte in her dash to the mailbox. But even had they blinded her, still nothing might have happened, had not precise fate, that synchronizing phantom, mixed within its alembic the car and the dog and the sun and the shade and the wet and the weak and the strong and the stone.

I had no idea, when I was first asked by my agents to audition for a film called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, that it would be any different in terms of scale to the jobs I’d done previously. In my mind it was another Borrowers: a relatively high-budget film with lots of children and, if I played my cards right, a part for me. But if I didn’t get a part? That was okay too. It wasn’t the be-all and end-all. There was a good chance something else would come along.

Reading Group Guide Questions Discussion questions for The Three Pines Mysteries, by Louise Penny 1. How important is the use of humor in this book? 2. Which Three Pines villager would you most like to have cafe au lait with at the bistro? 3. Why is Ruth a villager? 4. Louise Penny says her books are about murder, but at their heart they’re about other things. What else is this book about? What are some other themes? 5. Agent Nichol is an extremely controversial character in the books. What do you think of her? What purpose does she serve? Discussion questions for Still Life 1. At the beginning of Still Life, we are told that “violent death still surprised” Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Why is that odd for a homicide detective, and how does it influence his work? What are his strengths and his weaknesses? 2. The village of Three Pines is not on any map, and when Gamache and Agent Nicole first arrive there, they see “the inevitable paradox. An old stone mill sat beside a pond, the mid-morning sun warming its fieldstones. Around it the maples and birches and wild cherry trees held their fragile leaves, like thousands of happy hands waving to them on arrival. And police cars. The snakes in Eden.” Can you find other echoes of Paradise in Three Pines, and what role do snakes—real or metaphorical—play there? 3. There are three main couples in the book: Clara and Peter, Olivier and Gabri, and

The men who had inhabited prehistoric Egypt, who had carved the Sphinx and founded the world‘s oldest civilization, were men who had made their exodus from Atlantis to settle on this strip of land that bordered the Nile. And they had left before their ill-fated continent sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe which had drained the Sahara and turned it into a desert. The shells which to-day litter the surface of the Sahara in places, as well as the fossil fish which are found among its sands, prove that it was once covered by the waters of a vast ocean. It was a tremendous and astonishing thought that the Sphinx provided a solid, visible and enduring link between the people of to-day and the people of a lost world, the unknown Atlanteans. This great symbol has lost its meaning for the modern world, for whom it is now but an object of local curiosity. What did it mean to the Atlanteans? We must look for some hint of an answer in the few remnants of culture still surviving from peoples whose own histories claimed Atlantean origin. We must probe behind the degenerate rituals of races like the Incas and the Mayas, mounting to the purer worship of their distant ancestors, and we shall find that the loftiest object of their worship was Light, represented by the Sun. Hence they build pyramidal Temples of the Sun throughout ancient America. Such temples were either variants or slightly distorted copies of similar temples which had existed in Atlantis. After Plato went to Egypt and settled for a while in the ancient School of Heliopolis, where he lived and studied during thirteen years, the priest-teachers, usually very guarded with foreigners, favoured the earnest young Greek enquirer with information drawn from their well-preserved secret records. Among other things they told him that a great flat-topped pyramid had stood in the centre of the island of Atlantis, and that on this top there had been build the chief temple of the continent – a sun temple. […] The Sphinx was the revered emblem in stone of a race which looked upon Light as the nearest thing to God in this dense material world. Light is the subtlest, most intangible of things which man can register by means of one of his five senses. It is the most ethereal kind of matter which he knows. It is the most ethereal element science can handle, and even the various kind of invisible rays are but variants of light which vibrate beyond the power of our retinas to grasp. So in the Book of Genesis the first created element was Light, without which nothing else could be created. „The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Deep,“ wrote Egyptian-trained Moses. „And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light.“ Not only that, it is also a perfect symbol of that heavenly Light which dawns within the deep places of man‘s soul when he yields heart and mind to God; it is a magnificent memorial to that divine illumination which awaits him secretly even amid the blackest despairs. Man, in turning instinctively to the face and presence of the Sun, turns to the body of his Creator. And from the sun, light is born: from the sun it comes streaming into our world. Without the sun we should remain perpetually in horrible darkness; crops would not grow: mankind would starve, die, and disappear from the face of this planet. If this reverence for Light and for its agent, the sun, was the central tenet of Atlantean religion, so also was it the central tenet of early Egyptian religion. Ra, the sun-god, was first, the father and creator of all the other gods, the Maker of all things, the One, the self-born [...] If the Sphinx were connected with this religion of Light, it would surely have some relationship with the sun.

And for the matter, or substance of the invisible agents, so fancied; they could not by natural cogitation, fall upon any other conceit, but that it was the same with that of the soul of man; and that the soul of man, was of the same substance, with that which appeareth in a dream, to one that sleepeth; or in a looking-glass, to one that is awake; which, men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the fancy, think to be real, and external substances; and therefore call them ghosts; as the Latins called them imagines, and umbræ; and thought them spirits, that is, thin aërial bodies; and those invisible agents, which they feared, to be like them; save that they appear, and vanish when they please. But the opinion that such spirits were incorporeal, or immaterial, could never enter into the mind of any man by nature; because, though men may put together words of contradictory signification, as spirit, and incorporeal ; yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them: and therefore, men that by their own meditation, arrive to the acknowledgment of one infinite, omnipotent, and eternal God, chose rather to confess he is incomprehensible, and above their understanding, than to define his nature by spirit incorporeal, and then confess their definition to be unintelligible: or if they give him such a title, it is not dogmatically, with intention to make the divine nature understood; but piously, to honour him with attributes, of significations, as remote as they can from the grossness of bodies visible. Then, for the way by which they think these invisible agents wrought their effects; that is to say, what immediate causes they used, in bringing things to pass, men that know not what it is that we call causing, that is, almost all men, have no other rule to guess by, but by observing, and remembering what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time, or times before, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent event, any dependence or connexion at all: and therefore from the like things past, they expect the like things to come; and hope for good or evil luck, superstitiously, from things that have no part at all in the causing of it: as the Athenians did for their war at Lepanto, demand another Phormio; the Pompeian faction for their war in Africa, another Scipio; and others have done in diverse other occasions since. In like manner they attribute their fortune to a stander by, to a lucky or unlucky place, to words spoken, especially if the name of God be amongst them; as charming and conjuring, the liturgy of witches; insomuch as to believe, they have power to turn a stone into bread, bread into a man, or any thing into any thing.

The Inner Critic really wants you to be okay. It really wants you to make it in the world, to have a good job, to make enough money. It really wants you to be loved, to be successful, to be accepted, to have a family. It developed in your early years to protect your vulnerability by helping you to adapt to the world around you and to meet its requirements, whatever they might be. In order to do its job properly, it needed to curb your natural inclinations and to make you acceptable to others by criticizing and correcting your behavior before other people could criticize or reject you. In this way, it reasoned, it could earn love and protection for you as well as save you much shame and hurt. However, the Inner Critic often does not know when to stop. It does not know when enough is enough. It has a tendency to grow until it is out of control and begins to undermine us and to do real damage. Its original intent gets lost in the sands of time. Like a well-trained CIA agent, the Inner Critic has learned how to infiltrate every portion of your life, checking you out in minute detail for weakness and imperfections. Since its main job is to protect you from being too vulnerable in the world, it must know everything about you that might be open to attack from the outside. But, like a renegade CIA agent, at some point the Critic oversteps its bounds, takes matters into its own hands, and begins to operate on its own agenda. The information, which was originally supposed to be for your overall defense and to promote your general well-being, is now being used against you, the very person it was meant to protect. With the Critic’s original aims and purposes forgotten, all that is left for it is the excitement of the chase and the wonderfully triumphant feeling of conquest, as it operates secretly and independently of any outside control. When the Critic starts to outgrow its initial usefulness in this way, there is real trouble. At this point, the Inner Critic makes you feel dreadful about yourself. With your Inner Critic watching your every move, you become self-conscious, awkward, and ever more fearful about making a mistake. You may even stop trying because the Critic tells you that you are going about things all wrong and will undoubtedly fail. Although, underneath all of this, the Critic may want you to be so perfect that you will not fail, its effect is to block any attempts you might make. The Inner Critic kills your creativity. How can you possibly try anything new or different when you know that you will do something wrong?

AUTHOR’S NOTE The First Assassin is a work of fiction, and specifically a work of historical fiction—meaning that much of it is based on real people, places, and events. My goal never has been to tell a tale about what really happened but to tell what might have happened by blending known facts with my imagination. Characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, and John Hay were, of course, actual people. When they speak on these pages, their words are occasionally drawn from things they are reported to have said. At other times, I literally put words in their mouths. Historical events and circumstances such as Lincoln’s inauguration, the fall of Fort Sumter, and the military crisis in Washington, D.C., provide both a factual backdrop and a narrative skeleton. Throughout, I have tried to maximize the authenticity and also to tell a good story. Thomas Mallon, an experienced historical novelist, has described writing about the past: “The attempt to reconstruct the surface texture of that world was a homely pleasure, like quilting, done with items close to hand.” For me, the items close to hand were books and articles. Naming all of my sources is impossible. I’ve drawn from a lifetime of reading about the Civil War, starting as a boy who gazed for hours at the battlefield pictures in The Golden Book of the Civil War, which is an adaptation for young readers of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Yet several works stand out as especially important references. The first chapter owes much to an account that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 26, 1861 (and is cited in A House Dividing, by William E. Baringer). It is also informed by Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, 1861, edited by Norma B. Cuthbert. For details about Washington in 1861: Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech; The Civil War Day by Day, by E. B. Long with Barbara Long; Freedom Rising, by Ernest B. Ferguson; The Regiment That Saved the Capitol, by William J. Roehrenbeck; The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, by Thomas P. Lowry; and “Washington City,” in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. For information about certain characters: With Malice Toward None, by Stephen B. Oates; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Abe Lincoln Laughing, edited by P. M. Zall; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries of John Hay, edited by Tyler Dennett; Lincoln Day by Day, Vol. III: 1861–1865, by C. Percy Powell; Agent of Destiny, by John S. D. Eisenhower; Rebel Rose, by Isabel Ross; Wild Rose, by Ann Blackman; and several magazine articles by Charles Pomeroy Stone. For life in the South: Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese; Runaway Slaves, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger; Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich; Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself; The Fire-Eaters, by Eric H. Walther; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, by Robert E. May. For background on Mazorca: Argentine Dictator, by John Lynch. This is the second edition of The First Assassin. Except for a few minor edits, it is no different from the first edition.

Wilson put a hand to his forehead. “You mind being a little more careful with the evidence, Agent Conley?” Dale knelt down again and began to pull back on the rock. “Give me a hand, would ya?

Dale was angling for her phone number, but the window of opportunity was small. The lunchtime crowd at Rich’s Diner was thick, and Julia had several other tables. In a sea of greasy spoons, Rich’s was the greasiest. It wasn’t the first place one would expect to find a federal agent in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of Washington, D.C., in the middle of the 1970s. Everyone knew federal agents wore business suits and ate meals with three forks and five courses. But not BEI Special Agent Dale Conley.

I don’t know what the world is coming to,” she said sadly. “In my day select people—secret agents, hired guns, Girl Scouts who expected to sell their cookies without getting raped—were taught to kill with a single thumb.” “Were you a Girl Scout?” Stone asked. “Of course. How do you think I know this stuff?

Grey didn’t know whether the girl had been Warren’s personal property, and he didn’t ask her. He’d taken advantage of his own doubt to tell Mr. Dawes, the governor’s erstwhile secretary, that as there was no record of her provenance, they should assume that she was technically the property of His Majesty and should thus be omitted from the list of Governor Warren’s belongings. Mr. Dawes, an excellent secretary, had made a noise like a mildly consumptive sheep and lowered his eyes in acquiescence. Grey had then dictated a brief letter of manumission, signed this as acting military governor of Jamaica (and thus His Majesty’s agent), and had Mr. Dawes affix the most imposing seal in his collection—Grey thought it was the seal of the department of weights and measures, but it was done in red wax and looked very impressive.

suggested to the entire workforce that they read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” one of the most important things I ever read. Inspired in part by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, King’s letter is about seeking justice in a deeply flawed world. I have reread it several times since first encountering it in college. Because I knew that the FBI’s interaction with the civil rights movement, and Dr. King in particular, was a dark chapter in the Bureau’s history, I wanted to do something more. I ordered the creation of a curriculum at the FBI’s Quantico training academy. I wanted all agent and analyst trainees to learn the history of the FBI’s interaction with King, how the legitimate counterintelligence mission against Communist infiltration of our government had morphed into an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack on the civil rights leader and others. I wanted them to remember that well-meaning people lost their way. I wanted them to know that the FBI sent King a letter blackmailing him and suggesting he commit suicide. I wanted them to stare at that history, visit the inspiring King Memorial in Washington, D.C., with its long arcs of stone bearing King’s words, and reflect on the FBI’s values and our responsibility to always do better. The FBI Training Division created a curriculum that does just that. All FBI trainees study that painful history and complete the course by visiting the memorial. There, they choose one of Dr. King’s quotations from the wall—maybe “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” or “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”—and then write an essay about the intersection of that quotation and the FBI’s values. The course doesn’t tell the trainees what to think. It only tells them they must think, about history and institutional values. Last I checked, the course remains one of the highest-rated portions of their many weeks at Quantico.

FBI Counterterrorism Response Team Headquarters, Quantico, VA SPECIAL AGENT ODYSSEUS CARR looked up at the graying tiles of his boss’s ceiling and began counting to ten. He almost made it to three. “What do you mean, I can’t brief my men? They’re putting their lives at risk, commander. Big risk. These aren’t stone-throwers you’re asking us to kill. These are the guys who took out the World Trade Center.

In 2008, Sinegal bought a Kindle e-reader that turned out to be defective and wrote Bezos a laudatory e-mail after Amazon’s customer service replaced his device for free. Bezos wrote back, “I want you to consider me your personal customer service agent on the Kindle.” Perhaps

differed sharply from Eddy’s conviction that the human mind, far from being a potentially curative agent, was the cause of disease rather than its cure.

Then the center of influence shifted to London, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Who, the Kinks, and all the bands that orbited them. San Francisco, with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana, had its moment in a psychedelic spotlight around the Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but as the 1960s gave way to the '70s, the center of the musical universe shifted unmistakably to Los Angeles. "It was incredibly vital," said Jonathan Taplin, who first came to LA as the tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band and later relocated there to produce Martin Scorsese's breakthrough movie, Mean Streets. "The nexus of the music business had really moved from New York to Los Angeles. That had been a profound shift . . . It was very clear that something big had changed."'' For a breathtaking few years, the stars aligned to glittering effect in Los Angeles. The city attracted brilliant artists; skilled session musicians; soulful songwriters; shrewd managers, agents, and record executives; and buzz-building clubs. From this dense constellation of talent, a shimmering new sound emerged, a smooth blend of rock and folk with country influences. Talented young people from all over the country began descending on Los Angeles with their guitar cases or dreams of becoming the next Geffen. Irving Azoff, a hyper-ambitious young agent and manager who arrived in Los Angeles in 1972, remembered, "It was like the gold rush. You've never seen anything like it in the entertainment business. The place was exploding. I was here—right place, right time. I tell everybody, `If you're really good in this business, you only have to be right once,' so you kind of make your own luck, but it is luck, too. It was hard to be in LA in that time and have any talent whatsoever in the music business—whether you were a manager, an agent, an artist, a producer, or writer—[and] not to make it, because it was boom times. It was the gold rush, and it was fucking fun.

Members of The Center for AI Safety say that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, because inventing machines that are more powerful than us is playing with fire. While AI has many beneficial applications, it can be used to perpetuate bias, power autonomous weapons, promote misinformation, and conduct cyberattacks. Even as AI systems are used with human involvement, AI agents are increasingly able to act autonomously to cause harm.

Interstate 290 cuts past Chicago’s Rush University hospital and then through the city’s near Southwest Side. Adjacent to the expressway, homeless people and others suffering from opioid-use disorders do deals and shoot up, and the highway also provides quick access for affluent people from the suburbs. “They serve you in your car, quick-out in under a minute, and you’re back home in Hinsdale before the kids wake,” Jack Riley, ex–special agent in charge of the DEA’s Chicago office, told Rolling Stone. “That’s why gangsters kill for those corners. They’re the Park Place and Boardwalk of the drug game.” To Chicago residents, 290 is better known as the Eisenhower Expressway or, to many, the Heroin Highway. Chicago’s famously high murder rate, which police say is driven by drug dealing on the West Side, all comes to a head near the Heroin Highway, in drug markets on streets like Independence Boulevard.

Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward--pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about. Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth--a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attraction. Only inwardness remained to be explored. Only the human soul remained 'terra incognita

In scores of cities all over the United States, when the Communists were simultaneously meeting at their various headquarters on New Year’s Day of 1920, Mr. Palmer’s agents and police and voluntary aides fell upon them—fell upon everybody, in fact, who was in the hall, regardless of whether he was a Communist or not (how could one tell?)—and bundled them off to jail, with or without warrant. Every conceivable bit of evidence—literature, membership lists, books, papers, pictures on the wall, everything—was seized, with or without a search warrant. On this and succeeding nights other Communists and suspected Communists were seized in their homes. Over six thousand men were arrested in all, and thrust summarily behind the bars for days or weeks—often without any chance to learn what was the explicit charge against them. At least one American citizen, not a Communist, was jailed for days through some mistake—probably a confusion of names—and barely escaped deportation. In Detroit, over a hundred men were herded into a bull-pen measuring twenty-four by thirty feet and kept there for a week under conditions which the mayor of the city called intolerable. In Hartford, while the suspects were in jail the authorities took the further precaution of arresting and incarcerating all visitors who came to see them, a friendly call being regarded as prima facie evidence of affiliation with the Communist party. Ultimately a considerable proportion of the prisoners were released for want of sufficient evidence that they were Communists. Ultimately, too, it was divulged that in the whole country-wide raid upon these dangerous men—supposedly armed to the teeth—exactly three pistols were found, and no explosives at all. But at the time the newspapers were full of reports from Mr. Palmer’s office that new evidence of a gigantic plot against the safety of the country had been unearthed; and although the steel strike was failing, the coal strike was failing, and any danger of a socialist régime, to say nothing of a revolution, was daily fading, nevertheless to the great mass of the American people the Bolshevist bogey became more terrifying than ever. Mr. Palmer was in full cry. In public statements he was reminding the twenty million owners of Liberty bonds and the nine million farm-owners and the eleven million owners of savings accounts, that the Reds proposed to take away all they had. He was distributing boilerplate propaganda to the press, containing pictures of horrid-looking Bolsheviks with bristling beards, and asking if such as these should rule over America. Politicians were quoting the suggestion of Guy Empey that the proper implements for dealing with the Reds could be “found in any hardware store,” or proclaiming, “My motto for the Reds is S. O. S.—ship or shoot. I believe we should place them all on a ship of stone, with sails of lead, and that their first stopping-place should be hell.” College graduates were calling for the dismissal of professors suspected of radicalism; school-teachers were being made to sign oaths of allegiance; business men with unorthodox political or economic ideas were learning to hold their tongues if they wanted to hold their jobs. Hysteria had reached its height.

In that year, in Moscow, a ministerial conference of the Group of Eight (G-8) countries on combating transnational organized crime stated that the ministers had “agreed to consider putting certain responsibilities, as appropriate, on those professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, company formation agents, auditors, and other financial intermediaries who can either block or facilitate the entry of organized crime money into the financial system.”45 The 2003 revisions to the Forty Recommendations of the FATF implement the G8’s “Gatekeeper” initiative by extending basic AML/CFT prevention requirements, including the reporting requirements, with some qualifications, to a list of “designated non-financial businesses and professions” that includes casinos; real estate agents; dealers in precious metals and precious stones; lawyers, notaries, and other independent professionals and accountants in certain defined circumstances; and trust and company service providers.

Hell yeah! Twitter was proof that leaderless self-organizing systems could be true agents of change.

One cannot examine the actions of the Secret Service on November 22, 1963, without concluding that the Service stood down on protecting President Kennedy. Indeed, the 120-degree turn into Dealey Plaza violates Secret Service procedures, because it required the presidential limousine to come to a virtual stop. The reduction of the president’s motorcycle escort from six police motorcycles to two and the order for those two officers to ride behind the presidential limousine also violates standard Secret Service procedure. The failure to empty and secure the tall buildings on either side of the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza likewise violates formal procedure, as does the lack of any agents dispersed through the crowd gathered in Dealey Plaza. Readers who are interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Secret Service’s multiple failures and the conspicuous violation of longstanding Secret Service policies regarding the movement and protection of the president on November 22, 1963, should read Vince Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect. The difference in JFK Secret Service protection and its adherence to the services standard required procedures in Chicago and Miami would be starkly different from the arrangements for Dallas. Palamara established that Agent Emory Roberts worked overtime to help both orchestrate the assassination and cover up the unusual actions of the Secret Service in the aftermath. Roberts was commander of the follow-up car trailing the presidential limousine. Roberts covered up the escapades of his fellow secret servicemen at The Cellar, a club in downtown Ft. Worth, where agents, some directly responsible for the safety of President Kennedy during the motorcade, drank until dawn on November 22. He also ordered a perplexed agent Donald Lawton off the back of the presidential limousine while at Love Field, thus giving the assassins clearer, more direct shots and more time to get them off. Also, although Roberts recognized rifle fire being discharged in Dealey Plaza, he neglected to mobilize any of the agents under his watch to act. To mask the inactivity of his agents, Roberts, in sworn testimony, falsely increased the speed of the cars (from 9–11 mph to 20–25 mph) and the distance between them (from five feet to 20–25 feet).85 No analysis of the Secret Service’s actions on the day of the assassination can be complete without mentioning that Secret Service director James Rowley was a former FBI agent and close ally of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as a crony of Lyndon Johnson. Hoover was one of Johnson’s closest associates. The FBI Director would take the unusual step of flying to Dallas for a victory celebration in 1948 when Johnson illegally stole his Senate seat through election fraud. Johnson and Hoover were neighbors in the Foxhall Road area of the District of Columbia. Hoover’s budget would virtually triple during the years LBJ dominated the appropriations process as Senate Majority Leader. Rowley was a protégé of the director and one of the few men who left the FBI on good terms with Hoover. Rowley’s first public service job in the Roosevelt administration was arranged for him by LBJ. The neglect of assigning even one Secret Service agent to secure Dealey Plaza, as well as cleaning blood and other relatable pieces of evidence from the presidential limousine immediately following the assassination, seizing Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital to prevent a proper, well-documented autopsy, failing to record Oswald’s interrogation—all were important pieces of the assassination deftly executed by Rowley.

SPECIAL AGENT ODYSSEUS CARR looked up at the graying tiles of his boss’s ceiling and began counting to ten. He almost made it to three. “What do you mean, I can’t brief my men? They’re putting their lives at risk, commander. Big risk. These aren’t stone-throwers you’re asking us to kill. These are the guys who took out the World Trade Center.” Commander Potchak stood. He was a head shorter than Odi but built like a fireplug, and every bit as tough. “What’s your point?” Odi leaned forward and rested predatory palms on the edge of Potchak’s metal desk. “My point, sir, is that we’re giving up a crucial advantage if we don’t rehearse. I want to give my men every available advantage. They deserve no less.” Potchak did not twitch or blink. He just stared back cold and hard for a couple seconds and then said, “If you’re not up to it, Agent Carr, I’ll give Echo Team to Waslager. He’s been itching to go international. You can sit this one out—in isolation of course.” Odi wanted to leap over the desk, grab his boss

You ever hear the saying 'The third time's the charm'? It isn't. It's just a way of saying that you've tried something twice and failed and you're too stubborn or stupid to quit and move on. - Ernest Stone

Yes, Shelby, You’re the real best thing in his life. I know. I guess I can deal with being second best.” - Emily to Shelby

WALSH AND FOUR AGENTS from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms arrived at Cole’s house an hour later. Two stayed with their cars, but two male agents came in with Walsh—a tough-looking Latin guy named Paul Rodriguez and a tall lanky guy named Steve Hurwitz. Hurwitz was wearing an olive green Special Response Team jumpsuit. SRT was the ATF’s version of SWAT. They spread through Cole’s living room with an air of watchful suspicion, as if someone might jump out of a closet. Jon Stone had brought in a large box of his surveillance gear, and Cole was helping him set up. Cole was shirtless, but had strapped on a bullet-resistant vest. Pike couldn’t blame them for being wary, especially with the cash. Seven

They spent the next hour going over their plan and setting up their equipment. Stone loaded his software onto Carlos’s laptop, then fit locators on Pike and Cole, one in Cole’s hair, and the other on the back of Pike’s belt buckle. Both Walsh and Hurwitz made multiple calls, coordinating the tactical SRT team and six additional Special Agents. At

WALSH AND FOUR AGENTS from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms arrived at Cole’s house an hour later. Two stayed with their cars, but two male agents came in with Walsh—a tough-looking Latin guy named Paul Rodriguez and a tall lanky guy named Steve Hurwitz. Hurwitz was wearing an olive green Special Response Team jumpsuit. SRT was the ATF’s version of SWAT. They spread through Cole’s living room with an air of watchful suspicion, as if someone might jump out of a closet. Jon Stone had brought in a large box of his surveillance gear, and Cole was helping him set up. Cole was shirtless, but had strapped on a bullet-resistant vest. Pike couldn’t blame them for being wary, especially with the cash.

Meanings of the term 'petrification': [...] The dread of this happening: the dread, that is, of the possibility of turning, or being turned, from a live person into a dead thing, into a stone, into a robot, an automaton, without personal autonomy of action, an it without subjectivity. 3. The 'magical' act whereby one may attempt to turn someone else into stone, by 'petrifying' him; and, by extension, the act whereby one negates the other person's autonomy, ignores his feelings, regards him as a thing, kills the life in him. In this sense one may perhaps better say that one depersonalizes him, or reifies him. One treats him not as a person, as a free agent, but as an it. [Ontological insecurity - Petrification]

AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.

ALTHOUGH writers and publishers like to grumble about the proliferation of libel lawsuits in this country, few would seriously propose that anything be done to reverse the trend. The Ayatollah’s death sentence on Salman Rushdie brings into relief the primitive feeling that lies behind every libel suit, and makes the writer only too grateful for the mechanism the law provides for transforming the displeased subject’s impulse to kill him into the move civilized aim of extracting large sums of money from him. Although the money is rarely collected—most libel suits end in defeat for the plaintiff or in a modest settlement—the lawsuit itself functions as a powerful therapeutic agent, ridding the subject of his feelings of humiliating powerlessness and restoring to him his cheer and amour propre. From the lawyer who takes him into his care he immediately receives the relief that a sympathetic hearing of one’s grievances affords. Conventional psychotherapy would soon veer off into an unpleasurable examination of the holes in one’s story, but the law cure never ceases to be gratifying; in fact, what the lawyer says and writes on his client’s behalf is gratifying beyond the latter’s wildest expectations. The rhetoric of advocacy law is the rhetoric of the late-night vengeful brooding which in life rarely survives the skeptical light of morning but in a lawsuit becomes inscribed, as if in stone, in the bellicose documents that accrue while the lawsuit takes its course, and proclaims with every sentence “I am right! I am right! I am right!” On the other side, meanwhile, the same orgy of self-justification is taking place. The libel defendant, after an initial anxious moment (we all feel guilty of something, and being sued stirs the feeling up), comes to see, through the ministrations of his lawyer-therapist, that he is completely in the right and has nothing to fear. Of pleasurable reading experiences there may be none greater than that afforded by a legal document written on one’s behalf. A lawyer will argue for you as you could never argue for yourself, and, with his lawyer’s rhetoric, give you a feeling of certitude that you could never obtain for yourself from the language of everyday discourse. People who have never sued anyone or been sued have missed a narcissistic pleasure that is not quite like any other.

Though some Bible students have tried to estimate how much this stone weighed, we need not speculate, because Jesus could have come out of that tomb whether the stone was there or not.

Mounted on a bay horse (or, according to some accounts, a palomino) with clipped tail and ears and a plow-horse’s harness, the abbot’s representative carried a whip, a seed bag of wheat, and a basket filled with 120 rissoles. These were crescent-shaped pastries made of rye flour, stuffed with minced veal cooked in oil. A dog followed, also with clipped ears and tail, and with a rissole tied around his neck. The agent circled a stone cross at the entrance to the court three times, cracking his whip on each tour, dismounted and knelt at the lion platform, and, if each detail of equipment and performance was exactly right so far, was allowed to proceed. He then mounted the platform, kissed the lion, and deposited the rissoles plus twelve loaves of bread and three portions of wine as his homage. The Sire de Coucy took a third of the offerings, distributed the rest among the assembled bailiffs and town magistrates, and stamped the document of homage with a seal representing a mitered abbot with the feet of a goat.

Agent Life: When you no longer hold something people want, you go from white hot to stone cold in the blink of an eye!

It was a Thompson submachine gun. She calmly lowered the seat back in place. She stuck the stock under her left armpit and clutched the front handle. “Jesus!” I yelled. “Did you always have that there?” “Yes!” “What the hell were you waiting for?” “I was waiting until we got into a jam,” she turned and hefted the Tommy gun rearward. “Cover your ears!

Author's Note: NSDD 84 indicates that John Lear, Robert Lazar, Bruce Macabbee, Stanton Friedman, Clifford Stone, and many others may be active government agents.

Just as they were reaching the wall of the building, Justin spoke urgently. “Hostiles on roof!” But it was too late!! Two figures had thrown off their protective heat shields and jumped from the roof of the building onto the backs of the CIA agents. Trey fought hard. His attacker was standing behind him with his hand around the agent’s throat. Stone elbowed his attacker in the face and bit hard on his hand. Howling, his assailant let go of Trey’s esophagus, but punched him in the kidney and slammed his foot into Trey’s groin. He unleashed a flurry of punches into the back of the agent’s head, knocking him to the ground. In a flash the hostile had zip-tied Trey’s ankles and wrists.

Stone Age men broke flint and found it cut things better than their own teeth did. We’ve created methods of transportation that work better than legs, and often do things we could only dream of, like flying. A hydraulic grip clamps on things better than a human hand. They’re all tools and nobody objects to them, so why should anyone object to creating minds that are better at thinking than our own, and rulers that are better at their job than those humans who would aspire to rule?

In medieval times, one-third of Europe’s population was decimated by the bubonic plague. Within a few centuries of Columbus’s arrival in the New World, 95 percent of the indigenous population of the Americas had been wiped out by smallpox, measles, influenza, and other germs brought in by European invaders and colonists. More people died in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic than were killed in the trenches of World War I. Malaria, presently among the most deadly infectious agents on the planet, is arguably the greatest mass murderer of all time. Experts estimate the disease has killed half of all people who have roamed the planet since the Stone Age.

there were many contacts during the campaign and the transition between Trump associates and Russians—in person, on the phone, and via text and email. Many of these interactions were with Ambassador Kislyak, who was thought to help oversee Russian intelligence operations in the United States, but they included other Russian officials and agents as well. For example, Roger Stone, the longtime Trump political advisor who claimed that he was in touch with Julian Assange, suggested in August 2016 that information about John Podesta was going to come out. In October, Stone hinted Assange and WikiLeaks were going to release material that would be damaging to my campaign, and later admitted to also exchanging direct messages over Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, the front for Russian intelligence, after some of those messages were published by the website The Smoking Gun. We also know now that in December 2016, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-controlled bank that is under U.S. sanctions and tied closely to Russian intelligence. The Washington Post caused a sensation with its report that Russian officials were discussing a proposal by Kushner to use Russian diplomatic facilities in America to communicate secretly with Moscow. The New York Times reported that Russian intelligence attempted to recruit Carter Page, the Trump foreign policy advisor, as a spy back in 2013 (according to the report, the FBI believed Page did not know that the man who approached him was a spy). And according to Yahoo News, U.S. officials received intelligence reports that Carter Page met with a top Putin aide involved with intelligence. Some Trump advisors failed to disclose or lied about their contacts with the Russians, including on applications for security clearances, which could be a federal crime. Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to Congress about his contacts and later recused himself from the investigation. Michael Flynn lied about being in contact with Kislyak and then changed his story about whether they discussed dropping U.S. sanctions. Reporting since the election has made clear that Trump and his top advisors have little or no interest in learning about the Russian covert operation against American democracy.

SPECIAL AGENT ODYSSEUS CARR looked up at the graying tiles of his boss’s ceiling and began counting to ten. He almost made it to three. “What do you mean, I can’t brief my men? They’re putting their lives at risk, commander. Big risk. These aren’t stone-throwers you’re asking us to kill. These are the guys who took out the World Trade Center.

I have had my homes razed, raided and burned to the ground, my towers gutted, marauded, and blasted, and my castles pillaged, defiled, and demolished. I have been imprisoned in the Astral Plane, entombed in stone, had my spirit bound within a phylactery, and had my mind trapped within a crystal prism. I have been held for ransom by bandits, robbed by nobility, and dispossessed by extradimensional thieves. I have been threatened, cajoled, berated, cursed (both literally and actually), abused, and blackmailed. I have been stabbed, bludgeoned, whipped, tortured, burned, shocked, flayed, and worse.1 I have been possessed, mind-controlled, robbed of my body and volition, and rendered incorporeal. I have been turned into a newt, transmogrified into a frog, changed into a toad, and transformed into creatures slimier still.2 I have been charmed, bewitched, hexed, ensorcelled, enchanted, mesmerized, spellbound, and let’s not even talk about what happened while I was under the influence of hostile supernatural entities and agents. I have been abandoned by friends, forgotten by allies, scorned by compatriots, and turned upon by companions. I have had intimates taken, comrades killed, family members persecuted, and kith imprisoned. I have fought with incomprehensible daemons face to face, been engulfed by dragons’ raging hellfires, clashed with greater Powers, and been laid low by alien intelligences. I have been trapped within the bowels of forgotten ruins, lost within haunted crypts, striven through extradimensional labyrinths, delved over and through the hearts of uncharted planets, and foundered within the darkest and deepest wilds. I have had my identity erased, my memories taken, my will sapped, and my spirit broken. And these were on some of my better days. I am a wizard.

THE FORT DE ROMAINVILLE glowers over the eastern suburbs of Paris. A brutal stone giant, by 1941 it had been made into another Nazi vision of hell. Built in the 1830s on a low hill, the hulking bastion was part of the defensive ring constructed around Paris to protect the city from foreign attack, but it also held troops who could be deployed in the event of popular insurrection—a bloated, moated, impregnable monstrosity. For the Nazis, the ancient fort served a similar psychological purpose—as a hostage camp, a place of interrogation, torture, and summary execution, and a visible symbol of intimidation, inescapable in every way.

Sean Wyatt sat, somewhat uncomfortably, across from Allyson Webster, journalist for the Atlanta Sentinel. He scratched his messy blond hair for a moment while considering her line of questioning. The noises and the people bustling about enjoying their morning java did nothing to ease his mind. She’d requested to meet with Wyatt to ask a few questions about the International Archaeological Agency, the driving force behind the construction of the Georgia Historical Center. In fact, most of the artifacts on display were pieces recovered by IAA agents, one of whom in particular had been involved on more of the recovery missions than most

An east wind blew from the City: it had the stone-cold of big business blocks and banks.

Yes, I know. The thing is that the Vogel Vanderpless stone appeared from nowhere. I just have a hunch … My friends would laugh as I have always wanted to be an undercover agent or something!

Successful people are the change agent, they know how to turn the stumbling blocks to stepping-stones.

Instead, I got to spend some quality time at the hospital getting a kidney stone removed. Pete Rouse sent Mark Patterson a note with his condolences: 'Ask Tim which is more painful—the kidney stone or the tax deal briefings.' My ever-protective daughter, Elise, visiting me in the hospital from Stanford, tried to fend off my constant work-related interruptions so I could get some rest. At one point, my lead Secret Service agent poked his head through the door to inform me that POTUS was on the line. ¶ 'Who the fuck is POTUS?' Elise asked with exasperation. ¶ She agreed to let me take the call after we explained the acronyms of the President of the United States.

On September 18, 1975, the day Mer arrived, FBI agents swarmed two safe houses, including the one where Patty was hiding. Four days after the arrests, another female radical fired two shots at President Gerald Ford as he exited the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square, missing his head by inches. The would-be assassin later said she’d been inspired in part by Patty and the SLA. The astonishing case of the heiress turned kidnapping victim, self-proclaimed revolutionary, terrorist, fugitive, and frail penitent would keep the press enthralled for many moons.

AI isn’t a tool - it’s an agent.

Once the courts are no longer able to check the government’s power by legal means, and once the media obediently parrots the government line, all other institutions or persons who dare oppose the government can be smeared and persecuted as traitors, criminals, or foreign agents.

for example—but also any attempt by a nonhuman agent to pass itself off as a human. If anyone complains that such strict measures violate freedom of speech, they should be reminded that bots don’t have freedom of speech. Banning human beings from a public platform is a sensitive step, and democracies should be very careful about such censorship. However, banning bots is a simple issue: it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, because bots don’t have rights.[

It was up to him to solve the unknown variables and balance the equation. Everything in life was an equation, and unbalanced equations set off chain reactions and became chaos. In a perverse sense, he considered himself a bookkeeper, maintaining the ledgers of madness that mankind perpetually unleashed on itself and the world at large. When the books were balanced, a fragile sort of peace persisted until the tireless agents of entropy began their work anew. What is peace but war held in check? What is life but entropy held at bay? He could not remember when the thought first occurred to him that good and evil could be—must be—understood in mathematical terms. Entropy is the true devil in the universe, not some cackling, fiery satyr with horns and a pitchfork. Entropy is the great destructor, the root of all disorder and chaos. What are the seven deadly sins, if not a failure to resist the decay of one’s moral fiber? What is war, if not an alliance with entropy to bring chaos and destruction to an ordered world? It took 182 years to build Notre Dame de Paris—182 years of effort, energy, and discipline to construct a magnificent cathedral from sand, wood, and stone unhewn. But with only one Mark 83 general-purpose bomb, this beautiful triumph over entropy could be reduced to rubble. Would the bombing of Notre Dame be a sin, even with no human casualties? Yes, because the very existence of such a structure in the universe is good.

In contrast, AI can process information by itself, and thereby replace humans in decision making. AI isn’t a tool—it’s an agent.

The same is true of AI algorithms. They can learn by themselves things that no human engineer programmed, and they can decide things that no human executive foresaw. This is the essence of the AI revolution: The world is being flooded by countless new powerful agents.

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He opened his door and was immediately greeted by a blast of the post-noontime humidity of an eighty-eight-degree day. Braddock unfolded his lanky six-foot-four frame out onto the stone paver driveway. Jake Williams, simply known as “Steak” and his best detective, descended the steps of the front porch. The house itself was centered on a sprawling piece of well-manicured property along the thickly forested shores of Big Spruce Lake. As he got his bearings, Braddock noticed the leaves and branches scattered about the otherwise immaculately maintained grounds.

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