Ben 10 Quotes

And I hold her for so long, I have no idea if it’s still November 9th anymore or if it’s the 10th now. But the date doesn’t matter, because I’m going to love her through every single one of them.

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you’ve the chance.

Since the world is ending,” Peter quoted from behind us, “why not let the children touch the paintings?

How many out-of-character things did I need to do, I wondered, before the world rearranged itself around me?

This is Quick Ben’s game, O Elder. The bones are in his sweaty hands and they have been for some time. Now, if at his table you’ll find the Worm of Autumn, and the once Lord of Death, and Shadowthrone and Cotillion, not to mention the past players Anomander Rake and Dessembrae, and who knows who else, well – did you really believe a few thousand damned Nah’ruk could take him down? The thing about Adaephon Delat’s game is this: he cheats.

Why reproduce if you believe the world is ending? Because the world is always ending for each of us and if one begins to withdraw from the possibilities of experience, then no one would take any of the risks involved with love.

I promise to pass through a series of worlds with you,” I remembered from her vows.

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

For those who think religious people live in a constant state of fear and quaking, compare Ps 111:10 to Ps 112:7. There, you will find that the person who fears God will not fear anyone, or anything else. This is not living in fear. By choosing one fear, they are liberated from the many fears.

I breathed in the night air that was or was not laced with anachronistic blossoms and felt the small thrill I always felt to a lesser or greater degree when I looked at Manhattan’s skyline and the innumerable illuminated windows and the liquid sapphire and ruby of traffic on the FDR Drive and the present absence of the towers.

I will begin to remember our walk in the third person, as if I’d seen it from the Manhattan Bridge, but, at the time of writing, as I lean against the chain-link fence intended to stop jumpers, I am looking back at the totaled city in the second person plural. I know it’s hard to understand / I am with you, and I know how it is.  

...that part of what I loved about poetry was how the distinction between fiction and nonfiction didn't obtain, how the correspondence between text and world was less important than the intensities of the poem itself, what possibilities of feeling were opened up in the present tense of reading.

Unlike everyone else in Israel, she and her descendants cannot become citizens of Israel for 10 generations. (De 23:3-7) What could be worse than a Moabite convert? A widowed Moabite convert! Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 27

There is a predictable theme as to what upsets our matriarchs. Usually, matriarchs are known for their unified support. When it comes to kingdom matters, however, they are willing to drive out Abraham's son. (Ge 21:10) They are willing to reject Isaac's son. (Ge 27:6-13) In other words, they are not afraid to reject royalty ('shepherd-like acquaintances') to further God's kingdom goals. (Re 20:4-6)

Ben - “People and animals and plants will leave you, but the joy of having them, for however long, is worth the sorrow.

Every time the mind wanders away from the awareness of the breath, notice that it has wandered and bring your awareness back to the breath. This can be likened to a rep in the gym—every time you bring your mind back, you are building your "muscle" of attention.

Ruth, as a teenage convert, is less than zero. As a Moabite, she is 10 generations away from citizenship. Less than zero. This setback, however, is a small setback for someone with huge faith. (Mt 17:20) As tragic as Ruth’s situation seems, humans can adapt to, and overcome, anything. You can too. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 36

On the second or third day, sometime in the early evening, I walked from the splashing fountains and giant lions of Trafalgar Square, past the famous door of 10 Downing Street, and then, suddenly, when I turned the corner, I was face-to-face with Big Ben. I found myself just standing there, gazing up into the rare blue sky at this magnificent clock tower that gleamed in the sunlight. I couldn’t look away. Because all at once everything in my crazy heart and mind seemed to fall into place. Right in front of me was all the glory and sparkle that I knew my London life was going to be once I figured out how to grab on to it.

Did the people of Nineveh migrate to Athens after hearing Jonah’s pronouncement of doom? No. They repented where they stood. Although they were foreigners, the Ninevites prayed to the God of Israel, fasted, and asked Jonah to intercede in their behalf. (Jon 3:5-10) Yahweh took note of Nineveh’s sincerity and spared them. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 3

At Ge 1:1 God used a matrix of sevens: (1) Seven words. (2) 28 letters (28 ÷ 4 = 7). (3) First three words contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (4) Last four words contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (5) Fourth and fifth words have seven letters. (6) Sixth and seventh words have seven letters. (7) Key words (God, heaven, earth) contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (8) Remaining words contain 14 letters (14 ÷ 2 = 7). (9) Numeric value of first, middle and last letters equal, 133 (133 ÷ 19 = 7). (10) Numeric value of the first and last letters of all seven words equal 1,393 (1,393 ÷ 199 = 7). (11) The book of Genesis has 78,064 letters (78,064 ÷ 11,152 = 7). So, what is the big deal about seven? Jesus is our Shiva (7), our Shabbat (7th day). (Lu 6:5) You couldn’t see this messianic reference, however, unless you are reading in Hebrew. This book is the beginning of an amazing pilgrimage.

I’ll project myself into several futures simultaneously,” I should have said, “a minor tremor in my hand; I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.

We should expect nothing less from the language that was originally given by God, to His human family. Hebrew was the method that God chose for mankind to speak to Him, and Him to them. Adam spoke Hebrew—and your Bible confirms this. Everyone who got off the ark spoke one language—Hebrew. Even Abraham spoke Hebrew. Where did Abraham learn to speak Hebrew? Abraham was descended from Noah’s son, Shem. (Ge 11:10-26) Shem’s household was not affected by the later confusion of languages, at Babel. (Ge 11:5-9) To the contrary, Shem was blessed while the rest of Babel was cursed. (Ge 9:26) That is how Abraham retained Hebrew, despite residing in Babylon. So, Shem’s language can be traced back to Adam. (Ge 11:1) And, Shem (Noah’s son) was still alive when Jacob and Esau was 30 years of age. Obviously, Hebrew (the original language) was clearly spoken by Jacob’s sons. (Ge 14:13)

There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now.

And because his narrator was characterized above all by his anxiety regarding the disconnect between his internal experience and his social self-presentation,

Mindfulness practice can teach us about the nature of thinking, and perhaps even more importantly, it can teach us that we are not our thoughts.

I don’t want what we’re doing to just end up as notes for a novel.

There are no redundant levels of security in the zone. That had been instructor Ben-Haim, back in my Ops 4-10 days. I’d learned all my paranoia from him. In the paranoia stakes, I was not worthy to secure his sandals.

Alpha of the Vltava Pack. Been around since the Middle fucking Ages. Apparently a baker-of all the sodding things for a fearsome Alpha to be. We are glad we don't have to tell people our Alpha is a motherehumping baker.

...discovering you are not identical with yourself even in the most disturbing and painful way still contains the glimmer, however refracted, of the world to come, where everything is the same but a little different because the past will be citable in all of its moments, including those that from our present present happened but never occurred.

Ben has seen me without makeup. And he walked away. I was angry for a long time, but in the end, I realized, I don’t blame him. The year I turned twenty-five was pretty bloody awful. If I could have walked away from myself, I would have.

Men use these words to frighten us, Livia would tell them. To intimidate and paralyze. We need to habituate to what upsets us so we can fight through it. Deny our attackers the weapon of their words. And what was true for the verbal was true, too, for the physical.

The comparison of Lam 1:1 and Re 18:7 cannot be ignored. If Babylon the Great is actually rejected mother-Judah, brought back to life by the United Nations, then Is 47:7-10 connects divorced-ancient Israel to modern-day Israel. Remember, Jehovah removed His name. (Is 50:1) Thus, we see why Jehovah’s ex-wife took on many names from her many husbands, such as “Babylon.” (Is 1:21) Lamentations, pg 2

Then he imagined his narrator standing before it, imagined that the gaslight cut across worlds and not just years, that the author and the narrator, while they couldn’t face each other, could intuit each other’s presence by facing the same light, a kind of correspondence.

Ultimately, morality is about boundaries. As long as the Temple was sacred space, Ammonites and Moabites were forbidden from entering, until after 10 generations of continuous worship. (De 23:3) How well Ruth, the Moabite, understood those boundaries and prohibitions. pg 17

Peg started out, as did all the new girls, by painting the Big Ben alarm clocks that Westclox produced. He was “a rugged handsome fellow”9 of a clock, with a dial that measured about 10 centimeters across, giving him nice big numbers for the less experienced girls to paint.

Oda çok sıcaktı, o da konuşurken kendini yelpazeyle serinletmeye başladı. "Ah canım! Bugün her şey ne kadar da garip! Gece değiştim mi? Bugün farklı bir insan mıyım?" Ama eğer farklı bir insansam, bir sonraki soru şu olmalı: "Ben kimin? Ah, işte çözülmesi gereken asıl bilmece bu!

The first song Ben taught me was Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water', when i was 10, and I would play it on the top string with one finger. I did it so much that there was a massive crease in the skin and i think I must have driven everyone crazy, playing that same song all the time,

Late in the evening, someone in the White House decided to vent to Ben Smith: 'A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas. "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."' Boy, good thing for this source there's no member of Obama's staff who's known for blowing his stack and venting furiously at political defeats. I'll bet he was pounding the desk like a battering Rahm and that he threw out the E-manual on how to talk to the press when he did it.

I turned off the projector and Alex mumbled something in her sleep and turned over. I said, "Everything is fine, I'm going home now," and said it just so I could say I'd said it in case she was upset later that I'd left without telling her. I thought about kissing her on the forehead but rejected the idea immediately; whatever physical intimacy had opened up between us had dissolved with the storm; even that relatively avuncular gesture would be strange for both of us now. More than that: it was as though the physical intimacy with Alex, just like the sociability with strangers or the aura around objects, wasn't just over, but retrospectively erased. Because those moments had been enabled by a future that had never arrived, they could not be remembered from this future that, at and as the present, had obtained; they'd faded from the photograph.

We know where Ganoes wants us. We even know why – he’s her brother, for Hood’s sake.’ ‘We know where she wants us, too, Kalam.’ ‘Do we?’ Quick Ben slowly nodded. ‘So which of the fucking Parans do we obey here?’ ‘Which one would you rather face – here or other side of the Gates – to tell ’em you failed, that you made the wrong choice? No, I don’t mean brazening it out, either. Just standing there, saying what needs saying?’ Fuck. ‘I feel like I’m back in Mock’s Hold,’ he said in a growl. ‘I feel as if I never left.’ ‘And she meets your eyes.’ Abruptly a sob took the assassin, vicious as a body blow and just as unexpected.

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser The Keep by Jennifer Egan Silence by Shūsaku Endō Ask the Dust by John Fante Headlong by Michael Frayn What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale 10:04 by Ben Lerner How It All Began by Penelope Lively The Call of the Wild by Jack London

As soon as I close the door behind him, I reach for the phone and call the main number for Delta. Ten minutes later, I'm rebooked on the 3:11 flight today, leaving six hours earlier and arriving in Berlin at 10:50 tomorrow morning after a connection in New York. I didn't exactly lie to Ben, I reassure myself. I am changing my flight, just like I said.

A longtime, well-respected Republican election lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, explained what the scores of lawsuits had concluded—that Trump was wrong. Twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself, and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed Trump’s claims. As Ginsberg pointed out, dozens of courts had analyzed the underlying factual allegations and ruled against Trump and his allies: In all the cases that were brought—I have looked at the more than 60 that include more than 180 counts… the simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case.… And in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real.

I’m conscious of race whenever I’m writing, just as I’m conscious of class, religion, human psychology, politics — everything that makes up the human experience. I don’t think I can do a good job if I’m not paying attention to what’s meaningful to people, and in American culture, there isn’t anything that informs human interaction more than the idea of race.

Lawyers never forget. - Christine McCall

It is not uncommon that when someone has been deeply scarred, the walls that they put up to defend themselves from further pain can feel almost impossible to scale.

If we value play and imagination in the early years because they promote healthy minds and contribute to a strong sense of self, why are they not an essential part of adulthood?

What normally felt like the only possible world became one among many

Count on your beginner's mind to help you through any times when you might feel resistant or self-conscious about your practice.

Zazen can ultimately retrain your mind to see the world from an entirely new perspective.

The monks find comfort, contentment, and even joy in the simplest of tasks, living each moment to its fullest by grounding themselves in the present.

Mindfulness meditation practice will help you discern which thoughts support your goals and well-being and which thoughts are destructive or unhealthy and should be discarded.

we rarely see what we prefer to overlook.

Medicine isn’t supposed to taste good—that’s what candy is for. Medicine is supposed to make you better.

the young man’s blindness irreparable, his mistakes immutable, the consequences irreversible.

Checking your six?” he said, still smiling. “I thought you wanted an airport because they’re safe. What is it about me that scares people so much?

mono no aware, the sadness of being human,

Do all the people who know me know me better than I know myself?

8:03-8:10 a.m.: Brush teeth, go to toilet, make a conscious effort to produce reeking faeces.

Things do not necessarily happen for the best, but I can choose to make the best of things that happen.10

The trust I have...for some people...comes down to how well I know them, and then it's a matter of my trusting them to do what I think they're going to do.

As I read I experienced what was becoming a familiar sensation: the world was rearranging itself around me while I processed words from a liquid-crystal display.

If there were not laws against it; 9 of 10 men would be potential suicides

nothing in the world, I thought to myself, is as old as what was futuristic in the past.

I'd become the unreliable narrator of my first novel.

Achieving the advanced state of no-thought is not about stopping the thinking process, but rather, it’s about cultivating an expansive sensitivity to a level above the thinking mind.

Adults play in many of the same ways that kids do: by using our minds' eyes to see ourselves in new and different ways, by considering who we are, and imagining who and what we can be.

She chose you for your deficiencies, not in spite of them, a new kind of mating strategy for millennial women whose priority is keeping the more disastrous fathers away, not establishing a nuclear family.

The insult was calculated. Whether this guy was an amateur or a professional, he would perceive himself as the latter, and would now be invested in proving it to me. Interrogators call the technique ego down.

Maybe I liked his sculpture more when I couldn’t get close to it, had to see it from a fixed position through a pane of glass, so that I had to project myself into the encounter with its three-dimensionality.

By choosing to become aware, you choose to take back control of your attention and perspective, which can transform even mundane tasks, such as washing dishes or making coffee, into something joyful and beautiful.

To the distinguished female author’s left was her husband, probably also distinguished in some way, who had the look of many husbands: eyebrows perpetually raised a little in a defensive mask of polite interest, signifying boredom.

You look like a man who’s acquired some wisdom over the years. Can you tell me, why are women so difficult? I mean, I love them, but why?” The old guy shrugged. “Because they’re people. It’s not women who are difficult. It’s people.

First was the fewer, not less. Now it was the care in avoiding a preposition at the end of a sentence. An educated man, presumably. Precise. Apparently fussy about small-minded rules, perhaps to compensate for a willingness to ignore large ones.

Az antik időbeosztás a középkorban is érvényes törvénye szerint a nappali és éjszakai időszakot egyaránt 12-12 (kánoni) órára kellett osztani. Világos, hogy egyrészt északon és délen, másrészt télen és nyáron nagyon is eltérő volt egy óra hossza. Egyiptomban 10-14 óra között ingadozik az év során a napszak hossza, egy óra tehát 50-70 percig tartott, Londonban 7 óra 45 perc és 16 óra 30 perc között változott a nappal, vagyis télen 39, nyáron 83 percig tartott egy óra. Ilyen körülmények között egységes időmérésről, de munkaszervezésről sem lehetett szó. Az új órák az új korszak egyenletes időfolyását mérték, amiről az álmélkodó kortárs 1335-ben így emlékszik meg: "Csodálatos óramű... mely éjjel-nappal méri a 24 órát. Éjjel egykor egyszer, kettőkor kétszer üt... ami nagyon hasznos minden rendű embernek." 1345 óta az órákat 60 percre és ezeket 60 másodpercre osztják. Megkezdődött a modern időmérés. Talán igaza van Mumfordnak: "Az óra és nem a gőzgép az ipari forradalom kulcsgépe.

But now some people say, “Well that’s not fair because it doesn’t hurt the guy who made $10 billion dollars as much as the guy who made $10.” Where does it say you have to hurt the guy? He’s just put a billion dollars in the pot. We don’t need to hurt him.

Within seven months of founding, we’d already booked $10 million in contracts. Loudcloud was taking off, but we were in a race against time and the competition. This meant hiring the best people and fielding the broadest cloud service, and that meant spending money—lots of it.

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups. I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board. I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off. Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures. Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.

I keep saying there's no Choice, and what I've meant is that you can't choose: you have no right or ability to select one of the two alternatives. But I didn't go far enough. There's no Choice because the Choice itself is wrong. It's a false dilemma. The alternatives are not alternatives at all. Long versus short, quiet versus heroic: they're the same. In the scope of infinity, in a universe with no edge, human history is a flare and human consciousness is a blink. All lives are short and all lives are quiet. But all lives are glorious too, Cal. To live! To live like a human! You are ordinary and extraordinary all at once. You have a heart that contracts and relaxes and beats out your moments. You are alive and you know you are alive. Your too-short time is long enough. Long, short, humdrum, heroic: toss those considerations aside. Nothing to choose there. But we do have a choice. We do. Is consciousness a tragedy or a miracle? Does nothing matter, or does everything matter? That's the choice. That's the real choice. And I've chosen. My cousin, my match, listen to me and tell them all. Tell Trevor and Ben and Matt and Lill. Tell my father. Tell the ten thousand Madonnas, each and every one. I am Jesse, I have a choice, and I choose everything.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light; I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment’s living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. ‘Hey Dom, how you doin’?’ a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn’t studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

In 1903 the scientists found out that the brontosaurus was a fake! They realized that the brontosaurus was really an apatosaurus with the wrong head. However, although the scientists realized their mistake, most people didn’t know about their new discovery. Many people thought that the brontosaurus still existed because museums kept using the name on their labels—and because the brontosaurus was really, really popular! So even though the scientists discovered their error, most of us didn’t know.

A great Iranian mystic of the fourteenth century, fAlll'uddawla Semnlini, was to speak in similar terms of the "invisible master," the "Gabriel of your being." His esoteric exegesis, his ta'wll, carries the figures of Koranic revelation to a sevenfold depth; to attain to the "Gabriel of your being" is to pass successively through the seven esoteric levels and to be reunited with the Spirit which guides and initiates the "seven prophets of your being." This striving is also designated as jacob's contest with the Angel, which was so interpreted in the symbolic exegesis of the jewish mystic joseph ben Judah: the intellective soul struggling to be united with the Angel, with the active Intelligence, until the rising of the light ( ishraq), at which time the soul emerges, delivered, from the darkness that imprisoned it.10 Thus no doubt we should speak not of a combat with, that is against, the Angel, but of a combat for the Angel, for the Angel in tum needs the response of a soul if his being is to become what it has to be. A whole series of jewish speculative mystics found the same symbolism in the Song of Songs, where the Beloved plays the role of the active Intelligence, while the heroine is the thinking human soul.

This way of thinking allowed one to deploy the vocabularies of sixties radicalism—ecological awareness, anticorporate agitation, etc.—in order to justify the reproduction of social inequality. It allowed you to redescribe caring for your own genetic material—feeding Lucas the latest in coagulated soy juice—as altruism: it’s not just good for Lucas, it’s good for the planet. But from those who out of ignorance or desperation have allowed their children’s digestive tracts to know deep-fried, mechanically processed chicken, those who happen to be, in Brooklyn, disproportionately black and Latino, Lucas must be protected at whatever cost.

Populism is a common term for the parties and movements that carry forth this illiberal evolution of democratic politics. While populism is not inherently authoritarian, many strongmen past and present have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are “the people,” regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, attacking the leader is seen as attacking the nation itself, and why critics are labeled “enemies of the people” or terrorists.10

She said she hoped she would see me again, and the next thing I knew I was running through light snow back to my dorm, laughing aloud from an excess of joy like the schoolboy that I was. I had overwhelming sense of the world's possibility and plentitude; the massive, luminous spheres burned above me without irony; the streetlights were haloed and I could make out the bright, crustal highlands of the moon, the far-sprinkled systems; I was going to read everything and invent a new prosody and successfully court the radiant progeny of the vanguard doyens if it killed me; my mind and body were as a fading coal awakened to transitory brightness by her breath when she'd brushed her lips against me; the earth was beautiful beyond all change.

So much of the most important personal news I'd received in the last several years had come to me by smartphone while I was abroad in the city that I could plot on a map, could represent spatially the events, such as they were, of my early thirties. Place a thumbtack on the wall or drop a flag on Google Maps at Lincoln Center, where, beside the fountain, I took a call from Jon informing me that, for whatever complex of reasons, a friend had shot himself; mark the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, where I read the message ("Apologies for the mass e-mail...") a close cousin sent out describing the dire condition of her newborn; waiting in line at the post office on Atlantic, the adhan issuing from the adjacent mosque, I received your wedding announcement and was shocked to be shocked, crushed, and started a frightening multi week descent, worse for being so embarrassingly cliched; while in the bathroom at the SoHo Crate and Barrel--the finest semipublic restroom in lower Manhattan--I learned I'd been awarded a grant that would take me overseas for a summer, and so came to associate the corner of Broadway and Houston with all that transpired in Morocco; at Zucotti Park I heard my then-girlfriend was not--as she'd been convinced--pregnant; while buying discounted dress socks at the Century 21 department store across from Ground Zero, I was informed by text that a friend in Oakland had been hospitalized after the police had broken his ribs. And so on: each of these experiences of reception remained, as it were, in situ, so that whenever I returned to a zone where significant news had been received, I discovered that the news and an echo of its attendant affect still awaited me like a curtain of beads.

December 15 2 Chronicles 17 1Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his place and strengthened himself against Israel. 2He placed forces in all the fortified cities of Judah and set garrisons in the land of Judah, and in the cities of Ephraim that Asa his father had captured. 3The LORD was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals, 4but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments, and not according to the practices of Israel. 5Therefore the LORD established the kingdom in his hand. And all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat, and he had great riches and honor. 6His heart was courageous in the ways of the LORD. And furthermore, he took the high places and the Asherim out of Judah. 7In the third year of his reign he sent his officials, Ben-hail, Obadiah, Zechariah, Nethanel, and Micaiah, to teach in the cities of Judah; 8and with them the Levites, Shemaiah, Nethaniah, Zebadiah, Asahel, Shemiramoth, Jehonathan, Adonijah, Tobijah, and Tobadonijah; and with these Levites, the priests Elishama and Jehoram. 9And they taught in Judah, having the Book of the Law of the LORD with them. They went about through all the cities of Judah and taught among the people. 10And the fear of the LORD fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were around Judah, and they made no war against Jehoshaphat. 11Some of the Philistines brought Jehoshaphat presents and silver for tribute, and the Arabians also brought him 7,700 rams and 7,700 goats. 12And Jehoshaphat grew steadily greater. He built in Judah fortresses and store cities, 13and he had large supplies in the cities of Judah. He had soldiers, mighty men of valor, in Jerusalem. 14This was the muster of them by fathers' houses: Of Judah, the commanders of thousands: Adnah the commander, with 300,000 mighty men of valor; 15and next to him Jehohanan the commander, with 280,000; 16and next to him Amasiah the son of Zichri, a volunteer for the service of the LORD, with 200,000 mighty men of valor. 17Of Benjamin: Eliada, a mighty man of valor, with 200,000 men armed with bow and shield; 18and next to him Jehozabad with 180,000 armed for war. 19These were in the service of the king, besides those whom the king had placed in the fortified cities throughout all Judah.

XVIII ALLA SUA DONNA                Cara beltà che amore             Lunge m’inspiri o nascondendo il viso,             Fuor se nel sonno il core             Ombra diva mi scuoti,         5  O ne’ campi ove splenda             Più vago il giorno e di natura il riso;             Forse tu l’innocente             Secol beasti che dall’oro ha nome,             Or leve intra la gente       10  Anima voli? o te la sorte avara             Ch’a noi t’asconde, agli avvenir prepara?                Viva mirarti omai             Nulla spene m’avanza;             S’allor non fosse, allor che ignudo e solo       15  Per novo calle a peregrina stanza             Verrà lo spirto mio. Già sul novello             Aprir di mia giornata incerta e bruna,             Te viatrice in questo arido suolo             Io mi pensai. Ma non è cosa in terra       20  Che ti somigli; e s’anco pari alcuna             Ti fosse al volto, agli atti, alla favella,             Saria, così conforme, assai men bella.                Fra cotanto dolore             Quanto all’umana età propose il fato,       25  Se vera e quale il mio pensier ti pinge,             Alcun t’amasse in terra, a lui pur fora             Questo viver beato:             E ben chiaro vegg’io siccome ancora             Seguir loda e virtù qual ne’ prim’anni       30  L’amor tuo mi farebbe. Or non aggiunse             Il ciel nullo conforto ai nostri affanni;             E teco la mortal vita saria             Simile a quella che nel cielo india.                Per le valli, ove suona       35  Del faticoso agricoltore il canto,             Ed io seggo e mi lagno             Del giovanile error che m’abbandona;             E per li poggi, ov’io rimembro e piagno             I perduti desiri, e la perduta       40  Speme de’ giorni miei; di te pensando,             A palpitar mi sveglio. E potess’io,             Nel secol tetro e in questo aer nefando,             L’alta specie serbar; che dell’imago,             Poi che del ver m’è tolto, assai m’appago.       45     Se dell’eterne idee             L’una sei tu, cui di sensibil forma             Sdegni l’eterno senno esser vestita,             E fra caduche spoglie             Provar gli affanni di funerea vita;       50  O s’altra terra ne’ superni giri             Fra’ mondi innumerabili t’accoglie,             E più vaga del Sol prossima stella             T’irraggia, e più benigno etere spiri;             Di qua dove son gli anni infausti e brevi,       55  Questo d’ignoto amante inno ricevi.

Atatürk Bizden Biridir Ne var ki, 10 yıl süren bir savaş sonucunda Anadolu yıkıntıya dönmüş, halkı ve doğal kaynakları sömürülmüş, insanları cahil bıraktırılmıştı. Elbette, bitkin ve yorgun bir ülkede savaşı kazanmış olmak yetmeyecekti, ülkeyi kalkındırmak ve ilerletmek gerekiyordu. Bu, düşmanı savaş alanlarında yenmekten de önemliydi. Üstelik yatırım yapacak para yokken, Osmanlı’nın borçları da ödeniyordu. Bu da yetmezmiş gibi, dünya ekonomik bunalımı çıkageldi. Bunalım, bir şeyler üreterek satmaya çabalayanları da yiyip bitirecekti. İşte bu koşullar altında kıvranan halkının sıkıntılarını doğrudan ondan dinlemek için, Gazi yurt gezisine çıktı. Yol boyunca dura dura, halkı dinleye dinleye 6 Mart 1930 günü Isparta üzerinden Antalya’ya ulaştı. Gazi, kaldığı evin bir odasına Hasan Rıza Soyak’la birlikte çekilerek, kapıyı kapatır ve bir koltuğa yığılır. Çok yorgun ve sinirlidir. Elleri titreyerek sigarasını yakar ve şöyle konuşur: -“Bunalıyorum çocuk, büyük bir acı içinde bunalıyorum. Görüyorsun ya, gittiğimiz her yerde devamlı dert, şikâyet dinliyoruz... Her taraf derin bir yokluk, maddi, manevi bir perişanlık içinde... Ferahlatıcı pek az şeye rastlıyoruz; memleketin hakiki durumu bu işte. Bunda bizim bir günahımız yoktur; uzun yıllar hatta asırlarca dünyanın gidişinden aymaz, birtakım şuursuz idarecilerin elinde kalan bu cennet memleket; düşe düşe şu acınacak hale düşmüş. Memurlarımız henüz istenilen seviyede ve kalitede değil; çoğu görgüsüz, kifayetsiz ve şaşkın... Büyük yeteneklere sahip olan zavallı halkımız ise, kendisine kutsal inanç şeklinde telkin edilen bir sürü temelsiz görüş ve inanışların tesiri altında uyuşmuş, kalmış... Bu arada beni en çok üzen şey nedir bilir misin? Halkımızın aklında kökleştirilmiş olan, her şeyi başta bulunandan beklemek alışkanlığıdır. İşte bu zihniyetle; herkes, her şeyi Allah’tan bekleyiş ve rahatlık içinde, bütün iyilikleri bir şahıstan, yani şimdi benden istiyor, benden bekliyor; ama nihayetinde ben de bir insanım be birader, sihirli bir gücüm yok ki... Yeri geldikçe, her yerde tekrar ediyorum; bütün bu dertlerin, bütün bu ihtiyaçların giderilmesi, her şeyden evvel, pek başka şartlar altında yetişmiş; bilgili, geniş düşünceli, azim, gönlü tok ve uzmanlık sahibi adam meselesidir, sonra da zaman ve imkân meselesidir. Bu itibarla evvelâ kafaları ve vicdanları yıpranmış, geri, uyuşturucu fikir ve inançlardan temizleyeceksin. İşlerin uzmanı, idealist ve enerjik insanlardan kurulu, düzenli, her parçası yerli yerinde, modern bir devlet makinesi kuracaksın; sonra bu makine halkın başında ve halkla beraber durmadan çalışacak, maddi ve manevi her türlü doğal yetenek ve kaynaklarımızı harekete getirecek, işletecek, böylece memleket ileriye, refaha doğru yol alacaktır. İleri milletler seviyesine erişmek işini; bir yılda, beş yılda, hatta bir nesilde tamamlamak da imkânsızdır. Biz şimdi o yol üzerindeyiz; kafileyi hedefe doğru yürütmek için, insan gücünü üstünde, gayret sarf ediyoruz; başka ne yapabiliriz ki?” Gazi, sözlerinin burasında duracaktı, gözleri dolmuştu, elleri titriyordu. Hasan Rıza’ya: -“Kalk, bana bir kahve getirmelerini söyle de, gel...” diyecekti. Hasan Rıza anlamıştı Gazi’nin gözlerinden yaşlar boşandığını kendisinin görmesini istemediğini. O da, kahve söylemek bahanesiyle dışarı çıktığında oyalanacak, hemen dönmeyecekti odaya. Hasan Rıza Soyak, Atatürk’ten Anılar, İstanbul 1973, s. 405–406.

In his job as a financial educator, Keith had spent a fair amount of time breaking down the act — and sometimes art — of short selling, in a way that less savvy customers could understand. When a trader believed a company was in trouble, and its stock was overvalued, they could 'borrow' shares, sell them, and then when the stock went down as they'd predicted, rebuy the shares at a lower price, return them to whoever they'd borrowed them from, and pocket the difference. If GameStop was trading at 5, you could borrow 100 shares, sell them for $500; when the stock hit 1, you bought back the 100 shares for $100, returned them, pocketing $400 for yourself. You paid a little fee to the lender for their trouble and came out with a tidy profit. But what happened if the stock went up instead of down? What happened if GameStop figured out how to capitalize on its millions of nostalgic customers, who spent billions on video games every year? What if the stock went to 10 instead of 1? What happened was, the short seller was royally screwed. He'd borrowed those 100 shares and sold them at 5. Now the stock was at 10, but he still needed to return his 100 shares. Buying them on the market at 10 meant spending $1000. And what was worse, when he'd borrowed the shares, he'd agreed on a timeline to return them. There was a ticking clock hanging over his head, so he had a choice — buy the shares back at 10 now, losing $500 on the deal — or wait a little longer, hoping the stock went back down before his time limit was up. And what if he waited, and the stock kept going up? Sooner or later, he had to buy those shares back. Even if the stock went to 15, 20 — he was on the hook for those 100 shares. Theoretically, there was no limit to how much he could lose.

If Jim was back at the imaginary dinner party, trying to explain what he did for a living, he'd have tried to keep it simple: clearing involved everything that took place between the moment someone started at trade — buying or selling a stock, for instance — and the moment that trade was settled — meaning the stock had officially and legally changed hands. Most people who used online brokerages thought of that transaction as happening instantly; you wanted 10 shares of GME, you hit a button and bought 10 shares of GME, and suddenly 10 shares of GME were in your account. But that's not actually what happened. You hit the Buy button, and Robinhood might find you your shares immediately and put them into your account; but the actual trade took two days to complete, known, for that reason, in financial parlance as 'T+2 clearing.' By this point in the dinner conversation, Jim would have fully expected the other diners' eyes to glaze over; but he would only be just beginning. Once the trade was initiated — once you hit that Buy button on your phone — it was Jim's job to handle everything that happened in that in-between world. First, he had to facilitate finding the opposite partner for the trade — which was where payment for order flow came in, as Robinhood bundled its trades and 'sold' them to a market maker like Citadel. And next, it was the clearing brokerage's job to make sure that transaction was safe and secure. In practice, the way this worked was by 10:00 a.m. each market day, Robinhood had to insure its trade, by making a cash deposit to a federally regulated clearinghouse — something called the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, or DTCC. That deposit was based on the volume, type, risk profile, and value of the equities being traded. The riskier the equities — the more likely something might go wrong between the buy and the sell — the higher that deposit might be. Of course, most all of this took place via computers — in 2021, and especially at a place like Robinhood, it was an almost entirely automated system; when customers bought and sold stocks, Jim's computers gave him a recommendation of the sort of deposits he could expect to need to make based on the requirements set down by the SEC and the banking regulators — all simple and tidy, and at the push of a button.

By now, though, it had been a steep learning curve, he was fairly well versed on the basics of how clearing worked: When a customer bought shares in a stock on Robinhood — say, GameStop — at a specific price, the order was first sent to Robinhood's in-house clearing brokerage, who in turn bundled the trade to a market maker for execution. The trade was then brought to a clearinghouse, who oversaw the trade all the way to the settlement. During this time period, the trade itself needed to be 'insured' against anything that might go wrong, such as some sort of systemic collapse or a default by either party — although in reality, in regulated markets, this seemed extremely unlikely. While the customer's money was temporarily put aside, essentially in an untouchable safe, for the two days it took for the clearing agency to verify that both parties were able to provide what they had agreed upon — the brokerage house, Robinhood — had to insure the deal with a deposit; money of its own, separate from the money that the customer had provided, that could be used to guarantee the value of the trade. In financial parlance, this 'collateral' was known as VAR — or value at risk. For a single trade of a simple asset, it would have been relatively easy to know how much the brokerage would need to deposit to insure the situation; the risk of something going wrong would be small, and the total value would be simple to calculate. If GME was trading at $400 a share and a customer wanted ten shares, there was $4000 at risk, plus or minus some nominal amount due to minute vagaries in market fluctuations during the two-day period before settlement. In such a simple situation, Robinhood might be asked to put up $4000 and change — in addition to the $4000 of the customer's buy order, which remained locked in the safe. The deposit requirement calculation grew more complicated as layers were added onto the trading situation. A single trade had low inherent risk; multiplied to millions of trades, the risk profile began to change. The more volatile the stock — in price and/or volume — the riskier a buy or sell became. Of course, the NSCC did not make these calculations by hand; they used sophisticated algorithms to digest the numerous inputs coming in from the trade — type of equity, volume, current volatility, where it fit into a brokerage's portfolio as a whole — and spit out a 'recommendation' of what sort of deposit would protect the trade. And this process was entirely automated; the brokerage house would continually run its trading activity through the federal clearing system and would receive its updated deposit requirements as often as every fifteen minutes while the market was open. Premarket during a trading week, that number would come in at 5:11 a.m. East Coast time, usually right as Jim, in Orlando, was finishing his morning coffee. Robinhood would then have until 10:00 a.m. to satisfy the deposit requirement for the upcoming day of trading — or risk being in default, which could lead to an immediate shutdown of all operations. Usually, the deposit requirement was tied closely to the actual dollars being 'spent' on the trades; a near equal number of buys and sells in a brokerage house's trading profile lowered its overall risk, and though volatility was common, especially in the past half-decade, even a two-day settlement period came with an acceptable level of confidence that nobody would fail to deliver on their trades.

...the world is always ending for each of us and if one begins to withdraw from the possibilities of experience, then no one would take any of the risks involved with love.

Even in the early 1990s – less than 30 years ago – there were only 10 million people in the world with access to the internet.

As already noted, courage is particularly important, because every decision that a CEO makes is based on incomplete information. At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study. As a result, the CEO must have the courage to bet the company on a direction even though she does not know if the direction is right.

A beginner’s mind allows you to remain flexible and open, even as you encounter new things that may seem strange or even uncomfortable at first.

A beginner’s mind allows you to remain flexible and open, even as you encounter new things that may seem strange or even uncomfortable at first. It also allows you to experience something mundane from an entirely new perspective, whereas an expert might approach something believing they “already get it.