Bonds Real Time Quotes

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

Twin flame love is raw, real and rare ~ it comes when we least expect, can't understand nor have the patience to accept it, than its gone & the true test of fate starts to play. A bond built amongst the stars can't be tampered by an earthly experience, trust the distance, twin flames always meet again.

But it was in the nearly silent times that the real strength of their bond was evident. A friend who understands everything without being told is the rarest and best kind of friend.

For here was the thing that no fairy tale would ever admit, but that she understood in that moment: love was not inherently good. Certainly, it could inspire goodness. She didn’t argue that. Poets would tell you that love was electricity in your veins that could light a room. That it was a river in your soul to lift you up and carry you away, or a fire inside the heart to keep you warm. Yet electricity could also fry, rivers could drown, and fires could burn; love could be destructive. Punishingly, fatally destructive. And the other thing, the real bloody clincher of it all, was that the good and the bad didn’t get served up equally. If love were a balance of electric lights and electric jolts, two sides of an equally weighted coin, then fair enough. She could deal. That wasn’t how it worked, though. Some love was just the bad, all the time: an endless parade of electrified bones and drowned lungs and hearts that burned to a cinder inside the cage of your chest. And so she looked down at her son and loved him with the kind of twisted, complex feeling that came from having never wanted him in the first place; she loved him with bitterness, and she loved him with resignation. She loved him though she knew no good could ever come from such a bond.

One of my constant preoccupations is trying to understand how it is that other people exist, how it is that there are souls other than mine and consciousnesses not my own, which, because it is a consciousness, seems to me unique. I understand perfectly that the man before me uttering words similar to mine and making the same gestures I make, or could make, is in some way my fellow creature. However, I feel just the same about the people in illustrations I dream up, about the characters I see in novels or the dramatis personae on the stage who speak through the actors representing them. I suppose no one truly admits the existence of another person. One might concede that the other person is alive and feels and thinks like oneself, but there will always be an element of difference, a perceptible discrepancy, that one cannot quite put one's finger on. There are figures from times past, fantasy-images in books that seem more real to us than these specimens of indifference-made-flesh who speak to us across the counters of bars, or catch our eye in trams, or brush past us in the empty randomness of the streets. The others are just part of the landscape for us, usually the invisible landscape of the familiar. I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I've seen in engravings, that with many supposedly real people, with that metaphysical absurdity known as 'flesh and blood'. In fact 'flesh and blood' describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid on the butcher's marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive, the sirloin steaks and cutlets of Fate. I'm not ashamed to feel this way because I know it's how everyone feels. The lack of respect between men, the indifference that allows them to kill others without compunction (as murderers do) or without thinking (as soldiers do), comes from the fact that no one pays due attention to the apparently abstruse idea that other people have souls too.

And, corny as it may sound, I do cherish the bond between me and the audience, the minority that follows my stuff and always makes me glad it's us against the world.

Talking is what bonds us to other people the most, and we are supposed to learn this through experience out in the real world, but I’d spent that time hibernating with a book.

I'm stuck in the middle Of the dream and the reality Not able to tell the difference Not able to wake up Did I dream you into my life Or were you always real And were you always present Within the endlessness of time Something tells me, we came together A set of dreamers, a couple even, We're separated by many miles But we are bonded to one another I'm stuck in love and I'm really helpless There is no you to be touched with fingers But here you are, my dream and my reality And I touch you perfectly with my heart.

We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my speculation which justifies it; I espouse movement, which changes me into a generator of being, into an artisan of fictions, while my cosmogonic verve makes me forget that, led on by the whirlwind of acts, I am nothing but an acolyte of time, an agent of decrepit universes. (...) If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.

God, by the time I talk myself out of a fifth plate I think my stomach is in real danger of splitting open. What a way to die.

God knows I wasn’t ready to actually do any healing, but I was ready to write about it. Funny how that works. Funny how we come at things conceptually first, before life pushes us to experience them in real time.

I have traveled around the world. I’ve walked the Great Wall of China, eaten dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and ridden the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. That’s not all. I’ve led an army into battle on dragonback, seduced a vicious mafia boss, and journeyed back in time to fall in love with everyone from Vikings to the Knights of the Round Table. I’ve lived a thousand lives. Too bad the only real one fucking sucks.

Some scientists were conducting an experiment, he said, trying to gauge the impact of abuse on children. Ducks, like people, develop bonds between mother and young. They call it imprinting. So the scientists set out to test how that imprint bond would be affected by abuse. The control group was a real mother duck and her ducklings. For the experimental group, the scientist used a mechanical duck they had created - feathers, sound, and all - which would, at timed intervals, peck the ducklings with its mechanical beak. A painful peck, one a real duck would not give. They varied these groups. Each group was pecked with a different level of frequency. And then they watched the ducklings grow and imprint bond with their mother. Over time, he went on, the ducklings in the control group would waddle along behind their mother. But as they grew, there would be more distance between them. They'd wander and explore. The ducklings with the pecking mechanical mother, though, followed much more closely. Even the scientists were stunned to discover that the group that bonded and followed most closely was the one that had been pecked repeatedly with the greatest frequency. The more the ducklings were pecked and abused, the more closely they followed. The scientist repeated the experiment and got the same results.

Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them. The Brotherhood is powerful. It has many members. They are of all places and of all times. The members do not die. One is member to the degree that he can be member, no more, no less. And that part of him that is of the Brotherhood does not die. The work of the Brotherhood does not deal with surface events. Institutions on the world surface can rise and become powerful and they can destroy each other. Statesmen can put patch upon patch to make things continue to stand still. No matter what may happen on the surface the Brotherhood goes steadily on. It is the evolution of man. Let the surface destroy itself, the Brotherhood will start it again. For in all cases, no matter how strong the surface institutions become, no matter what laws may be laid down, what patches may be made, all change that is real is due to the Brotherhood.

Real friendship is a bond that survives in a world where most things will end.

It’s actually totally badass to go from your twenties to your thirties. There are so many awesome things that happen to you! Like deeply bonding with your yoga pants, developing a burning passion for expensive cheese, having real, actual orgasms (!), not giving two shits what other people think, figuring out the things you actually like to spend time and money doing, and embracing giant underwear.

There is someone special for everyone. Often there are two or three or even four. They come from different generations. They travel across oceans of time and the depths of heavenly dimensions to be with you again. They come from the other side, from heaven. They look different, but your heart knows them. Your heart has held them in arms like yours in the moon-filled deserts of Egypt and the ancient plains of Mongolia. You have ridden together in the armies of forgotten warrior-generals, and you have lived together in the sand-covered caves of the Ancient Ones. You are bonded together throughout eternity, and you will never be alone.

The “Curriculum of Family” is at the heart of any good life. We’ve gotten away from that curriculum — it’s time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during schooltime confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief.

Love wasn’t just being there in the good times. Real love was standing next to someone on their darkest days. Real love was sweating together, striving together. Falling down and getting back up. Hurting, healing. That’s where the bond came from. The work.

In the early months of World War II, San Francisco's Fill-more district, or the Western Addition, experienced a visible revolution. On the surface it appeared to be totally peaceful and almost a refutation of the term “revolution.” The Yakamoto Sea Food Market quietly became Sammy's Shoe Shine Parlor and Smoke Shop. Yashigira's Hardware metamorphosed into La Salon de Beauté owned by Miss Clorinda Jackson. The Japanese shops which sold products to Nisei customers were taken over by enterprising Negro businessmen, and in less than a year became permanent homes away from home for the newly arrived Southern Blacks. Where the odors of tempura, raw fish and cha had dominated, the aroma of chitlings, greens and ham hocks now prevailed. The Asian population dwindled before my eyes. I was unable to tell the Japanese from the Chinese and as yet found no real difference in the national origin of such sounds as Ching and Chan or Moto and Kano. As the Japanese disappeared, soundlessly and without protest, the Negroes entered with their loud jukeboxes, their just-released animosities and the relief of escape from Southern bonds. The Japanese area became San Francisco's Harlem in a matter of months. A person unaware of all the factors that make up oppression might have expected sympathy or even support from the Negro newcomers for the dislodged Japanese. Especially in view of the fact that they (the Blacks) had themselves undergone concentration-camp living for centuries in slavery's plantations and later in sharecroppers' cabins. But the sensations of common relationship were missing. The Black newcomer had been recruited on the desiccated farm lands of Georgia and Mississippi by war-plant labor scouts. The chance to live in two-or three-story apartment buildings (which became instant slums), and to earn two-and even three-figured weekly checks, was blinding. For the first time he could think of himself as a Boss, a Spender. He was able to pay other people to work for him, i.e. the dry cleaners, taxi drivers, waitresses, etc. The shipyards and ammunition plants brought to booming life by the war let him know that he was needed and even appreciated. A completely alien yet very pleasant position for him to experience. Who could expect this man to share his new and dizzying importance with concern for a race that he had never known to exist? Another reason for his indifference to the Japanese removal was more subtle but was more profoundly felt. The Japanese were not whitefolks. Their eyes, language and customs belied the white skin and proved to their dark successors that since they didn't have to be feared, neither did they have to be considered. All this was decided unconsciously.

When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication. If we lose the real meaning of a language, we lose the real understanding of a language. Friendship is developed and nurtured through effective communication and that is the great tool that shapes friendship. A good communication, regardless of how short it might be is a great litmus paper that proves who a true friend or false friend is. A good communication does not only trigger the best bond but it also uncovers things in the heart that are hidden from the eyes. Without an effective communication, real friendship and real love between two great people is just like two great mountains with a valley between them. Without communication, we lose what we could have heard from real people. When we miss the meaning of a language, we miss the real essence and impact of communication!!!

In every time of season change: it is #wise to slow down and examine what our ego, thought-habits, and spiritual-energy are communicating to others...our environments. Truth is these thoughts (attitudes that aren't situationally static) are producing real activity, outcomes that shape our existence. Consider the conception of our thoughts, and what they will give birth to beyond the physical...they have an incredible power, with or without our active will, to lift us, sink us or soar us. Consider how we as human beings can be subject to the law enforcement of living under our own thought legislation...Selah.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

A marriage is a private bond between two people. But a wedding is a party for everyone, a celebration of life and love, a gathering of friends and relatives to rejoice in life’s good food, champagne, dancing, laughter, and a golden moment in the passage of life. A marriage lasts years, through the good times and bad, and all the banal, boring everyday goings-on of living. A wedding is a brief flash, a unique, exceptional festivity with singing and flowers and good will among men—and women. A marriage is real life. A wedding is a fairy tale. But a wedding is also a promise that we will hold dear the joys of the fairy tale close to our hearts as we go through the years of our marriage.

I beg you to cultivate imagination, which means to develop your power of sympathy, and I entreat you to decide thoughtfully what makes a human being great in his time and in his station. The faculty of imagination is often lightly spoken of as of no real importance, often decried as mischievous, as in some ways the antithesis of practical sense, and yet it ranks with reason and conscience as one of the supreme characteristics by which man is distinguished from all other animals.… Sympathy, the great bond between human beings, is largely dependent on imagination—that is, upon the power of realizing the feelings and the circumstances of others so as to enable us to feel with and for them.

The way I feel about you, Jacinda...I know you feel it, too." He stares at me so starkly, so hungrily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do," I admit. But I don't understand him. Don't get why he should feel this way about me. Why should he want me so much? What do I offer him? Why did he save me that day in the mountains? And why does he pursue me now? When no girl spiked his interest before? "Good," he says. "Then how about a date?" "A date?" I repeat, like I've never heard the word. "Yeah. A real date. Something official. You. Me. Tonight. We're long overdue." His smile deepens, revealing the deep grooves on the sides of his cheeks. "Dinner. Movie. Popcorn." "Yes." The word slips past. For a moment I forget. Forget that I'm not an ordinary girl. That he's not an ordinary boy. For the first time, I understand Tamra. And the appeal of normal. "Yes." It feels good to say it. To pretend. To drink in the sight of him and forget there's an ulterior reason I need to go out with him. A reason that's going to tear us apart forever. Stupid. Did you think you might have a future with him? Mom's right. Time to grow up. He smiles. Then he's gone. Out the door. For a second, I'm confused. Then he's at my door, opening it, helping me out. Together we walk through the parking lot. Side by side. We move only a few feet before he slips his hand around mine. As we near the front of the building, I see several kids hanging out around the flagpole. Tamra with her usual crowd. Brooklyn at the head. I try to tug my hand free. His fingers tighten on mine. I glance at him, see the resolve in his eyes. His hazel eyes glint brightly in the already too hot morning. "Coward." "Oh." The single sound escapes me. Outrage. Indignation. I stop. Turn and face him. Feel something slip, give way, and crumble loose inside me. Set free, it propels me. Standing on my tiptoes, I circle my hand around his neck and pull his face down to mine. Kiss him. Right there in front of the school. Reckless. Stupid. I stake a claim on him like I've got something to prove, like a drake standing before the pride in a bonding ceremony. But then I forget our audience. Forget everything but the dry heat of our lips. My lungs tighten, contract. I feel my skin shimmer, warm as my lungs catch. Crackling heat works its way up my chest. Not the smartest move I've ever made.

People who create successful strategic relationships demonstrate 10 essential character traits:    1. Authentic. They are genuine, honest, and transparent. They are cognizant of (and willing to admit to) their strengths and weaknesses.    2. Trustworthy. They build relationships on mutual trust. They have a good reputation based on real results. They have integrity: their word is their bond. People must know, like, and trust you before sharing their valuable social capital.    3. Respectful. They are appreciative of the time and efforts of others. They treat subordinates with the same level of respect as they do supervisors.    4. Caring. They like to help others succeed. They’re a source of mutual support and encouragement. They pay attention to the feelings of others and have good hearts.    5. Listening. They ask good questions, and they are eager to learn about others—what’s important to them, what they’re working on, what they’re looking for, and what they need—so they can be of help.    6. Engaged. They are active participants in life. They are interesting and passionate about what they do. They are solution minded, and they have great “gut” instincts.    7. Patient. They recognize that relationships need to be cultivated over time. They invest time in maintaining their relationships with others.    8. Intelligent. They are intelligent in the help they offer. They pass along opportunities at every chance possible, and they make thoughtful, useful introductions. They’re not ego driven. They don’t criticize others or burn bridges in relationships.    9. Sociable. They are nice, likeable, and helpful. They enjoy being with people, and they are happy to connect with others from all walks of life, social strata, political persuasions, religions, and diverse backgrounds. They are sources of positive energy.   10. Connected. They are part of their own network of excellent strategic relationships.

As more and more work is done by machines, people can spend more time on other activities. Not just leisure and amusements, but also on the deeper satisfactions that come from invention and exploration, from creativity and building, and from love, friendship, and community. ... If the first machine age helped unlock the forces of energy trapped in chemical bonds to reshape the physical world, the real promise of the second machine age is to help unleash the power of human ingenuity.

In the real world of globalised finance, where investment portfolios for the major centres are combined, where the markets (stock, bond, money, real estate, government securities, forex and commodities) tick almost round-the-clock from Tokyo Monday morning to New York Friday 5 pm, via London, Frankfurt, etc, in between (and the digital books are passed at the appropriate times), tracking such practices as “round tripping” – discovering the real footprints – is going to be exceedingly difficult. It would be better to focus on tracing the footprints of the black incomes where they are generated, i e, in India itself.

Spiritual disciplines more easily introduced into daily activities ▪   School calendar formulated to dates that work best for our family’s needs ▪   Free time in our days for relaxation, family fun and bonding (instead of time spent driving from school to school) ▪   Strong parent-child bonds and sibling-to-sibling bonds more easily developed ▪   Removal from negative influences and peer pressure during the early impressionable years ▪   Difficult subjects discussed at the appropriate age for each individual child ▪   Difficult subject matter presented from a biblical worldview and within the context of our strong parent-child bond. ▪   Real world learning incorporated into lesson plans and practiced in daily routines ▪   Field trips and “outside the book” learning available as we see fit What We Hope to Give Our Kids: ▪   A close relationship with Christ and a complete picture of what it means to be a Christ-follower ▪   A strong moral character rooted in biblical integrity, perseverance and humility ▪   A direction and purpose for where God has called them in life ▪   A deep relationship and connection with us, their parents ▪   Rich, ever-growing relationships with their siblings ▪   Real-world knowledge in everything from how to cook and do laundry to how to resolve conflicts and work with those that are “different” from them ▪   A comprehensive, well-rounded education in the traditional school subjects

It all struck me as very odd. But my intention in visiting him was not to study or analyze Sensei, so I let it pass. In retrospect, I particularly treasure my memory of that response to Sensei. Because of it, I think, I was able to achieve the real human intimacy with him that I later did. If I had chosen to turn the cool and analytical eye of curiosity on Sensei’s heart, it would inexorably have snapped the bond of sympathy between us. At the time, of course, I was too young to be aware of any of this. Perhaps that is precisely where its true value lies. If I had made the mistake of responding less than guilelessly, who knows what might have befallen our relationship? I shudder to think of it. The scrutiny of an analytical eye was something Sensei always particularly dreaded.

Our experience of nature is becoming more and more about what we see on our screens, and less about actually being outside and experiencing it for ourselves. Crouched on the fellside, nose to flower with Purple Saxifrage, I had felt such wonder at just being present with another organism, the kind you can only experience when you’re there, on the mountainside, or in the meadow, or under the trees. It’s impossible to get that same, raw feeling from a television documentary, from our social media feeds or even from a book like this one. True appreciation of nature requires us to form real life bonds with it. [...] I think plants can offer us a lot in this regard, and the fact they can’t move actually allows us to spend time with them in a way that you just can’t with many animals.

He was named Abiram, that is to say, "My father is exalted," or probably, just as correctly, "father of the exalted." For in a way Abraham was God's father. He had perceived Him and thought Him into being. The mighty properties which he ascribed to Him were probably God's original possession, Abraham was not their creator. But was he not so, after all, when he recognised them, preached them and by thinking made them real? The mighty properties of God were indeed something objective, existing outside of Abraham; but at the same time they were also in him and of him. The power of his own soul was at certain moments scarcely distinguishable from them, it interlaced and melted consciously into one with Him, and such was the origin of the bond which then the Lord struck with Abraham.

The dream where he was standing alone with a gun to his head, finger to the trigger. “God, please no,” she whispered. It took her some time to steady her breathing. The panic that locked up her chest was hard to shake. “It was just a dream. That’s it.” She told herself; but damn if it didn’t feel like so much more. Morgan and Messiah had created a bond that transcended space. She had no idea just how real her dreams were, but as she pulled the cover up over her shoulder, she took a deep breath and whispered, “Bring yo’ ass home…” “I can’t, shorty.” Morgan flipped the covers off her, suddenly, because she heard that shit. She felt it, and suddenly, everything he had ever told her played back in her head. “Something’s wrong…” she whispered, as tears came to her eyes. “Oh my god, Messiah. Where are you?” To be continued…

We live in a world of broken promises. We live in a time when people treat their words lightly. We tell a friend we will call her next week for lunch knowing full well we do not have the time to do so. We promise a co-worker we will bring in that new book we love so much knowing full well that we never lend out our books. And we promise ourselves this will be the year we will get back into shape, simplify our lives and have more fun without any real intention of making the deep life changes necessary to achieve these goals. Saying things we don’t really mean becomes a habit when we practice it long enough. The real problem is that when you don’t keep your word, you lose credibility. When you lose credibility, you break the bonds of trust. And breaking the bonds of trust ultimately leads to a string of broken relationships. To

She sighed. It was a sad, weary sound, and it nearly broke his heart. “You’re very kind to try to help me,” she said, “but I have already explored all of those avenues. Besides, I am not your responsibility.” “You could be.” She looked at him in surprise. In that moment, Benedict knew that he had to have her. There was a connection between them, a strange, inexplicable bond that he’d felt only one other time in his life, with the mystery lady from the masquerade. And while she was gone, vanished into thin air, Sophie was very real. He was tired of mirages. He wanted someone he could see, someone he could touch. And she needed him. She might not realize it yet, but she needed him. Benedict took her hand and tugged, catching her off-balance and wrapping her to him when she fell against his body. “Mr. Bridgerton!” she yelped. “Benedict,” he corrected, his lips at her ear. “Let me—” “Say my name,” he persisted. He could be very stubborn when it suited his interests, and he wasn’t going to let her go until he heard his name cross her lips. And maybe not even then. “Benedict,” she finally relented. “I—” “Hush.” He silenced her with his mouth, nibbling at the corner of her lips. When she went soft and compliant in his arms, he drew back, just far enough so that he could focus on her eyes. They looked impossibly green in the late-afternoon light, deep enough to drown in. “I want you to come back to London with me,” he whispered, the words tumbling forth before he had a chance to consider them. “Come back and live with me.” She looked at him in surprise. “Be mine,” he said, his voice thick and urgent. “Be mine right now. Be mine forever. I’ll give you anything you want. All I want in return is you.” -Sophie & Benedict

The case for bitcoin as a cash item on a balance sheet is very compelling for anyone with a time horizon extending beyond four years. Whether or not fiat authorities like it, bitcoin is now in free-market competition with many other assets for the world’s cash balances. It is a competition bitcoin will win or lose in the market, not by the edicts of economists, politicians, or bureaucrats. If it continues to capture a growing share of the world’s cash balances, it continues to succeed. As it stands, bitcoin’s role as cash has a very large total addressable market. The world has around $90 trillion of broad fiat money supply, $90 trillion of sovereign bonds, $40 trillion of corporate bonds, and $10 trillion of gold. Bitcoin could replace all of these assets on balance sheets, which would be a total addressable market cap of $230 trillion. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s market capitalization is around $700 billion, or around 0.3% of its total addressable market. Bitcoin could also take a share of the market capitalization of other semihard assets which people have resorted to using as a form of saving for the future. These include stocks, which are valued at around $90 trillion; global real estate, valued at $280 trillion; and the art market, valued at several trillion dollars. Investors will continue to demand stocks, houses, and works of art, but the current valuations of these assets are likely highly inflated by the need of their holders to use them as stores of value on top of their value as capital or consumer goods. In other words, the flight from inflationary fiat has distorted the U.S. dollar valuations of these assets beyond any sane level. As more and more investors in search of a store of value discover bitcoin’s superior intertemporal salability, it will continue to acquire an increasing share of global cash balances.

This book festival...grew to attract thousands of visitors every year. Now they felt like they needed a new purpose. The festival’s continuing existence felt assured. What was it for? What could it do? How could it make itself count? The festival’s leadership reached out to me for advice on these questions. What kind of purpose could be their next great animating force? Someone had the idea that the festival’s purpose could be about stitching together the community. Books were, of course, the medium. But couldn’t an ambitious festival set itself the challenge of making the city more connected? Couldn’t it help turn strong readers into good citizens? That seemed to me a promising direction—a specific, unique, disputable lodestar for a book festival that could guide its construction...We began to brainstorm. I proposed an idea: Instead of starting each session with the books and authors themselves, why not kick things off with a two-minute exercise in which audience members can meaningfully, if briefly, connect with one another? The host could ask three city- or book-related questions, and then ask each member of the audience to turn to a stranger to discuss one of them. What brought you to this city—whether birth or circumstance? What is a book that really affected you as a child? What do you think would make us a better city? Starting a session with these questions would help the audience become aware of one another. It would also break the norm of not speaking to a stranger, and perhaps encourage this kind of behavior to continue as people left the session. And it would activate a group identity—the city’s book lovers—that, in the absence of such questions, tends to stay dormant. As soon as this idea was mentioned, someone in the group sounded a worry. “But I wouldn’t want to take away time from the authors,” the person said. There it was—the real, if unspoken, purpose rousing from its slumber and insisting on its continued primacy. Everyone liked the idea of “book festival as community glue” in theory. But at the first sign of needing to compromise on another thing in order to honor this new something, alarm bells rang. The group wasn’t ready to make the purpose of the book festival the stitching of community if it meant changing the structure of the sessions, or taking time away from something else. Their purpose, whether or not they admitted it, was the promotion of books and reading and the honoring of authors. It bothered them to make an author wait two minutes for citizens to bond. The book festival was doing what many of us do: shaping a gathering according to various unstated motivations, and making half-hearted gestures toward loftier goals.

maternal love, the most successful object of the religious imagination of romantic art. For the most part real and human, it is yet entirely spiritual, without the interest and exigency of desire, not sensuous and yet present: absolutely satisfied and blissful spiritual depth. It is a love without craving, but it is not friendship; for be friendship never so rich in emotion, it yet demands a content, something essential, as a mutual end and aim. Whereas, without any reciprocity of aim and interests, maternal love has an immediate support in the natural bond of connection. But in this instance the mother’s love is not at all restricted to the natural side. In the child which she conceived and then bore in travail, Mary has the complete knowledge and feeling of herself; and the same child, blood of her blood, stands all the same high above her, and nevertheless this higher being belongs to her and is the object in which she forgets and maintains herself. The natural depth of feeling in the mother’s love is altogether spiritualized; it has the Divine as its proper content, but this spirituality remains lowly and unaware, marvellously penetrated by natural oneness and human feeling. It is the blissful maternal love, the love of the one mother alone who was the first recipient of this joy. Of course this love too is not without grief, but the grief is only the sorrow of loss, lamentation for her suffering, dying, and dead son, and does not, as we shall see at a later stage,[9] result from injustice and torment from without, or from the infinite battle against sins, or from the agony and pain brought about by the self. Such deep feeling is here spiritual beauty, the Ideal, human identification of man with God, with the spirit and with truth: a pure forgetfulness and complete self-surrender which still in this forgetfulness is from the beginning one with that into which it is merged and now with blissful satisfaction has a sense of this oneness. In such a beautiful way maternal love, the picture as it were of the Spirit, enters romantic art in place of the Spirit itself because only in the form of feeling is the Spirit made prehensible by art, and the feeling of the unity between the individual and God is present in the most original, real, and living way only in the Madonna’s maternal love. This love must enter art necessarily if, in the portrayal of this sphere, the Ideal, the affirmative satisfied reconciliation is not to be lacking. There was therefore a time when the maternal love of the blessed Virgin belonged in general to the highest and holiest [part of religion] and was worshipped and represented as this supreme fact. But when the Spirit brings itself into consciousness of itself in its own element, separated from the whole natural grounding which feeling supplies, then too it is only the spiritual mediation, free from such a grounding, that can be regarded as the free route to the truth; and so, after all, in Protestantism, in contrast to mariolatry in art and in faith, the Holy Spirit and the inner mediation of the Spirit has become the higher truth.

What about childhood? What did you like to do?” I ask, fishing for any commonality now. “Take pictures of moss. Collect stickers. Pretend that the sticks I found were a wand, and I was Hermione Granger.” I pause and glance at her. “You’re a Potter head?” She grips the edge of the table. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, please tell me that you’re a Potter head as well.” “Eh, not so much.” She groans. “Ughhh, really?” “No, I actually am.” “Stop, are you?” she asks. “Yes, and I read some of the books when they were first released. That’s how old I am compared to you. I have some first editions.” “You’re a liar,” she yells, excitement bustling in her eyes. “Seriously?” “Yes, they’re my prized possessions. Have you been to Harry Potter World?” “No,” she bemoans. “But when I graduate, I plan on going. I’m assuming since you’re rich and can do whatever you want when you’re not playing, you’ve been?” “I have.” “Is the butter beer everything I think it would be?” “And then some,” I answer. “Harry Potter World is probably one of the best things that has ever happened to fandom. It feels so real.” “Urrghh, I’m so jealous. Did you get sorted into a house?” “Yeah, Gryffindor.” “Of course. You seem like an overachiever. I know I’m Hufflepuff through and through, and I’m damn proud of it.” “Do you ever feel bad for people who get Ravenclaw?” I ask. “No one ever talks about it. Gryffindor is clearly superior, Slytherin has its own merit because it’s evil, and then Hufflepuff is for all the fun-loving people. What about Ravenclaw?” “You know, now that you mentioned it, I don’t think I ever hear anyone claim they’re from Ravenclaw. That’s sad.” “It is.” She tilts her head to the side. “I think we figured out what we bonded over.

Learning to meditate helped too. When the Beatles visited India in 1968 to study Transcendental Meditation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, I was curious to learn it, so I did. I loved it. Meditation has benefited me hugely throughout my life because it produces a calm open-mindedness that allows me to think more clearly and creatively. I majored in finance in college because of my love for the markets and because that major had no foreign language requirement—so it allowed me to learn what I was interested in, both inside and outside class. I learned a lot about commodity futures from a very interesting classmate, a Vietnam veteran quite a bit older than me. Commodities were attractive because they could be traded with very low margin requirements, meaning I could leverage the limited amount of money I had to invest. If I could make winning decisions, which I planned to do, I could borrow more to make more. Stock, bond, and currency futures didn’t exist back then. Commodity futures were strictly real commodities like corn, soybeans, cattle, and hogs. So those were the markets I started to trade and learn about. My college years coincided with the era of free love, mind-expanding drug experimentation, and rejection of traditional authority. Living through it had a lasting effect on me and many other members of my generation. For example, it deeply impacted Steve Jobs, whom I came to empathize with and admire. Like me, he took up meditation and wasn’t interested in being taught as much as he loved visualizing and building out amazing new things. The times we lived in taught us both to question established ways of doing things—an attitude he demonstrated superbly in Apple’s iconic “1984” and “Here’s to the Crazy Ones,” which were ad campaigns that spoke to me. For the country as a whole, those were difficult years. As the draft expanded and the numbers of young men coming home in body bags soared, the Vietnam War split the country. There was a lottery based on birthdates to determine the order of those who would be drafted. I remember listening to the lottery on the radio while playing pool with my friends. It was estimated that the first 160 or so birthdays called would be drafted, though they read off all 366 dates. My birthday was forty-eighth.

I look back now and can see how much my father also found his own freedom in the adventures we did together, whether it was galloping along a beach in the Isle of Wight with me behind him, or climbing on the steep hills and cliffs around the island’s coast. It was at times like these that I found a real intimacy with him. It was also where I learned to recognize that tightening sensation, deep in the pit of my stomach, as being a great thing to follow in life. Some call it fear. I remember the joy of climbing with him in the wintertime. It was always an adventure and often turned into much more than just a climb. Dad would determine that not only did we have to climb a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot chalk cliff, but also that German paratroopers held the high ground. We therefore had to climb the cliff silently and unseen, and then grenade the German fire position once at the summit. In reality this meant lobbing clumps of manure toward a deserted bench on the cliff tops. Brilliant. What a great way to spend a wet and windy winter’s day when you are age eight (or twenty-eight, for that matter). I loved returning from the cliff climbs totally caked in mud, out of breath, having scared ourselves a little. I learned to love that feeling of the wind and rain blowing hard on my face. It made me feel like a man, when in reality I was a little boy. We also used to talk about Mount Everest, as we walked across the fields toward the cliffs. I loved to pretend that some of our climbs were on the summit face of Everest itself. We would move together cautiously across the white chalk faces, imagining they were really ice. I had this utter confidence that I could climb Everest if he were beside me. I had no idea what Everest would really involve but I loved the dream together. These were powerful, magical times. Bonding. Intimate. Fun. And I miss them a lot even today. How good it would feel to get the chance to do that with him just once more. I think that is why I find it often so emotional taking my own boys hiking or climbing nowadays. Mountains create powerful bonds between people. It is their great appeal to me. But it wasn’t just climbing. Dad and I would often go to the local stables and hire a couple of horses for a tenner and go jumping the breakwaters along the beach. Every time I fell off in the wet sand and was on the verge of bursting into tears, Dad would applaud me and say that I was slowly becoming a horseman. In other words, you can’t become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again a good number of times. There’s life in a nutshell.

Mowbray! Been a while since you bothered with the season. What brings you to town?” Lord Adrian Montfort, Earl of Mowbray, shifted his gaze from the couples whirling past on the dance floor and to the man who approached: the tall, fair, eminently good-looking Reginald Greville. He and Greville, his cousin, had once been the best of friends. However, time and distance had weakened the bond—with a little help from the war with France, Adrian thought bitterly. Ignoring Reginald’s question, he offered a somewhat rusty smile in greeting, then turned his gaze back to the men and women swinging elegantly about the dance floor. He replied instead, “Enjoying the season, Greville?” “Certainly, certainly. Fresh blood. Fresh faces.” “Fresh victims,” Mowbray said dryly, and Reginald laughed. “That too.” Reginald was well-known for his success in seducing young innocents. Only his title and money kept him from being forced out of town. Shaking his head, Adrian gave that rusty smile again. “I wonder you never tire of the chase, Reg. They all look sadly similar to me. I would swear these were the very same young women who were entering their first season the last time I attended…and the time before that, and the time before that.” His cousin smiled easily, but shook his head. “It has been ten years since you bothered to come to town, Adrian. Those women are all married and bearing fruit, or well on their way to spinsterhood.” “Different faces, same ladies,” Adrian said with a shrug. “Such cynicism!” Reg chided. “You sound old, old man.” “Older,” Adrian corrected. “Older and wiser.” “No. Just old,” Reg insisted with a laugh, his own gaze turning to the mass of people moving before them. “Besides, there are a couple of real lovelies this year. That blonde, for instance, or that brunette with Chalmsly.” “Hmmm.” Adrian looked the two women over. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is that the brunette—lovely as she is—doesn’t have a thought in her head. Rather like that Lady Penelope you seduced when last I was here.” Reg’s eyes widened in surprise at the observation. “And the blonde…” Adrian continued, his gaze raking the woman in question and taking in her calculating look. “Born of parents in trade, lots of money, and looking for a title to go with it. Rather like Lily Ainsley. Another of your conquests.” “Dead-on,” Reginald admitted, looking a bit incredulous. His gaze moved between the two women and then he gave a harsh laugh. “Now you have quite ruined it for me. I was considering favoring one or both of them with my attentions. But now you have made them quite boring.” -Reg & Adrian

Lesson one: Pack light unless you want to hump the eight around the mountains all day and night. By the time we reached Snowdonia National Park on Friday night it was dark, and with one young teacher as our escort, we all headed up into the mist. And in true Welsh fashion, it soon started to rain. When we reached where we were going to camp, by the edge of a small lake halfway up, it was past midnight and raining hard. We were all tired (from dragging the ridiculously overweight packs), and we put up the tents as quickly as we could. They were the old-style A-frame pegged tents, not known for their robustness in a Welsh winter gale, and sure enough by 3:00 A.M. the inevitable happened. Pop. One of the A-frame pegs supporting the apex of my tent broke, and half the tent sagged down onto us. Hmm, I thought. But both Watty and I were just too tired to get out and repair the first break, and instead we blindly hoped it would somehow just sort itself out. Lesson two: Tents don’t repair themselves, however tired you are, however much you wish they just would. Inevitably, the next peg broke, and before we knew it we were lying in a wet puddle of canvas, drenched to the skin, shivering, and truly miserable. The final key lesson learned that night was that when it comes to camping, a stitch in time saves nine; and time spent preparing a good camp is never wasted. The next day, we reached the top of Snowdon, wet, cold but exhilarated. My best memory was of lighting a pipe that I had borrowed off my grandfather, and smoking it with Watty, in a gale, behind the summit cairn, with the teacher joining in as well. It is part of what I learned from a young age to love about the mountains: They are great levelers. For me to be able to smoke a pipe with a teacher was priceless in my book, and was a firm indicator that mountains, and the bonds you create with people in the wild, are great things to seek in life. (Even better was the fact that the tobacco was homemade by Watty, and soaked in apple juice for aroma. This same apple juice was later brewed into cider by us, and it subsequently sent Chipper, one of the guys in our house, blind for twenty-four hours. Oops.) If people ask me today what I love about climbing mountains, the real answer isn’t adrenaline or personal achievement. Mountains are all about experiencing a shared bond that is hard to find in normal life. I love the fact that mountains make everyone’s clothes and hair go messy; I love the fact that they demand that you give of yourself, that they make you fight and struggle. They also induce people to loosen up, to belly laugh at silly things, and to be able to sit and be content staring at a sunset or a log fire. That sort of camaraderie creates wonderful bonds between people, and where there are bonds I have found that there is almost always strength.

To see how we separate, we first have to examine how we get together. Friendships begin with interest. We talk to someone. They say something interesting and we have a conversation about it. However, common interests don’t create lasting bonds. Otherwise, we would become friends with everyone with whom we had a good conversation. Similar interests as a basis for friendship doesn’t explain why we become friends with people who have completely different interests than we do. In time, we discover common values and ideals. However, friendship through common values and ideals doesn’t explain why atheists and those devout in their faith become friends. Vegans wouldn’t have non-vegan friends. In the real world, we see examples of friendships between people with diametrically opposed views. At the same time, we see cliques form in churches and small organizations dedicated to a particular cause, and it’s not uncommon to have cliques inside a particular belief system dislike each other. So how do people bond if common interests and common values don’t seem to be the catalyst for lasting friendships? I find that people build lasting connections through common problems and people grow apart when their problems no longer coincide. This is why couples especially those with children tend to lose their single friends. Their primary problems have become vastly different. The married person’s problems revolve around family and children. The single person’s problem revolves around relationships with others and themselves. When the single person talks about their latest dating disaster, the married person is thinking I’ve already solved this problem. When the married person talks about finding good daycare, the single person is thinking how boring the problems of married life can be. Eventually marrieds and singles lose their connection because they don’t have common problems. I look back at friends I had in junior high and high school. We didn’t become friends because of long nights playing D&D. That came later. We were all loners and outcasts in our own way. We had one shared problem that bound us together: how to make friends and relate to others while feeling so “different”. That was the problem that made us friends. Over the years as we found our own answers and went to different problems, we grew apart. Stick two people with completely different values and belief systems on a deserted island where they have to cooperate to survive. Then stick two people with the same values and interests together at a party. Which pair do you think will form the stronger bond? When I was 20, I was living on my own. I didn’t have many friends who were in college because I couldn’t relate to them. I was worrying about how to pay rent and trying to stretch my last few dollars for food at the end of the month. They were worried about term papers. In my life now, the people I spend the most time with have kids, have careers, are thinking about retirement and are figuring out their changing roles and values as they get older. These are problems that I relate to. We solve them in different ways because our values though compatible aren’t similar. I feel connected hearing about how they’ve chosen to solve those issues in a way that works for them.

On the contrary the depth and profound feeling of the spirit presupposes that the soul has worked its way through its feelings and powers and the whole of its inner life, i.e. that it has overcome much, suffered grief, endured anguish and pain of soul, and yet in this disunion has preserved its integrity and withdrawn out of it into itself. In the myth of Hercules the Greeks have presented us with a hero who after many labours was placed amongst the gods and enjoyed blissful peace there. But what Hercules achieved was only something outside him, the bliss given him as a reward was only peaceful repose. The ancient prophecy that he would put an end to the reign of Zeus, he did not fulfill, supreme hero of the Greeks though he was. The end of that rule only began when man conquered not dragons outside him or Lernaean hydras, but the dragons and hydras of his own heart, the inner obstinacy and inflexibility of his own self. Only in this way does natural serenity become that higher serenity of the spirit which completely traverses the negative moment of disunion and by this labour has won infinite satisfaction. The, feeling of cheerfulness and happiness must be transfigured and purified into bliss. For good fortune and happiness still involve an accidental and natural correspondence between the individual and his external circumstances; but in bliss the good fortune still attendant on a man’s existence as he is in nature falls away and the whole thing is transferred into the inner life of the spirit. Bliss is an acquired satisfaction and justified only on that account; it is a serenity in victory, the soul’s feeling when it has expunged from itself everything sensuous and finite and therefore has cast aside the care that always lies in wait for us. The soul is blissful when, after experiencing conflict and agony, it has triumphed over its sufferings. (α) If we now ask what can be strictly ideal in this subject-matter, the answer is: the reconciliation of the individual heart with God who in his appearance as man has traversed this way of sorrows. The substance of spiritual depth of feeling is religion alone, the peace of the individual who has a sense of himself but who finds true satisfaction only when, self-collected, his mundane heart is broken so that he is raised above his mere natural existence and its finitude, and in this elevation has won a universal depth of feeling, a spiritual depth and oneness in and with God. The soul wills itself, but it wills itself in something other than what it is in its individuality and therefore it gives itself up in face of God in order to find and enjoy itself in him. This is characteristic of love, spiritual depth in its truth, that religious love without desire which gives to the human spirit reconciliation, peace, and bliss. It is not the pleasure and joy of actual love as we know it in ordinary life, but a love without passion, indeed without physical inclination but with only an inclination of soul. Looked at physically, this is a love which is death, a death to the world, so that there hovers there as something past the actual relationship of one person to another; as a real mundane bond and connection this relationship has not come essentially to its perfection; for, on the contrary, it bears in itself the deficiency of time and the finite, and therefore it leads on to that elevation into a beyond which remains a consciousness and enjoyment of love devoid of longing and desire.

The game is a thread, microscopic in breadth, a hint of gossamer drawing unsuspecting souls together in simple competition to the exclusion of all else, from a mother and her infant playing peekaboo to two old men hunched over a chessboard and everything in between. The game unifies, joining father and son pitching baseballs at night after a long day at the office, pitches pounding the mitt or skipping past, one time even knocking the coffee cup handle clean off and the boy scampering off to retrieve a wild one as the dad sips and ponders. The game allows brothers to bond even when the age gap is too great for real competition, their mutual effort to fashion a bridge between disparate age and ability forming a bond of trust and respect. And finally, it is the game’s presence and past and its memory that inspires each of us to forgive time and aging and their inevitable accompanying attrition because the gray and hobbled old man before me was once lean and powerful and magnificent and some of what became of him was due to the investment he made in me and after all the batting practice he threw and grounders he hit, his shoulder aches and his knees need replacement. Even though youth masks it so you don't realize it all when you’re a kid, someday it happens to you and suddenly you realize you are him and you are left wishing you could go back and tell him what you now know and perhaps thank him for what he gave up. You imagine him back then receiving nothing in return except the knowledge that you would someday understand but he could not hasten that day or that revelation and he abided it all so graciously knowing that your realization might be too late for him. So you console yourself that in the absence of your gratitude he clung to hope and conviction and the future. Turn the page and you find yourself staring out at the new generation and you wince as his pitches bruise your palm and crack your thumb and realize that today the game is growth and achievement and tomorrow it will be love and memories. The game is a gift.

He had turned forty yesterday, and a bunch of his friends had thrown a big party for him down at the bar across the street from his bail bond office. The beer had been flowing freely. They’d even sprung for a day-old cake from the deli section of one of the big grocery stores across town. Their gift to Wilson had been Wanelle, the prettiest hooker on their side of the city, which was a title Wanelle held proudly, even if her claim to fame came from a real long stretch of the truth. Still, Wanelle had all her own teeth and clear skin, and she was almost pretty when she laughed. Wilson knew her slightly. He’d seen her around Ft. Worth from time to time, but buying a woman had never been his style. He’d felt trapped when Wanelle had been presented to him, especially since his buddies had tied a big red bow around her neck. Turning her down would have been a serious social faux pas to his friends and to Wanelle. So, rather than hurt everyone’s feelings, Wilson had graciously accepted, and they’d spent the night in her fifth floor apartment, only to be awakened by the scent of smoke.

different meanings of safety to different investors. For someone needing a lump of money in a year’s time, the only safe investment is a cash deposit or a short-term government bond. For someone with no imminent need of the money and a desire to accumulate capital and increase purchasing power in the long-term, it may be safer to invest in equities – volatile but with the historic and likely future characteristic of a high return after inflation – than to put money on deposit with the risk that over the years the real value of the investment will be eroded by inflation.

To Fleming, and to his readers, James Bond was a real person living in the modern world. The details of his life appear only sporadically in the books, but they proved vitally important in grounding him in his time, which made his extraordinary and often implausible adventures seem possible.

Proneness to forget God causes our memory to be as if immersed in time, whose relation to eternity, to the benefits and promises of God, it no longer sees. This defect inclines our memory to see all things horizontally on the line of time that flees, of which the present alone is real, between the past that is gone and the future that is not yet. Forgetfulness of God prevents us from seeing that the present moment is also on a vertical line which attaches it to the single instant of immobile eternity, and that there is a divine manner of living the present moment in order that by merit it may enter into eternity. Whereas forgetfulness of God leaves us in this banal and horizontal view of things on the line of time which passes, the contemplation of God is like a vertical view of things which pass and of their bond with God who does not pass. To be immersed in time, is to forget the value of time, that is to say, its relation to eternity.

The needs of a wife are nothing like that. A close human bond demands a tolerance, an ability to adjust, to moderate one’s own actions and to accept criticism, even unreasonable behavior at times, to listen to all kinds of chatter and hear the real message behind the words. Above all, it needs the sharing of self, the dreams and the fears, the laughter and the pain. It means taking down the defenses, knowing that sooner or later you will be hurt. It means tempering ideals and acknowledging the vulnerable and flawed reality of human beings.

I think I understand the problem—she doesn’t want to be parted from her sister, Sophia. Did you know they were twins?” Baird looked at him apprehensively. “Are human twins like the Twin Kindred? Do they have to share a mate? Because I have to tell you, Sylvan, I don’t think I can handle more than one like Olivia. And she’s the only one I want, anyway.” “No, no. Don’t worry about that.” Sylvan shook his head. “But the bond between them is extraordinarily strong. I spent some time talking to Sophia and she told me they had never been parted even for a single day.” Baird frowned. “That is like the Twin Kindred. Do you suppose they feel actual physical pain while they’re separated?” Sylvan looked thoughtful. “I don’t think it’s physical so much but certainly the pain is a very real thing. Sophia was very concerned about Olivia. She was, ah, worried that you might hurt her.” “Hurt

Olivia hadn’t eaten much—just a few bites—but he thought he was probably to blame for that. He’d made her nervous, talking about taking her to bed. He knew she wasn’t an untried virgin from the dreams they’d shared but she acted like one when he attempted to discuss sex or bonding with her. Baird thought he knew why. From what he’d seen in his dreams of her, the few former lovers she’d taken to her bed had no real concept of what it meant to please a woman. Her last lover especially, the one she’d almost made a lifetime commitment to, preferred to please himself and then go to sleep. He’d used her body as an implement of self pleasure without bothering to make sure that Olivia was satisfied, a fact that made Baird angry and disgusted. It was like using a fine musical instrument to play a simple, selfish tune when it was capable of producing a much richer, more complex sound if only you took the time to really master it. At

She just kept seeing the hopeless look in Baird’s eyes as he’d held her tight one last time. He hadn’t even said anything but then, he didn’t need to. She could see what was going on—he was dying inside from losing her. That was the real reason the Kindred didn’t do divorce, she finally understood. Because they couldn’t survive without their mates. She supposed it was a good thing she and Baird hadn’t actually bonded before she’d had to leave or he wouldn’t stand a chance.

You dragged her in here without letting her change or say goodbye to her family?” The two officers looked as sheepish as six foot six males could. “Standard operating procedure,” one of them mumbled defiantly. “Allowing the subject out of your sight, even for an instant, more than doubles the flight risk.” “She’s not a subject, you fuckin’ idiot,” growled the dark warrior, his amber eyes flashing. “She’s my bride. I don’t give a good goddamn what your SOP is, if I find you’ve hurt her in any way, you’ll both answer to me.” “I’m so sorry,” the blond Kindred said awkwardly as the dark one raked the officers over the coals. “None of this was handled very well.” He put a hand tentatively on Sophia’s shoulder and she flinched away from him. “Don’t touch me!” she flared, shooting him a deadly glare from narrowed green eyes. The blond Kindred’s ice blue eyes widened, then narrowed as well. “Forgive me. I wasn’t aware you’d take a gesture of comfort as a threat.” The double set of fangs in his upper teeth seemed to sharpen alarmingly. “Okay, everybody take it down a notch.” Kat raised her voice to be heard over the babble. She looked at Liv. “First the good news. It’s only for thirty days.” “Only thirty days?” Sophia cried, still clinging to her. “That’s a long time to be abused and molested, Kat!” “Nobody’s getting abused or molested,” the dark warrior growled. “Oh really? So you have no interest in having sex with my sister?” Sophia demanded of him. Liv felt her cheeks heat. “Sophie, please.” The warrior’s eyes flashed. “Hell yes, I’m interested and I’m not gonna deny it. She’s mine—I need to claim her. Bond with her. Can’t do that without sex.” Liv felt her face get even hotter. Oh my God, is he for real? The thought of being pressed up against that huge, masculine, muscular body was doing strange things to her, things she didn’t want to admit even to herself. And no one had ever said they wanted to bond with her before. “Baird, you’re only making things worse,” the blond Kindred muttered, tugging at the other one’s muscular arm. Baird—is

Gold is often sought as a refuge during times of financial travail. True to form, the price of the precious metal more than tripled in the 1999-2009 decade. But gold is largely a rank speculation, for its price is based solely on market expectations. Gold provides no internal rate of return. Unlike stocks and bonds, gold provides none of the intrinsic value that is created for stocks by earnings growth and dividend yields, and for bonds by interest payments. So in the two centuries plus shown in the chart, the initial $10,000 investment in gold grew to barely $26,000 in realterms. In fact, since the peak reached during its earlier boom in 1980, the price of gold has lost nearly 40 percent of its real value.

These, too [ideologies], have disappeared. And we survive only by a reflex action of collective credulity, which consists not only in absorbing everything put about under the heading of news or information, but in believing in the principle and transcendence of information. While, at the same time, remaining deeply incredulous and resistant to that kind of knee-jerk consensus. We no more believe in information by divine right than serfs ever believed they were serfs by divine right, but we act as though we do. Behind this façade, a gigantic principle of incredulity is growing up, a principle of secret disaffection and the denial of any social bond. There is a considerable danger of the inertia threshold being crossed, danger of a potential gravitational collapse by an exceeding of the critical mass, thanks to the absorption by the system of all negative elements: crashes, errors, scandals, conflicts -- everything is absorbed back into it as though by evaporation. All the wastes and disorders are digested and recycled. Maddening metastability which gives rise to a whole range of violent, virulent, destabilizing abreactions, which are the symptom of that collapse. All our contemporary passions arise from this: objectless, negative passions, all born of indifference, all built (in the absence of a real object) on a virtual other, and thus doomed to crystallize for preference on any old thing at all.

As I travel around the financial services industry today, the most interesting trend I see is the one toward relationship consolidation. Now that Glass-Steagall has been repealed, and all financial services providers can provide just about all financial services, there's a tendency - particularly as people get older - to want to tie everything up... to develop a plan, which implies having a planner. A planner, not a whole bunch of 'em... You've got basically two options. One is that you can sit here and wait for a major investment firm, which handles your client's investment portfolio while you handle the insurance, to bring their developing financial and estate planning capabilities to your client's door. And to take over the whole relationship. In this case, you have chosen to be the Consolidatee. A better option is for you to be the Consolidator. That is, you go out and consolidate the clients' financial lives pursuant to a really great plan - the kind you pride yourselves on. And of course that would involve your taking over management of the investment portfolio. Let's start with the classic Ibbotson data [Stocks, Bonds, Bills and Inflation Yearbook, Ibbotson Associates]. In the only terms that matter to the long-term investor - the real rate of return - he [the stockholder] got paid more like three times what the bondholder did. Why would an efficient market, over more than three quarters of a centry, pay the holders of one asset class anything like three times what it paid the holders of the other major asset class? Most people would say: risk. Is it really risk that's driving the premium returns, or is it volatility? It's volatility.... I invite you to look carefully at these dirty dozen disasters: the twelve bear markets of roughly 20% or more in the S&P 500 since the end of WWII. For the record, the average decline took about thirteen months from peak to trough, and carried the index down just about 30%. And since there've been twelve of these "disasters" in the roughly sixty years since war's end, we can fairly say that, on average, the stock market in this country has gone down about 30% about one year in five.... So while the market was going up nearly forty times - not counting dividends, remember - what do we feel was the major risk to the long-term investor? Panic. 'The secret to making money in stocks is not getting scared out of them' Peter Lynch.

He’s a real man!’ shrieked Neena. ‘Not a namby-pamby bastard like you!’ ‘Any more abuse and I’ll leave you here with Mr Lobo. You can both occupy the VIP suite. Many famous people have slept in it—Emperor Haile Selassie, the Panchen Lama, Pearl S. Buck, Raj Kapoor, Helen, and Polly Umrigar the cricketer.’ ‘What—all together?’ giggled Neena. ‘It must have been quite an orgy!’ ‘Not all together, Your Highness. Separately, and at different times.’ ‘Helen of Troy, too.’ ‘Not Helen of Troy. Helen, the Bollywood dancer.

Code Section 1031 lets taxpayers roll the gain from the sale of their old investment property over to their new investment property; therefore, they do not have to pay capital gains tax on the increase at that time. This is one of the tremendous advantages of owning real estate over owning stocks and bonds because there is no comparable code section for stocks and bonds.

You buy a 6% bond at 100, convertible into stock at 25—that is, at the rate of 40 shares for each $1,000 bond. The stock goes to 30, which makes the bond worth at least 120, and so it sells at 125. You either sell or hold. If you hold, hoping for a higher price, you are pretty much in the position of a common shareholder, since if the stock goes down your bond will go down too. A conservative person is likely to say that beyond 125 his position has become too speculative, and therefore he sells and makes a gratifying 25% profit. So far, so good. But pursue the matter a bit. In many cases where the holder sells at 125 the common stock continues to advance, carrying the convertible with it, and the investor experiences that peculiar pain that comes to the man who has sold out much too soon. The next time, he decides to hold for 150 or 200. The issue goes up to 140 and he does not sell. Then the market breaks and his bond slides down to 80. Again he has done the wrong thing. Aside from the mental anguish involved in making these bad guesses—and they seem to be almost inevitable—there is a real arithmetical drawback to operations in convertible issues.

Real life is so all-absorbing that it doesn’t leave us time to create an imaginary, parallel life. It’s very hard not to stay in love with or be captivated by someone who makes us laugh and does so even though he often mistreats us; the hardest thing to give up is that companionable laughter, once you’ve met someone and decided to stay with them. How cast down we are by rejection, and how much power accrues to the person to whom we gave that power, for no one can take power unless it is first given or conferred, unless you’re prepared to adore and fear that person, unless you aspire to being loved by him or to enjoy his unswerving approval, any such ambition is a sign of conceit and that conceit is what weakens and leaves us defenseless: once that ambition remains unsatisfied or unfulfilled, it marks the beginning of our downfall. Sensations are unstable things, they become transformed in memory, they shift and dance, they can prevail over what was said and heard, over rejection or acceptance. Sometimes, sensations can make us give up and, at others, encourage us to try again. That Spanish mania for mixing business deals with a semblance of incipient friendship. In Spain, oddly enough, it’s considered far more prestigious to be known by one’s first name, and this applies to only four or five or six people: “Federico” is always García Lorca, just as “Rubén” is Rubén Darío, “Juan Ramón” is the Nobel Laureate Jiménez, “Ramón” is Gómez de la Serna, “Mossèn Cinto” is Verdaguer and, five centuries on, “Garcilaso” is Garcilaso de la Vega. In the face of ignorance, one is always free to invent. “Far too civilized. Airport hub. Business deals by the shedload. No, I don’t like it, I don’t like it all. Tons of visitors. The annual Buchmesse. Money calling to money. Rumor on the other hand is what lasts, it’s unstoppable, undying, the one thing that endures. I certainly don’t want to give that imbecile the gift of a rumor. He probably often had such attacks of oral literature. Whoever he was with and whatever the circumstances, he found it hard not to slip into pedantic, didactic mode. Like many unhappy, lonely people, he kept a diary. Curiosity makes us lose all caution. Unhappy people often insist on trying to uncover the full magnitude of their unhappiness, or choose to investigate other people’s lives as a distraction from their own. The eyes of the imagination, which are the eyes that best remember a scene and best recall it later. In the middle of the night everything seems plausible and real. Desire is a selfish thing too and will do almost anything to achieve satisfaction—lie, flatter, take risks, inveigle, make false promises. A nostalgia for the life you discarded always lingers on in the inner depths of your being, and, during bad times, you seek refuge in it as you might in a daydream or a fantasy. I sometimes think that the bonds of deceit and unhappiness are the strongest of all, as are those of error; they may bind even more closely than those of openness, contentment and sincerity. We do sometimes bring about what we most fear because the only way of freeing ourselves from that fear is for the bad thing actually to have happened, for it to be in the past and not in the future or in the realm of possibilities. For it to remain behind.

The centuries she had already lived had sobered her to the power of fate. There was a pervasive principle within which everything operated. As convincing as the idea of free will was, there was a constant, albeit subtle force directing events toward a particular end. She knew this intimately as she employed it almost every day: divination. Due to its complexity—as was also the case with other types of temporal magics— even she couldn't claim to know all its nuances. What she knew for sure was that there were different planes of consciousness and that the physical manifestation of the Triskai was one such realm, lying smack in the middle with some realms higher and some lower. Being so far removed from the highest plane of consciousness, people in the Triskai were always under the illusion that their thoughts and actions were made in real time when, in fact, they had already made those decisions in the higher, abstract realms. The decisions and actions simply cascaded down the tiers like a mental waterfall, presenting themselves as instantaneous deeds.

If your company has any credible strategy for providing equity-based returns with muted volatility, you have not just a value proposition, but one of the most important value propositions of our time.... What's the concept in an operating real estate REIT? Operating real estate (as distinct from net leases or mortgages, which are other financing concepts) has the potential to produce equity-like long-term returns, but isan extremely powerful diversifier, in that real estate correlates positively with inflation while stocks and bonds correlate negatively with it. Inflation, with it attendant higher interest rates, chokes off new supply of real estate: new expensive to build, to expensive to finance at prevailing market rents. When new supply dwindles, normal growth absorbs the available space and puts upward pressure on rents, increasing cash flows to the owners... until rents get to a point where new construction pencils out again. (Meanwhile, in an inflation/interest rate flareup of any consequence, stocks and bonds are usually getting hit, and sometimes hit hard.) This, to me, is a trifecta of a conceptual value proposition: (a) the potential for the equity-like long-term returns investors need, (b) historically correlated positively with inflation, unlike all financial assets, and (c) just when you think this story can't get better, with 90% of available income paid out currently to income-starved investors.... What's the concept for variable life insurance? It's certainly the least expensive long-term form of life insurance, in that, as the investment portion grows, it extinguishes the insurance company's exposure. (As Ben Baldwin gnomically and brilliantly observes, 'All insurance is term insurance.') It may also be, in a given situation, the cheapest way of funding an estate tax liability, leaving the maximum legacy to one's heirs. And, of course, if the ownership is vested in an insurance trust, one may (under current law at this writing) be bequeathing wealth without income or estate taxation. As long as there is an estate tax - any estate tax - there will be a financial planning issue in the life of every affluent household/family: how do you want the heirs to pay it? And it seems likely that, conceptually, VUL will always be an answer.... Small cap equities? The concept is, clearly, higher returns with - and precisely because of - their higher volatility.

The fervour accompanying these events may be deceptive. If it expresses nothing more than the zeal with which the countries of the East are casting aside the bonds of ideology, or if it is a mimetic fervour - a tribute, as it were, to those liberal countries where all liberty has already been traded in for a technically easy life - then we shall have found out definitively what freedom is worth, and that it is probably never to be discovered a second time. History offers no second helpings. On the other hand, it could be that the present thaw in the East may be as disastrous in the long term as the excess of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, that it may bring about a political greenhouse effect, and so overheat human relations on the planet that the melting of the Communist ice-sheet will cause Western seaboards to be submerged. Odd that we should be in such absolute fear of the melting of the polar ice, and look upon it as a climatic catastrophe, while we aspire with every democratic bone in our bodies to the occurrence of just such an event on the political plane. If in the old days the USSR had released its gold reserves onto the world market, that market would have been completely destabilized. Today, by putting back into circulation their vast accumulated store of freedom, the Eastern countries could quite easily destabilize that very fragile balance of Western values which strives to ensure that freedom no longer emerges as action but only as a virtual and consensual form of interaction; no longer as a drama but merely as the universal psychodrama of liberalism. A sudden infusion of freedom as a real currency, as violent and active transcendence, as Idea, would be in every way catastrophic for our present air-conditioned redistribution of values. Yet this is precisely what we are asking of the East: freedom, the image of freedom, in exchange for the material signs of freedom. This is an absolutely diabolical contract, by virtue of which one signatory is in danger of losing their soul, and the other of losing their creature comforts. But perhaps - who knows? - this may, after all, be the best thing for both sides. Those societies that were formerly masked - Communist societies - have been unmasked. What is their face like? As for us, we dropped the mask long ago and have for a long time been without either mask or face. We are also without memory. We have reached the point of searching the water for signs of a memory that has left no traces, hoping against hope that something might remain when even the water's molecular memory has faded away. So it goes for our freedom: we would be hard put to it to produce a single sign of it, and we have been reduced to postulating its infinitesimal, intangible, undetectable existence in a (programmatic, operational) environment so highly dilute that in truth only a spectre of freedom floats there still, in a memory every bit as evanescent as water's.

From this basis, Boyd sets out to develop a normative view on a design for command and control. As in Patterns of Conflict, he starts with some ‘samples from historical environment’, offering nine citations from nine practitioners, including from himself (see Box 6.1):6 Sun Tzu (around 400 BC) Probe enemy strength to unmask his strengths, weaknesses, patterns of movement and intentions. Shape enemy’s perception of world to manipulate/undermine his plans and actions. Employ Cheng/Ch’I maneuvers to quickly and unexpectedly hurl strength against weaknesses. Bourcet (1764–71) A plan ought to have several branches . . . One should . . . mislead the enemy and make him imagine that the main effort is coming at some other part. And . . . one must be ready to profit by a second or third branch of the plan without giving one’s enemy time to consider it. Napoleon (early 1800s) Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less chary of the latter than the former. Space we can recover, time never. I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute. The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack. Clausewitz (1832) Friction (which includes the interaction of many factors, such as uncertainty, psychological/moral forces and effects, etc.) impedes activity. Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper. In this sense, friction represents the climate or atmosphere of war. Jomini (1836) By free and rapid movements carry bulk of the forces (successively) against fractions of the enemy. N.B. Forrest (1860s) Git thar the fustest with the mostest. Blumentritt (1947) The entire operational and tactical leadership method hinged upon . . . rapid concise assessment of situations, . . . and quick decision and quick execution, on the principle: each minute ahead of the enemy is an advantage. Balck (1980) Emphasis upon creation of implicit connections or bonds based upon trust, not mistrust, that permit wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative – yet harmonize within intent of superior commanders. Benefit: internal simplicity that permits rapid adaptability. Yours truly Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action loops to enmesh adversary in a world of uncertainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic, chaos . . . and/or fold adversary back inside himself so that he cannot cope with events/efforts as they unfold.

MICHAEL PILLER As soon as I started, I said, “I need to see every script, every abandoned story, and every submitted piece of material that’s sitting around, because I have to have something to shoot next week.” Somebody gave me a script called “The Bonding,” by a guy named Ron Moore who was about to go into the Marines, and it was a very interesting story about a kid whose mother goes down on an away mission and gets killed. The kid is obviously torn apart by the death of his mother, and seeing how much he’s suffering, aliens provide him with a mother substitute. The writing was rough and amateurish in some ways, but I thought it had real potential to tell an interesting story. I went to Gene and pitched him the story, and he said it didn’t work. I asked him why, and he said, “Because in the twenty-fourth century, death is accepted as a part of life, so this child would not be mourning the death of his mother. He would be perfectly accepting of the fact that she had lived a good life, and he would move on with his life.” I went back to the writing staff and told them what Gene had said, and they sort of smirked and said, “Ah-ha, you see? Now you know what we’ve been going through.” I said, “Wait a minute, let’s think about it. Is there any way we can satisfy Gene’s twenty-fourth-century rules and at the same time not lose the story that we have to shoot on Tuesday?” I finally said, “Look, what if this kid has in fact been taught all of his life not to mourn the death of his loved ones, because that’s what society expects of him? He’s taught that death is a part of life, so he loses his mother and doesn’t have any reaction at all. That’s what Gene is telling us has to happen. Well, that is freaky, that is weird, and that’s going to feel far more interesting on film than if he’s crying for two acts. What if the aliens who feel guilty about killing his mother provide him with a mother substitute and the kid bonds with this mother substitute, and it’s Troi who goes to Picard and says, “We have a problem? The kid is not going to give up this mother substitute until he really accepts and mourns the death of his real mother, and we’re going to have to penetrate centuries of civilization to get to the emotional core of this kid in order to wake up his emotional life.” So the show becomes a quest for emotional release and the privilege of mourning. Well, Gene loved the idea. It respected his universe and at the same time turned a fairly predictable story on its ear, and it became a far better story and episode than it would have if Gene had simply signed off on the original pitch. SANDRA

Her relationships were more about shared memories and common values than about strategic partnerships to help each other succeed. That one killed me. I’d ask why we were getting together with so-and-so and she’d say something about how they hadn’t seen each other in a long time and one time they’d stayed up all night smoking cigarettes on the lawn and talking about boys. I had no mental category for that kind of friendship. I wasn’t sure how that kind of friendship profited anybody anything. What were they trying to build? Who were they trying to beat? What were the rules of the game, and how were they going to win? These are the questions in life that matter, right? “Staying up all night smoking cigarettes and talking about boys seems to me a waste of time,” I said sweetly. Betsy rolled her eyes. “Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don,” she said. “Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that’s a powerful thing.” She might be right. I’m unwilling to say at this point. God knows I’m not staying up all night to sit on a lawn and talk about nothing. Betsy said if we have children I’ll do it and I suppose I will. It’s funny what happens to you when part of your heart gets born inside somebody else. I trust I’ll do the crazy things parents do and they won’t seem crazy.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving I once had a lovely real estate client named Jane who was an elderly lady living alone. Her sons lived far away in the Pacific Northwest and she rarely saw them. I became her Realtor when she decided she needed to down-size from her larger home and buy a smaller one. Throughout this transition, we would talk, laugh, share, and bond. After we successfully completed her transactions and got her comfortably situated in her new home, I stayed in touch to nurture our friendship. Over a year later, I got a call from her son in Seattle who was calling to inform me that his mother had passed away. And at the reading of her will it was revealed she had requested that when it the time came to sell the property in her estate, they were to call Susan Young. By making her feel special and important, I earned not only her friendship, but her loyalty and continued business.

off from the same line, they were scattered peacefully across the globe for centuries, each mostly disregarding the others. But in the Middle Ages, the witches, who by nature did the most interacting with normal humans, began to be discovered. And then persecuted, and tortured, and murdered. Their leaders went to the vampires and the wolves and begged for help, but both groups turned away, the vampires from apathy and the wolves from fear of meeting the same fate. Wolves are pack animals, and look after their pack before anything else. So the witches did the only thing they could: they looked to strengthen their magic. They didn’t know about evolution and magical lines back then, but during their research, the witches managed to stumble upon a group of plants that magic had bonded itself to, just like the human conduits. They were known as nightshades: belladonna, mandragora, Lycium barbarum (which also became known as wolfberry), tomatillo, cape gooseberry flower, capsicum, and solanum. The entire subspecies was rife with magic. The latter four plants could be used in hundreds of charms and potions, many of which helped the witches to deter the human persecutors. But the former three plants were unique; they interacted with the remaining magical beings in mystifying ways. Belladonna was poisonous to vampires—it took unbelievable amounts to actually kill them, but even a sprinkle of the plant would work as a paralytic. Proximity to wolfberry caused the shifters to lose control, painfully unable to stop from changing, again and again, which was very dangerous to anyone nearby. And mandragora, also called mandrake, was the key ingredient in a spell that could grant a very powerful witch the ability to communicate between living and dead. Which is how I ended up disposing of that naked guy’s body in Culver City, all those years ago. This discovery was your classic Pandora’s box scenario. A small group of witches, furious that the vampires and the wolves had abandoned them during their darkest time, began to use wolfberry and belladonna against them—sometimes without much provocation. The balance of power shifted once again, and while the witches’ discovery didn’t cause a full-out war, it did spawn thousands of skirmishes, minor battles breaking out between the three major factions. Eventually, the use of those herbs was “outlawed” in the Old World, but it was done the way that marijuana has been outlawed in the US—basically, don’t get caught. The witches are always arguing about this among themselves; some of them think it should be open season, and others think the ban should be more strictly enforced. But while they may not be able to pull together a majority vote, in Los Angeles Kirsten has organized the witches into sort of an informal union. I know it sounds crazy, but if actors and directors can have unions in this town, why not witches? As I understand it, the real benefit to joining the union is access: to chat rooms, newsletters, support groups, spell sessions—and me. The witches’ dues pay Kirsten a small salary, and she uses the rest to organize the network and pay me. There are plenty of “non-union” witches in LA, too, ones who either haven’t

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Morgan had described customary property owned by tightly bonded kin groups; real-world Communist regimes in the former USSR and China forced millions of unrelated peasants into collective farms. By breaking the link between individual effort and reward, collectivization undermined incentives to work, leading to mass famines in Russia and China, and severely reducing agricultural productivity. In the former USSR, the 4 percent of land that remained privately owned accounted for almost one-quarter of total agricultural output. In China, once collective farms were disbanded in 1978 under the leadership of the reformer Deng Xiaoping, agricultural output doubled in the space of just four years.

Investment firms are buying up more vacation homes, aiming to cash in on growing demand from tourists and remote workers. Most vacation rental homes are owned by small-time owners who list their properties on websites such as Airbnb Inc., but the number of financial firms investing in the sector is growing. New York-based investment firm Saluda Grade is launching a venture with short-term- rental operator AvantStay Inc. to buy about $500 million of homes, the companies said Tuesday. Saluda Grade said it is also looking to raise debt by selling mortgage bonds backed by its homes to investors, the first vacation-rental mortgage securitization, according to the company. Andes STR, a startup that buys and manages short-term rental homes on behalf of investors, also recently signed a deal with Chilean investment firm WEG Capital to buy roughly $80 million of properties in the U.S., Andes said. These investors are betting they can get higher returns if they rent out homes by the night instead of by the year. Low-interest rates have made it more attractive to borrow and Buy Traditional Rental Homes, inflating property prices and making it harder for new buyers to turn a profit. That has prompted some institutions and wealthy families to look in more obscure corners of the property market where competition is smaller, investment advisers say. Some are turning to investments in vacation homes, where demand has surged in many places during the pandemic as more people choose to work from remote locations and leisure travel heated up last year. “There’s a lot more yield available in the short-term market,” said Saluda Grade’s chief executive, Ryan Craft. It is the latest sign of how the pandemic is changing the way people work and live, and how real-estate investors are angling to find new ways to profit from these shifts. Saluda Grade is targeting homes within driving distance of major population centers, Mr. Craft said. His company will buy the homes and AvantStay will manage them for a fee. But while vacation-rental homes can offer higher returns, they also pose challenges to investors. Mortgages are usually more expensive and harder to get for short-term rentals than for owner-occupied homes, said Giri Devanur, CEO of reAlpha Tech Corp., a startup that wants to pool money from small-time investors to buy short-term-rental homes.

Compassion is important. Spiritual Guru and the Hugging Saint of India revered, as Amma states, "To have mercy is the first step in spiritual life." Having success and material wealth and being compassionate with the world around us is Okay. We are living in an age where more and more people understand that we are not aloof from those who are struggling or living in poverty. Nor are we isolated from those who get mad from time to time, and are mean to us. We all have a human heart with real feelings, bonds rich and sometimes enmeshed, epic mistakes and glorious victories. The more we can cultivate appreciation for our fellow man and woman, the better the ability to treat each other with dignity. If we love each other, we listen and even if our opinions are different, we will learn how to live in harmony.

There is someone special for everyone. Often there are two or three or even four. They come from different enerations. They travel across oceans of time and the depths of heavenly dimensions to be with you again. They come from the other side, from heaven. They look different, but your heart knows them. Your heart has held them in arms like yours in the moon-filled deserts of Egypt and the ancient plains of Mongolia. You have ridden together in the armies of forgotten warrior-generals, and you have lived together in the sand-covered caves of the Ancient Ones. You are bonded together throughout eternity, and you will never be alone.

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By D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review "Historical fiction readers are in for a treat with When I Was Better, a love story set in Hungary and Canada which follows the journey of István and Teréza, who flee the Nazi and Soviet invasions and the Hungarian Revolution to finally make their home in Winnipeg in the 1960s. Maps and a cast of characters portend an attention to details that history buffs will appreciate, but the lively chapter headings that begin with "This is What Dying Feels Like" are the real draw, promising inviting scenarios that compel readers to learn more about the characters' lives and influences. Few other books about immigrant experience hold the descriptive power of When I Was Better: "Her world had transformed into a place of gestures and facial expressions, making her feel more vigilant now than she had ever been under Communism. No one understood her but Zolti. Already she ached for her language and the family she left behind." Rita Bozi's ability to capture not just the history and milieu of the times, but the life and passions of those who live it is a sterling example of what sets an extraordinary read apart from a mundane narration of circumstance and history. Her ability to depict the everyday experiences and insights of her protagonist bonds reader to the subject in an intimate manner that brings not just the era, but the psychology of its participants to life through inner reflection, influence and experience, and even dialogue: “Four lengths of sausage, please?” Teréza watched as the man pulled two small lengths from the hook and wrapped them in course paper. “I beg your pardon, sir, but would you kindly add in two more lengths?” “We got an aristocrat here? If you take four lengths, what d’you imagine the workers are gonna eat at the end of the day?” The account of a seven-year separation, Budapest and Winnipeg cultures and contrasts, and refugee experiences brings history to life through the eyes of its beholders. That which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. This saying applies especially strongly to When I Was Better 's powerful story, highly recommended for historical fiction readers and library collections interested in powerfully compelling writing packed with insights: “Why is it so agonizing to be truthful?” István asked, not expecting an answer. “It depends on what truth you’re about to reveal. And how you expect it to be received. If you’re expecting an execution, you have two choices. Die for what you believe in or lie to save your life.” “So in the end, it all comes down to values.” István reached for the martini, took another sip. Bela smiled. “Without truth, there’s no real connection. The truth hurts, but love eventually heals what hurts.”" "With sharp insight and the gifts of a natural, Bozi's novel brilliantly chronicles the plight of an entire generation of Hungarians through the intimate portrait of two lovers tested by the political and personal betrayals that ripped through the heart of the twentieth century.

I believe that when you first take over a new outfit, start out trusting the people there unless you have real evidence not to. If you trust them, they will trust you, and those bonds will strengthen over time. They will work hard to make sure you do well. They will protect you and cover you. They will take care of you.

Fascism is also about the slow, steady infiltration of all the instruments of state power. It’s about the slow erosion of civil liberties, about unspectacular day-today injustices. Fighting it means fighting to win back the minds and hearts of people. Fighting it does not mean asking for shakhas and the madrassas that are overtly communal to be banned, it means working toward the day when they’re voluntarily abandoned as bad ideas. It means keeping an eagle eye on public institutions and demanding accountability. It means putting your ear to the ground and listening to the whispering of the truly powerless. It means giving a forum to the myriad voices from the hundreds of resistance movements across the country which are speaking about real things—about bonded labor, marital rape, sexual preferences, women’s wages, uranium dumping, unsustainable mining, weavers’ woes, farmers’ suicides. It means fighting displacement and dispossession and the relentless, everyday violence of abject poverty. Fighting it also means not allowing your newspaper columns and prime-time TV spots to be hijacked by their spurious passions and their staged theatrics, which are designed to divert attention from everything else.

In the current system, to manage the laborious process of cross-firm reconciliation, middlemen ledger-keepers have been created—clearinghouses, settlement agencies, and correspondent banks, custodial banks, and others. Those intermediaries solve some of the trust problems but they also add cost, time, and risk. In the United States, the final settlement of a trade takes two days for U.S. Treasury bonds and up to thirty days for instruments such as syndicated loans. Not only do massive errors and omissions still occur, but the time lag paralyzes literally trillions of dollars of potentially useful capital, which must wait in escrow accounts or collateral agreements until all parties have cleared their books and the trade is settled. A more efficient, real-time system would unlock those funds, sending a wall of money into the world’s markets—yes, to make bankers richer, but also to provide more credit to businesses and households. In theory, R3’s distributed ledger could achieve all that. It could unleash a tidal wave of money.

When we spend time together with those we love and respect, good things follow. It’s a virtuous cycle. The way to create a sense of belonging isn’t some corporate retreat or a forced and artificial team bonding activity; it’s in creating space for genuine, real connection.

In the late-twentieth century, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist named Robin Dunbar proposed a theory that Homo sapiens can only care about, identify with, and maintain stable relationships with 150 people. This number correlates to the size of the social groups in our evolutionary past. When we were Homo erectus, we lived in small hunter-gatherer groups bonded by sociality. Back then, only caring about our immediate group was advantageous. It helped us defend our tribe. It helped us advance, and survive. But that limitation carried forward. Today, in a given tragedy, we can overlay the faces of our family, friends, and co-workers on only 150 people. Beyond that, compassion fades, but not because we’re evil. Our emotional hardwiring can’t cope with it. We’re living in a global community of ten billion, with brains that can only feel compassion for our immediate clan. Other factors come into play, such as distance. A tragedy across the world is harder to feel compassion for than one in our own neighborhood. People who don’t look like us are more challenging to identify with. And if our species has a problem with apathy, and feeling compassion for the pain of others in real time, how can we expect ourselves to conjure compassion for a tragedy that hasn’t even happened yet? The victims of Homo sapiens’ demise haven’t even been born. What emotional incentive do we have to make the sacrifices that will save future generations, if our brains aren’t capable of caring about them sufficiently?

have traveled around the world. I’ve walked the Great Wall of China, eaten dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and ridden the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. That’s not all. I’ve led an army into battle on dragonback, seduced a vicious mafia boss, and journeyed back in time to fall in love with everyone from Vikings to the Knights of the Round Table. I’ve lived a thousand lives. Too bad the only real one fucking sucks.

Rhys looked them each in the eye, even my sisters, his hand brushing the back of my own. 'Do you want the inspiring talk or the bleak one?' he asked. 'We want the real one,' Amren said. Rhys pushed his shoulders back, elegantly folding his wings behind him. 'I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, of the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn't... I might have become as awful as the prick we're going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training,' he said to Cassian, 'I would not have known the true depth of strength, of resilience, of honour and loyalty.' Cassian's eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, 'If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.' Azriel bowed his head in thanks. Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. 'If I had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.' She wiped away her tears as she nodded. I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting. Rhys bowed his head to her. 'If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake...' A quiet laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. 'My own power would have consumed me long ago.' Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. 'And if I had not met my mate...' His words failed him as silver lined his eyes. He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have... The wait was worth it. He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. 'I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to... so I could find you.' He kissed another tear away. And then he said to my sisters, 'We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we'll find out why.' He surveyed them all again- and held out his hand to Cassian. Cassian took it, and held out his other for Mor. Then Mor extended her other to Azriel. Azriel to Amren. Amren to Nesta. Nesta to Elain. And Elain to me. Until we were all linked, all bound together. Rhys said, 'We will walk out onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today...' His chin lifted. 'The great joy and honour of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful- more than I can possibly say- that I was given this time with you all.' 'We are grateful, Rhysand,' Amren said quietly. 'More than you know.' Rhys gave her a small smile as the others murmured their agreement. He squeezed my hand again as he said, 'Then let's go make Hybern very ungrateful to have known us, too.

Rhys looked them each in the eye, even my sisters, his hand brushing the back of my own. 'Do you want the inspiring talk or the bleak one?' he asked. 'We want the real one,' Amren said. Rhys pushed his shoulders back, elegantly folding his wings behind him. 'I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, of the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn't... I might have become as awful as the price we're going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training,' he said to Cassian, 'I would not have known the true depth of strength, of resilience, of honour and loyalty.' Cassian's eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, 'If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.' Azriel bowed his head in thanks. Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. 'If I had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.' She wiped away her tears as she nodded. I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting. Rhys bowed his head to her. 'If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake...' A quiet laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. 'My own power would have consumed me long ago.' Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. 'And if I had not met my mate...' His words failed him as silver lined his eyes. He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have... The wait was worth it. He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. 'I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to... so I could find you.' He kissed another tear away. And then he said to my sisters, 'We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we'll find out why.' He surveyed them all again- and held out his hand to Cassian. Cassian took it, and held out his other for Mor. Then Mor extended her other to Azriel. Azriel to Amren. Amren to Nesta. Nesta to Elain. And Elain to me. Until we were all linked, all bound together. Rhys said, 'We will walk out onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today...' His chin lifted. 'The great joy and honour of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful- more than I can possibly say- that I was given this time with you all.' 'We are grateful, Rhysand,' Amren said quietly. 'More than you know.' Rhys gave her a small smile as the others murmured their agreement. He squeezed my hand again as he said, 'Then let's go make Hybern very ungrateful to have known us, too.

I have traveled around the world. I've walked the Great Wall of China, eaten dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and ridden the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. That's not all. I've led an army into battle on dragonback, seduced a vicious mafia boss, and journeyed back in time to fall in love with everyone from Vikings to the Knights of the Round Table. I've lived a thousand lives. Too bad the only real one fucking sucks.

The key to true wealth is putting your money to work for you. Practically speaking, that means spending money on income-producing assets that will supply cash and continue to grow in value over time. The most common assets used to build wealth include: • Stocks • Bonds • Real estate

After seven years of pain and starvation, little red hair, after torment and suffering, I thought to take your blood. “My life,” she corrected bravely, needing all the pieces of the puzzle. He stared relentlessly, the watchful eyes of a predator. Shea twisted her fingers together in agitation. He looked a stranger, an invincible being with no real emotion, only a hard resolve and a killer’s instincts. She cleared her throat. “You needed me.” I had no thought but to feed. My body recognized yours before my mind did. “I don’t understand.” Once I recognized you as my lifemate, my first thought was to punish you for leaving me in torment, then bind you to me for eternity. There was no apology, only a waiting. Shea sensed danger, but she did not back down. “How did you bind me to you?” The exchange of our blood. Her heart slammed painfully. “What does that mean, exactly?” The blood bond is strong. I am in your mind, as you are in mine. It is impossible for us to lie to one another. I feel your emotions and know your thoughts as you do mine. She shook her head in denial. “That may be true for you, but not for me. I feel your pain at times, but I never know your thoughts.” That is because you choose not to merge with me. Your mind seeks the touch and reassurance of mine often, yet you refuse to allow it, so I merge with you to prevent your discomfort. Shea could not deny the truth in his words. Often she felt her mind tuning itself to his, reaching out for him. Disturbed by the unwanted and unfamiliar need, she always imposed a strict discipline on herself. It was unconscious on her part, something she did automatically for self-protection. Jacques, within minutes of her need arising, always reached for her to merge them. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “You seem to know more about what is happening here than I do, Jacques. Tell me.” Lifemates are bound together for all eternity. One cannot exist without the other. We balance one another. You are the light to my darkness. We must share one another often.

I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

I'll Be There For You" These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

As the modern era came into being, the avarice of the usurer was supplanted by interest in the broader and more abstract sense of a share or stake. This new concept of interest was ethically wide-ranging: it ‘came to cover virtually the entire range of human actions, from the narrowly self-centered to the sacrificially altruistic, and from the prudently calculated to the passionately compulsive’.49 The seventeenth-century English statesman and philosopher Lord Shaftesbury summed up the new thinking with his comment that ‘Interest governs the World.’50 In his Fable of the Bees (1714), Bernard Mandeville exposed the paradox at the heart of the modern world, namely that private vices brought public benefits. Adam Smith incorporated Mandeville’s wicked insights into his political economy. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith describes the individual as one who ‘By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.’51 A similar thought is expressed in another famous line, in which Smith writes that ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ The spirit of capitalism was transmitted across networks of credit that connected lenders and borrowers through bonds of mutual self-interest.52 Daniel Defoe described credit as a ‘stock’, synonymous with capital, while the French in Defoe’s day referred to capital as ‘interest’, in the sense of taking a stake.fn6 From a technical viewpoint, capital consists of a stream of future income discounted to its present value. Without interest, there can be no capital. Without capital, no capitalism. Turgot, a contemporary of Adam Smith’s, understood this very well: ‘the capitalist lender of money,’ he wrote, ‘ought to be considered as a dealer in a commodity which is absolutely necessary for the production of wealth, and which cannot be at too low a price.’53 (Turgot exaggerated. As we shall see, interest at ‘too low a price’ is the source of many evils.)

Often times, the two go hand in hand: good food can give people a common denominator to bond over. But when you take a group of people already so intimately close and then you give them an outstanding meal? That’s where the real magic happens.

While the specifics of her fate still eluded her, the knowledge she had encountered on her journey did not. Her friendship with Victoria had taught her about ambition, obsession, and desperation. Janay had taught her about selflessness and the compulsion to put the wellbeing of others before oneself. Her foster father, Alan Cooper, had taught her about the strength of familial bonds, about being a decent human being, about righteousness. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. While she may not have had much time with her foster mother, Elena Cooper, even she had influenced her. It was Elena who had introduced Sofia to Venice and to the concept that monsters might just exist, if not in real life, then in the mind.  Sofia could see it all very clearly now. There was a reason why she was unable to integrate at school or to forge other meaningful relationships with any of the other children beyond her few friends. There was a reason she struggled to lay down roots. Her repressed sexuality, dormant for all her formative years and stifling her appetite for romance beyond the craving of her dreams, no doubt had its purpose too. While the nature of this remained a mystery to her, she still strongly believed that it was fate that had carved a path for her to Palazzo Rosso, and everything that had happened up until her epiphany in that hospital bed had happened for a reason. To teach her. To prepare her for what awaited. She knew this now. And she was ready. But this was her journey. Hers alone.

Rhys looked them each in the eye, even my sisters, his hand brushing the back of my own. “Do you want the inspiring talk or the bleak one?” he asked. “We want the real one,” Amren said. Rhys pushed his shoulders back, elegantly folding his wings behind him. “I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, or the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don’t know. I don’t really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn’t … I might have become as awful as that prick we’re going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training,” he said to Cassian, “I would not have known the true depths of strength, of resilience, of honor and loyalty.” Cassian’s eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, “If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.” Azriel bowed his head in thanks. Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. “If I had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.” She wiped away her tears as she nodded. I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting. Rhys bowed his head to her. “If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake …” A quiet laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. “My own power would have consumed me long ago.” Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. “And if I had not met my mate …” His words failed him as silver lined his eyes. He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have … The wait was worth it. He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. “I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to … so I could find you.” He kissed another tear away. And then he said to my sisters, “We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we’ll find out why.

I have traveled around the world. I’ve walked the Great Wall of China, eaten dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and ridden the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. That’s not all. I’ve led an army into battle on dragonback, seduced a vicious mafia boss, and journeyed back in time to fall in love with everyone from Vikings to the Knights of the Round Table. I’ve lived a thousand lives. Too bad the only real one fucking sucks. I sigh and close the book I’ve been reading. It’s a good one, about a ghost hunter who accidentally falls in love with the spirit she’s supposed to track down. Some people call these guilty pleasure reads, but why should I feel guilt for wanting to escape to somewhere else, even for a little while?

Unfortunately, the Bull that gilded Renaissance New York did little for most Americans. Eighties Wall Street was about institutional money released by deregulation, mergers and acquisitions, and, most of all, the debt that made it all possible. As John Kenneth Galbraith points out, financial euphoria always starts with new ways to borrow money; this time it was triggered by the Savings & Loan crisis. Volcker’s rocketing interest rates had forced S&Ls to offer double digits to new depositors while only getting back single digits on the old thirty-year mortgages on their books. S&Ls were going under, and getting a mortgage was nearly impossible, so in March 1980, with the banking system and the housing market on the brink, Carter had signed a law to allow them to issue credit cards, invest in commercial real estate, and offer checking accounts in order to stay in business. Reagan then took it a step further with a change that encouraged S&Ls to sell their mortgages in search of higher returns, freeing up a $1 trillion that needed to be invested in something. Which takes us back to Salomon Brothers, where in 1978 one Lew Ranieri had repackaged an old investment product the government had clamped down on during the Depression: A group of home mortgages all backed by government insurance would be bundled together, then sliced into bonds, thus converting the debt some people owed on their homes into an asset for others. Ranieri had been a bit ahead of the curve then—the same high interest rates that killed the S&Ls also made his bonds unattractive—but now deregulation let Salomon buy up the S&Ls’ mortgages at a deep discount, bundle them into bonds, and sell them back to the S&Ls who believed they’d diversified into the bond market when in fact they’d just bought ground meat made out of their own steaks. In June 1983, Salomon Brothers and Freddie Mac together issued the first collateralized mortgage obligation bonds (CMOs), which bundled up debt and cut it into tranches based on the amount of risk: you could choose between ground chuck and ground sirloin. It would be years before technology would allow doing this on a huge scale, but the immediate impact was that all kinds of debt, not just mortgages, were bundled, cut into bonds, and sold: credit card debt, car loans, you name it. Between 1983 and 1988, some $60 billion of CMOs were sold; GM’s financing arm became more profitable than its cars. America began to make debt instead of things. The

Love should increase over time, not start at a high," she said. "Real love is developed over time. It's about learning to trust, bond, and build a family together, with or without children. So I'm in favor of not overthinking yourself to death in the beginning. Women, especially, tend to rule people out too quickly.

The dolphins spent far more time near the mirror, inspecting their reflection, when they had been visibly marked than when they had been sham marked. They seemed to recognize that the mark they saw in the mirror had been put on their own body. Since they hardly paid any attention to marks on other dolphins, it was not as if they were obsessed with marks in general. They were specifically interested in the ones on themselves. Critics complained that the dolphins in this study failed to touch their own body. or rub off the mark, as humans or apes do, but I’m not sure we should hold the absence of self-touching against an animal that lacks the anatomy for it. Until better tests have been designed, it seems safe to let dolphins join the cognitive elite of animals that recognize themselves in a mirror. Dolphins possess large brains (larger than humans, in fact), and show every sign of high intelligence. Each individual produces its own unique whistle sound by which the others recognize him or her, and there are even indications that they use these sounds to call each other “by name,” so to speak. They enjoy lifelong bonds, and reconcile after fights by means of sexy petting (much like bonobos), while males form power-seeking coalitions. They may encircle a school of herring to drive them together in a compact ball, releasing bubbles to keep them in place, after which they pick their food like fruit from a tree. With regard to the co-emergence hypothesis, it is important to note the level of dolphin altruism. Does self-awareness go hand in hand with perspective-taking, and do dolphins show the sort of targeted helping known of humans and apes? One of the oldest reports in the scientific literature concerns an incident on October 30, 1954, off the coast of Florida. During a capture expedition for a public aquarium, a stick of dynamite was set off underwater near a pod of bottlenose dolphins. As soon as one stunned victim surfaced, heavily listing, two other dolphins came to its aid: “One came up from below on each side, and placing the upper lateral part of their heads approximately beneath the pectoral fins of the injured one, they buoyed it to the surface in an apparent effort to allow it to breathe while it remained partially stunned.” The two helpers were submerged, which meant that they couldn’t breathe during their effort. The entire pod remained nearby (whereas normally they’d take off immediately after an explosion), and waited until their companion had recovered. They then all fled in a hurry, making tremendous leaps. The scientists reporting this incident added: “There is no doubt in our minds that the cooperative assistance displayed for their own species was real and deliberate.