Cater To Others Quotes

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We are so materially well off, yet so psychologically tormented in so many low-level and shallow ways. People relinquish all responsibility, demanding that society cater to their feelings and sensibilities. People hold on to arbitrary certainties and try to enforce them on others, often violently, in the name of some made-up righteous cause. People, high on a sense of false superiority, fall into inaction and lethargy for fear of trying something worthwhile and failing at it.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
We live among ruins in a World in which ‘god is dead’ as Nietzsche stated. The ideals of today are comfort, expediency, surface knowledge, disregard for one’s ancestral heritage and traditions, catering to the lowest standards of taste and intelligence, apotheosis of the pathetic, hoarding of material objects and possessions, disrespect for all that is inherently higher and better — in other words a complete inversion of true values and ideals, the raising of the victory flag of ignorance and the banner of degeneracy. In such a time, social decadence is so widespread that it appears as a natural component of all political institutions. The crises that dominate the daily lives of our societies are part of a secret occult war to remove the support of spiritual and traditional values in order to turn man into a passive instrument of dark powers. The common ground of both Capitalism and Socialism is a materialistic view of life and being. Materialism in its war with the Spirit has taken on many forms; some have promoted its goals with great subtlety, whilst others have done so with an alarming lack of subtlety, but all have added, in greater or lesser measure, to the growing misery of Mankind. The forms which have done the most damage in our time may be enumerated as: Freemasonry, Liberalism, Nihilism, Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Imperialism, Anarchism, Modernism and the New Age.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Trump liked to portray his business as an empire, it was actually a discrete holding company and boutique enterprise, catering more to his peculiarities as proprietor and brand representative than to any bottom line or other performance measures.
Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
A parable: The Monk and the Minister Two close boyhood friends grow up and go their separate ways. One becomes a humble monk, the other a rich and powerful minister to the king. Years later they meet. As they catch up, the portly minister (in his fine robes) takes pity on the thin and shabby monk. Seeking to help, he says: “You know, if you could learn to cater to the king, you wouldn’t have to live on rice and beans.” To which the monk replies: “If you could learn to live on rice and beans, you wouldn’t have to cater to the king.” Most all of us fall somewhere between the two. As for me, it is better to be closer to the monk.
J.L. Collins (The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life)
The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over. Provided too that its passions, hatreds, fears are catered to. Nor need one try to stay within the limits of plausibility: on the contrary, the grosser, the bigger, the cruder the lie, the more readily is it believed and followed. Nor is there any need to avoid contradictions: the mob never notices; needless to pretend to correlate what is said to some with what is said to others: each person or group believes only what he is told, not what anyone else is told; needless to strive for coherence: the mob has no memory; needless to pretend to any truth: the mob is radically incapable of perceiving it: the mob can never comprehend that its own interests are what is at stake.
Alexandre Koyré (Réflexions sur le mensonge)
Carve out the time. Notice I do not say find the time. That is an absurd and dangerous phrase. Time is never lying around waiting for us to find her. She is elusive. She wants you to sculpt her like clay, to mold her into exactly the form you desire your days to take. If you refuse to do that, if you spend your mornings worrying and your afternoons catering to others, always hoping there will be a few minutes left for you, time will play you like a sucker, making you run harder and faster with each passing week. Time wants you to realize that she is the most precious and irreducible fact in your live. Make her into what you will
Jennifer Louden
If you reach out to your phone every few minutes, it isn't the urgency you are catering to but your need to be needed by others, you are seeking attention while battling loneliness
Shahenshah Hafeez Khan
allowing your needs to remain unaddressed while you continuously cater to others is the path toward resentment and bitterness.
Damon Zahariades (The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!) (The Art Of Living Well Book 1))
The commercial media … help citizens feel as if they are successful and have met these aspirations, even if they have not. They tend to neglect reality (they don't run stories about how life is hard, fame and fortune elusive, hopes disappointed) and instead celebrate idealized identities – those that, in a commodity culture, revolve around the acquisition of status, money, fame and power, or at least the illusion of these things. The media, in other words, assist the commercial culture in “need creation”, prompting consumers to want things they don't need or have never really considered wanting. And catering to these needs, largely implanted by advertisers and the corporate culture, is a very profitable business. A major part of the commercial media revolves around selling consumers images and techniques to “actualize” themselves, or offering seductive forms of escape through entertainment and spectacle. News is filtered into the mix, but actual news is not the predominant concern of the commercial media.
Chris Hedges (The Death of the Liberal Class)
A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know—if anybody does. He said: “About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life—and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires.
Dale Carnegie (How To Stop Worrying & Start Living)
Some bemoan the brutalism of socialist architecture, but was the blandness of capitalist architecture any better? One could drive for miles along a boulevard and see nothing but parking lots and the kudzu of strip malls catering to every need, from pet shops to water dispensaries to ethnic restaurants and every other imaginable category of mom-and-pop small business, each one an advertisement for the pursuit of happiness.
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something. He is going to do something. If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak individual.
Richard M. Nixon
If life is a movie most people would consider themselves the star of their own feature. Guys might imagine they're living some action adventure epic. Chicks maybe are in a rose-colored fantasy romance. And homosexuals are living la vida loca in a fabulous musical. Still others may take the indie approach and think of themselves as an anti-hero in a coming of age flick. Or a retro badass in an exploitation B movie. Or the cable man in a very steamy adult picture. Some people's lives are experimental student art films that don't make any sense. Some are screwball comedies. Others resemble a documentary, all serious and educational. A few lives achieve blockbuster status and are hailed as a tribute to the human spirit. Some gain a small following and enjoy cult status. And some never got off the ground due to insufficient funding. I don't know what my life is but I do know that I'm constantly squabbling with the director over creative control, throwing prima donna tantrums and pouting in my personal trailor when things don't go my way. Much of our lives is spent on marketing. Make-up, exercise, dieting, clothes, hair, money, charm, attitude, the strut, the pose, the Blue Steel look. We're like walking billboards advertising ourselves. A sneak peek of upcoming attractions. Meanwhile our actual production is in disarray--we're over budget, doing poorly at private test screenings and focus groups, creatively stagnant, morale low. So we're endlessly tinkering, touching up, editing, rewriting, tailoring ourselves to best suit a mass audience. There's like this studio executive in our heads telling us to cut certain things out, make it "lighter," give it a happy ending, and put some explosions in there too. Kids love explosions. And the uncompromising artist within protests: "But that's not life!" Thus the inner conflict of our movie life: To be a palatable crowd-pleaser catering to the mainstream... or something true to life no matter what they say?
Tatsuya Ishida
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is that no one will protect my time or prioritize my needs as vigilantly as me. That’s understandable. Most people act out of self-interest; they naturally put their own priorities ahead of others’ priorities. But it means each of us is responsible for making sure our personal needs are met. No one is going to do it for us. Moreover, it’s important that we attend to our own needs before attending to the needs of others. This assertion may make you feel uncomfortable, particularly if you strive to be loving and giving in all that you do. But allowing your needs to remain unaddressed while you continuously cater to others is the path toward resentment and bitterness. It can even become a health issue if you run yourself ragged (I speak from experience).
Damon Zahariades (The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!) (The Art Of Living Well Book 1))
People don’t enter conversations, work or social, with the same intentions. You must understand and cater to that.
Patrick King (Improve Your People Skills: Build and Manage Relationships, Communicate Effectively, Understand Others, and Become the Ultimate People Person)
Selfishness isn’t characterized by knowing how you feel or what you want; selfishness is when you demand that other people always cater to your feelings, your wants, and your needs.
Leslie Vernick (The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope)
Geeks are not the world’s rowdiest people. We’re quiet and introspective, and usually more comfortable communing with our keyboards or a good book than each other. Our idea of how to paint the Emerald City red involves light liquor, heavy munchies, and marathon sessions of video games of the ‘giant robots shooting each other and everything else in sight’ variety. We debate competing lines of software or gaming consoles with passion, and dissect every movie, television show, and novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. With as many of us as there are in this town, people inevitably find ways to cater to us when we get in the mood to spend our hard-earned dollars. Downtown Seattle boasts grandiose geek magnets, like the Experience Music Project and the Experience Science Fiction museum, but it has much humbler and far more obscure attractions too, like the place we all went to for our ship party that evening: a hole-in-the-wall bar called the Electric Penguin on Capitol Hill.
Angela Korra'ti (Faerie Blood (The Free Court of Seattle #1))
Because I questioned myself and my sanity and what I was doing wrong in this situation. Because of course I feared that I might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that they’re irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile, and bossy. Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up. Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I’m fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice. Because slightly more than half of the population is regularly told that what happens doesn’t or that it isn’t the big deal we’re making it into. Because your mothers, sisters, and daughters are routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied, harassed, threatened, punished, propositioned, and groped, and challenged on what they say. Because when a woman challenges a man, then the facts are automatically in dispute, as is the speaker, and the speaker’s license to speak. Because as women we are told to view and value ourselves in terms of how men view and value us, which is to say, for our sexuality and agreeability. Because it was drilled in until it turned subconscious and became unbearable need: don’t make it about you; put yourself second or last; disregard your feelings but not another’s; disbelieve your perceptions whenever the opportunity presents itself; run and rerun everything by yourself before verbalizing it—put it in perspective, interrogate it: Do you sound nuts? Does this make you look bad? Are you holding his interest? Are you being considerate? Fair? Sweet? Because stifling trauma is just good manners. Because when others serially talk down to you, assume authority over you, try to talk you out of your own feelings and tell you who you are; when you’re not taken seriously or listened to in countless daily interactions—then you may learn to accept it, to expect it, to agree with the critics and the haters and the beloveds, and to sign off on it with total silence. Because they’re coming from a good place. Because everywhere from late-night TV talk shows to thought-leading periodicals to Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Congress and the current administration, women are drastically underrepresented or absent, missing from the popular imagination and public heart. Because although I questioned myself, I didn’t question who controls the narrative, the show, the engineering, or the fantasy, nor to whom it’s catered. Because to mention certain things, like “patriarchy,” is to be dubbed a “feminazi,” which discourages its mention, and whatever goes unmentioned gets a pass, a pass that condones what it isn’t nice to mention, lest we come off as reactionary or shrill.
Roxane Gay (Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture)
Goldwater was, in other words, a candidate for voters in Boston as much as those in Birmingham—catering to white voters who were against the idea of federal civil rights legislation but at the same time desperate to receive assurances that this didn’t make them bad people.
Rick Perlstein (Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus)
It is also true that memory sometimes comes to him as a voice. It is a voice that speaks inside him, and it is not necessarily his own. It speaks to him in the way a voice might tell stories to a child, and yet at times this voice makes fun of him, or calls him to attention, or curses him in no uncertain terms. At times it willfully distorts the story it is telling him, changing the facts to suit its whims, catering to the interests of drama rather than truth. Then he must speak to it in his own voice and tell it to stop, thus returning it to the silence it came from. At other times it sings to him. At still other times it whispers. And then there are the times it merely hums, or babbles, or cries out in pain. And even when it says nothing, he knows it is still there, and in the silence of this voice that says nothing, he waits for it to speak.
Paul Auster (The Invention of Solitude)
There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
This paying attention is the foundational act of empathy, of listening, of seeing, of imagining experiences other than one's own, of getting out of the boundaries of one's own experience. There's a currently popular argument that books help us feel empathy, but if they do so they do it by helping us imagine that we are people we are not. Or to go deeper within ourselves, to be more aware of what it means to be heartbroken, or ill, or six, or ninety-six, or completely lost. Not just versions of our self rendered awesome and eternally justified and always right, living in a world in which other people only exist to help reinforce our magnificence, though those kinds of books and movies exist in abundance to cater to the male imagination. Which is a reminder that literature and art can also help us fail at empathy if it sequesters us in the Big Old Fortress of Magnificent Me.
Rebecca Solnit (The Mother of All Questions)
It’s about respecting yourself, instead of catering to your insecure need to be liked. This is incredibly powerful, because when you love yourself enough to stand in your truth no matter what the cost, everyone benefits. You start attracting the kinds of things, people, and opportunities, that are in alignment with who you truly are, which is way more fun than hanging out with a bunch of irritating energy suckers. And by declining to participate in other people’s drama, (i.e. refusing to rip people to shreds, to complain about how unfair the world is, etc.) you not only raise your own frequency, but you offer the drama queens the chance to rise up too, instead of everyone continuing to play a low, lame game.     Never apologize for who you are. It lets the whole world down.
Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life)
[Christy] joined some other girls from her floor who had gathered in the den to watch THe Princess Bride. The last time Christy had watched the movie was before she went to Switzerland. Katie had rented it and brought it over for their final girls' night. After watching it, Katie had declared she would never trust a guy who said "As you wish" to her every whim. She wanted a guy with gusto who would say, "Get it yourself," otherwise she knew she would sit around and get fat while he catered to her.
Robin Jones Gunn (As You Wish (Christy and Todd: College Years #2))
Nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism. But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its "bourgeois" pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history. Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness. But the "progressives" blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint. Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism. On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism. These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another. But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether.
Ludwig von Mises
Are we talking a white dress and reception? Because I’ve been to loads of weddings, and I’ve had it. Friends resent the plane tickets and hotel bills; the happy couple resents the catering. Both parties think they’re doing the other a huge favor. The hoo-ha is over before you know it, and all anyone’s got to show for it is a hangover. Weddings are a racket, and the only people who profit are florists and bartenders.
Lionel Shriver (The Post-Birthday World)
I’ve been wondering how much of a person is on the surface, how much we really know about anyone at all. We don’t really know very much about each other, never mind those with whom we have only an acquaintanceship.
Anne Perry (The Cater Street Hangman (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt, #1))
There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge.
Bella DePaulo (Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After)
Unfortunately, I predict we will see a lot more of this type of behavior (and worse) as our culture progresses beyond Anglo domination. Many white people are beginning to feel like their world is being taken from them, and it causes fear and outbursts of violence like this. Except nothing is actually being taken away, it's just now being shared. It's what is referred to as privilege. Before, we (white people) could assume everything catered to us by default. Everything spoke our language. Everyone (that mattered) looked like us. Everything reflected our beliefs (well, the religious majority, anyways). Now, that is not the case. We are actually having to share space with others. What we are seeing with acts of aggression at restaurants like this is a sort of only-child selfishness taken to the extreme. We've been privileged for a long time now, and we don't like to share. There are many privilege axes beyond white. There is christian privilege, straight (heterosexual) privilege, and male privilege. If you are angered by the acceptance of things counter to how you live, but do no actual harm, then you are probably a victim of privilege. [In response to women wearing hijabs being attacked at restaurants, November 2015]
Michael Brewer
In 1973, the library even added a service called the Hoot Owl Telephonic Reference, which operated from nine P.M. until one A.M., long after the library was closed. Dialing H-O-O-T-O-W-L connected you to a librarian who could find the answer to almost any question. The Hoot Owl slogan was “Win Your Bet Without a Fight.” Apparently, in the late evening, people all over Los Angeles did a lot of betting on trivia such as the correct names of the Seven Dwarves. The service got a call every three minutes, adding up to about thirty-five thousand a year. Hoot Owl was a favorite target of conservative groups, who believed it catered to “hippies and other night people.” But the library persisted, and Hoot Owl operated every weeknight until the end of 1976.
Susan Orlean (The Library Book)
Her approach, guided by Mook and informed by the demands of winning the primary, was to build a coalition focused on core strengths: African Americans, Latinos, college-educated whites, and women. But the more she catered to them, the more she pushed away other segments of the electorate.
Jonathan Allen (Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign)
Stay Humble. Often anger comes from our own ego and pride. We don't get our own way and so we get angry. But remember, it's not all about you. :) There are other people on the planet that have wants and needs to. :) If what you want conflicts with what others want, sometime you will have to let them have what they want. Everyone is not here to meet your needs alone. They need to take care of themselves sometimes too. Sometimes anger is an ego trip. It's when we think everyone should cater to our needs and do things our own way. Our pride makes us start to think that it's our way or the highway. But you are not God. No one but God is God. :) You cannot run the universe and you are not perfect. These are all good things to remind ourselves of all the time. Paul says in Romans 12, "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment." Often times anger comes when we have a high opinion of ourselves and the way we think things SHOULD be done. But no one of is perfect. None of us has a perfect way of doing things. We need to allow for differences in other people and different opinions on things. It is never we are right and everyone else is wrong. We need to admit that sometimes we might be wrong too. Amen. So always remember to stay humble and not think of yourself as being perfect or better than you are. If you are able to see that you too make mistakes all the time, then you will have more grace for other people, and you will then become angry less. Amen.
Lisa Bedrick (How to Walk Worthy of Your Calling)
We are taught from girlhood to be nice and to protect other people's feelings, even at the expense of our own well-being. We learn, by example, that we are supposed to cater to everyone else around us. We cater to the men in our lives. We cater to our children. We cater to our friends. We cater to strangers. Does everyone have what they need? Is everyone feeling good and doing great? I address the concerns of others without even thinking, as automatically as a reflex, but when it comes to taking care of myself I have to pause and remember to ask myself, *Wait, do I have everything I need? Am I feeling good and doing great?*
Kristina Kuzmic (Hold On, But Don't Hold Still)
Luz leaned her head against the window. The bus was already on the outskirts of Mexico City and the endless urban landscape had never seemed so gray and or so harsh. Most of the city was nothing like the old money enclave of Lomas Virreyes where the Vegas lived or Polanco where the city’s most expensive restaurants and clubs catered to the wealthy. The bus passed block after block of sooty concrete cut into houses and shops and shanties and parking garages and mercados and schools and more shanties where people lived surrounded by hulks of old cars and plastic things no one bothered to throw away. Sometimes there wasn’t concrete for homes, just sheets of corrugated metal and big pieces of cardboard that would last until the next rainy season. It was the detritus of millions upon millions of people who had nowhere to go and nothing to do and were angry about it. The Reforma newspaper had reported a few weeks ago that the city’s population was in excess of 28 million--more than 25 percent of the country’s entire population--and Luz believed it. All of those people were clawing at each other in a huge fishbowl suspended 7500 feet above sea level, where there was never enough oxygen and the air was thin and dirty. The city was hemmed in by mountains on all sides; mountains like Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl that sometimes spewed smoke and ash and prevented the contaminatión from cars and factories and sewers from escaping. Luz privately thought of it as la sopa--a white soup that often blotted out the stars and prevented the night sky from getting dark. The bus slowed in traffic. As they crept along Luz saw a car stopped on the side of the road, pulled over by a transito traffic cop. As Luz watched, the driver handed the cop a peso bill from his wallet. The transito accepted it but kept talking, gesturing at the car. The motorist handed him another bill. La mordida--the bite--of the traffic cop, right under her nose. Los Hierros was crap.
Carmen Amato (The Hidden Light of Mexico City)
The problem of our time has never been with technology as such. There is no inner working of technology that inevitably leads to human subjection. The tendency exists merely because, by allowing an overwhelming increase in the numbers of the superfluous, it gives them and those who cater to them power when it is mixed with democracy. The left environmentalist, among many others, is misguided because he wants more power given to such people. He attacks precisely those elements of the modern West, of modern technology, even of modern culture, that can mitigate somewhat the rule of the superfluous and their destruction of nature, including human nature
Bronze Age Pervert (Bronze Age Mindset)
Car 68?” The dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio. “Copy.” “We got a 10-10 in progress at The Boar’s Butt.” The Boar’s Butt was a local bar and pizza joint that mainly catered to the same crowd of rowdy guys. Jack always laughed at the name. “Any other info?” Jack swung the car around and hit the lights. “Bartender called it in. No other details. Backup is
Christopher Greyson (Girl Jacked (Jack Stratton, #1))
If I could write an autobiography for fear, it would read like this: __________ Hi, my name is Fear. F-E-A-R. But you are going to call me a lot of other things as you start to get closer to me. I’m terribly unoriginal. I’m like every has-been out there, but you give me way more credit than I deserve. You should keep doing that. I like it when you make me bigger than I actually am. I’m going to make you feel alone, and I like it when you believe you’re the only one who’s ever felt this way. You think I’m custom-catered to fit you, but I’m really no different than the brand of me your best friend wears. I’m a ballad lurking in the hearts of a billion people, and I will do anything to keep you from realizing that I am just the same song on repeat. You all know all my words. I’m pretty jealous though. I want you alone with me at night. I’m not afraid to say I’m greedy or that I don’t want to share you. I’m a territorial lover, and I would rather you not have solid and deep conversations at dinner parties or find a community that doesn’t leave your side. I wrote you a story a long time ago, and I don’t want you to figure out that you’ve outgrown the plotline. I wonder why you don’t get over me sometimes, but then the realization hits me: You come back because you know I want you. You come back because you know the sound of my voice. You come back because you know the way I move and how I shut you down. You’ve stood face-to-face with me so many times and I have told you who you are. The crazy thing is, you’ve believed me.
Hannah Brencher (Come Matter Here: Your Invitation to Be Here in a Getting There World)
A narcissist’s daughter grows up in a home that lacks nurturing, validation, and unconditional love, and she often develops into an adult who does not know who she is. She grows up to be hesitant and lost. She does not have a strong sense of self, and because she has been conditioned to cater to her mother’s needs, she will often seek relationships in which she can continue to put others before herself.
Brenda Stephens (Recovering from Narcissistic Mothers: A Daughter's Guide)
HYGGE TIP: CREATE A COOKING CLUB A few years ago, I wanted to create some kind of system that would mean I would get to see some of my good friends on a regular basis, so we formed a cooking club. This was in part prompted by my work, as the importance of our relationships always emerges as a key indicator of why some people are happier than others. Furthermore, I wanted to organize the cooking club in a way that maximized the hygge. So instead of taking turns being the host and cooking for the five or six other people, we always cook together. That is where the hygge is. The rules are simple. Each time there is a theme, or a key ingredient—for example, duck or sausages—each person brings ingredients to make a small dish to fit the theme. It creates a very relaxed, informal, egalitarian setting, where no one person has to cater for the guests—or live up to the standards of the last fancy dinner party.
Meik Wiking (The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living)
Drenched in café au lait stucco, the mall was bordered by an example of America’s most unique architectural contribution to the world, a parking lot. Some bemoan the brutalism of socialist architecture, but was the blandness of capitalist architecture any better? One could drive for miles and see nothing but parking lots and the kudzu of strip malls catering to every need, from pet shops to water dispensaries to ethnic restaurants and every other imaginable category of mom-and-pop small business, each one an advertisment for the pursuit of happiness.
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
opting to complain, life gives you things to complain about this vicious circle ensures your happiness drought life responds to us according to our actions and belief thus reinforcing those beliefs to no relief there is no first cause—still, break the cycle abide in peaceful Silence or experience an inner hell “others” are often a reflecting mirror shining back revealing to us what loads are left to unstack what are friends for but a means to practice kindness and for fortifying the ego’s belief in disconnectedness people cater to me according to my own nature so they are me—there is no individual self, rest assured tweak your thoughts about her and she then treats you thus all minds are one, and all is illusory, as priorly discussed she is you, and you, her the shroud of separateness shall now henceforth wither look back at your life’s recurring patterns and themes and the façade of the ego will start to crack at the seams untranscended mindsets follow wherever we go the common denominator is what your mind has sown that which supports life is automatically supported the get-gain-obtain mentality can be safely aborted
Jarett Sabirsh (Love All-Knowing: An Epic Spiritual Poem)
By noon they will all be at my new house in the Victor’s Village. The reporters, the camera crews, even Effie Trinket, my old escort, will have made their way to District 12 from the Capitol. I wonder if Effie will still be wearing that silly pink wig, or if she’ll be sporting some other unnatural color especially for the Victory Tour. There will be others waiting, too. A staff to cater to my every need on the long train trip. A prep team to beautify me for public appearances. My stylist and friend, Cinna, who designed the gorgeous outfits that first made the audience take notice of me in the Hunger Games.
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
A number of Chinese filmmakers, including Chen Kaige and Li Shaohong, imitated Zhang's visual style in the early 1990s by multiplying various erotic images of the oriental Other for global consumption. Consequently, these films, usually sponsored by multinational corporations and catering to the tastes of global audiences, can be perceived as following the same model -- the Zhang Yimou model. To a great degree, this model also marks the end of formal experiment for the Fifth Generation directors because they must adopt a much more conventional way of filmmaking in order to meed the demand of the global market.
Tonglin Lu (Confronting Modernity in the Cinemas of Taiwan and Mainland China)
Do not allow your children to celebrate the days on which unbelief and superstition are being catered to. They are admittedly inclined to want this because they see that the children of Roman Catholic parents observe those days. Do not let them attend carnivals, observe Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), see Santa Claus, or observe Twelfth Night, because they are all remnants of an idolatrous papacy. You must not keep your children out of school or from work on those days nor let them play outside or join in the amusement. The Lord has said, “After the doings of the land of Egypt, where you lived, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, where I bring you, you shall not do: neither shall you walk in their ordinances” (Lev. 18:3). The Lord will punish the Reformed on account of the days of Baal (Hosea 2:12-13), and he also observes what the children do on the occasion of such idolatry (Jer. 17:18). Therefore, do not let your children receive presents on Santa Claus day, nor let them draw tickets in a raffle and such things. Pick other days on which to give them the things that amuse them, and because the days of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost have the same character, Reformed people must keep their children away from these so-called holy days and feast days.
Jacobus Koelman
Cesca sipped from her coffee cup as she peered through the windshield into the darkness. Rain was falling hard on a San Francisco she didn’t recognize from her own universe, or from her time in the other Matt’s universe. The real darkness here had nothing to do with night. This San Francisco mirrored the moral corruption and decay of the society which inhabited it. She and Ariel had been here two days, scouring streets filled with perversion and hopelessness; alleyways inhabited by the homeless and mentally ill; sex shops catering to every perversion imaginable and unimaginable; sidewalks teeming with drug addicts and male prostitutes — some dressed as women; street corners inhabited by once lovely young women prematurely aging from selling their bodies to all takers — male and female; children of both sexes, from as young as seven and eight, dressed by pimps to attract pedophiles who cruised this part of the city nightly. Many of the children would be sold on the spot, never to be seen again. Sun-faded and now graffitied wall mosaics of galvanizing yet transient political cult personalities, erected by their blinded followers centuries ago, marked this alternate world’s gradual slide into an ethical, and finally moral abyss, from which it had never crawled out. "God, I can’t believe this is San Francisco,” whispered Ariel from the seat next to Cesca. “I feel like I need to run a bar of soap over my soul.
Bobby Underwood (The Dreamless Sea (Matt Ransom #9))
An antiracist movement that emphasizes the *actions* of individual 'white people' with a docus on things like 'calling out' everyday racism, or holding a company 'to account' for not catering to darker skin tones, perhaps isn't up to the task of defeating a concept that our societies have been deeply invested in for centuries, and that has assumed the 'truth' status that whiteness has. The focus on microaggressions and interpersonal slights often occurs at the expense of considering 'whiteness' or as a pervasive, insidious modus operandi, a particular way of engaging with the world. It is a system that is extractive, oppositional, and binary - a dominant system, one that asserts not just that white people should be dominant over other 'races' but that, more fundamentally, sees human life as dominant over all other life forms.
Emma Dabiri (What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition)
Meanwhile the Zenias of this world are abroad in the land, plying their trade, cleaning out male pockets, catering to male fantasies. Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur. The Zenias of this world have studied this situation and turned it to their own advantage; they haven't let themselves be moulded into male fantasies, they've done it themselves. They've slipped sideways into dreams; the dreams of women too, because women are fantasies for other women, just as they are for men. But fantasies of a different kind.
Margaret Atwood (The Robber Bride)
People, especially those in charge, rarely invite you into their offices and give freely of their time. Instead, you have to do something unique, compelling, even funny or a bit daring, to earn it. Even if you happen to be an exceptionally well-rounded person who possesses all of the scrappy qualities discussed so far, it’s still important to be prepared, dig deep, do the prep work, and think on your feet. Harry Gordon Selfridge, who founded the London-based department store Selfridges, knew the value of doing his homework. Selfridge, an American from Chicago, traveled to London in 1906 with the hope of building his “dream store.” He did just that in 1909, and more than a century later, his stores continue to serve customers in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Selfridges’ success and staying power is rooted in the scrappy efforts of Harry Selfridge himself, a creative marketer who exhibited “a revolutionary understanding of publicity and the theatre of retail,” as he is described on the Selfridges’ Web site. His department store was known for creating events to attract special clientele, engaging shoppers in a way other retailers had never done before, catering to the holidays, adapting to cultural trends, and changing with the times and political movements such as the suffragists. Selfridge was noted to have said, “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.” How do you get people to take notice? How do you stand out in a positive way in order to make things happen? The curiosity and imagination Selfridge employed to successfully build his retail stores can be just as valuable for you to embrace in your circumstances. Perhaps you have landed a meeting, interview, or a quick coffee date with a key decision maker at a company that has sparked your interest. To maximize the impression you’re going to make, you have to know your audience. That means you must respectfully learn what you can about the person, their industry, or the culture of their organization. In fact, it pays to become familiar not only with the person’s current position but also their background, philosophies, triumphs, failures, and major breakthroughs. With that information in hand, you are less likely to waste the precious time you have and more likely to engage in genuine and meaningful conversation.
Terri L. Sjodin (Scrappy: A Little Book About Choosing to Play Big)
and the two of you started dating… he proposed on New Year’s Eve and you married in April of the following year.’ I nod, twisting the wedding ring on my finger. ‘And, just to confirm, you had no suspicion that he was anyone other than Dominic Stephen Gill?’ I think back to the little anomalies. The tiny signs that I was only too happy to ignore. ‘No, not at all,’ I say. ‘I’d be more than happy to take a lie detector test to that effect.’ For Christ sake, why did you say that? I ask myself. What do you think this is, an episode of Law and Order? DS Sutherland’s sorrowful expression returns, as he closes the cover of the file. ‘That won’t be necessary, Ms Palmer.’ April arrives, with its cloud of blossom and canopy of acid-bright greenery. I sign the documents selling my interest in Comida Catering Ltd and bank a substantial sum of money. I attend my first antenatal ultrasound appointment as Alice Palmer, having first removed the rings from my left hand and shoved them into the back of a drawer. And I receive a Metropolitan Police compliment slip, with three handwritten words Please See Attached. The attached is a formal document, a ‘Recorded Crime Outcome’, confirming that there would be sufficient evidence to charge the individual using the alias Ben MacAlister with the murder of Dominic Stephen Gill, if said individual were still alive. A check of the envelope reveals nothing more. I take out my phone and
Alison James (The Man She Married)
Emergency food has become very useful indeed, and to a very large assortment of people and institutions. The United States Department of Agriculture uses it to reduce the accumulation of embarrassing agricultural surpluses. Business uses it to dispose of nonstandard or unwanted product, to protect employee morale and avoid dump fees, and, of course, to accrue tax savings. Celebrities use it for exposure. Universities and hospitals, as well as caterers and restaurants, use it to absorb leftovers. Private schools use it to teach ethics, and public schools use it to instill a sense of civic responsibility. Churches use it to express their concern for the least of their brethren, and synagogues use it to be faithful to the tradition of including the poor at the table. Courts use it to avoid incarcerating people arrested for Driving While Intoxicated and a host of other offense. Environmentalists use it to reduce the solid waste stream. Penal institutions use it to create constructive outlets for the energies of their inmates, and youth-serving agencies of all sorts use it to provide service opportunities for young people. Both profit-making and nonprofit organizations use it to absorb unneeded kitchen and office equipment. A wide array of groups, organizations, and institutions benefits from the halo effect of 'feeding the hungry,' and this list does not even include the many functions for ordinary individuals--companionship, exercise, meaning, and purpose. . .If we didn't have hunger, we'd have to invent it.
Janet Poppendieck (Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement)
You can’t get caught up in perfect. It’s not about what the paddle says. If you immerse yourself every single day for three months in this journey, you’re going to grow. You’re going to learn stuff about yourself; you’re going to overcome your obstacle--be it physical or emotional. That’s what’s important. But I want to be 100 percent honest here: there are days when I’m freaking out and I don’t have the answers. I get frustrated, but I try and see it as a temporary situation and a separate entity from who I am. I step away from it. I’ve learned a ton about myself and how to manage myself and my expectations. There have been days when I’ve said to my partner, “I need you to help me today.” I put them in the teacher role, and they wind up giving me the pep talk: “We can do this, Derek. We can do it.” They’re saying it, they’re doing it, they’re believing it. Before DWTS, my work was instinctual and internal. It was something I could never put into words. But being a teacher forced me to dissect what I was doing and explain it. Some partners I could be really tough with and they’d respond to me. Others would shut down. If I got a little intense with Jennifer Grey, it was counterproductive, because she would block me out. But if I did this to Maria Menounos, she would get a fire in her belly and try harder. I have to learn to adjust myself to cater to each partner’s needs and style of learning. If the look I get from her is deer in the headlights, I know I am on the wrong path. I have to find a way to make them understand. Great teachers strive to get through. My fulfillment comes when the lightbulb goes on and they experience that aha moment. They see not just what I want them to do, but what they’re capable of.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
Different form, same function. Many companies that create blue oceans attract customers from other industries who use a product or service that performs the same function or bears the same core utility as the new one but takes a very different physical form. In the case of Ford’s Model T, Ford looked to the horse-drawn carriage. The horse-drawn carriage had the same core utility as the car: transportation for individuals and families. But it had a very different form: a live animal versus a machine. Ford effectively converted the majority of noncustomers of the auto industry, namely customers of horse-drawn carriages, into customers of its own blue ocean by pricing its Model T against horse-drawn carriages and not the cars of other automakers. In the case of the school lunch catering industry, raising this question led to an interesting insight. Suddenly those parents who make their children’s lunches came into the equation. For many children, parents had the same function: making their child’s lunch. But they had a very different form: mom or dad versus a lunch line in the cafeteria. Different form and function, same objective. Some companies lure customers from even further away. Cirque du Soleil, for example, has diverted customers from a wide range of evening activities. Its growth came in part through drawing people away from other activities that differed in both form and function. For example, bars and restaurants have few physical features in common with a circus. They also serve a distinct function by providing conversational and gastronomical pleasure, a very different experience from the visual entertainment that a circus offers. Yet despite these differences in form and function, people have the same objective in undertaking these three activities: to enjoy a night out.
W. Chan Kim (Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant)
Holy s——!” someone shouted from outside. A few guests reacted with good-natured titters. The children hardly noticed, they were so absorbed in their music. The song ended. All the little eyes were on Mr. Kangana, who counted them into their next song, “One, two, three—” “F——!” someone else shouted. This was not OK. I dashed through the laundry room to the back door, with the intention of shushing the raucous caterers. I turned the handle. A strong, dull, consistent pressure pushed the door toward me. Immediately sensing a terrible force of nature on the other side, I attempted to close the door. The inhuman force wouldn’t allow it. I stuck my foot against the bottom of the door. I heard an ominous creak. The hinges began pulling loose from the frame. Before I could compute any of this, the marimba music suddenly stopped. A series of pops and pings erupted from the sunroom. A child squealed in distress. I abandoned the threat at the door and hurtled to the sunroom, where I was met by the shattering of glass. The children were running, screaming, from their instruments. With none of their own parents to run to for comfort, the kindergarteners collectively burrowed into the crowd of prospective parents, who in turn were trying to squeeze through the one small door leading to the living room. It’s a small miracle nobody was trampled. My daughter, Ginny, ran to me and hugged my legs. Her back was wet… and muddy. I looked up. The shades were now eerily raised of their own accord. And then came the mud. In it sloshed, through the broken windows. Thick mud, watery mud, rocky mud, mud with beveled-glass shards, mud with window muntins, mud with grass, mud with barbecue utensils, mud with a mosaic birdbath. In a flash, the sunroom windows were gone, and in their place, a gaping, mud-oozing hole.
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
Sancho asked the landlord what he had to give them for supper. To this the landlord replied that his mouth should be the measure; he had only to ask what he would; for that inn was provided with the birds of the air and the fowls of the earth and the fish of the sea. "There's no need of all that," said Sancho; "if they'll roast us a couple of chickens we'll be satisfied, for my master is delicate and eats little, and I'm not over and above gluttonous." The landlord replied he had no chickens, for the kites had stolen them. "Well then," said Sancho, "let senor landlord tell them to roast a pullet, so that it is a tender one." "Pullet! My father!" said the landlord; "indeed and in truth it's only yesterday I sent over fifty to the city to sell; but saving pullets ask what you will." "In that case," said Sancho, "you will not be without veal or kid." "Just now," said the landlord, "there's none in the house, for it's all finished; but next week there will be enough and to spare." "Much good that does us," said Sancho; "I'll lay a bet that all these short-comings are going to wind up in plenty of bacon and eggs." "By God," said the landlord, "my guest's wits must be precious dull; I tell him I have neither pullets nor hens, and he wants me to have eggs! Talk of other dainties, if you please, and don't ask for hens again." "Body o' me!" said Sancho, "let's settle the matter; say at once what you have got, and let us have no more words about it." "In truth and earnest, senor guest," said the landlord, "all I have is a couple of cow-heels like calves' feet, or a couple of calves' feet like cowheels; they are boiled with chick-peas, onions, and bacon, and at this moment they are crying 'Come eat me, come eat me." "I mark them for mine on the spot," said Sancho; "let nobody touch them; I'll pay better for them than anyone else, for I could not wish for anything more to my taste; and I don't care a pin whether they are feet or heels." "Nobody shall touch them," said the landlord; "for the other guests I have, being persons of high quality, bring their own cook and caterer and larder with them.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
I DON'T WANT to talk about me, of course, but it seems as though far too much attention has been lavished on you lately-that your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment have been catered to far too much. You just want and want and want. You believe in yourself excessively. You don't believe in Nature anymore. It's too isolated from you. You've abstracted it. It's so messy and damaged and sad. Your eyes glaze as you travel life's highway past all the crushed animals and the Big Gulp cups. You don't even take pleasure in looking at nature photographs these days. Oh, they can be just as pretty as always, but don't they make you feel increasingly ... anxious? Filled with more trepidation than peace? So what's the point? You see the picture of the baby condor or the panda munching on a bamboo shoot, and your heart just sinks, doesn't it? A picture of a poor old sea turtle with barnacles on her back, all ancient and exhausted, depositing her five gallons of doomed eggs in the sand hardly fills you with joy, because you realize, quite rightly, that just outside the frame falls the shadow of the condo. What's cropped from the shot of ocean waves crashing on a pristine shore is the plastics plant, and just beyond the dunes lies a parking lot. Hidden from immediate view in the butterfly-bright meadow, in the dusky thicket, in the oak and holly wood, are the surveyors' stakes, for someone wants to build a mall exactly there-some gas stations and supermarkets, some pizza and video shops, a health club, maybe a bulimia treatment center. Those lovely pictures of leopards and herons and wild rivers-well, you just know they're going to be accompanied by a text that will serve only to bring you down. You don't want to think about it! It's all so uncool. And you don't want to feel guilty either. Guilt is uncool. Regret maybe you'll consider. Maybe. Regret is a possibility, but don't push me, you say. Nature photographs have become something of a problem, along with almost everything else. Even though they leave the bad stuff out-maybe because you know they're leaving all the bad stuff out-such pictures are making you increasingly aware that you're a little too late for Nature. Do you feel that? Twenty years too late? Maybe only ten? Not way too late, just a little too late? Well, it appears that you are. And since you are, you've decided you're just not going to attend this particular party.
Joy Williams (Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals)
When you have an honest heart, you do not get engaged nor get involved with any smear campaigns nor black propaganda! When you have an honest heart, you do not malign nor take advantage of generous people who helped and trusted you! When you have an honest heart, you do not shit on people whom you used and abused for three years! Do not fall into a political naïvety and become a victim or a doormat nor have your generosity and honest heart be used and abused by unscrupulous political movers, abusive, aggressive political harridans who scam gullible generous hearts by asking donations, funds, services, foods, urgent favours, and after using you and abusing your generosity, trust, and kindness; whereby these unscrupulous and deceptive political movers, abusive, aggressive political harridans intentionally and maliciously create forged screenshots of evidence convincing their audience or political groups that you are a mentally ill person, a brain-damaged person as they even brand you as "Sisang Baliw," or crazy Sisa, a threat, a risk, a danger, they maliciously and destructively red-tag your friends as communists, and they resort to calumny, libel and slander against you, to shame you, defame you, discredit you, blame you, hurt you, make you suffer for having known the truth of their deceptive global Operandi, and for something you didn’t do through their mob lynching, calumny, polemics mongering, forgery, and cyberbullying efforts. Their character assassination through libel and slander aims to ruin your integrity, persona, trustworthiness, and credibility with their destructive fabricated calumny, lies, identity theft, forged screenshots of polemics mongering, and framing up. Amidst all their forgery, fraud, libel and slander they committed: you have a right to defy and stop their habitual abuse without breaking the law and fight for your rights against any forms of aggression, public lynching, bullies, threats, blackmail, and their repetitive maltreatment or abuse, identity theft, forgery, deceptions fraud, scams, cyber libel, libel, and slander. When you defend human rights, you fight against corruption and injustice, help end impunity: be sure that you are not part of any misinformation, disinformation, smear campaigns and black propaganda. Do not serve, finance, or cater directly or indirectly for those dirty politicians. Those who are engaged in abusively dishonest ways do not serve to justify their end. Deceiving and scamming other people shall always be your lifetime self-inflicted karmic loss. Be a law-abiding citizen. Be respectful. Be honest. Be factual. Be truthful. You can be an effective human rights defender when you have clean and pure intentions, lawful and morally upright, and have an honest heart." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from Calunniatopia Book 1, Stronzata Trilogy Genre: inspirational, political, literary novel © 2021 Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn
Angelica Hopes
You’re going to do great,” Lizzy said as they reached the mini Tiki bar. The air was cool in the high fifties and the scent of various meats on the grill filled the air. Even though they’d had the party catered, apparently Grant had insisted on grilling some things himself. “I wouldn’t have recommended you apply for it otherwise.” Athena ducked behind the bar and grinned at the array of bottles and other garnishes. She’d been friends with Lizzy the past couple months and knew her friend’s tastes by now. As she started mixing up their drinks she said, “If I fail, hopefully they won’t blame you.” Lizzy just snorted but eyed the drink mix curiously. “Purple?” “Just wait. You’ll like it.” She rolled the rims of the martini glasses in sugar as she spoke. “Where’d you learn to do this?” “I bartended a little in college and there were a few occasions on the job where I had to assist because staff called out sick for an event.” There’d been a huge festival in Madrid she’d helped out with a year ago where three of the staff had gotten food poisoning, so in addition to everything else she’d been in charge of, she’d had to help with drinks on and off. That had been such a chaotic, ridiculous job. “At least you’ll have something to fall back on if you do fail,” Lizzy teased. “I seriously hope not.” She set the two glasses on the bar and strained the purple concoction into them. With the twinkle lights strung up around the lanai and the ones glittering in the pool, the sugar seemed to sparkle around the rim. “This is called a wildcat.” “You have to make me one of those too!” The unfamiliar female voice made Athena look up. Her eyes widened as her gaze locked with Quinn freaking Brody, the too-sexy-man with an aversion to virgins. He was with the tall woman who’d just asked Athena to make a drink. But she had eyes only for Quinn. Her heart about jumped out of her chest. What was he doing here of all places? At least he looked just as surprised to see her. She ignored him because she knew if she stared into those dark eyes she’d lose the ability to speak and then she’d inevitably embarrass herself. The tall, built-like-a-goddess woman with pale blonde hair he was with smiled widely at Athena. “Only if you don’t mind,” she continued, nodding at the drinks. “They look so good.” “Ah, you can have this one. I made an extra for the lush here.” She tilted her head at Lizzy with a half-smile. Athena had planned to drink the second one herself but didn’t trust her hands not to shake if she made another. She couldn’t believe Quinn was standing right in front of her, looking all casual and annoyingly sexy in dark jeans and a long-sleeved sweater shoved up to his elbows. Why did his forearms have to look so good? “Ha, ha.” Lizzy snagged her drink as Athena stepped out from behind the bar. “Athena, this is Quinn Brody and Dominique Castle. They both work for Red Stone but Dominique is almost as new as you.” Forcing a smile on her face, Athena nodded politely at both of them—and tried to ignore the way Quinn was staring at her. She’d had no freaking idea he worked for Red Stone. He looked a bit like a hungry wolf. Just like on their last date—two months ago. When he’d decided she was too much trouble, being a virgin and all. Jackass. “It’s so nice to meet you both.” She did a mental fist pump when her voice sounded normal. “I promised Belle I’d help out inside but I hope to see you both around tonight.” Liar, liar. “Me too. Thanks again for the drink,” Dominique said cheerfully while Lizzy just gave Athena a strange look. Athena wasn’t sure what Quinn’s expression was because she’d decided to do the mature thing—and studiously ignore him.
Katie Reus (Sworn to Protect (Red Stone Security, #11))
Watching, I dread my own womanhood, the day when I too will follow along carrying bags of groceries, my mission wherever I go to feed other people who take actual part in life while I am simply the catering staff.
Jennifer Haigh (Faith)
Had I fallen prey, in middle age, to a kind of andropause? It wouldn’t have surprised me. To find out for sure I decided to spend my evenings on YouPorn, which over the years had grown into a sort of porn encyclopedia. The results were immediate and extremely reassuring. YouPorn catered to the fantasies of normal men all over the world, and within minutes it became clear that I was an utterly normal man. This was not something I took for granted. After all, I’d devoted years of my life to the study of a man who was often considered a kind of Decadent, whose sexuality was therefore not entirely clear. At any rate, the experiment put my mind at rest. Some of the videos were superb (shot by a crew from Los Angeles, complete with a lighting designer, cameramen and cinematographer), some were wretched but ‘vintage’ (German amateurs), and all were based on the same few crowd-pleasing scenarios. In one of the most common, some man (young? old? both versions existed) had been foolish enough to let his penis curl up for a nap in his pants or boxers. Two young women, of varying race, would alert him to the oversight and, this accomplished, would stop at nothing until they liberated his organ from its temporary abode. They’d coax it out with the sluttiest kind of badinage, all in a spirit of friendship and feminine complicity. The penis would pass from one mouth to the other, tongues crossing paths like restless flocks of swallows in the sombre skies above the Seine-et-Marne when they prepare to leave Europe for their winter migration. The man, destroyed at the moment of his assumption, would utter a few weak words: appallingly weak in the French films (‘Oh putain!’ ‘Oh putain je jouis!’: more or less what you’d expect from a nation of regicides), more beautiful and intense from those true believers the Americans (‘Oh my God!’ ‘Oh Jesus Christ!’), like an injunction not to neglect God’s gifts (blow jobs, roast chicken). At any rate I got a hard-on, too, sitting in front of my twenty-seven-inch iMac, and all was well. Once I was made a professor, my reduced course load meant I could get all my teaching done on Wednesdays.
Michel Houellebecq (Submission)
My preference was the demolition of the lobby altogether. [Of all of my books], only Sula has this ‘entrance.’ The others refuse the ‘presentation,’ refuse the seductive safe harbor; the line of demarcation between…them and us. Refuse, in effect, to cater to the diminished expectations of the reader, or his or her alarm heightened by the emotional luggage one carries into the black-topic text….
Toni Morrison (Sula)
In a distributed system backed by Cassandra, we should minimize unnecessary network traffic as much as possible. In other words, the lesser the number of nodes the query needs to work with, the better the performance of the data model. We must cater to the cluster topology as well as the physical storage of the data model.
C.Y. Kan (Cassandra Data Modeling and Analysis)
Labor and employment firm Fisher & Phillips LLP opened a Seattle office by poaching partner Davis Bae from labor and employment competitor Jackson Lewis PC. Mr. Bea, an immigration specialist, will lead the office, which also includes new partners Nick Beermann and Catharine Morisset and one other lawyer. Fisher & Phillips has 31 offices around the country. Sara Randazzo LAW Cadwalader Hires New Partner as It Looks to Represent Activist Investors By Liz Hoffman and David Benoit | 698 words One of America’s oldest corporate law firms is diving into the business of representing activist investors, betting that these agitators are going mainstream—and offer a lucrative business opportunity for advisers. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP has hired a new partner, Richard Brand, whose biggest clients include William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP, among other activist investors. Mr. Brand, 35 years old, advised Pershing Square on its campaign at Allergan Inc. last year and a board coup at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. in 2012. He has also defended companies against activists and has worked on mergers-and-acquisitions deals. His hiring, from Kirkland & Ellis LLP, is a notable step by a major law firm to commit to representing activists, and to do so while still aiming to retain corporate clients. Founded in 1792, Cadwalader for decades has catered to big companies and banks, but going forward will also seek out work from hedge funds including Pershing Square and Sachem Head Capital Management LP, a Pershing Square spinout and another client of Mr. Brand’s. To date, few major law firms or Wall Street banks have tried to represent both corporations and activist investors, who generally take positions in companies and push for changes to drive up share prices. Most big law firms instead cater exclusively to companies, worried that lining up with activists will offend or scare off executives or create conflicts that could jeopardize future assignments. Some are dabbling in both camps. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, for example, represented Trian Fund Management LP in its recent proxy fight at DuPont Co. and also is steering Time Warner Cable Inc.’s pending sale to Charter Communications Inc. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP have done work for activist firm Third Point LLC. But most firms are more monogamous. Those on one end, most vocally Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, defend management, while a small band including Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP and Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP primarily represent activists. In embracing activist work, Cadwalader thinks it can serve both groups better, said Christopher Cox, chairman of the firm’s corporate group. “Traditional M&A and activism are becoming increasingly intertwined,” Mr. Cox said in an interview. “To be able to bring that perspective to the boardroom is a huge advantage. And when a threat does emerge, who’s better to defend a company than someone who’s seen it from the other side?” Mr. Cox said Cadwalader has been thinking about branching out into activism since late last year. The firm is also working with an activist fund launched earlier this year by Cadwalader’s former head of M&A, Jim Woolery, that hopes to take a friendlier stance toward companies. Mr. Cox also said he believes activism can be lucrative, pooh-poohing another reason some big law firms eschew such assignments—namely, that they don’t pay as well as, say, a large merger deal. “There is real money in activism today,” said Robert Jackson, a former lawyer at Wachtell and the U.S. Treasury Department who now teaches at Columbia University and who also notes that advising activists can generate regulatory work. “Law firms are businesses, and taking the stance that you’ll never, ever, ever represent an activist is a financial luxury that only a few firms have.” To be sure, the handful of law firms that work for both sides say they do so
Anonymous
By the spring of 1963, Las Vegas was made up of an odd convergence of gamblers, gangsters, and government. All three forces, intentionally or unintentionally, catered to every kind of human weakness. Although the aboveground nuclear blasts were gone, the town was still full of glitzy, beckoning casinos; flamboyant, roguish celebrities; down-and-out and entrepreneurial prostitutes; and notorious, brutal criminals. By now it had gained its much deserved reputation as “Sin City”—universally considered a town where “just about anything goes.” And surrounding it were the infamous “holes in the desert.” Many of Las Vegas’s problems were known to be buried in those same holes. So, naturally, as a woman who relished audacity, this would be the place to which my mother would move my sister and me. As it turned out, that was the other part of her telephone call’s “exciting news.
Gary Spetz (Searching for Alpha Centauri: A Boyhood Memoir)
When We Should Not Rush into Anything It is not good for a soul to be without knowledge, and he sins who hastens with his feet. PROVERBS 19:2 FAR TOO OFTEN a hasty decision made without enough knowledge, thought, or prayer has gotten a husband and wife into trouble. And when one spouse is guilty of making that hasty decision over the objections of the other, it can cause serious friction between them. How many times have we, or someone else we know, done something that “seemed like a good idea,” but it only seemed like a good idea because God was never consulted? The book of Proverbs says, “He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind” (Proverbs 11:29). Doing foolish and impulsive things troubles a spouse, which definitely troubles the house. If you or your husband has ever rushed into anything without proper consideration, without praying enough about it until you had the leading of the Lord, without talking it out between you, or without gathering all the knowledge and information you needed on the subject, this may have become a prelude to trouble in your house. In fact, it can break down trust in a marriage to the point that it becomes irreparable in the eyes of the spouse who is the sensible one. No one will continually pay the price for a spouse who does impulsive or irresponsible things that can jeopardize their future. At some point it becomes too much to bear. Pray this doesn’t happen to you. Ask God to give you and your husband wisdom in all things. Pray that neither of you ever hastily rushes into something that may be out of God’s will for your life. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would give my husband and me wisdom, knowledge, and understanding so that we don’t make hasty decisions without first seeking You for direction. If either of us is ever about to do something like that at any time, I pray You would give us such clear revelation that it stops us in our tracks before we make a serious mistake. Help both of us to never trouble our house by being impulsive and quick to cater to what we think is right instead of waiting to hear from You so that we do what we know is right. Don’t let us get off the path You have for us by taking even one step in the wrong direction that will lead to problems for us later on. Pull us back from our own way and help us live according to Yours. Keep us from pursuing our own desires over Your will. Wake us up to the truth whenever we have willfully stepped into the path of deception. Keep us from buying something we cannot afford, or committing to something we are not supposed to do, or investing time and money in something You will not bless. Keep our eagerness to have something from controlling our decisions. Give us wisdom, and let our good judgment lead us in the right way. Enable us to have a calm, sensible, Spirit-led approach to every decision we make. In Jesus’ name I pray.
Stormie Omartian (The Power of a Praying Wife Devotional)
Instead of searching for weight-loss gimmicks and tricks, adopt a resolution to be healthy. Focusing on your health, not on your weight, will eventually result in long-term weight loss. Eating a healthy diet, one that is rich in an assortment of natural plant fibers, will help you crave less and feel satisfied without overeating. Other diet plans fail because they cater to modern American tastes, which include too many processed foods and animal products to be healthy. Stop measuring portions and trying to follow complicated formulas. Instead, eat as many vegetables, beans, and fresh fruits as possible, and less of everything else. Don’t succumb to those other plans, which are an insult to your body as well as your intelligence.
Joel Fuhrman (Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss)
Until women are made a balance of power—to be consulted, catered to, and bargained with, if you please—My one article of party creed—shall be that of woman suffrage—All other articles of party creeds shall be with me as a drop in the bucket—as compared with this vital one—hence I make it my whole party
Stephen Cope (The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling)
Give people the chance to interact, from small to big. Some people just want to click a ‘like’ button, say ‘yes’ or sign a petition. Others want to help you build the community themselves and be heavily involved. Make sure your community caters for a spectrum of engagement - with as many different entry points as possible for those who are busy but want to stay connected and for those who have more time to get involved with the hard graft.
Marc Thomas (Connected: The power of modern community (Guardian Shorts))
In the meantime, my parents settled in Paris, got used to the hotel and found out about the Jewish section, where they went to eat in kosher restaurants. Many other refugees did the same. In fact, the hotel Maillot catered exclusively to refugees, referred to them by the HIAS. However, my Father was not well; he could hardly eat.
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
When testifying before a senate committee investigating his behavior, he said, “I got that patronage from the sheriff, the county clerk, the county treasurer, all the clerks of the different courts, the State administration … It rarely happened … that any appointments of any kind, big or little, were made in the section of the city in which I lived without my recommendation.” Lorimer also owned a number of businesses that did contracting for the city, and through a process of what he suggested was “honest graft” managed to accumulate considerable wealth. His machine, like those in other cities, catered to the interests of the huge number of immigrants and working-class voters who were flocking into the city to work in its new industries.
Francis Fukuyama (Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy)
The most responsible thing you can do is care for yourself before you cater to others.
Damon Zahariades (The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!) (The Art Of Living Well Book 1))
Get a Dual Perspective "Having a dual perspective means thinking not just in terms of what you want to say and hear but also in terms of the other person’s interests." - Conversationally Speaking, page 9 A dual perspective requires humility. Humility is to consider others better than yourself. Humble people ask questions like, “How can I benefit this person?” or “How can I empathize with this person’s feelings?” People ought to consider their conversation partner’s interests and seek every way to cater your words to their betterment. Here’s a practical way to accentuate a dual perspective… Ask the other person what activities interest him/her and find an activity you both enjoy. Seek to benefit the other person and then look for mutual benefit. For instance, your acquaintance expresses his interest in golf, theatre, and investing to you. If you despise theatre and investing, talk about golf. Common interests fuel conversation. If all the activities your conversation partner enjoys are boring to you, suck it up. Practice humility and engage in their interests. You may learn something new! Not every conversation will provide mutual benefit and not every conversation should provide mutual benefit. Even still, you should always seek this mutual outcome. Conversation requires engagement from two parties. The quicker you arrive at a topic you both enjoy, the easier it is to continue conversation. This dual perspective mindset initially benefits others and will normally reciprocate benefit to you.
Alan Garner
The bar was perfectly dingy, with dark amber lights and a stucco ceiling. It’s been a writer haunt for almost a century, and Gala said it really looked it. The walls were covered with photos of men who had the appearance of being dyspeptic. Mathilde led us through the crowd and said she’d buy us a drink. We asked for white wine, and she said, “They do not cater to your tastes here. It’s either beer or whiskey.” Gala and I looked at each other, weighing the pros and cons of those options. I assumed we would have to take part in conversation, and I wanted to be especially vigilant. We ordered two whiskeys with ginger ale in tall glasses, which makes it one part whiskey, three parts ginger ale. It’s what I call planning ahead.
Marlowe Granados (Happy Hour)
I pray that there may be many ministries that cater to the poor and homeless in your town, whether for food, clothing, overnight stay, counseling or other ministries. At one time or another, the homeless will tell you “horrible” stories about a ministry. You, on the other hand, are NEVER to belittle any other ministries no matter who you are with at the time. Do not partake of other people’s complaining about others. Remain positive, building UP the body of Christ without grumbling.
Jean-Luc (The Spark In The Street: Revival Through Ministering to the Homeless and the Poor)
When you come to them with food, they may have just eaten. Most of the homeless eat only one meal a day. It takes too much out of them to travel from one church to another for three meals a day...if three meals can be available in one day. Try to keep track of which church feeds when. The Salvation Army, Rescue Missions, and other organizations and churches that cater to the homeless may offer meals. Most of the time, Wednesday and Sunday will most likely be hungry days because no one else may feed the homeless on those days. That’s where you come
Jean-Luc (The Spark In The Street: Revival Through Ministering to the Homeless and the Poor)
The rules of professional conduct required a lawyer to represent his or her client to the best of his or her ability and abide by the client's decisions. Would she have used any legal means to exonerate a client, even if it meant endangering another attorney's license? Jessie feared her answer to the question. She was a litigator, a gladiator, like every other attorney. When representing her clients, she had done, and would do, everything legally permissible to protect them. Even if, like Jeremy, it meant catering to the whims of a madman
Jodé Millman (Hooker Avenue)
Were there even a lot of food trucks around then? I thought the big boom was just a few years ago with that Korean barbecue truck in LA." Lou researches everything. Farfar smiled. "Amir's family ran a popular kebab shop in Mariehamm. It was a pretty easy transition for him---at least as far as the actual work. Me, not so much. I could cook a little bit, but I had never made munkar before in my life. They just made me happy, and I knew that is what I wanted to offer, as strange a combination as it is." "I don't know," Lou said. "If you ever go to the Gyro Fest at the big Greek Orthodox church in York, people eat a huge gyro, then go back for honey puffs. Doesn't seem like that much of a stretch." "Looo, this is why you're my favorite person.
Jared Reck (Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love)
At this point, Dahmer looked at us with complete honesty in his voice and said, “This is when I decided to give in to the dark side. Grandma’s way was not working; I was miserable and lonely, so I decided to indulge my sexual lusts and fantasies.” The first thing he did was buy some gay porn magazines. He kept them in a suitcase hidden in the fruit cellar. He spent hours viewing and masturbating to the images of lean, muscular men performing sexual acts, but over time, this proved unfulfilling. He learned about Milwaukee’s gay bar scene through these magazines, an area just south of downtown with a cluster of taverns and dance clubs catering to the gay community. Dahmer began to frequent these clubs on weekends, enjoying the drinking and lifestyle. He discovered a gay bathhouse on Wisconsin Avenue, where he paid for a separate cubicle to store his clothes, using it for extracurricular activities with other patrons. His fantasies of dominating, killing, and dismembering were still with him; however, he managed to control himself and tried to enjoy being with men and indulging in sexual activity. He never had a lasting relationship with anyone he met there, and often felt lonely and empty.
Patrick Kennedy (GRILLING DAHMER: The Interrogation Of "The Milwaukee Cannibal")
What got Arrington High in trouble was a weekly newsletter he published that argued for integration. He had been editor of a two-page mimeographed broadside, the Eagle Eye, for some fourteen years and had made a name for himself protesting the treatment of colored people in central Mississippi. What got him declared insane, however, was exposing the segregationists who were consorting with prostitutes at a colored brothel that catered only to white politicians. It was a death wish of a crusade that actually may have fit the legal definition of insanity for a colored man in Mississippi at the time. High was taken into custody and committed to the insane asylum in October 1957. It was a sentence that would shut him off, at age forty-seven, from the rest of the world and his wife and four children for the remainder of his life. He was held in confinement deep in the woods, surrounded by guards and hospital personnel, a good fifteen miles from the nearest city. It amounted to a total silencing of a revered dissident of the Mississippi order of things and a slow death in a crazy place where he would be subjected to whatever indignities his keepers devised.
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
Oh, she went to get us some bagels and fruit because we have two-a-days,” the answer came. “Our nutritionist says we should eat an hour after our first training and an hour before our next one.” Langel was again stunned. The players had double training days, and in between sessions, a player had to run out and get food because U.S. Soccer didn’t provide catering like they did at the men’s training sessions. That went on the list, too. Other small things added up. Players weren’t allowed to keep their jerseys after they played—they had to give them back to the federation, which was unusual in the world of soccer. There were no provisions that covered childcare for mothers on the team. Joy Fawcett and Carla Overbeck had children that they often took to national team camps.
Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
Now, there are other themes arising from our blindness to the Black Swan: We focus on preselected segments of the seen and generalize from it to the unseen: the error of confirmation. We fool ourselves with stories that cater to our Platonic thirst for distinct patterns: the narrative fallacy. We behave as if the Black Swan does not exist: human nature is not programmed for Black Swans. What we see is not necessarily all that is there. History hides Black Swans from us and gives us a mistaken idea about the odds of these events: this is the distortion of silent evidence.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
Now, there are other themes arising from our blindness to the Black Swan: We focus on preselected segments of the seen and generalize from it to the unseen: the error of confirmation. We fool ourselves with stories that cater to our Platonic thirst for distinct patterns: the narrative fallacy. We behave as if the Black Swan does not exist: human nature is not programmed for Black Swans. What we see is not necessarily all that is there. History hides Black Swans from us and gives us a mistaken idea about the odds of these events: this is the distortion of silent evidence. We “tunnel”: that is, we focus on a few well-defined sources of uncertainty, on too specific a list of Black Swans (at the expense of the others that do not easily come to mind).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
She was reluctant to admit that Buckeye had become what her sons called “a hick town.” The Sears and Roebuck no longer delivered, there were no new shiny, neon shopping malls, and the peach farmers, whose abounding yields had once been the town’s glory, had either moved or were slowly dying off. The few shopkeepers who eked out a living now catered to tourists who came in late Friday afternoons on their way to the emerging gambling oasis in Laughlin, Nevada. Indian mocassins and peach jam in jars with fake old-fashioned labels were loaded into their foreign cars before they sped through the invisible town to the highway lined with crooked Joshua trees.
Linda Feyder (All's Fair and Other California Stories)
But allowing your needs to remain unaddressed while you continuously cater to others is the path toward resentment and bitterness.
Damon Zahariades (The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!) (The Art Of Living Well Book 1))
When Wimdu launched, the Samwers reached out to Airbnb to discuss combining forces, as they had done with Groupon and eBay to facilitate a speedy exit. Discussions ensued between Airbnb and Wimdu cofounders and investors—meeting multiple times, touring the Wimdu offices, and checking with other founders like Andrew Mason from Groupon to best understand the potential outcome. In the end, Airbnb chose to fight. Brian Chesky described his thought process: My view was, my biggest punishment, my biggest revenge on you is, I’m gonna make you run this company long term. So you had the baby, now you gotta raise the child. And you’re stuck with it for 18 years. Because I knew he wanted to sell the company. I knew he could move faster than me for a year, but he wasn’t gonna keep doing it. And so that was our strategy. And we built the company long term. And the ultimate way we won is, we had a better community. He couldn’t understand community. And I think we had a better product.82 To do this, the company would mobilize their product teams to rapidly improve their support for international regions. Jonathan Golden, the first product manager at Airbnb, described their efforts: Early on, Airbnb’s listing experience was basic. You filled out forms, uploaded 1 photo—usually not professional—and editing the listing after the fact was hard. The mobile app in the early days was lightweight, where you could only browse but not book. There were a lot of markets in those days with just 1 or 2 listings. Booking only supported US dollars, so it catered towards American travelers only, and for hosts, they could get money out via a bank transfer to an American bank via ACH, or PayPal. We needed to get from this skeleton of a product into something that could work internationally if we wanted to fend off Wimdu. We internationalized the product, translating it into all the major languages. We went from supporting 1 currency to adding 32. We bought all the local domains, like airbnb.co.uk for the UK website and airbnb.es for Spain. It was important to move quickly to close off the opportunity in Europe.83 Alongside the product, the fastest way to fight on Wimdu’s turf was to quickly scale up paid marketing in Europe using Facebook, Google, and other channels to augment the company’s organic channels, built over years. Most important, Airbnb finally pulled the trigger on putting boots on the ground—hiring Martin Reiter, the company’s first head of international, and also partnering with Springstar, a German incubator and peer of Rocket Internet’s, to accelerate their international expansion.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
Narcissistic fathers poison the whole family with this competitive energy and instead of creating a safe environment for the children to grow, they turn family members against each other. The children’s mother and the scapegoated child are usually the ones to blame for all the failures, mistakes and wrongdoings, particularly for those he himself has committed. His wife is described as emotionally cold, distant, unloving, unsupportive and a sabotager of his and the family happiness or she takes the role of the flying monkey, catering to his needs, adoring him and supporting his toxic parenting, many times unconsciously.
Theresa J. Covert (Narcissistic Fathers: The Problem with being the Son or Daughter of a Narcissistic Parent, and how to fix it. A Guide for Healing and Recovering After Hidden Abuse)
In other words, the learner plays a more active role in learning in an emotionally and socially supported environment, creating knowledge, while the teacher’s role is somewhat passive, guiding learners in the knowledge creation process. In pedagogy, this scenario is referred to as a dialectic teaching-learning process. As we can see, the dialectic approach has a deeper and critical focus to learning, while the didactic approach is more likely to produce a surface approach to learning. In the dialectic approach, the delivery is so paced and toned that the learners are in a more emotionally and socially comfortable position to engage in reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation stages of the Kolb’s cycle. We can also see student-centred learning from another important point of view: it is possible that individual students get more attention from the teacher to possibly get individual feedback and individual issues addressed for more purposeful learning and development. Also, the teacher gets to know students individually based on the discussions they engage in, thus getting to know their personality traits, as widely referred to by psychologists, so that appropriate personalised feedback can be provided. This learner-centred approach accommodates for a more authentic learning experience for each student, and at the same time, it caters for a more authentic evaluation of individual students.
Chandana Watagodakumbura (Education from a Deeper and Multidisciplinary Perspective: Enhanced by Relating to Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Based on Mindfulness, Self-Awareness & Emotional Intelligence)
We spent countless dinner conversations talking about a move away from whiteness, away from country clubs and catered dinner parties and classrooms with fifteen students discussing literature around large wooden tables. A group of Peter’s closest friends from college had moved to a predominantly African American, low-income neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, and we thought we might join them. Those friends—a multiracial group that included white men as well as men with families from Haiti, Sri Lanka, and India—had all been involved in efforts to acknowledge the historical racial divides within the church in America, and they wanted to participate in building bridges of reconciliation. They also had wanted to live near each other, and they had prayed for an inner-city community where people of color invited them into the neighborhood. Now, a decade later, two friends worked as doctors in the city, one served as a copastor of a multiethnic church, two taught school, one ran a nonprofit to connect kids in the neighborhood to the outdoors. We took our family to Richmond to visit those friends one summer.
Amy Julia Becker (White Picket Fences: Turning toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege)
I'm done writing stories to cater for others, who aren't even interested. This time, I'll write for me with my own voice.
Veronica Purcell
Social Media Advertising - Different Options & Their Benefits How To Use Social Media Paid Ads Ideally? What is the most effective way to make use of social media ads? Choosing which social media platform to advertise on depends on your target audience. You need to understand which platforms are being used, the type of campaigns that can run on each platform, and what investment you’ll be required to make. Pew Research Center’s report helps give us an idea of the most preferred platform for various demographics. For example, if your product caters to the teenage group, consider advertising on Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. If you’re catering to a more B2B client, you can consider LinkedIn. Once you understand where your audience spends the most time, you can narrow down the platforms. However, we’d still advise on A/B testing various platforms. You’d be surprised by how many B2B clients you can find on TikTok! What Are The Most Popular Social Media Ads? Here is a brief rundown of the various social media ad options available. 1. Facebook Ads Facebook Ads are the most successful form of social media advertising. Statistics show that Facebook paid ads have an average conversion rate of 9.21%. They’re easy to set up and track, and allow you to measure campaign performance easily, giving insights into how well your ads are performing. They also offer a wide range of targeting options that help you reach people who might be interested in what you’re selling, which is why they’re so effective at generating sales leads. Facebook Ads are also highly targeted. You can target specific demographics or audiences based on gender, age range, location, and other details such as interests and behaviors or job titles. This helps ensure that only people who are interested in what you’re offering, see your ad on Facebook. 2. Twitter Ads Twitter ads are a great way to reach your target audience, especially if your company already has a presence on the platform. They’re easy to set up and manage so you can focus on other aspects of your business. As of 2022, they have an average conversion rate of 0.77%. Twitter ads also offer simple targeting options that let you get more followers, increase engagement with existing customers and gain new followers interested in what you have to offer. There are multiple ad options to choose from for accomplishing various advertising goals, including promoted ads, follower ads, amplify ads, and takeover ads. Promoted and follower ads have a much wider average cost range than their takeover counterparts. 3. LinkedIn Ads LinkedIn is a professional networking site, so it’s not as casual as other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. As a result, users are more likely to be interested in what you are promoting on the platform because they’re looking for something related to their professional lives. LinkedIn has an average click-through rate of 0.65%. In addition, the conversion rate for LinkedIn ads is also fairly decent (2.35%). They can have high or low conversion rates depending on factors like interests and demographics. But if your ad is effectively targeted, it will have more chances of enjoying a higher conversion rate. 4. Instagram Ads As a younger demographic, Instagram users make up a great target audience for social media advertising. They are highly engaged in the platform and are more likely to respond to call-to-action than other demographics. 5. YouTube Ads YouTube ads are excellent for marketers with video content to promote their business. Furthermore, the advertising options offered by this platform ensure that you needn't bother with YouTuber fame or even a large number of subscribers on your channel to spread the word on this platform.
David parkyd
Sixth of Ten Elegies for Fire and Oxycodone The Greek myth goes like this you probably know it but I had to look it up Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and the other gods gives it to humans heaven's prowess now mortal Zeus sticks it to Prometheus cause he knows knowledge knows how sharp its edge can be chains him to a rock an eagle eating his liver all day the liver regenerates every morning the eagle keeps eating keeps eating keeps eating with the patent for Oxycontin set to run out in 2013 Purdue Pharma reformulates it gets a new patent lobbies the old drug illegal no one steals from the gods no one dulls the blade of knowledge - That summer my first desk job insurance intakes at a doctor's office the relief of air conditioning pharma reps catering our lunches released from the fear of dropping a ladder on a foreman of threading my thumbnail with another drill bit the good doc scheduled in five minute increments I retyped patient addresses all hill towns sixty miles off the waiting room so full and grumpy I wondered about the etymology of patient but never what makes a person drive hours through the mountains wait hours for a flicker with the doc I was not paid to wonder I quit before I ever typed your name
Robert Wood Lynn (Mothman Apologia)
Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people’s weakness.” That’s from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. It couldn’t be more telling about our attention and the things we focus on. We allow other people to control us because we’re pretty much defenseless when the media exploits our weaknesses. And as a result, we often end up chasing different goals and outcomes every other day. One day we want to look like a fitness model, the other day we want to be a millionaire entrepreneur. It’s not healthy behavior because you never focus on one thing at a time.
Darius Foroux (The Road to Better Habits, Updated and Expanded: A simple framework for transforming your habits)
the family circle, for example, just like in many other settings, covert narcissists are restricted in their behavior, so it is unlikely that anyone who is not part of the family will ever notice the narcissistic patterns. These parents are usually very socially acceptable, likable, display themselves and are perceived as perfect parents and members of society. However, behind closed doors they expect perfection from their kids, wanting them to cater to their own needs and to fit into the idea of an ideal child, shaming individuality and authenticity. It is not uncommon for a narcissistic parent to project their unfulfilled ambitions, expectations, and desires of social success onto their children, putting a lot of pressure on the kids to achieve success, usually at the expense of a child’s happiness.
Theresa J. Covert (The Covert Narcissist: Recognizing the Most Dangerous Subtle Form of Narcissism and Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships)
Dr. Al Rosen. He is a former accounting professor, one of the most reputable forensic accountants in North America. Dr. Rosen has consulted or given independent opinions on over 1,000 litigation-related engagements. In recent years he has written two books, which have sounded alarm bells about the state of the accounting profession, but the profession makes more money by not heeding his warnings. What concerns him should concern us all. His first book was titled “Swindlers” and went into detail about how easy it is to financially dupe investors in Canada and the U.S. His book gave examples from cases he has handled in his career. His second book “Easy Prey Investors” is also a must read for anyone investing in Canada or the U.S. In it he reveals the tricks and traps of the accounting industry that no others in the industry have the courage or the moral freedom to voice. The story below, from the UK, gives a snapshot and a link to the kind of accounting fraud that Dr. Al Rosen has long been warning us about. January 15, 2018 On Monday, Carillion, the U.K.’s second-largest construction company, announced that it would go into compulsory liquidation. Carillion is a construction company, it also provides facilities management and maintenance services such as cleaning and catering in the U.K.’s National Health Service hospitals, providing meals in 900 schools, and maintaining prisons. It holds a number of government contracts, including for the construction of a high-speed rail link and for the maintenance of roads. 43,000 employees worldwide, 20,000 work in the U.K.; the company also has a significant presence in the
Larry Elford (Farming Humans: Easy Money (Non Fiction Financial Murder Book 1))
Personally, I’d be willing to sacrifice some of the benefits I get as a consumer and investor in order to achieve these social ends—as long as I knew everyone else was, too. Yet how to create new rules of the game? The market is adept at catering to us as consumers and investors, but democracy has become less responsive to us in our roles as citizens seeking to make the rules of the game fairer. That’s mainly because, as I will show in these pages, supercapitalism has spilled over into politics. The money Wal-Mart and other companies are pouring into Washington and every other major capital gets in the way.
Robert B. Reich (Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life)
Jed focused on Tristan, and thought he had the man figured out. He seemed uncomfortable, but not because of Donna. Jed got the impression Tristan was a man used to being catered to and he fancied himself an outdoorsman but he didn’t necessarily enjoy being with other clients not in his social stratum. The joshing and passing of the bottles didn’t amuse him but he knew enough about human nature to know if he got up and left he’d be talked about and made the butt of jokes. So he stayed and endured and simply hoped the night would break up early. Tristan had made it clear to Jed he’d studied their route in advance and was as familiar with it as anyone could be.
C.J. Box (Back Of Beyond (Highway Quartet #1))
So I loved you because I thought you would be fat. I thought you would increase, multiply, develop a big belly, double cheeks, triple chins, dimpled knees. I thought there would be more of you. You'd stand out in a crowd, flaunt fashion. We'd have to buy clothes in stores catering to the big fellow. In your hands birds would nest. On your knees children would perch. You would rock marvelously— better than any rocking chair, better than any row boat. You would conjure up the sound and feel of water, the expanse of sea—its waves and calms, its storms under control. In your arms I would be sailing without the bother of shipwreck. All our gardens would grow if you dropped the seeds. Pumpkins would explode for fullness. Tomatoes so heavy would collapse their vines. Cauliflowers sprouting the size of streetlights. Your voice would fill the house— raise the ceilings, flood the windows. I'd hear you in every room. Over storms your voice would carry, lightning would not diminish you. What happened? You are no larger than me. Our voices fill the same small space. No soft flesh to press my fingers into deeply before I hit the road of your body. Your bones are as clear to find as mine, neither distinct nor hidden. They are simply the usual set— they suffice. They hold us together with no genius. The self you offer me is not unlike my self— no great dimensions, no extraordinary appetite. I don't live in the tower of your sound. Trees are outside our human scale and birds belong more properly in them. The only nest we can build is a nest for ourselves. In short, my dear you are my equal. We can only grow what every other can grow— the seeds we have been given.
Marcia Aldrich
I went to this meeting on the other side of town once and I kid you not, they had stale ass pita chips and hummus all up in that motherfucker. That's it!" He laughs at himself. "Like, what? Who the fuck are they catering to? We're addicts. We're disgusting human beings. We want drugs. Dirty, nasty drugs. And if we can't have drugs, we want sugar and anything else That's bad for our bodies. How hard is that to understand? I mean, read a fucking book on it. Shit.
J. Daniels
Although our countries have been changed by the hegemonizing influences of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the headlines in the Western media have always reduced matters of extraordinary depth and complexity to a mere snapshot, which more often than not has catered to an orientalist audience that regards Arab or Muslim cultures as backward and to security-focused policymakers. Over time those two groups have worked to reinforce each other, merging to such an extent that everything was viewed through the prism of the security of the West, especially after 9/11.
Kim Ghattas (Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East)
see B&P or my name on an event, they know there will be at least 10 black people there. It encourages black people to come out. Even when we throw an event, it’s fully inclusive and we’ll still only make up a small percentage of the attendees, but [black people)] know they will have people there.” The idea that these groups are unnecessary or that they further divide a small community furthers the notion that white experiences are universal experiences. As I’ve stated earlier, on more occasions than I can count, I’ve found myself as the sole person of color at an event for polyamorous people. Although we all had polyamory in common, once the conversations moved to unrelated territory, I’ve found myself struggling to stay engaged with others…or others struggling to stay engaged with me. It’s not an intentional or malicious disconnect, but it’s something that should be acknowledged, discussed, and understood. If spending time in spaces that cater to our cultural similarities can help us find comfort when we’re in the spaces that do not, both spaces have a valid purpose and right to exist.
Kevin A. Patterson (Love's Not Color Blind: Race and Representation in Polyamorous and Other Alternative Communities)
longed for solitude, for space and breathing room without the thought of how someone else might be impacted. Traveling with others comes with a daily series of negotiations: Is the room temperature okay? What sites should we visit? What time should we have dinner? Can I sit quietly and read while you go out shopping? On and on. By default, I cater. And rather than feeling the need to accommodate, I wanted the beautiful freedom to choose, to please only myself.
Alicia Keys (More Myself: A Journey)