Four Aces Quotes

Sizeism = like racism, only against people who aren't a size two or four.

Unwilling to play the hand that is dealt [to] him, the borderline keeps folding every time, losing his ante, waiting to be dealt four aces. If he cannot be assured of winning, he won't play out the hand. Improvement comes when he learns to accept the hand for what it is, and recognize that, skillfully played, he can still win.

The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn’t go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema.[2] They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide.[3] Scientists have learned that stress is literally toxic. Stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline surging through our bodies are healthy in moderation—you wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning without a good dose of cortisol. But in overwhelming quantities, they become toxic and can change the structure of our brains. Stress and depression wear our bodies out. And childhood trauma affects our telomeres. Telomeres are like little caps on the ends of our strands of DNA that keep them from unraveling. As we get older, those telomeres get shorter and shorter. When they’ve finally disappeared, our DNA itself begins to unravel, increasing our chances of getting cancer and making us especially susceptible to disease. Because of this tendency, telomeres are linked to human lifespan. And studies have shown that people who suffered from childhood trauma have significantly shortened telomeres.[4]

The profound discovery was that our patients with four or more ACEs were twice as likely to be overweight or obese and 32.6 times as likely to have been diagnosed with learning and behavioral problems.

There's always one more notch and four more aces Billy, and you're playin' all alone.

It would be useful (I wasn’t quite sure in what way, but I was sure nonetheless) to learn to fend for myself in the wilderness. When guys in camouflage pants and hunting hats sat around in the Four Aces Diner talking about fearsome things done out-of-doors, I would no longer have to feel like such a cupcake. I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, “Yeah, I’ve shit in the woods.

Instead of asking myself, Is her room clean? Did he ace that test? I’m asking, Did I connect with them in a way that I will remember twenty years from now? Did I listen when she called my name four times? Did our hearts meet for a brief moment? Did he know that even when I couldn’t fix the problem, I was there for him?

When guys in camouflage pants and hunting hats sat around in the Four Aces Diner talking about fearsome things done out-of-doors, I would no longer have to feel like such a cupcake.

When destiny deals, you will find yourself staring at four cards. Inevitably, your hand will not change. Time passes and eventually you face three upturned aces, leaving one unknown. Deep down, you know what the fourth holds. Do you have the courage to flip one last time knowing there is no going back? Fate knows no bounds...

Apart from these revelations, the profound discovery was that our patients with four or more ACEs were twice as likely to be overweight or obese and 32.6 times as likely to have been diagnosed with learning and behavioral problems.

Ultimately, there are not fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana of the tarot. There are only four—the four aces. The other fifty-two cards (the sixteen court cards and the thirty-six small cards), live inside the four aces. As we learned in chapter 8, if we look at the ace of any suit under a magic microscope, we first see the four court cards of that suit living comfortably inside. Let's not stop there. If we increase the magnification level of our microscope, we see that the nine small cards of the suit are nestled neatly inside in three rows of three cards. Isn't that tidy?

Ace is right to select this simple yet special film, for it reminds Porter that what most matters is not those things for which either politics or materialism tells us to strive, that what matters is fulfilling those four capacities with which we’re born—love, hope, faith, and respect for the truth—while holding fast to the humility of the very young, which too often we leave behind with childhood.

To the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis—will it work? Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective alternate means. But if one lacks the luxury of a choice and is possessed of only one means, then the ethical question will never arise; automatically the lone means becomes endowed with a moral spirit. Its defense lies in the cry, “What else could I do?” Inversely, the secure position in which one possesses the choice of a number of effective and powerful means is always accompanied by that ethical concern and serenity of conscience so admirably described by Mark Twain as “The calm confidence of a Christian holding four aces.” To

A report by the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund showed that among those with a college degree or more (the non–working class), fewer than half had experienced an ACE. Among the working class, well over half had at least one ACE, while about 40 percent had multiple ACEs. This is really striking—four in every ten working-class people had faced multiple instances of childhood trauma. For the non–working class, that number was 29 percent.

Two-year-old Christine Hanson and four-year-old Juliana McCourt would never visit Disneyland. Neither they nor David Gamboa-Brandhorst would know first days of school, first loves, or any other milestone, from triumph to heartbreak, of a full life. Andrea LeBlanc would never again travel the world with her gregarious, pacifist husband, Bob. Julie Sweeney wouldn’t bear children, grow old, and feel safe with her confident warrior husband, Brian. Delayed passengers wouldn’t hear recitals of Forrest Gump dialogue from Captain Victor Saracini. First Officer Michael Horrocks’s daughter wouldn’t rise from bed with the promise that her daddy loved her to the moon. Ace Bailey and Mark Bavis would never again share their gifts with young hockey players or with their own families. Retired nurse Touri Bolourchi, who’d fled Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini, wouldn’t see her grandsons grow up as Americans.

Dr Smart-Allick, of Narkover, gave a powerful address in the Speech Hall last night. He said that it was not always the timid fellow, with four conventional aces in his hand, who won the highest honours, '"it is often," he said, "the fifth ace that makes all the difference between success and failure." He was loudly cheered from the fifth-form benches and at the end of the address a young master swarmed up a pillar and threw playing cards down among the boys.

I would like to see you cheat,” Elizabeth said impulsively, smiling at him. His hands stilled, his eyes intent on her face. “I beg your pardon?” “What I meant,” she hastily explained as he continued to idly shuffle the cards, watching her, “is that night in the card room at Charise’s there was mention of someone being able to deal a card from the bottom of the deck, and I’ve always wondered if you could, if it could…” She trailed off, belatedly realizing she was insulting him and that his narrowed, speculative gaze proved that she’d made it sound as if she believed him to be dishonest at cards. “I beg your pardon,” she said quietly. “That was truly awful of me.” Ian accepted her apology with a curt nod, and when Alex hastily interjected, “Why don’t we use the chips for a shilling each,” he wordlessly and immediately dealt the cards. Too embarrassed even to look at him, Elizabeth bit her lip and picked up her hand. In it there were four kings. Her gaze flew to Ian, but he was lounging back in his chair, studying his own cards. She won three shillings and was pleased as could be. He passed the deck to her, but Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t like to deal. I always drop the cards, which Celton says is very irritating. Would you mind dealing for me?” “Not at all,” Ian said dispassionately, and Elizabeth realized with a sinking heart that he was still annoyed with her. “Who is Celton?” Jordan inquired. “Celton is a groom with whom I play cards,” Elizabeth explained unhappily, picking up her hand. In it there were four aces. She knew it then, and laughter and relief trembled on her lips as she lifted her face and stared at her betrothed. There was not a sign, not so much as a hint anywhere on his perfectly composed features that anything unusual had been happening. Lounging indolently in his chair, he quirked an indifferent brow and said, “Do you want to discard and draw more cards, Elizabeth?” “Yes,” she replied, swallowing her mirth, “I would like one more ace to go with the ones I have.” “There are only four,” he explained mildly, and with such convincing blandness that Elizabeth whooped with laughter and dropped her cards. “You are a complete charlatan!” she gasped when she could finally speak, but her face was aglow with admiration. “Thank you, darling,” he replied tenderly. “I’m happy to know your opinion of me is already improving.” The laughter froze in Elizabeth’s chest, replaced by warmth that quaked through her from head to foot. Gentlemen did not speak such tender endearments in front of other people, if at all. “I’m a Scot,” he’d whispered huskily to her long ago. “We do.” The Townsendes had launched into swift, laughing conversation after a moment of stunned silence following his words, and it was just as well, because Elizabeth could not tear her gaze from Ian, could not seem to move. And in that endless moment when their gazes held, Elizabeth had an almost overwhelming desire to fling herself into his arms. He saw it, too, and the answering expression in his eyes made her feel she was melting. “It occurs to me, Ian,” Jordan joked a moment later, gently breaking their spell, “that we are wasting our time with honest pursuits.” Ian’s gaze shifted reluctantly from Elizabeth’s face, and then he smiled inquisitively at Jordan. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, shoving the deck toward Jordan while Elizabeth put back her unjustly won chips. “With your skill at dealing whatever hand you want, we could gull half of London. If any of our victims had the temerity to object, Alex could run them through with her rapier, and Elizabeth could shoot him before he hit the ground.” Ian chuckled. “Not a bad idea. What would your role be?” “Breaking us out of Newgate!” Elizabeth laughed. “Exactly.

PUT IT IN PRACTICE: So there you have it: here are four ways to really connect with the way we learn and that we can use every time we revise. Are we doing sad, unhelpful revision or are we doing SAAD revision? S: Are you repeating this revision activity at spaced intervals? Or is this a one-off? A: Are you revising actively? Are you thinking? Or are you just reading? A: Are you associating this new information to knowledge you already have? How can you make links? D: Is this activity desirably difficult? Can you make it more challenging, if necessary?

Between 1995 and 1997 the California-based healthcare network Kaiser Permanente gave more than 17,000 patients a questionnaire to assess the level of trauma in their childhoods. Questions included whether the patients' parents had been mentally or physically abusive or neglectful and whether their parents were divorced or had abused substances. This was called the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. After taking the questionnaire, patients were given an ACE score on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the score, the more trauma a person experienced in childhood. The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn't go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema. They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide. Scientists have learned that stress is literally toxic. Stress chemicals surging through our bodies like cortisol and adrenaline are healthy in moderation—you wouldn't be able to get up in the morning without a good dose of cortisol. But in overwhelming quantities, they become toxic and can change the structure of our brains. Stress and depression wear our bodies out. And childhood trauma affects our telomeres. Telomeres are like little caps on the ends of our strands of DNA that keep them from unraveling. As we get older, those telomeres get shorter and shorter. When they've finally disappeared, our DNA itself begins to unravel, increasing our chances of getting cancer and making us especially susceptible to disease. Because of this, telomeres are linked to human lifespan. And studies have shown that people who have suffered from childhood trauma have significantly shortened telomeres. In the end, these studies claimed that having an ACE score of 6 or higher takes twenty years off your life expectancy. The average life expectancy for someone with 6 or more ACEs is sixty years old.

And I did find it, in an impressive organization called the Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project. MBA was doing mindfulness work (both meditation and yoga) with kids in juvenile hall and getting some solid results. I had seen the data on how many kids in juvie have their own fair share of ACEs (one study that came out later on looked at more than sixty thousand young people in the Florida juvenile justice system and found that 97 percent had experienced at least one ACE category and 52 percent four or more), so I figured it would be a good fit. After I met with MBA’s executive director, Gabriel Kram, and heard his story, I was even more

You want to talk about trauma? Man, it doesn’t get much worse than kids who’ve survived the foster system. Fifty-one percent of children in the foster system have four or more ACEs, compared with 13 percent of children outside the foster system. It’s not abnormal for foster kids to shuffle in and out of a dozen or more foster homes during their childhood, leaving them without a sense of the stability of a true home. One study found that foster children are ten times more likely to be sexually abused. Of course, these painful childhoods have real consequences when the children get older. Ninety percent of foster kids who have had more than five placements will enter the criminal justice system.

ACEs are traumatic childhood events, and their consequences reach far into adulthood. The trauma need not be physical. The following events or feelings are some of the most common ACEs: • being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents • being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you • feeling that your family didn’t support each other • having parents who were separated or divorced • living with an alcoholic or a drug user • living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide • watching a loved one be physically abused. ACEs happen everywhere, in every community. But studies have shown that ACEs are far more common in my corner of the demographic world. A report by the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund showed that among those with a college degree or more (the non–working class), fewer than half had experienced an ACE. Among the working class, well over half had at least one ACE, while about 40 percent had multiple ACEs. This is really striking—four in every ten working-class people had faced multiple instances of childhood trauma. For the non–working class, that number was 29 percent.

tried to go to a counselor, but it was just too weird. Talking to some stranger about my feelings made me want to vomit. I did go to the library, and I learned that behavior I considered commonplace was the subject of pretty intense academic study. Psychologists call the everyday occurrences of my and Lindsay’s life “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs. ACEs are traumatic childhood events, and their consequences reach far into adulthood. The trauma need not be physical. The following events or feelings are some of the most common ACEs: •​being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents •​being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you •​feeling that your family didn’t support each other •​having parents who were separated or divorced •​living with an alcoholic or a drug user •​living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide •​watching a loved one be physically abused. ACEs happen everywhere, in every community. But studies have shown that ACEs are far more common in my corner of the demographic world. A report by the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund showed that among those with a college degree or more (the non–working class), fewer than half had experienced an ACE. Among the working class, well over half had at least one ACE, while about 40 percent had multiple ACEs. This is really striking—four in every ten working-class people had faced multiple instances of childhood trauma. For the non–working class, that number was 29 percent. I gave a quiz to Aunt Wee, Uncle Dan, Lindsay, and Usha that psychologists use to measure the number of ACEs a person has faced. Aunt Wee scored a seven—higher even than Lindsay and me, who each scored a six. Dan and Usha—the two people whose families seemed nice to the point of oddity—each scored a zero. The weird people were the ones who hadn’t faced any childhood trauma. Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, to suffer from heart disease and obesity, and to contract certain types of cancers. They’re also more likely to underperform in school and suffer from relationship instability as adults. Even excessive shouting can damage a kid’s sense of security and contribute to mental health and behavioral issues down the road. Harvard pediatricians have studied the effect that childhood trauma has on the mind. In addition to later negative

I remember, one week, we all started playing strip poker. This is more like it, I thought. It wasn’t really even poker, but was more like: pick an ace and lose an item of clothing. I tried one night to rig the cards so that I could end up naked with Stephie, this girl I really fancied. I carefully counted out the cards and the aces, and rather unsubtly made sure I was sitting next to her, when we started playing. Annoyingly, she then swapped places when someone else came to join us and I ended naked next to Mick, embarrassed and self-conscious. (That will teach me to cheat.) Most of the time my attempts to get a girl fell pretty flat. In fact, whenever I really liked a girl I would always end up losing her to someone else, mainly because I found it so hard to make my feelings known and to pluck up the courage just to ask her out. I remember a friend coming down to the island to stay at the end of one summer, and within twenty-four hours he was in bed with the girl I had been chasing all holidays! I couldn’t believe it. What the hell did he have that I didn’t? I noticed that he wore these brown suede cowboy boots, so I went out and bought a secondhand pair, but I just looked stupid in them. To make matters worse, this friend then went on to describe to me in great detail what they had got up to in that bed. Aarrgh. It kind of summed up my attempts at womanizing.

There were four ways out of Nickel. One: serve your time. A typical sentence fell between six months and two years, but the administration had the power to confer a legal discharge before then at its discretion. Good behavior was a trigger for a legal discharge, if a careful boy gathered enough merits for promotion to Ace. Whereupon he was released into the bosom of his family, who were very glad to have him back or else winced at the sight of his face bobbing up the walk, the start of another countdown to the next calamity. If you had family. If not, the state of Florida's child-welfare apparatus had assorted custodial remedies, some more pleasant than others. You could also serve time by aging out. The schools showed boys the door on their eighteenth birthday, quick hand-shake and pocket change...Boys arrived banged up in different ways before they got to Nickel and picked up more dents and damage during their term. Often graver missteps and more fierce institutions waited. Nickel boys were f***** before, during, and after their time at the school, if one were to characterize the general trajectory... Three: You could die. Of 'natural causes' even, if abetted by unhealthy conditions, malnutrition, and the pitiless constellation of negligence. In the summer of 1945, one young by died of heart failure while locked in a sweatbox, a popular corrective at that time, and the medical examiner called it natural causes.

Pixie lay in a basket by the fire where a dozen brown and white puppies wriggled around her.  She had surprised us by getting pregnant very soon after moving back in with us, and the puppies were just under four-weeks-old now. We couldn’t have been more thrilled, and Bandit couldn’t have been a better dad.  He seemed to have endless patience as they climbed all over him, these wriggling furballs of energy.  Literally everything excited them.   Sully kneeled down beside me to pet the nearest pup, one with a big brown patch over one eye and a butt that never quit shaking.   “Have you got names for them yet?”  I pointed at the one in his hand while Bandit said.  “That’s Patch” “Because of his eye, obviously,” I filled in. Hearing the name, Patch suddenly squirmed out of his hands and bolted for Bandit, but his little paws couldn’t quite get purchase on the new floor and he skidded all the way to Bandit who he bumped into, coming to a sudden stop.  Shaking his head, he looked up at Bandit with intelligent eyes, then sat, waiting for further instructions.  Sully and I shared a look.   They were too young to know their names or much more than that, but it definitely seemed that Patch had known his name and was now waiting for Bandit to begin a game or something.  I pointed at a different puppy, one with a white shape on his rump.   “That one’s Star.” Bandit said. The minute the iPad said his name, Star’s head shot up, then he too bounded over to sit beside his brother.  Sully’s mouth fell open.  “No way…. They’re too young to behave like this.” Feeling a wave of excitement, I watched as Bandit finished calling his kids.   “Panda, Ace, Champ…” As he called their names, each puppy jumped to attention, coming to sit in a neat row in front of Bandit until all twelve of them were in a line in front of him.   I snapped a look at Bandit.  “Did you know about this? Did you know they were super smart too?”  He snorted out of his nose, laughing at our shock.  Sully and I looked at each other, the same startled expression in our eyes. “But…” was all Sully could say.  I at least managed two whole words before the full ramifications of an entire household of super smart dogs could hit me. “Oh boy.

But that’s life right? It’s just a shitty hand of cards. But then maybe somebody pulls out an Ace, and somebody else gets a four, or a ten. It’s all in the draw and how you play it.

problems, if her ACE score had been zero, a standard ADHD workup would have been warranted. But now I knew that if a patient had four or more ACEs, she was thirty-two times as likely to have learning or behavior problems, which suggested that the underlying issue was probably not ordinary ADHD.

I’m stacking days, building a house of cards made from nothing but days. Monday is the Ace of Hearts. Saturday is the Four of Spades. Wednesday is the Seven of Clubs. Thursday night is, I suspect, the Seven of Diamonds, and it might be heavy enough to bring the whole precarious thing tumbling down around my ears. I would spend an entire hour watching cards fall, because time would stretch, the same way it stretches out to fill in awkward pauses, the way it stretched thin in that thundering moment of a car crash. Or at the edges of a wound.

The tarot is a perfect representation of the Tree of Life. The ace of each suit represents the top sephira (1) and the two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten of each suit represents its respective sephira on the Tree.

Americans,” Kuzis spat. “You have it so easy, and then you come to us and preach that we should act as you act. But we’re not holding aces.” “Like I said, Kuzis, you haven’t seen my hand.” “I don’t need to.” “Let me tell you something,” Lance said, “not that it will do you much good now, but the difference between you and me isn’t that I was dealt four aces, and you weren’t.” “What is it then?” “It’s that I play like I was dealt four aces.” Kuzis let out a hollow laugh. “Oh, I see. You’re just bluffing your way to victory then.” “I’m saying, it isn’t the same as a card game, Kuzis. You’re only dealt one hand in life. One hand. And that’s the hand you play.

Babe, this isn’t one of the books we hide on our Kindles and recommend to each other off the clock then proceed to read one-handed while some girl doesn’t have to pick between four guys because they all want to be with her. This is real life.

ACE score on a scale of 0 to 10. The higher the score, the more trauma a person had experienced in childhood. The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn’t go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema.2 They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide.3

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces

As he settled in, he assessed the way he felt with one of his favorite phrases from Mark Twain—the calm confidence of a Christian holding four aces. He slept well.

An excellent example of a proactive network marketing professional is Lenny Evans. When Lenny was introduced to network marketing he was already working close to 80 hours a week, yet he knew that getting the word out to as many people as possible was the only way to see results. Lenny made a decision never to eat lunch alone and to talk to a minimum of two people each day, five days a week. After his first year, Lenny had talked to 520 people. Ninety percent of them rejected Lenny’s opportunity but 10 percent said yes. So he signed 52 people in his first year. Interestingly, 52 is the number of cards in a full deck, and like a deck of cards, there are four aces to be found. Those same numbers held true for Lenny because among those 52 people, he had four true “aces.” During the next four years, Lenny and his “four aces” brought more than 23,000 people into his business! Indeed, being proactive was the key to Lenny’s success. He took initiative and made things happen. Resourcefulness

Along the bottom of each chart, the x-axis, the doctors plotted the number of ACEs that patients had experienced. Along the y-axis, they indicated the prevalence of a specific undesirable outcome: obesity, depression, early sexual activity, history of smoking, and so on. On each chart, the bars rose steadily and consistently from left (0 ACEs) to right (more than 7 ACEs). Compared to people with no history of ACEs, people with ACE scores of 4 or higher were twice as likely to smoke, seven times more likely to be alcoholics, and seven times more likely to have had sex before age fifteen. They were twice as likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, twice as likely to have heart disease, twice as likely to have liver disease, four times as likely to suffer from emphysema or chronic bronchitis.

Agustín Parlá Orduña was among the early Cuban aviation aces. He was born in Key West, Florida, on October 10, 1887, and received his early education there. After Cuba was liberated from Spain, the family returned to Havana, where he continued his education. On April 20, 1912, he received his pilot’s license at the Curtiss School of Aviation in Miami. On July 5, 1913, when the Cuban Army Air Corps was formed, Agustín Parlá was commissioned as a captain in the Cuban Armed Forces. On May 17, 1913, Domingo Rosillo and Agustín Parlá attempted the first international flights to Latin America, by trying to fly their airplanes from Key West to Havana. At 5:10 a.m., Rosillo departed from Key West and flew for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 40 seconds before running out of gas. He had planned to land at the airfield at Camp Columbia in Havana, but instead managed to squeak in at the shooting range, thereby still satisfactorily completing the flight. Parlá left Key West at 5:57 in the morning. Just four minutes later, at 6:01 a.m., he had to carefully turn back to the airstrip he had just left, since the aircraft didn’t properly respond to his controls. Parlá said, “It would not let me compensate for the wind that blew.” When he returned to Key West, he discovered that two of the tension wires to the elevator were broken. On May 19, 1913, Parlá tried again and left Key West, carrying the Cuban Flag his father had received from José Martí. This time he fell short and had to land at sea off the Cuban coast near Mariel, where sailors rescued him from his seaplane.

Well," Paul said. "Hit a stiff hand against the dealer’s seven through ace. Hit soft eighteen against the dealer’s nine or ten. Stand on soft nineteen or above. Double on eleven and on ten against the dealer’s two through nine. Split pairs of aces and eights, never split tens, fives, or fours. Split twos through sevens against the dealer’s two through seven. Split pairs of nines against the dealer’s

I’m not a huge fan of bananas.” I chuckle. “Noted. No banana boat sundaes. How about we keep it simple and order Sandwiches to Go? I know a more private area where we can eat.” “That sounds perfect.

Go back downstairs with your friends and call me in the morning or leave with me now. But know if you leave with me, I plan on making you come so hard you’ll be begging me to stop while begging me to never stop. I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk for a week. Your choice. But if you leave with me, I won’t accept no as an answer. There’s no way I’ll be able to stop once we start, so be sure about what you want.

Drake: I had a great time last night. Call me when you wake up. An hour later, he sent another. Drake: Are you free Monday? For breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Or sex. Preferably all of the above. And then another from not long ago. He must have sent it when I was on the T. Drake: Came upstairs to check on you and you’re gone. You okay? Let me know you made it home safely. And answer your texts so I don’t sound like a desperate lover. But I am desperate. To see you again.

Drake: Not gonna lie. I’m a little envious of Owen right now. He texted me and bragged about seeing you while I’m stuck here at work. And by the way, I’m only kidding. Well, not really. Owen did brag, but it was just to bust my chops. Counting down until Monday.

You keep saying things like this and my ego’s going to get so big I won’t be able to fit through the lobby of my casino.” “I’ll tell you what else is big.” The innuendo slips from my lips. I’m not a flirt, and I’ve never talked dirty before. Drake brings out a side of me I never thought existed.

Babe.” He settles his hands on my hips. “Just because you come doesn’t mean I stop touching you. Haven’t you picked up on that yet?

When I take you again, I want you strong and able to handle what I have planned for you.

Babe.” I straighten her hat and whisper in her ear. “If I told you how I really feel, I’ll need to find us a back alley and take you against the wall. I can barely contain myself as it is.

You okay?” Drake asks from behind me, rubbing my back.

HELL. DRAKE IS PERFECT.

He stepped out the door into the brilliant sunshine. George laid down his cards thoughtfully, turned his piles of three. He built four clubs on his ace pile. The sun square was on the floor now, and the flies whipped through it like sparks. A sound of jingling harness and the croak of heavy-laden axles sounded from outside.

Just this year, we introduced an exercise for our Duke MBAs called “How Your Talents Add Value” to help drive this point home for them. We presented them with four “buckets” of work: (1) Making things happen, (2) Collaborating with others, (3) Leading and influencing others, and (4) Solving challenging problems. We then asked our students to pick two of their Top 5 talent themes that they must regularly combine in order to accomplish each bucket of work. They were instructed to put in their own words how they used these talent themes in tandem to do good work and then to describe an example where they did so.

TO REDUCE APPETITE, PROMOTE FAT LOSS, AND REBALANCE OUR METABOLISM: The peptide semaglutide (and other glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists) have aced four-year-plus clinical trials, with subjects routinely losing 15 percent of their body weight—or 30 pounds for someone weighing in at 200. Generally well-tolerated, with a terrific safety profile, GLP-1s can be game-changers when added to a healthy diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes. Occasional side effects: nausea, diarrhea, and flatulence. May not be suitable for individuals with a history of thyroid gland tumors. MOTS-c and Humanin are derived from the mitochondria, our cells’ power packs. Among other things, they may revitalize our carbohydrate and fat metabolism. This category of mitochondrial peptides is a potential wellspring of future innovation for longevity, healthspan, and peak performance!

Join me in raising a glass to our families, friends, and neighbors as well as this damn fine little town we work and live in. Together they enrich our lives, and may God continue to bless us in the coming years. I know you’ll all agree that we are truly fortunate. To us all!” Nick said, raising his glass. Everyone lining the sidewalks loudly echoed the words, “To us all!

For those with an ACE score of four or more, its prevalence is 66 percent in women and 35 percent in men, compared with an overall rate of 12 percent in those with an ACE score of zero. The likelihood of being on antidepressant medication or prescription painkillers also rose proportionally. As Felitti has pointed out, we may be treating today experiences that happened fifty years ago—at ever-increasing cost. Antidepressant drugs and painkillers constitute a significant portion of our rapidly rising national health-care expenditures.16 (Ironically, research has shown that depressed patients without prior histories of abuse or neglect tend to respond much better to antidepressants than patients with those backgrounds.

But if we can’t compete with technology when it comes to storing answers, questioning—that uniquely human capacity—is our ace in the hole. Until Watson acquires the equivalent of human curiosity, creativity, divergent thinking skills, imagination, and judgment, it will not be able to formulate the kind of original, counterintuitive, and unpredictable questions an innovative thinker—or even just your average four-year-old—can come up with.

Figure 17. The court cards are elemental aspects of the ace. Table 3. Elemental Subdivisions of the Aces and Court Cards Four pentagrams, representing the ace and four court cards of each suit, are placed upon the extremities the Rose Cross of Manifestation.

In the military, they mostly divide themselves into four major categories: There are the ‘me-firsters,’ the ‘me-tooers,’ the ‘deadwood,’ and the ‘dedicated.

LaForche's never-was has-never been emaciated spirit was now as it had always been, hole’ up by vapidity and things intangible. Yet it looked so common and ordinary, blenting into the masses using the trogs as a mask to hide itself (later Christina recalled Thomas saying that the sleuth Man said there was nothing unnatural like the common, and the detective was right. “The Fork” was a four-star pronged pointless entity, a spirit without form or life, except now it was evident, his external body displaying to all the leftovers of his empty writhing, splastic visage. Short of sheet and simply put, the girl had out-foiled him—. With the wolves of humiliation tearing the meat right off of his soul, he continued in his loner power mongering ways. Once formidable, they now reeked of rancid mal-diminishment. This is all he had left–and knew it, an armload of empty conquests, but the prize, the one he had desired and wanted so much, had eluded his hounding dogmatic futile, empty and sterile grasp. The power of powerlessness tonned his shoulders, gashing him and his god of pride apart. He shot a quick glarance toward the wall phone thinking of “The Bix,” Kerta’s # 1 Ace problem solving “mechanic.” --OnFelipe LaForche , Villain The lady and the Samurai