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But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.

Mother Earth Speaks: You live in my womb, learn from my seasons and grow old in my arms Listen to my heart I give you garments woven in gold I bless your arrival then let you fly free knowing forever we are one you and I

Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular.

you can use positive constraints to increase perceived free will and results. Freeform days might seem idyllic, but they are paralyzing due to continual paradox of choice (e.g., “What should I do now?”) and decision fatigue (e.g., “What should I have for breakfast?”). In

In Russian folklore there is an archetype called yurodivy, or the “Holy Fool.” The Holy Fool is a social misfit—eccentric, off-putting, sometimes even crazy—who nonetheless has access to the truth. Nonetheless is actually the wrong word. The Holy Fool is a truth-teller because he is an outcast. Those who are not part of existing social hierarchies are free to blurt out inconvenient truths or question things the rest of us take for granted. In one Russian fable, a Holy Fool looks at a famous icon of the Virgin Mary and declares it the work of the devil. It’s an outrageous, heretical claim. But then someone throws a stone at the image and the facade cracks, revealing the face of Satan.

Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader with Barthes. For how can you write, believing in Barthes? Still, I’m glad I’m not the reader I was in college anymore, and I’ll tell you why: it made me feel lonely. Back then I wanted to tear down the icon of the author and abolish, too, the idea of a privileged reader—the text was to be a free, wild thing, open to everyone, belonging to no one, refusing an ultimate meaning. Which was a powerful feeling, but also rather isolating, because it jettisons the very idea of communication, of any possible genuine link between the person who writes and the person who reads. Nowadays I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own. To this end I find myself placing a cautious faith in the difficult partnership between reader and writer, that discrete struggle to reveal an individual’s experience of the world through the unstable medium of language. Not a refusal of meaning, then, but a quest for it.

Most televangelists, popular Christian preacher icons, and heads of those corporations that we call megachurches share an unreflective modern view of Jesus--that he translates easily and almost automatically into a modern idiom. The fact is, however, that Jesus was not a person of the twenty-first century who spoke the language of contemporary Christian America (or England or Germany or anywhere else). Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine. He was not like us, and if we make him like us we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes. Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and--most striking of all--his beliefs were not ours. Jesus was a first-century Jew, and when we try to make him into a twenty-first century American we distort everything he was and everything he stood for.

The contemporary West is the most individualistic era of all time. Its central values are in ethics, autonomy; in politics, individual rights; in culture, postmodernism; and in religion, ‘spirituality’. Its idol is the self, its icon the ‘selfie’, and its operating systems the free market and the post-ideological, managerial liberal democratic state. In place of national identities we have global cosmopolitanism. In place of communities we have flash-mobs. We are no longer pilgrims but tourists. We no longer know who we are or why.

Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church?

THIRTEEN GREAT ICONS FELL FROM THE SKY, WHEN THEY CAME ALIVE, SIX CITIES DIED. REMEMBER 6/6. THE PROJECTS ARE SLAVERY. WE ARE NOT FREE. SILENCE IS NOT PEACE. REMEMBER THE DAY. DEATH TO THE SYMPAS, DEATH TO THE LORDS. DESTROY THE ICONS. REMEMBER.

People referred to the symbolism of the empty Cross more than once on its journey. It would seem obviously to point to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s not quite so simple though. The Cross is bare, but in and of itself the empty Cross does not point directly to the Resurrection. It says only that the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. If a crucifix is a symbol of Good Friday, then it is the image of the empty tomb that speaks more directly of Easter and resurrection. The empty Cross is a symbol of Holy Saturday. It’s an indicator of the reality of Jesus’ death, of His sharing in our mortal coil. At the same time, the empty Cross is an implicit sign of impending resurrection, and it tells us that the Cross is not only a symbol of hatred, violence and inhumanity: it says that the Cross is about something more. The empty Cross also tells us not to jump too quickly to resurrection, as if the Resurrection were a trump card that somehow absolves us from suffering. The Resurrection is not a divine ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card that immunises people from pain, suffering or death. To jump too quickly to the Resurrection runs the risk of trivialising people’s pain and seemingly mapping out a way through suffering that reduces the reality of having to live in pain and endure it at times. For people grieving, introducing the message of the Resurrection too quickly cheapens or nullifies their sense of loss. The empty Cross reminds us that we cannot avoid suffering and death. At the same time, the empty Cross tells us that, because of Jesus’ death, the meaning of pain, suffering and our own death has changed, that these are not all-crushing or definitive. The empty Cross says that the way through to resurrection must always break in from without as something new, that it cannot be taken hold of in advance of suffering or seized as a panacea to pain. In other words, the empty Cross is a sign of hope. It tells us that the new life of God surprises us, comes at a moment we cannot expect, and reminds us that experiences of pain, grief and dying are suffused with the presence of Christ, the One Who was crucified and is now risen.

Whatever the reasoning, a neglected resident dog on a chain is more likely to become mentally frustrated from lack of exercise and fearful of strangers because it cannot flee to defend itself, while other people, dogs, and/or wildlife are free to approach, taunt, or harm it (in the Southwest, chained dogs are often called “coyote bait

Forty-five years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing American slaves, Green Cottenham and more than a thousand other black men toiled under the lash at Slope 12. Imprisoned in what was then the most advanced city of the South, guarded by whipping bosses employed by the most iconic example of the modern corporation emerging in the gilded North, they were slaves in all but name.

Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment: InterLace TelEntertainment, 932/1864 R.I.S.C. power-TPs w/ or w/o console, Pink2, post-Primestar D.S.S. dissemination, menus and icons, pixel-free InterNet Fax, tri- and quad-modems w/ adjustable baud, post-Web Dissemination-Grids, screens so high-def you might as well be there, cost-effective videophonic conferencing, internal Froxx CD-ROM, electronic couture, all-in-one consoles, Yushityu ceramic nanoprocessors, laser chromatography, Virtual-capable media-cards, fiber-optic pulse, digital encoding, killer apps; carpal neuralgia, phosphenic migraine, gluteal hyperadiposity, lumbar stressae.

Petre's commitment to Roman Catholicism combined with her openness to mental and moral subjectivism formed a rare alchemy among early twentieth-century Catholics. Her exposure to thinkers like Nietzsche did not strip her of her faith. She argued that despite Nietzsche's professed atheism, his life and thought offered much for Catholics to admire. His was a 'strenuous,' 'suffering,' 'unselfish' 'life militant' marked by 'purity, integrity, [and] utter unworldliness.' Despite being the sweetheart of libertine artists and writers, Nietzsche criticized the decadence and pessimism of modern aesthetics. Likewise, the goal of his celebration of free will and his critique of sin was not an orgiastic 'self-abandonment, but ... strong self-possession; a mastering of one's own life and conduct' and a recognition that true contrition is not legislated from without but cultivated from within a deep reverence for the 'mysterious laws of our being.' Petre insisted that in Nietzsche, Catholics could find a fellow seeker of moral strenuousness: 'There is to be here no dilettantism, but sheer hard work.

Alex Honnold, free solo climbing phenom: The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding and others: ambitones like The Zen Effect in the key of C for 30 minutes, made by Rolfe Kent, the composer of music for movies like Sideways, Wedding Crashers, and Legally Blonde Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of WordPress, CEO of Automattic: “Everyday” by A$AP Rocky and “One Dance” by Drake Amelia Boone, the world’s most successful female obstacle course racer: “Tonight Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins and “Keep Your Eyes Open” by NEEDTOBREATHE Chris Young, mathematician and experimental chef: Paul Oakenfold’s “Live at the Rojan in Shanghai,” Pete Tong’s Essential Mix Jason Silva, TV and YouTube philosopher: “Time” from the Inception soundtrack by Hans Zimmer Chris Sacca: “Harlem Shake” by Baauer and “Lift Off” by Jay Z and Kanye West, featuring Beyoncé. “I can bang through an amazing amount of email with the Harlem Shake going on in the background.” Tim Ferriss: Currently I’m listening to “Circulation” by Beats Antique and “Black Out the Sun” by Sevendust, depending on whether I need flow or a jumpstart.

Ultimately the reason for both the work of evangelism and the work of justice is not simply the relief of suffering, whether present or eternal. It is the restoration of God’s true image in the world, made known in the one true Image and Icon, Jesus Christ, and refracted and reflected in fruitful, multiplying image bearers set free by his death and resurrection to reclaim their true calling. Our mission is not primarily driven by a calculation of which suffering, present or eternal, we need to relieve most urgently; it is the fruit of glorious promises that call us into a new kingdom where the world is full of truth-bearing images. No image bearer can fully return to their true calling without finding themselves rescued and redeemed by the true Image Bearer, so no serious Christian witness in the world can fail to call people to put their trust in Jesus and the true God he makes known. And no image bearer can bear full witness to the glory of the Creator without the conditions for flourishing that are summed up in the rich biblical conception of justice. “He comes to make his blessings flow / far as the curse is found.” Because idolatry and injustice are the twin fruits of the curse, the work of evangelism and the work of justice are one.

The Magic of Goulash “The trip down the aisle [on a bus or train, during his travels] was where all the stakes were. Because as I’m going down that aisle, I’ve got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me. The stakes are high because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home. Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.” The clincher question Cal used to get free room and board around Europe as a poor traveler was: “Can you tell me: How do you make the perfect goulash?” He would purposefully sit down next to grandmas, who would then pour out their souls. After a few minutes of passionate pantomiming, people would come from around the train to help translate, no matter the country. Cal never had to worry about where he was spending the night. “During [one dinner party a grandma threw in Hungary to feed me goulash,] one of the neighbors says, ‘Have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives a half an hour away. You’ve got to come to taste the apricot brandy.’ That weekend, we’re tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts, another neighbor comes over to me. ‘Have you ever been to Kiskunhalas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kiskunhalas.’ Now we’re off to Kiskunhalas. I’m telling you, a single question about goulash could get me 6 weeks of lodging and meals, and that’s how I got passed around the world. 10 years. 10 years.

Naval’s Laws The below is Naval’s response to the question “Are there any quotes you live by or think of often?” These are gold. Take the time necessary to digest them. “These aren’t all quotes from others. Many are maxims that I’ve carved for myself.” Be present above all else. Desire is suffering (Buddha). Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else (Buddhist saying). If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day. Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else. All the real benefits in life come from compound interest. Earn with your mind, not your time. 99% of all effort is wasted. Total honesty at all times. It’s almost always possible to be honest and positive. Praise specifically, criticize generally (Warren Buffett). Truth is that which has predictive power. Watch every thought. (Always ask, “Why am I having this thought?”) All greatness comes from suffering. Love is given, not received. Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts (Eckhart Tolle). Mathematics is the language of nature. Every moment has to be complete in and of itself. A Few of Naval’s Tweets that are Too Good to Leave Out “What you choose to work on, and who you choose to work with, are far more important than how hard you work.” “Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.” “If you eat, invest, and think according to what the ‘news’ advocates, you’ll end up nutritionally, financially, and morally bankrupt.” “We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.” “The guns aren’t new. The violence isn’t new. The connected cameras are new, and that changes everything.” “You get paid for being right first, and to be first, you can’t wait for consensus.” “My one repeated learning in life: ‘There are no adults.’ Everyone’s making it up as they go along. Figure it out yourself, and do it.” “A busy mind accelerates the passage of subjective time.

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

For abolitionists, who advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves, and free-soilers, who simply opposed the spread of slavery into the western territories, the existence of such a group proved the destructive effect of slavery on social morals and human industry and the inordinate economic power of the planter elite. It also served as an implicit warning of the disastrous consequences of the spread of slavery into nonslaveholding regions and its debilitating effect on the work ethic of otherwise stalwart white farmers. For slave-holders, particularly those at the apex of southern society, the idleness of rural working-class whites justified the “peculiar institution” and made clear the need for a planter-led economic and social hierarchy. Planter D. R. Hundley wrote, for example, that “poor whites” were “the laziest two-legged animals that walk erect on the face of the earth . . . [and exhibited] a natural stupidity or dullness of intellect that almost surpasses belief.” To abolitionists and proslavery ideologues alike, therefore, southern poor whites utterly lacked industry, intelligence, social propriety, and honor, the essential ingredients for political and social equality and thus should not be trusted with political decision-making.7 Northern and southern middle- to upper-class commentators perceived this class of people as so utterly degraded that they challenged their assertion of “whiteness,” the one claim southern working-class whites had to political equality, “normative” status, and social superiority to free and enslaved blacks. Like Byrd and the author of “The Carolina Sand-Hillers,” journalists and travel writers repeatedly compared “poor whites” unfavorably to other supposedly inferior people of color, be they enslaved blacks, Indians, or even Mexican peasants. Through a variety of arguments, including genetic inferiority, excessive interbreeding with “nonwhites,” and environmental factors, such as the destructive influences of the southern climate, rampant disease, and a woefully inadequate diet, these writers asserted that “poor whites” were neither truly “white” nor clearly “nonwhite” but instead, a separate “‘Cracker’ race” in all ways so debased that they had no capacity for social advancement. This attitude is clear in an 1866 article from the Boston Daily Advertiser that proclaimed that this social class had reached depths of “[s]uch filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbecility” that they could never be truly civilized. “[T]ime and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood,” the author concluded, “but I almost doubt if it will be possible to ever lift this ‘white trash’ into respectability.”8 Contempt for working-class whites was almost as strong among African Americans as among middle-class and elite whites. Enslaved African Americans invented derogatory terms containing explicit versions of “whiteness” such as “(poor) white trash” and “poor buckra” (a derivative form of the West African word for “white man”). Although relations between slaves and non-elite southern whites were complex, many slaves deeply resented the role of poor whites as overseers and patrol riders and adopted their owners’ view that elite southern planters were socially and morally superior. Many also believed that blacks, enslaved and free, formed a middle layer of social respectability between the planter aristocracy at the top of the social system and the “poor whites” at the bottom. The construction of a “poor white” and “white trash” social and cultural category thus allowed black slaves to carve out a space of social superiority, as well as permitted the white planter elite to justify enormous economic and social inequality among whites in a supposedly democratic society.9

A Tale of Two Parking Requirements The impact of parking requirements becomes clearer when we compare the parking requirements of San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco limits off-street parking, while LA requires it. Take, for example, the different parking requirements for concert halls. For a downtown concert hall, Los Angeles requires, as a minimum, fifty times more parking than San Francisco allows as its maximum. Thus the San Francisco Symphony built its home, Louise Davies Hall, without a parking garage, while Disney Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, did not open until seven years after its parking garage was built. Disney Hall's six-level, 2,188-space underground garage cost $110 million to build (about $50,000 per space). Financially troubled Los Angeles County, which built the garage, went into debt to finance it, expecting that parking revenues would repay the borrowed money. But the garage was completed in 1996, and Disney Hall—which suffered from a budget less grand than its vision—became knotted in delays and didn't open until late 2003. During the seven years in between, parking revenue fell far short of debt payments (few people park in an underground structure if there is nothing above it) and the county, by that point nearly bankrupt, had to subsidize the garage even as it laid employees off. The money spent on parking shifted Disney Hall's design toward drivers and away from pedestrians. The presence of a six-story subterranean garage means most concert patrons arrive from underneath the hall, rather than from the sidewalk. The hall's designers clearly understood this, and so while the hall has a fairly impressive street entrance, its more magisterial gateway is an "escalator cascade" that flows up from the parking structure and ends in the foyer. This has profound implications for street life. A concertgoer can now drive to Disney Hall, park beneath it, ride up into it, see a show, and then reverse the whole process—and never set foot on a sidewalk in downtown LA. The full experience of an iconic Los Angeles building begins and ends in its parking garage, not in the city itself. Visitors to downtown San Francisco have a different experience. When a concert or theater performance lets out in San Francisco, people stream onto the sidewalks, strolling past the restaurants, bars, bookstores, and flower shops that are open and well-lit. For those who have driven, it is a long walk to the car, which is probably in a public facility unattached to any specific restaurant or shop. The presence of open shops and people on the street encourages other people to be out as well. People want to be on streets with other people on them, and they avoid streets that are empty, because empty streets are eerie and menacing at night. Although the absence of parking requirements does not guarantee a vibrant area, their presence certainly inhibits it. "The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages," Jane Jacobs argued in 1961, "the duller and deader it becomes ... and there is nothing more repellent than a dead downtown.

The King James Bible, which most Pennsylvanians would have been using, describes the central moment as an act of economic liberation: “Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.” But there’s a problem with this translation. The Hebrew word deror, which the King James renders as liberty, is more precisely translated as release. Modern Bibles usually translate Leviticus 25:10 as “You shall proclaim release throughout the land,” stressing that the liberation is a freeing from economic duress, not political servitude. Considering all that would befall Isaac Norris’s bell, the one misfortune that proved most beneficial was preventing America’s treasured icon from being called … the Release Bell.

your device, or by contacting Amazon Customer Service. When Restrictions are enabled or a FreeTime profile is active, you will see a lock icon at the top of the screen next to the Wi-Fi status indicator, and the Deregistration and Reset Device options will be disabled.

So you attempt what De Bruik attempted, in her Free Radical Binds to Macromolecule.” “We all attempt what De Bruik attempted, in one way or another.” In Free Radical De Bruik had represented the macromolecule, an RNA strand, as a passacaglia, a ground base repeated again and again, in patterns of four that alternated regularly. This was a simple icon, a metaphor in which the repeated ground base stood for the repeated proteins in the RNA; fine. And the free radical’s part was a test for any trumpet player.

For the past two hundred years the arts in Russia have served as an arena for political, philosophical and religious debate in the absence of a parliament or a free press. As Tolstoy wrote in ‘A Few Words on War and Peace’ (1868), the great artistic prose works of the Russian tradition were not novels in the European sense.3 They were huge poetic structures for symbolic contemplation, not unlike icons, laboratories in which to test ideas; and, like a science or religion, they were animated by the search for truth.

make the time to purify your Heartset so it’s free of the suppressed toxic emotions of fear, anger, sadness, disappointment, resentment, shame and guilt that every human being accumulates as we advance through a life and endure misfortunes. Fail to deal with and steadily heal this “Field of Hurt” that lurks in your subconscious and you’ll find the peak of your energy, creativity and productivity will always be blocked (this is extremely important to understand).

None of my tattoos belong to me; other people wore them first. I have Gaga’s Rilke quote on the inside of my arm and Lana del Rey’s paradise on the side of my foot. Rihanna’s stars cascade across my hip; Cara Delevingne’s wasp stings my shoulder. These tattoos belong to people who are free and abundantly themselves. When they walk in, they belong, even though they look like they came from the moon or Mars or the Milky Way. They don’t have scars; they are the scar—the line that separates them from the ordinary is their entire existence. Their tattoos are my icons, little etched Patronus charms that fly across my body. So when I get ink, I get theirs. I reach for what they have; I cling to it in permanent colors.

white men never hesitated to find their pleasure with Negro women. Before the Civil War, Southern slave owners kept their white women on pedestals, hidden away from the slaves; they made those women icons to white purity and the Southern way of life. But such veneration came with a cost. Women on pedestals tended to be frosty in bed, so the white man had his way with the Negro women and girls. Southern white boys crossed the threshold into manhood with a romp with a woman slave, who refused at the risk of a whipping, or worse. Even the white overseer could help himself whenever the urge arose, and it arose often, and all those mulatto babies were the result. But then the Union triumphed and the slaves were freed. Mingled with the Southern white man’s fury at the destruction of his way of life was this fear: what sort of retribution might the “black buck” now exact on white women? Negro men were now free to do to the white men’s beloved wives and daughters what the white men had done to the Negro women. Great vigilance was required to prevent such abominations. After all, how many rapes began with just a smile?

Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and expert in how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities, compares social media notifications to slot machines.51 They both deliver variable rewards: you’re curious, will I have two Likes or two hundred? You click the app icon and wait for the wheels to turn—a second, two, three, piquing your anticipation only makes the reward sweeter: you have nineteen Likes. Will it be more in an hour? You’ll have to check to find out. And while you’re there, here are these fake news stories that bots have been littering the information space with. Feel free to share them with your friends, even if you haven’t read them—you know you’ll get your tribe’s approval by sharing more of what they already believe.

CreativeLive is an online learning platform that broadcasts live, high-definition classes to more than 2 million students in 200 countries. All classes are free to watch live and can be purchased for later viewing.

I fully enjoyed “Imagineer Your Future” by Les LaMotte. This is a wonderful manual with an underlying Christian base that teaches how anyone can learn the principles of becoming an “Imagineer” like Les. The book begins by explaining the author’s own spiritual, life, and career journey that produced in him an Imagineer mindset. His grandfathers specific teaching the principles of a simple kite that in 50 years turned into his Xtra Lite Display System with five US patents and several international that opened sales in over 36 countries. The author explains, “To call yourself an Imagineer means you lead a complex life, schooled in enlightenment and problem solving with many hundreds of ideas of the past, present, and future technology, all while living your life in various stages of your own growth, development, and experience.” This creative and colorful book filled with photographs and illustrations has 20 sections ranging from important principles gleaned from childhood to helping the reader take necessary self assessments before launching into higher education without a well thought through plan. These sections are color coded using side tabs and there are vertical chapter titles present that allow the reader to quickly comb through the concepts and chapters that are most relevant to them. Dollar icons are present throughout to indicate where an Excel sheet is available to download free on LaMotte’s website. An Imagineer symbol targets areas of specific learning opportunities. To make this process even easier, the reader is provided with fill in the blank lists and links to online Core Passion assessments so they can discover their actual motivations in light of their gifts and how to apply their five top core passions to complete their own Imagineer journey. I really enjoyed how the author weaves his own experiences throughout each section and the heartfelt mentions of well known individuals that have Imagineered throughout recent and ongoing history. Les provides his own amazing pointers on how to stay on the path to leading a fulfilling life of an Imagineer. If you are looking for a cross between a creative and easy to understand manual on becoming an Imagineer and a heartfelt journey traveling the road to success this is the choice for you.

At the same time, art cannot be understood in terms of purpose. As the sculptor Charles Ray has said, art is “for absolutely nothing.” To make, or experience, art is to enter a kind of free zone; it slows us down, places us in some epistemological estuary, takes us into the wild. We make art from our flaws, fragilities, perversities, from our need to communicate or be entertained or stave off death, to create our own mating dances, to deliver our own children, to mourn. Art is bigger than mere subject matter. It is as big as life.

The great saints, sages and spiritual geniuses all understood that a main aim on the path to awakening was to stand in any mess that life sends and remain contented, courageous, serene and free. To stay tranquil while all appears to be falling apart. To construct an inner axis of power so strong, and yet so flexible, that nothing on the outside could shake its roots. Imagine this: making an interior life that stays graceful, quiet and grateful, regardless of what is happening outside of you. To have your strength depend not on worldly stability but upon your primal heroism

What these creative professionals understand is that focus not only requires keeping distraction out; it also necessitates keeping ourselves in. After we’ve learned to master internal triggers, make time for traction, and hack back external triggers, the last step to becoming indistractable involves preventing ourselves from sliding into distraction. To do so, we must learn a powerful technique called a “precommitment,” which involves removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsivity. Although researchers are still studying why it is so effective, precommitment is, in fact, an age-old tactic. Perhaps the most iconic precommitment in history appears in the ancient telling of the Odyssey. In the story, Ulysses must sail his ship and crew past the land of the Sirens, who sing a bewitching song known to draw sailors to their shores. When sailors approach, they wreck their ships on the Sirens’ rocky coast and perish. Knowing the danger ahead, Ulysses hatches a clever plan to avoid this fate. He orders his men to fill their ears with beeswax so they cannot hear the Sirens’ call. Everyone follows Ulysses’s orders, with the exception of Ulysses, who wants to hear the beautiful song for himself. But Ulysses knows that he will be tempted to either steer his ship toward the rocks or jump into the sea to reach the Sirens. To safeguard himself and his men, he instructs his crew to tie him to the mast of the ship and instructs them not to set him free nor change course until the ship is in the clear, no matter what he says or does. The crew follows Ulysses’s commands, and as the ship passes the Sirens’ shores, he is driven temporarily insane by their song. In an angry rage, he calls for his men to let him go, but since they cannot hear the Sirens nor their captain, they navigate past the danger safely.

Because of this mysterious virus from China, Broadway was closing.33 All of Broadway. Not just one theater or ten theaters, as in a free society in which business owners make choices based on individual risk. All of Broadway, in one iconic, sweeping, Soviet-style, top-down gesture.

von Ahn, PhD, (TW: @LuisvonAhn, duolingo.com) is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Duolingo, a free language learning platform with more than 100 million users.

When I articulated that I didn’t care anymore about what anybody thought about what I did except me, all the weight of the world came off my shoulders, and everything became possible. It shifted to everybody else [being] worried. Now they’re worried. But everything for me, it shifted to a place where I felt free.

The Amazon Whispernet service wirelessly delivers content to your Kindle whenever and wherever you want it. Your Kindle can connect to Whispernet via its built-in Wi-Fi capability; some models also include free cellular network connectivity to Whispernet. The more bars on the Wi-Fi or cellular network status indicator that are filled, the stronger the signal. Your Kindle is connected to Whispernet using Wi-Fi. The more bars that are filled, the stronger the signal. Your Kindle is connected to Whispernet using a cellular network. The more bars that are filled, the stronger the signal. The icon to the left of the signal-strength bars indicates the type of cellular network you are connected to. (Applies to Kindle Wi-Fi

Consider using the free, cross-platform tool VeraCrypt. If you feel you might ever be compelled to reveal a password for your computer such as at a border crossing or by “rubber hose” cryptanalysis (being beaten by a rubber hose until you squeal), you can use “hidden volumes” to hide

In contrast, something as simple as pre-scheduled workouts acts as scaffolding around which you can more effectively plan and execute your day. This gives you a greater sense of agency and feeling of freedom. Jocko adds, “It also means that if you want freedom in life—be that financial freedom, more free time, or even freedom from sickness and poor health—you can only achieve these things through discipline.

I will give you NOTHING! Shall I tell you what I believe, Thagus?...I believe you are likewise trapped in the storm. I believe the Warp aided your pursuit of us, then cut you adrift in our wake, leaving you becalmed and with no idea why. I believe that the malignant essences we call Gods have brought us together in the heart of this storm to play out a game of kings and pawns, just to see where their favour should fall...I believe, most of all, that you are frightened of us. You fear us because despite your raving speeches that we are betraying the Legions, and despite your petty crusades to destroy us, we not only survive, but THRIVE. We grow with every conflict. The icons of the failed Legions are sheared from ever more suits of armour, and the colours of shame are eclipsed in numbers no other warband can match. You fear that we are right and you are wrong. You fear us, more than any other reason, because you had to chase us. Because we were here first. Because we are the ones on the verge of breaking free, despite all your attempts in these last decades to hinder us. We have been working towards this fate, while you have done nothing but seek to stop us. We've fought for true unity, all brothers beneath the black banner, while you've fought against it in the guise of preserving the old, failed ways. We, Thagus, have acted. You have reacted. And here we stand at our prison's edge. Even now you have no answers to give your men. Instead, you force this meeting with us, praying you can glean insight into our plans and scavenge victory through threats. You'll lose this war, Thagus. You'll lose because you desire the Gods' favour and you fear it falling upon anyone else.

How Ma Bell Helped Us Build the Blue Box In 1955, the Bell System Technical Journal published an article entitled “In Band Signal Frequency Signaling” which described the process used for routing telephone calls over trunk lines with the signaling system at the time. It included all the information you’d need to build an interoffice telephone system, but it didn’t include the MF (multifrequency) tones you needed for accessing the system and dialing. But nine years later, in 1964, Bell revealed the other half of the equation, publishing the frequencies used for the digits needed for the actual routing codes. Now, anybody who wanted to get around Ma Bell was set. The formula was there for the taking. All you needed were these two bits of information found in these two articles. If you could build the equipment to emit the frequencies needed, you could make your own free calls, skipping Ma Bell’s billing and monitoring system completely. Famous “phone phreaks” of the early 1970s include Joe Engressia (a.k.a. Joybubbles), who was able to whistle (with his mouth) the high E tone needed to take over the line. John Draper (a.k.a. Captain Crunch) did the same with the free whistle that came inside boxes of Cap’n Crunch. A whole subculture was born. Eventually Steve Jobs (a.k.a. Oaf Tobar) and I (a.k.a. Berkeley Blue) joined the group, making and selling our own versions of the Blue Boxes. We actually made some good money at this.

Gran Trak 10. In just those couple of nights, I got so good at it that many years later, when I found one in a pizza parlor, I was able to get the score you needed for a free pizza every time. After I did that twice, the pizza parlor got rid of the machine.

The ongoing problem with most American poetry & poets today is their lack of belief in themselves & that they don't expand upon their ideals or experiment enough with their craft. That's why we are all stuck in the same old literary grind & groove still pushing out old ideas, listening to ridiculous banter of egotistical critics & still worshipping the old schools & movements of long past yesterdays from decades ago. Dead icons, dead ideas, dead slams and an established academic system that's biased and too busy promoting all the cliche events that they believe are all about community but mainly promoting their own of which are not open to all poets without degrees but mostly only to students & the inner sanctum. Poetry is for everyone and it needs a new vision of our times. The 21st century. The majority of poets who are producing new & original works are being ignored. Poetry should be independent and free of bias and uncategorized. Workshops or classes are not the solution.

When John Kenneth Galbraith rose to deliver the presidential address of the American Economic Association in 1972, the angular Harvard professor and supremely self-confident adviser to presidents was arguably the most famous living economist in America. From The Affluent Society in 1958 to The New Industrial State in 1967, his critical accounts of capitalism's tendencies to underfund social goods and concentrate corporate control had been fixtures on the best-seller lists. Galbraith's thirteen-part BBC television series on the workings of capitalism in 1977 was to help goad the production of Milton Friedman's counterassertion of 1980, the PBS series Free to Choose, an iconic statement of the new market ideology.

Connecting to the outernet was less of a shock this time, as the monitor gave him a sense of distance from it, but it was still annoying. How did these people live with such a system, stalked by advertisements and "free" offers and icons that would take you to another site, unasked-for, the moment you gave them your attention? It was like wending your way through an obstacle course. Perhaps after a while you just learned to tune it all out... or perhaps you could buy programs that did it for you. He would have to design himself one of those before he did any more real work on the outernet, though he suspected that the consumer programs which were stalking him were capable of adapting to anything he could turn out quickly. Advertising: the ultimate predator. He longed for the simplicity of the Gueran network, which simply did what it was supposed to and no more. When had these people lost touch with the fact that the purpose of a network was to facilitate communication, not impede it?

During his extensive career as an airmail pilot with Aéropostale, Antoine served as the company’s station manager in barren Villa Bens. During the Second World War, although he was older than most, Saint-Exupéry joined the Free French Air Force. On July 31, 1944, as fate would have it, he disappeared on a reconnaissance mission flying a P-38 Lightning over the Mediterranean, somewhere south of Marseille. The body of a French pilot was found a few days after Antoine’s disappearance and was buried in Carqueiranne, France. After his death he became an icon and national hero throughout France. For a fleeting moment I wondered what anyone could do to pass the time of day at such a remote location…. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry used his time to write books! Today the word Aéropostale takes on an entirely new meaning. It has become the name of an American retailer of casual apparel for young people. Go figure….

*What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made? “The best thing I ever did, besides getting sober 25 years ago, was shelving my restaurant career in 2002, selling my shares in my restaurant, and working for free for a local radio station, magazine, and TV station in an effort to create my own media syllabus. I wanted to create a product with a massive platform, and try to make a difference in the world, and I couldn’t do it without becoming a 40-year-old intern, learning everything I needed, and rebooting my career.

the late 1990s, one of the largest slot machine manufacturers hired a former video game executive to help them design new slots. That executive’s insight was to program machines to deliver more near wins. Now, almost every slot contains numerous twists—such as free spins and sounds that erupt when icons almost align—as well as small payouts that make players feel like they are winning when, in truth, they are putting in more money than they are getting back. “No other form of gambling manipulates the human mind as beautifully as these machines,” an addictive-disorder researcher at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine told a New York Times reporter in 2004.

tap on your child's name. Using Kindle FreeTime To view your child's progress, tap the profile icon next to their name, then select Progress. Tap the Books link in the top left of the screen to view the percentage of each

Here’s my protocol for my usual monthly 3-day fast from Thursday dinner to Sunday dinner: On Wednesday and Thursday, plan phone calls for Friday. Determine how you can be productive via cell phone for 4 hours. This will make sense shortly. Have a low-carb dinner around 6 p.m. on Thursday. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, sleep as late as possible. The point is to let sleep do some of the work for you. Consume exogenous ketones or MCT oil upon waking and 2 more times throughout the day at 3- to 4-hour intervals. I primarily use KetoCaNa and caprylic acid (C8), like Brain Octane. The exogenous ketones help “fill the gap” for the 1 to 3 days that you might suffer carb withdrawal. Once you’re in deep ketosis and using body fat, they can be omitted. On Friday (and Saturday if needed), drink some caffeine and prepare to WALK. Be out the door no later than 30 minutes after waking. I grab a cold liter of water or Smartwater out of my fridge, add a dash of pure, unsweetened lemon juice to attenuate boredom, add a few pinches of salt to prevent misery/headaches/cramping, and head out. I sip this as I walk and make phone calls. Podcasts also work. Once you finish your water, fill it up or buy another. Add a little salt, keep walking, and keep drinking. It’s brisk walking—NOT intense exercise—and constant hydration that are key. I have friends who’ve tried running or high-intensity weight training instead, and it does not work for reasons I won’t bore you with. I told them, “Try brisk walking and tons of water for 3 to 4 hours. I bet you’ll be at 0.7 mmol the next morning.” One of them texted me the next morning: “Holy shit. 0.7 mmol.” Each day of fasting, feel free to consume exogenous ketones or fat (e.g., coconut oil in tea or coffee) as you like, up to 4 tablespoons. I will often reward myself at the end of each fasting afternoon with an iced coffee with a bit of coconut cream in it. Truth be told, I will sometimes allow myself a SeaSnax packet of nori sheets. Oooh, the decadence. Break your fast on Sunday night. Enjoy it. For a 14-day or longer fast, you need to think about refeeding carefully. But for a 3-day fast, I don’t think what you eat matters much. I’ve done steak, I’ve done salads, I’ve done greasy burritos. Evolutionarily, it makes no sense that a starving hominid would need to find shredded cabbage or some such nonsense to save himself from death. Eat what you find to eat.

The last thing DeMille added to his $13 million film before he delivered the final negative to Paramount was his introduction that ran before the opening credits, filmed with him standing behind a microphone in front of a blue-and-white curtain (the colors of the Israeli flag). His intention was to emphasize the “importance” of what the audience was about to see and how authentic the film really was, and to make the spiritual connection to the Holocaust. DeMille says, in part: “The theme of this picture is whether man ought to be ruled by God’s law, or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the state or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today. Our intention was not to create a story, but to be worthy of the divinely inspired story, created three thousand years ago . . .” The introduction was almost always cut after the film’s initial run. That

her imperative to “think dialectically”—a maxim drawn from her study of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Because reality is constantly changing, we must constantly detect and analyze the emerging contradictions that are driving this change. And if reality is changing around us, we cannot expect good ideas to hatch within an ivory tower. They instead emerge and develop through daily life and struggle, through collective study and debate among diverse entities, and through trial and error within multiple contexts. Grace often attributes her “having been born female and Chinese” to her sense of being an outsider to mainstream society. Over the past decade she has sharpened this analysis considerably. Reflecting on the limits of her prior encounters with radicalism, Grace fully embraces the feminist critique not only of gender discrimination and inequality but also of the masculinist tendencies that too often come to define a certain brand of movement organizing—one driven by militant posturing, a charismatic form of hierarchical leadership, and a static notion of power seen as a scarce commodity to be acquired and possessed. Grace has struck up a whole new dialogue and built relationships with Asian American activists and intellectuals since the 1998 release of her autobiography, Living for Change. Her reflections on these encounters have reinforced her repeated observation that marginalization serves as a form of liberation. Thus, she has come away impressed with the particular ability of movement-oriented Asian Americans to dissect U.S. society in new ways that transcend the mind-sets of blacks and whites, to draw on their transnational experiences to rethink the nature of the global order, and to enact new propositions free of the constraints and baggage weighing down those embedded in the status quo. Still, Grace’s practical connection to a constantly changing reality for most of her adult life has stemmed from an intimate relationship with the African American community—so much so that informants from the Cointelpro days surmised she was probably Afro-Chinese.3 This connection to black America (and to a lesser degree the pan-African world) has made her a source of intrigue for younger generations grappling with the rising complexities of race and diversity. It has been sustained through both political commitments and personal relationships. Living in Detroit for more than a half century, Grace has developed a stature as one of Motown’s most cherished citizens: penning a weekly column for the city’s largest-circulation black community newspaper; regularly profiled in the mainstream and independent media; frequently receiving awards and honors through no solicitation of her own; constantly visited by students, intellectuals, and activists from around the world; and even speaking on behalf of her friend Rosa Parks after the civil rights icon became too frail for public appearances.

The 4-Hour Workweek Films: The Bourne Identity, Shaun of the Dead “Flow” album: Gran Hotel Buenos Aires by Federico Aubele “Wake-up” album: One-X by Three Days Grace The 4-Hour Body Films: Casino Royale, Snatch “Flow” album: Luciano Essential Mix (2009, Ibiza) featuring DeadMau5 “Wake-up” album: Cold Day Memory by Sevendust The 4-Hour Chef Films: Babe (Yes, the pig movie. It was the first thing that popped up for free under Amazon Prime. I watched it once as a joke and it stuck. “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.” Gets me every time.) “Flow” album: “Just Jammin’” extended single track by Gramatik “Wake-up” album: Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin Tools of Titans Films: None! I was traveling and used people-watching at late-night cafés in Paris and elsewhere as my “movie.” “Flow” album: I Choose Noise by Hybrid “Wake-up” album: Over the Under by Down

How might you put this into practice? Here are a few things I’ve done repeatedly for 3 to 14 days at a time to simulate losing all my money: Sleeping in a sleeping bag, whether on my living room floor or outside Wearing cheap white shirts and a single pair of jeans for the entire 3 to 14 days Using CouchSurfing.com or a similar service to live in hosts’ homes for free, even if in your own city Eating only A) instant oatmeal and/or B) rice and beans Drinking only water and cheap instant coffee or tea Cooking everything using a Kelly Kettle. This is a camping device that can generate heat from nearly anything

Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.

I’ve scheduled deloading phases in a few ways: roughly 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. daily for journaling, tea routines, etc.; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Wednesday for creative output (i.e., writing, interviewing for the podcast); and “screen-free Saturdays,” when I use no laptops and only use my phone for maps and coordinating with friends via text (no apps). Of course, I still use “mini-retirements” à la The 4-Hour Workweek a few times a year.

Moving together in time also made them feel members of a harmonious

MapMySound is a free Audio Mixer App that supports the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It provides various interesting features like audio recording, mixing, editing, sound spectrogram, and sound mapping. Let's spread your audios through the MapMySound interactive map and also listen to others by clicking the map icons.