“
Are you ready to put the ‘fun’ in Fall Fun Fest?” he says as I slap his palm.
“I can at least put the ‘trip’ in ‘Triple F.’” A pause. “By being clumsy, I mean. Not by, like, sharing drugs with the group.” Three sets of eyes are on me, and I can’t stop myself from talking. “I don’t have any drugs. In case you were worried. Or, in case you were … expecting me to have drugs.…”
Gideon grins.
”
”
Emma Mills (Foolish Hearts)
“
She’d been hunting for an indescribable thrill, a feeling she remembered from nights out with her friends, but she’d misunderstood where the feeling came from. It wasn’t about drinking and partying in some dingy club. It had been about the people. The constant laughter they shared, too high on each other to care that they were being obnoxious. Group trips to the bathroom like a small army unit, where the mission objective was helping each other squat over filthy toilets without their dresses touching the seat. Belonging.
”
”
Talia Hibbert (Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1))
“
You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined,that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'.
”
”
Paul Murray (Skippy Dies)
“
I saw you then and felt nothing. Saw you months later during the ghoul uprising and felt nothing then, too ... until I watched you tear through a group of ghouls 'til they were no more than blood in the wind. Made me so hard, I almost tripped over my cock on my way to kill the ghoul in front of me."
"Romantic," I said in an acerbic tone, but a fluttering had started inside that I was having a difficult time controlling.
A quick grin. "Indeed. Felt nothing when you rudely interrupted my orgy, either, except rage when I recognized you as the Guardian who'd been at Katie's supposed execution. Then we fought ... and I felt the same thing I'd felt when I watched you tear through those ghouls years before."
"Something long and hard?" I supplied, adding, "I remember it hitting my foot when I was trying to hold you down."
"Not that, though that, too," he said with another unrepentant grin. Then it faded as he said, "I felt that you were mine.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Shades of Wicked (Night Rebel, #1))
“
When my son David was a high school senior in 2003, his graduating class went on a camping trip in the desert. A creative writing educator visited the camp and led the group through an exercise designed to develop their sensitivity and imaginations. Each student was given a pen, a notebook, a candle, and matches. They were told to walk a short distance into the desert, sit down alone, and “discover themselves.” The girls followed instructions. The boys, baffled by the assignment, gathered together, threw the notebooks into a pile, lit them with the matches, and made a little bonfire.
”
”
Christina Hoff Sommers (The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men)
“
Despite your best efforts and intentions, there's a limited reservoir to fellowship before you begin to rely solely on the vapors of nostalgia. Eventually, you move on, latch on to another group of friends. Once in a while, though, you remember something, a remark or a gesture, and it takes you back. You think how close all of you were, the laughs and commiserations, the fondness and affection and support. You recall the parties, the trips, the dinners and late, late nights. Even the arguments and small betrayals have a revisionist charm in retrospect. You're astonished and enlivened by the memories. You wonder why and how it ever stopped. You have the urge to pick up the phone, fire off an email, suggesting reunion, resumption, and you start to act, but then don't, because it would be awkward talking after such a long lag, and, really, what would be the point? Your lives are different now. Whatever was there before is gone. And it saddens you, it makes you feel old and vanquished--not only over this group that disbanded, but also over all the others before and after it, the friends you had in grade and high school, in college, in your twenties and thirties, your kinship to them (never mind to all your old lovers) ephemeral and, quite possibly, illusory to begin with.
”
”
Don Lee (The Collective)
“
The deeper I went, the more I noticed this phenomenon all around me: individuals not guided by legible principles or beliefs, but acting as members of groups playing yin to the other’s yang—well versus weak; awake versus sheep; righteous versus depraved. Binaries where thinking once lived.
”
”
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
James Potter moved slowly along the narrow aisles of the train, peering as nonchalantly as he could into each compartment. To those inside, he probably looked as if he was searching for someone, some friend or group of confidantes with whom to pass the time during the trip, and this was intentional. The last thing that James wanted anyone to notice was that, despite the bravado he had so recently displayed with his younger brother Albus on the platform, he was nervous. His stomach knotted and churned as if he’d had half a bite of one of Uncles Ron and George’s Puking Pastilles. He opened the folding door at the end of the passenger car and stepped carefully through the passage into the next one. The first compartment was full of girls. They were talking animatedly to one another, already apparently the best of friends despite the fact that, most likely, they had only just met. One of them glanced up and saw him staring. He quickly looked away, pretending to peer out the window behind them, toward the station which still sat bustling with activity. Feeling his cheeks go a little red, he continued down the corridor. If only Rose was a year older she’d be here with him. She was a girl, but she was his cousin and they’d grown up together. It would’ve been nice to have at least one familiar face along with him.
”
”
G. Norman Lippert (James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing (James Potter, #1))
“
Richard had met Jessica in France, on a weekend trip to Paris two years earlier; had in fact discovered her in the Louvre, trying to find the group of his office friends who had organized the trip. Staring up at an immense sculpture, he had stepped backwards into Jessica, who was admiring an extremely large and historically important diamond. He tried to apologize to her in French, which he did not speak, gave up, and began to apologize in English, then tried to apologize in French for having to apologize in English, until he noticed that Jessica was about as English as it was possible for any one person to be.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere (London Below, #1))
“
James had been acting a little weird. After waking up yesterday, he'd been a little bit distant. It might just be the stress of the trip. It was probably hard on James to be in charge of the little group. He was responsible for the welfare of his lover, a nun, and a talking horse. That couldn't be easy.
”
”
Anne Tenino (18% Gray (Task Force Iota, #1))
“
In 1959 Corrie was part of a group that visited Ravensbruck, which was then in East Germany, to honor Betsie and the 96,000 other women who died there. There Corrie learned that her own release had been part of a clerical error; one week later all women her age were taken to the gas chamber. When I heard Corrie speak in Darmstadt in 1968, she was 76, still traveling ceaselessly in obedience to Betsie’s certainty that they must “tell people.” Her work took her to 61 countries, including many “unreachable” ones on the other side of the Iron Curtain. To whomever she spoke—African students on the shores of Lake Victoria, farmers in a Cuban sugar field, prisoners in an English penitentiary, factory workers in Uzbekistan—she brought the truth the sisters learned in Ravensbruck: Jesus can turn loss into glory. John and I made some of those trips with her, the only way to catch this indefatigable woman long enough to
”
”
Corrie ten Boom (The Hiding Place)
“
Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior. We are constantly scanning our environment and wondering, “What is everyone else doing?” We check reviews on Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor because we want to imitate the “best” buying, eating, and travel habits. It’s usually a smart strategy.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
So we ran the experiment. For a period of time, in our control groups of Googlers, people who were nominated for cash awards continued to receive them. In our experimental groups, nominated winners received trips, team parties, and gifts of the same value as the cash awards they would have received. Instead of making public stock awards, we sent teams to Hawaii. Instead of smaller awards, we provided trips to health resorts, blowout team dinners, or Google TVs for the home. The result was astounding. Despite telling us they would prefer cash over experiences, the experimental group was happier. Much happier. They thought their awards were 28 percent more fun, 28 percent more memorable, and 15 percent more thoughtful. This was true whether the experience was a team trip to Disneyland (it turns out most adults are still kids on the inside) or individual vouchers to do something on their own. And they stayed happier for a longer period of time than Googlers who received money. When resurveyed five months later, the cash recipients’ levels of happiness with their awards had dropped by about 25 percent. The experimental group was even happier about the award than when they received it. The joy of money is fleeting, but memories last forever.
”
”
Laszlo Bock (Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead)
“
His parents went to a brimstone church, the hard kind that would raffle a hunting rifle to raise money for the youth group summer trip or whatever.
”
”
Ruth Coker Burks (All The Young Men)
“
Your grandparents are English?"
"Grandfather is,but Grandmere is French. And my other grandparents are American,of course."
"Wow.You really are a mutt."
St. Clair smiles. "I'm told I take after my English grandfather the most, but it's only because of the accent."
"I don't know.I think of you as more English than anything else.And you don't just sound like it,you look like it,too."
"I do?" He surprised.
I smile. "Yeah,it's that...pasty complexion. I mean it in the best possible way," I add,at his alarmed expression. "Honestly."
"Huh." St. Clair looks at me sideways. "Anyway.Last summer I couldn't bear to face my father, so it was the first time I spent the whole holiday with me mum."
"And how was it? I bet the girls don't tease you about your accent anymore."
He laughs. "No,they don't.But I can't help my height.I'll always be short."
"And I'll always be a freak,just like my dad. Everyone tells me I take after him.He's sort of...neat,like me."
He seems genuinely surprised. "What's wrong with being neat? I wish I were more organized.And,Anna,I've never met your father,but I guarantee you that you're nothing like him."
"How would you know?"
"Well,for one thing,he looks like a Ken doll.And you're beautiful."
I trip and fall down on the sidewalk.
"Are you all right?" His eyes fill with worry.
I look away as he takes my hand and helps me up. "I'm fine.Fine!" I say, brushing the grit from my palms. Oh my God, I AM a freak.
"You've seen the way men look at you,right?" he continues.
"If they're looking, it's because I keep making a fool of myself." I hold up my scraped hands.
"That guy over there is checking you out right now."
"Wha-?" I turn to find a young man with long dark hair staring. "Why is he looking at me?"
"I expect he likes what he sees."
I flush,and he keeps talking. "In Paris, it's common to acknowledge someone attractive.The French don't avert their gaze like other cultures do. Haven't you noticed?"
St. Clair thinks I'm attractive. He called me beautiful.
"Um,no," I say. "I hadn't noticed."
"Well.Open your eyes."
But I stare at the bare tree branches, at the children with balloons, at the Japanese tour group. Anywhere but at him. We've stopped in front of Notre-Dame again.I point at the familiar star and clear my throat. "Wanna make another wish?"
"You go first." He's watching me, puzzled, like he's trying to figure something out. He bites his thumbnail.
This time I can't help it.All day long, I've thought about it.Him.Our secret.
I wish St. Clair would spend the night again.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
In his trip to Bethlehem Mark Twain had reported that all sects of Christians, except Protestants, had chapels under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, he also observed that one group dared not trespass on the other’s territory, proving beyond doubt, he noted, that even the grave of the Savior couldn’t inspire peaceful worship among different beliefs.
”
”
David Baldacci (The Christmas Train)
“
In Europe, whenever multiethnic groups of workers and peasants started to build power from below, threatening to challenge entrenched wealth, spasms of anti-Semitic propaganda soon followed.
”
”
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.
”
”
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Volume 1) (Mark Twain Library))
“
You’re going to turn the next page, because you still have hope. You hope there’s a little something more, and it’s nothing personal. People do it at the end of every book. I think that’s why publishers put in all those extra pages. So you have a chance to shuffle and flip through them while it sinks in. It’s over. The trip is done.
You know it’s over, but you’re going to turn the page anyway.
”
”
Rory Harrison (Looking for Group)
“
Like the fascist/New Age alliance, all of this is playing out on a kind of historical loop. Whenever one group has chosen to allow terrible violence to be inflicted on another group, there have been stories and logics that provided the permission for the beneficiaries of the violence either to actively (even gleefully) participate or to actively look away. Stories that said things like this: The people being sacrificed/enslaved/imprisoned/colonized/left to die so that others can live comfortably are not the same level of human. They are other/substandard/lesser/darker/more animal/diseased/criminal/lazy/uncivilized. These logics have been resurgent on the right for years now, evident in the presence of protofascist and authoritarian leaders in Brazil, India, Hungary, the Philippines, Russia, and Turkey, among others.
”
”
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
Hare Rama... I felt a jolt of energy coursing up my spine. I'm in Kathmandu, I kept telling myself - as the sounds began to permeate every pore of my body. It's a full moon - I'm on a glorious valley at the top of the world, I'm actually here - surrounded by the most extraordinary group of people, yes, I'm actually here, and the chanting is building and building until it becomes one great shout of ecstasy, and suddenly I'm chanting too - I've moved into the circle, I'm pounding on a drum, and I'm looking into the eyes of people around me - and I'm feeling part of something big and glorious and magnificently insane
”
”
Terry Tarnoff (The Bone Man of Benares: A Lunatic Trip Through Love and the World)
“
There is a growing belief, particularly among those belonging to the fifty-plus age group, that recently married people seem to be tripping over themselves to divorce each other. And often, for frivolous reasons!
”
”
Vijay Nagaswami (TO D OR NOT TO D
WORKING TOWARDS AN AMICABLE
DIVORCE)
“
Much of Chinese society still expected its women to hold themselves in a sedate manner, lower their eyelids in response to men's stares, and restrict their smile to a faint curve of the lips which did not expose their teeth. They were not meant to use hand gestures at all. If they contravened any of these canons of behavior they would be considered 'flirtatious." Under Mao, flirting with./bre/gners was an unspeakable crime.
I was furious at the innuendo against me. It had been my Communist parents who had given me a liberal upbringing.
They had regarded the restrictions on women as precisely the sort of thing a Communist revolution should put an end to. But now oppression of women joined hands with political repression, and served resentment and petty jealousy.
One day, a Pakistani ship arrived. The Pakistani military attache came down from Peking. Long ordered us all to spring-clean the club from top to bottom, and laid on a banquet, for which he asked me to be his interpreter, which made some of the other students extremely envious. A few days later the Pakistanis gave a farewell dinner on their ship, and I was invited. The military attache had been to Sichuan, and they had prepared a special Sichuan dish for me. Long was delighted by the invitation, as was I. But despite a personal appeal from the captain and even a threat from Long to bar future students, my teachers said that no one was allowed on board a foreign ship.
"Who would take the responsibility if someone sailed away on the ship?" they asked. I was told to say I was busy that evening.
As far as I knew, I was turning down the only chance I would ever have of a trip out to sea, a foreign meal, a proper conversation in English, and an experience of the outside world.
Even so, I could not silence the whispers. Ming asked pointedly, "Why do foreigners like her so much?" as though there was something suspicious in that. The report filed on me at the end of the trip said my behavior was 'politically dubious."
In this lovely port, with its sunshine, sea breezes, and coconut trees, every occasion that should have been joyous was turned into misery. I had a good friend in the group who tried to cheer me up by putting my distress into perspective. Of course, what I encountered was no more than minor unpleasantness compared with what victims of jealousy suffered in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. But the thought that this was what my life at its best would be like depressed me even more.
This friend was the son of a colleague of my father's.
The other students from cities were also friendly to me. It was easy to distinguish them from the students of peasant backgrounds, who provided most of the student officials.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
Here were shadows on the window blinds of guests assembling, and there a group of pretty girls, hooded and Ugg-booted and all chattering at once, tripping off lightly to some near neighbor’s house where woe would befall the single guy who saw them enter—they were artful witches, and they knew it.
”
”
David Levithan (Marly's Ghost)
“
Speaking to a foreigner was the dream of every student, and my opportunity came at last. When I got back from my trip down the Yangtze, I learned that my year was being sent in October to a port in the south called Zhanjiang to practice our English with foreign sailors. I was thrilled.
Zhanjiang was about 75 miles from Chengdu, a journey of two days and two nights by rail. It was the southernmost large port in China, and quite near the Vietnamese border.
It felt like a foreign country, with turn-of-the-century colonial-style buildings, pastiche Romanesque arches, rose windows, and large verandas with colorful parasols. The local people spoke Cantonese, which was almost a foreign language. The air smelled of the unfamiliar sea, exotic tropical vegetation, and an altogether bigger world.
But my excitement at being there was constantly doused by frustration. We were accompanied by a political supervisor and three lecturers, who decided that, although we were staying only a mile from the sea, we were not to be allowed anywhere near it. The harbor itself was closed to outsiders, for fear of 'sabotage' or defection. We were told that a student from Guangzhou had managed to stow away once in a cargo steamer, not realizing that the hold would be sealed for weeks, by which time he had perished. We had to restrict our movements to a clearly defined area of a few blocks around our residence.
Regulations like these were part of our daily life, but they never failed to infuriate me. One day I was seized by an absolute compulsion to get out. I faked illness and got permission to go to a hospital in the middle of the city. I wandered the streets desperately trying to spot the sea, without success. The local people were unhelpful: they did not like non-Cantonese speakers, and refused to understand me. We stayed in the port for three weeks, and only once were we allowed, as a special treat, to go to an island to see the ocean.
As the point of being there was to talk to the sailors, we were organized into small groups to take turns working in the two places they were allowed to frequent: the Friendship Store, which sold goods for hard currency, and the Sailors' Club, which had a bar, a restaurant, a billiards room, and a ping-pong room.
There were strict rules about how we could talk to the sailors. We were not allowed to speak to them alone, except for brief exchanges over the counter of the Friendship Store. If we were asked our names and addresses, under no circumstances were we to give our real ones. We all prepared a false name and a nonexistent address. After every conversation, we had to write a detailed report of what had been said which was standard practice for anyone who had contact with foreigners. We were warned over and over again about the importance of observing 'discipline in foreign contacts' (she waifi-lu). Otherwise, we were told, not only would we get into serious trouble, other students would be banned from coming.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
There are many well-known arguments for why the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis was different. It was higher tech. Death came faster. It was industrial in its scale. All true. But it’s also true that every holocaust is different. Every genocide has its own particular characteristics, and every hated group is hated in its own special way. By sheer numbers of dead, the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas surpasses all others. In terms of modern technologies, the transatlantic trade in kidnapped and enslaved Africans, and the plantations the trade served in the antebellum South and the Caribbean, were highly modern for their times. So cutting-edge, scholars have shown, that the systems developed to transport, insure, depreciate, track, control, and extract maximum wealth from this coerced labor shaped many aspects of modern accounting and human resources management. And as Rinaldo Walcott, a scholar of race and gender, writes in his manifesto On Property, “The ideas forged in the plantation economy continue to shape our social relations.” Among those social relations are modern policing, mass surveillance, and mass incarceration. On what else does the claim to exceptionalism rest?
”
”
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
Homeschooling? What was she thinking? All I could envision were those religious families, the ones with the little girls wearing Amish dresses and the boys with their slicked-back hair and matching polo shirts. I’d seen groups of them at the mall, following their mother single file, pretending it was a field trip.
”
”
Karen McQuestion (Life on Hold)
“
There was nothing you could be sure about, it was all lies, and it was all done to mess with minds because the control and the power trip was so important to them, as well as it being necessary in terms of screwing up anything you might remember from an evidential perspective.
They would also build up your hopes, in terms of any tiny thing you did like or were less scared of, so I'd be told that it would be a nice night because Uncle Andrew would be coming, but then it wouldn't be him. There would be someone else There would be someone else who I was told was my Uncle Andrew as he was raping me. Sometimes, this other person would have a mask on but I would know that it wasn't really him. They would be the wrong height or the wrong weight or, sometimes, even obviously a woman. There were occasions when I would be told to call the person Uncle Andrew and then when I did, they would ask me why I was doing that. Sometimes he would be there, too, but that was rare.
Was it Satanic? I don't know.
Personally I don't believe in God or Satan or any of those things, but abusers use whatever they can to silence children because if you go to the police and say something about Satan, you are so much less likely to be believed. I personally think they were just a group of likeminded people who had no beliefs other than that they wanted to get satisfaction out of abusing children and it's as simple and horrible as that.
My uncle certainly doesn't have any satanic beliefs — he just thinks that he loves children and is allowed to get sexual satisfaction from them. Why is there sex involved if it is just about Satan? Why does it always come down to them getting off? No matter what they do that's all it is, whether masturbation or penetration or humiliation, that's what it's about. I encountered people who just liked to humiliate — they wouldn't allow you to go to the bathroom, you would be given drink after drink, fizzy drinks, whatever, so you ended up absolutely desperate and that's where they got off — that's when they started to masturbate themselves, as you stood there peeing yourself. That was just awful, so humiliating. Where is God or Satan in that?
(her Uncle was convicted for abusing her and jailed)
”
”
Laurie Matthew (Groomed)
“
At a concluding discussion with one school group on the bus leaving Auschwitz Berkenau, he asks “What has the trip taught you?”, I hated the question, but I was required to ask it. I’ve heard all this (the standard answers) before. I know it by heart.
Until one boy says..”I think in order to survive we need to be a little bit Nazi,too.
”
”
Yishai Sarid (The Memory Monster)
“
It's a dream," Pris said. "Induced by drugs that Roy gave me."
"P-pardon?"
"You really think that bounty hunters exist?"
"Mr. Baty said they killed your friends."
"Roy Baty is as crazy as I am," Pris said. "Our trip was between a mental hospital on the East Coast and here. We're all schizophrenic, with defective emotional lives — flattening of affect, it's called. And we have group hallucinations.
”
”
Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
“
You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg — that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors — GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE — keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn't necessarily need to be closed.
”
”
Paul Murray (Skippy Dies)
“
Italy still has a provincial sophistication that comes from its long history as a collection of city states. That, combined with a hot climate, means that the Italians occupy their streets and squares with much greater ease than the English. The resultant street life is very rich, even in small towns like Arezzo and Gaiole, fertile ground for the peeping Tom aspect of an actor’s preparation. I took many trips to Siena, and was struck by its beauty, but also by the beauty of the Siennese themselves. They are dark, fierce, and aristocratic, very different to the much paler Venetians or Florentines. They have always looked like this, as the paintings of their ancestors testify. I observed the groups of young people, the lounging grace with which they wore their clothes, their sense of always being on show. I walked the streets, they paraded them. It did not matter that I do not speak a word of Italian; I made up stories about them, and took surreptitious photographs. I was in Siena on the final day of the Palio, a lengthy festival ending in a horse race around the main square. Each district is represented by a horse and jockey and a pair of flag-bearers. The day is spent by teams of supporters with drums, banners, and ceremonial horse and rider processing round the town singing a strange chanting song. Outside the Cathedral, watched from a high window by a smiling Cardinal and a group of nuns, with a huge crowd in the Cathedral Square itself, the supporters passed, and to drum rolls the two flag-bearers hurled their flags high into the air and caught them, the crowd roaring in approval. The winner of the extremely dangerous horse race is presented with a palio, a standard bearing the effigy of the Virgin. In the last few years the jockeys have had to be professional by law, as when they were amateurs, corruption and bribery were rife. The teams wear a curious fancy dress encompassing styles from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. They are followed by gangs of young men, supporters, who create an atmosphere or intense rivalry and barely suppressed violence as they run through the narrow streets in the heat of the day. It was perfect. I took many more photographs. At the farmhouse that evening, after far too much Chianti, I and my friends played a bizarre game. In the dark, some of us moved lighted candles from one room to another, whilst others watched the effect of the light on faces and on the rooms from outside. It was like a strange living film of the paintings we had seen. Maybe Derek Jarman was spying on us.
”
”
Roger Allam (Players of Shakespeare 2: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company)
“
According to Wal-Mart expert Bob Ortega, Sam Walton got the idea for the cheer on a 1975 trip to Japan, “where he was deeply impressed by factory workers doing group calisthenics and company cheers.” Ortega describes Walton conducting a cheer: “‘Gimme a W!’ he’d shout. ‘W!’ the workers would shout back, and on through the Wal-Mart name. At the hyphen, Walton would shout ‘Gimme a squiggly!’ and squat and twist his hips at the same time; the workers would squiggle right back
”
”
Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America)
“
Walking through town with Trip, I thought about how easily he had folded me into his group. Sometimes when Didi makes peanut butter cookies, she'll get all cranky trying to blend the peanut butter in the sugar, eggs, and butter. See, the peanut butter always stays in a big clump and the eggs are all slimy and you have to really work at it before everything gets nice and smooth. But the way Trip pulled me into his buttery, sugary life, you'd never know when I was peanut butter in the first place.
”
”
Kat Yeh
“
Violet had carefully chosen some long-hanging, loose-fitting basketball shorts to wear over her swimsuit, in hopes of keeping her injuries at least partially hidden. But it didn’t take long before one . . . and then two . . . and then at least twenty of her friends had noticed her bandages peeking out from beneath the swishing fabric, and she was forced to recount her morning accident.
Jay loved hearing her tell the story, and every time he heard her talking about it, he would come over so that he could interject, and of course embellish, his role in the events. In his version, he was her champion, practically carrying her from the woods and performing near-miraculous medical feats to save her legs from complete amputation. Violet, and annoyingly every other girl within earshot, couldn’t help but giggle while he jokingly sang his own praises.
Violet happened to walk up just in time to hear Jay recounting his version once more to a group of eager admirers.
“Hero? I wouldn’t say hero . . .” he quipped.
Violet rolled her eyes, turning to Grady Spencer, a friend of theirs from school. “Can you believe him?”
Grady gave her a concerned look. “Seriously, are you okay, Violet? It sounds like it was pretty bad.”
Violet was embarrassed that Jay’s exaggerations were actually dredging up real sympathy from others. “It’s fine,” she assured him, and when Grady didn’t look convinced, she added, “Really, I just tripped.”
She reached out and shoved Jay. “Will you knock it off, hero? You’re making an ass out of yourself.
”
”
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder (The Body Finder, #1))
“
Aelin looped her arm through his. “I’m going to start a rumor about you, then. Something truly grotesque.”
He groaned. “I dread the thought of what you might come up with.”
She adopted a harsh whisper as they passed a group of human soldiers. “You flew back onto the battlefield to peck out the eyes of our enemies?” Her gasp echoed off the rock. “And ate those eyes?”
One of the soldiers tripped, the others whipping their heads to them.
Rowan pinched her shoulder. “Thank you for that.”
She inclined her head. “You’re very welcome.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
“
James Potter moved slowly along the narrow aisles of the train, peering as nonchalantly as he could into each compartment. To those inside, he probably looked as if he was searching for someone, some friend or group of confidantes with whom to pass the time during the trip, and this was intentional. The last thing that James wanted anyone to notice was that, despite the bravado he had so recently displayed with his younger brother Albus on the platform, he was nervous. His stomach knotted and churned as if he’d had half a bite of one of Uncles Ron and George’s Puking Pastilles.
”
”
G. Norman Lippert (James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing (James Potter, #1))
“
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.
”
”
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
“
This immoral system, how do you get outside it? Option one, you drop out, sever the connections. They got that far in ’68, okay? People went as far with that as they could, to say, I’m free, you’re free, kumbaya and barbaric yawp and yadda yadda, and look what happened. The problem with the whole Rousseau trip is that man is primordially a social animal, in the sense of clan or tribe. Marx says this somewhere. You detach completely, you not only find yourself way out on a limb, against your nature, but you’ve lost any power for group resistance. And eventually, you come crawling back, clutching credit-card applications, begging to be let in.
”
”
Garth Risk Hallberg (City on Fire)
“
Martin Silenus had been writing notes on a pad but now he stood and paced the length of the room. “Jesus Christ, people. Look at us. We’re not six fucking pilgrims, we’re a mob. Hoyt there with his cruciform carrying the ghost of Paul Duré. Our ‘semisentient’ erg in the box there. Colonel Kassad with his memory of Moneta. M. Brawne there, if we are to believe her tale, carrying not only an unborn child but a dead Romantic poet. Our scholar with the child his daughter used to be. Me with my muse. The Consul with whatever fucking baggage he’s brought to this insane trek. My God, people, we should have received a fucking group rate for this trip.
”
”
Dan Simmons (Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1))
“
We are attempting to build, within our movement, non-exploitative ways of relating to one another based on trust and concern rather than political expediency. We have serious personal/political intentions in breaking down hierarchical and elitist structures, and for experimenting with leaderless groups and collective decision making. In dealing with the media these revolutionary principles and practices are destroyed. The media works to create leaders, it knows no way of relating to us on our own terms. Being interviewed and presented as a leader is a real ego trip--the media brings out the most counter-revolutionary traits in people. Elitism, dissension and division are the ultimate results.
”
”
Nancy Ferro
“
Before he left, Sartre took a small side trip to Araraquara, in the interior of São Paulo state, where he had an unlikely encounter with a Brazilian of truly global stature. The episode is retold in Joseph A. Page’s fine book The Brazilians: As Sartre stood outside a building conversing with a cadre of intellectuals, down the street came Pelé, the world’s greatest soccer star, accompanied by several fans. The two groups converged on a street corner. When they separated, the intellectuals realized they were now following Pelé, and Sartre was walking alone. The intellectuals ran back down the street, a bit embarrassed, and rejoined their French hero. According to Page, many residents still refer to the spot as “Pelé-Sartre Corner.
”
”
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir)
“
Church is important to most folks in the South. So the most important thing going is basically ruled by men as decreed by the Big Man himself. Not only that, but the church puts pressures on women that it does not put on men. Young women are expected to be chaste, moral, and pure, whereas young men are given way more leeway, ’cause, ya know, boys will be boys. Girls are expected to marry young and have kids, be a helpmate to their husbands (who are basically like having another child), and, of course, raise perfect little Christian babies to make this world a better place.
So while it’s the preacher man who controls the church, it’s the women—those helpmates—who keep that shit going. They keep the pews tidy and wash the windows; type up the bulletins; volunteer for Sunday school, the nursery, youth group, and Vacation Bible School; fry the chicken for the postchurch dinners; organize the monthly potluck dinners, the spaghetti supper to raise money for a new roof, and the church fund drive; plant flowers in the front of the church, make food for sick parishioners, serve food after funerals, put together the Christmas pageant, get Easter lilies for Easter, wash the choir robes, organize the church trip, bake cookies for the bake sale to fund the church trip, pray unceasingly for their husband and their pastor and their kids and never complain, and then make sure their skirts are ironed for Sunday mornin’ service. All this while in most churches not being allowed to speak with any authority on the direction or doctrine of the church.
No, no, ladies, the heavy lifting—thinkin’ up shit to say, standing up at the lectern telling people what to do, counting the money—that ain’t for yuns. So sorry.
”
”
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
“
Roosevelt wouldn't interfere even when he found out that Moses was discouraging Negroes from using many of his state parks. Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!' ... He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just The Public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public." Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason. Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous. For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas. And Negroes were discouraged from using "white" beach areas -- the best beaches -- by a system Shapiro calls "flagging"; the handful of Negro lifeguards [...] were all stationed at distant, least developed beaches. Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water; the temperature at the pool at Jones Beach was deliberately icy to keep Negroes out. When Negro civic groups from the hot New York City slums began to complain about this treatment, Roosevelt ordered an investigation and an aide confirmed that "Bob Moses is seeking to discourage large Negro parties from picnicking at Jones Beach, attempting to divert them to some other of the state parks." Roosevelt gingerly raised the matter with Moses, who denied the charge violently -- and the Governor never raised the matter again.
”
”
Robert A. Caro (The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York)
“
Come on, Gray,” another sailor called. “Just one toast.”
Miss Turner raised her eyebrows and leaned into him. “Come on, Mr. Grayson. Just one little toast,” she taunted, in the breathy, seductive voice of a harlot. It was a voice his body knew well, and vital parts of him were quickly forming a response.
Siren.
“Very well.” He lifted his mug and his voice, all the while staring into her wide, glassy eyes. “To the most beautiful lady in the world, and the only woman in my life.”
The little minx caught her breath. Gray relished the tense silence, allowing a broad grin to spread across his face. “To my sister, Isabel.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. The men groaned.
“You’re no fun anymore, Gray,” O’Shea grumbled.
“No, I’m not. I’ve gone respectable.” He tugged on Miss Turner’s elbow. “And good little governesses need to be in bed.”
“Not so fast, if you please.” She jerked away from him and turned to face the assembled crew. “I haven’t made my toast yet. We ladies have our sweethearts too, you know.”
Bawdy murmurs chased one another until a ripple of laughter caught them up. Gray stepped back, lifting his own mug to his lips. If the girl was determined to humiliate herself, who was he to stop her? Who was he, indeed?
Swaying a little in her boots, she raised her tankard. “To Gervais. My only sweetheart, mon cher petit lapin.”
My dear little rabbit? Gray sputtered into his rum. What a fanciful imagination the chit had.
“My French painting master,” she continued, slurring her words, “and my tutor in the art of passion.”
The men whooped and whistled. Gray plunked his mug on the crate and strode to her side. “All right, Miss Turner. Very amusing. That’s enough joking for one evening.”
“Who’s joking?” she asked, lowering her mug to her lips and eyeing him saucily over the rim. “He loved me. Desperately.”
“The French do everything desperately,” he muttered, beginning to feel a bit desperate himself. He knew she was spinning naïve schoolgirl tales, but the others didn’t. The mood of the whole group had altered, from one of good-natured merriment to one of lust-tinged anticipation. These were sailors, after all. Lonely, rummed-up, woman-starved, desperate men. And to an innocent girl, they could prove more dangerous than sharks.
“He couldn’t have loved you too much, could he?” Gray grabbed her arm again. “He seems to have let you go.”
“I suppose he did.” She sniffed, then flashed a coquettish smile at the men. “I suppose that means I need a new sweetheart.”
That was it. This little scene was at its end.
Gray crouched, grasping his wayward governess around the thighs, and then straightened his legs, tossing her over one shoulder. She let out a shriek, and he felt the dregs of her rum spill down the back of his coat.
“Put me down, you brute!” She squirmed and pounded his back with her fists.
Gray bound her legs to his chest with one arm and gave her a pat on that well-padded rump with the other.
“Well, then,” he announced to the group, forcing a roguish grin, “we’ll be off to bed.”
Cheers and coarse laughter followed them as Gray toted his wriggling quarry down the companionway stairs and into the ladies’ cabin.
With another light smack to her bum that she probably couldn’t even feel through all those skirts and petticoats, Gray slid her from his shoulder and dropped her on her feet. She wobbled backward, and he caught her arm, reversing her momentum. Now she tripped toward him, flinging her arms around his neck and sagging against his chest. Gray just stood there, arms dangling at his sides.
Oh, bloody hell.
”
”
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
“
Seriously. I’ve never seen so many camera flashes. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose there’s any way you guys can be less attractive for the next few minutes?” Livvy asked. “You’re drawing almost as much attention as the efflorescence.” Fitz grinned—and a girl who’d been watching him tripped over her own feet. “You guys have plenty of admirers too,” Sophie had to point out, nudging her chin toward several adults who were snapping pictures of Grady and Livvy as if they thought they were celebrities. “I think Tam’s causing the biggest stir,” Biana said, tilting her head toward an entire busload of schoolgirls who were shamelessly gawking. “Great,” Tam grumbled, pulling his bangs lower over his eyes—which only seemed to make the group swoon more. “Be glad Keefe’s not here,” Fitz told him as they strode deeper into the field. “He’d be calling them over and making you pose for photos.
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Nightfall (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #6))
“
On our first flight out, and for all the following ones, we boarded two Black Hawk helicopters. On that first flight, we were looking for the area where a marine in our group lost both of his hands. While we were airborne, the door was kept open. There were only a few pairs of headsets for the group, so whoever was the focus of the trip got first dibs on a pair and would help guide the pilot to the right spot. The rest of us shared the remaining few sets as we squinted against the wind to the terrain below. Right before we made it to this marine’s area, the guy sitting next to me handed me the headset. Just as I put it over my ears, I saw the marine looking out the window, and then I heard him say, “And that’s where my hands are.”
Suddenly it wasn’t about me, the injured guy. I was privy to this man’s intimate struggle. It was a painfully shocking statement. I knew all of the rest of these guys were injured, too, but I don’t think it really hit me until that moment that these guys all faced the same kinds of struggles and confusion I’d faced.
”
”
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
“
How did the name misfit even come about?" Sam asked. "It's so... dumb."
Willo laughed. "Well, it's really not," she said. "We used to call them all sorts of slang terms: kooks, greasers, killjoys, chumps, and we had to keep changing the name as times changed. We used nerds for a long time, and then we started calling them dweebs."
Willo hesitated. "And then a group of kids wasn't so nice to your mom."
"I had braces," Deana said. "I had pimples. I had a perm. You do the math."
She smiled briefly, but Sam could tell the pain was still there. Deana continued: "And I worked here most of the time so I really didn't get a chance to do a lot with friends after school. It was hard."
This time, Willo reached out to rub her daughter's leg. "Your mom was pretty down one Christmas," she said. "All of the kids were going on a ski trip to a resort in Boyne City, but she had to stay here and work during the holiday rush. She was moping around one night, lying on the couch and watching TV..."
"... stuffing holiday cookies in my mouth," Deana added.
"... and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came on. She was about to change the channel, but I made her sit back down and watch it with me. Remember the part about the Island of Misfit Toys?"
Sam nodded.
Willo continued. "All of those toys that were tossed away and didn't have a home because they were different: the Charlie-in-the-Box, the spotted elephant, the train with square wheels, the cowboy who rides an ostrich..."
"... the swimming bird," Sam added with a laugh.
"And I told your mom that all of those toys were magical and perfect because they were different," Willo said. "What made them different is what made them unique."
Sam looked at her mom, who gave her a timid smile.
"I walked in early the next morning to open the pie pantry, and your mom was already in there making donuts," Willo said. "She had a big plate of donuts that didn't turn out perfectly and she looked up at me and said, very quietly, 'I want to start calling them misfits.' When I asked her why, she said, 'They're as good as all the others, even if they look a bit different.' We haven't changed the name since.
”
”
Viola Shipman (The Recipe Box)
“
Throughout history, wise observers of human behavior have pinpointed over and over again a core group of unhealthy human tendencies that are obstacles to happiness. They're the states of mind that distract us in meditation practice, and trip us up in the rest of our lives. Broadly speaking, they are: desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. And they manifest in a variety of ways - many of which you'll recognize. Desire includes grasping, clinging, wanting, or attachment. Aversion can appear as hatred, anger, fear, or impatience. Sloth is not just laziness, but also numbing out, switching off, disconnecting, and the sluggishness that comes with denial or feeling overwhelmed: This is going to be difficult; I think I'll take a nap. Restlessness shows itself as anxiety, worry, fretfulness, or agitation. The kind of doubt we're talking about is not healthy questioning but rather the inability to make a decision or commitment. Doubt keeps us feeling stuck; we don't know what to do next. Doubt undermines wholehearted involvement (in relationships, in our meditation practice) and robs us of in-depth experience.
”
”
Sharon Salzberg (Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation)
“
The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year? We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization? The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.” After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.
”
”
Sandra K. Cook (Overcome Your Fear of Homeschooling with Insider Information)
“
THE JOURNEY BACK from Regium to Rome was easier than our progress south had been, for by now it was early spring, and the mainland soft and welcoming. Not that we had much opportunity to admire the birds and flowers. Cicero worked every mile of the way, swaying and pitching in the back of his covered wagon, as he assembled the outline of his case against Verres. I would fetch documents from the baggage cart as he needed them and walk along at the rear of his carriage taking down his dictation, which was no easy feat. His plan, as I understood it, was to separate the mass of evidence into four sets of charges — corruption as a judge, extortion in collecting taxes and official revenues, the plundering of private and municipal property, and finally, illegal and tyrannical punishments. Witness statements and records were grouped accordingly, and even as he bounced along, he began drafting whole passages of his opening speech. (Just as he had trained his body to carry the weight of his ambition, so he had, by effort of will, cured himself of travel sickness, and over the years he was to do a vast amount of work while journeying up and down Italy.) In this manner, almost without his noticing where he was, we completed the trip in less than a fortnight and came at last to Rome on the Ides of March,
”
”
Robert Harris (Imperium (Cicero, #1))
“
one stubborn glitch they couldn’t figure out: the program did a wonderful job spewing out data on the trajectory of artillery shells, but it just didn’t know when to stop. Even after the shell would have hit the ground, the program kept calculating its trajectory, “like a hypothetical shell burrowing through the ground at the same rate it had traveled through the air,” as Jennings described it. “Unless we solved that problem, we knew the demonstration would be a dud, and the ENIAC’s inventors and engineers would be embarrassed.”69 Jennings and Snyder worked late into the evening before the press briefing trying to fix it, but they couldn’t. They finally gave up at midnight, when Snyder needed to catch the last train to her suburban apartment. But after she went to bed, Snyder figured it out: “I woke up in the middle of the night thinking what that error was. . . . I came in, made a special trip on the early train that morning to look at a certain wire.” The problem was that there was a setting at the end of a “do loop” that was one digit off. She flipped the requisite switch and the glitch was fixed. “Betty could do more logical reasoning while she was asleep than most people can do awake,” Jennings later marveled. “While she slept, her subconscious untangled the knot that her conscious mind had been unable to.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
“
Many kinds of animal behavior can be explained by genetic similarity theory. Animals have a preference for close kin, and study after study has shown that they have a remarkable ability to tell kin from strangers. Frogs lay eggs in bunches, but they can be separated and left to hatch individually. When tadpoles are then put into a tank, brothers and sisters somehow recognize each other and cluster together rather than mix with tadpoles from different mothers.
Female Belding’s ground squirrels may mate with more than one male before they give birth, so a litter can be a mix of full siblings and half siblings. Like tadpoles, they can tell each other apart. Full siblings cooperate more with each other than with half-siblings, fight less, and are less likely to run each other out of the territory when they grow up.
Even bees know who their relatives are. In one experiment, bees were bred for 14 different degrees of relatedness—sisters, cousins, second cousins, etc.—to bees in a particular hive. When the bees were then released near the hive, guard bees had to decide which ones to let in. They distinguished between degrees of kinship with almost perfect accuracy, letting in the closest relatives and chasing away more distant kin. The correlation between relatedness and likelihood of being admitted was a remarkable 0.93.
Ants are famous for cooperation and willingness to sacrifice for the colony. This is due to a quirk in ant reproduction that means worker ants are 70 percent genetically identical to each other. But even among ants, there can be greater or less genetic diversity, and the most closely related groups of ants appear to cooperate best.
Linepithema humile is a tiny ant that originated in Argentina but migrated to the United States. Many ants died during the trip, and the species lost much of its genetic diversity. This made the northern branch of Linepithema humile more cooperative than the one left in Argentina, where different colonies quarrel and compete with each other. This new level of cooperation has helped the invaders link nests into supercolonies and overwhelm local species of ants. American entomologists want to protect American ants by introducing genetic diversity so as to make the newcomers more quarrelsome.
Even plants cooperate with close kin and compete with strangers. Normally, when two plants are put in the same pot, they grow bigger root systems, trying to crowd each other out and get the most nutrients. A wild flower called the Sea Rocket, which grows on beaches, does not do that if the two plants come from the same “mother” plant. They recognize each others’ root secretions and avoid wasteful competition.
”
”
Jared Taylor
“
When you are workshopped, it is important to remember that you will not connect with everything that is said. You shouldn’t! Don’t listen to everything; don’t take every suggestion—trust your instincts. Think hard, though, about all the questions asked of you. Are you making your decisions consciously enough? Are there decisions you made subconsciously that turned out to be even better (or worse) than you expected? Don’t ever try to make your story into someone else’s story, or especially the group’s story. That will ruin what you love about your story and so will ruin your story. Part of being in a writing community is learning who is a good reader for your work, and how to incorporate suggestions into your own intentions and process. Also remember that while you might not like a suggestion, the most important thing about a critique might be simply its existence. The point remains that that part of your story might have tripped up this group of test readers, and if they are reading carefully, you can use that knowledge to find your own solution or even your own problem. Also remember that sometimes making a certain part of a story work isn’t about that part of the story, but about an earlier part, or a later part, or the whole thing, or the basic foundation. What is most important is to know that there’s still work to do and to be inspired to do it.
”
”
Matthew Salesses (Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping)
“
According to Finnish psychologist Kaj Björkqvist, by the time a girl is eight years old she is unlikely to express frustration and anger toward others physically. Girls are, on the other hand, as verbally aggressive as boys. Instead of hitting or shoving, girls will use verbal, nonverbal, and socially manipulative skills to hurt others—mainly other girls. Girls will insult and denigrate each other; they will also hold grudges for a very long time. Björkqvist and others have shown that girls are “significantly more likely than boys to become friendly with someone else as revenge”; and that girls will gossip and suggest the “shunning” of another girl. According to Björkqvist, indirect aggression is a type of “hostile behavior [that] is carried out in order to harm the opponent, while avoiding being identified as aggressive.” Björkqvist and others developed a scale, known as the Direct and Indirect Aggression Scale, which measures physical aggression (hitting, kicking, tripping, shoving, pushing, pulling), and verbal aggression (yelling, insulting, teasing, threatening to hurt the other, calling the other names), on the one hand, and on the other hand, indirect aggression (shutting the other out of the group, becoming friends with another as revenge, ignoring, gossiping, telling bad stories, planning secretly to bother the other, saying bad things behind the back, saying to others: “let’s not be with him/her,” telling the other’s secrets to a third person, writing notes in which the other is criticized, criticizing the other’s hair or clothing, trying to get others to dislike the person).
”
”
Phyllis Chesler (Woman's Inhumanity to Woman)
“
The black magic that evil-minded people of all religions practice for their ugly and inhuman motives. The modern world ignores that and even do not believe in it; however, it exists, and it sufficiently works too.
When I was an assistant editor, in an evening newspaper, I edited and published such stories. As a believer, I believe that. However, not that can affect everyone; otherwise, every human would have been under the attack of it.
No one can explain and define black magic and such practices. The scientists today fail to recognize such a phenomenon; therefore, routes are open for black magic to proceeds its practices without hindrances.
One can search online websites, and YouTube; it will realize a large number of the victims of that the evil practice by evil-minded peoples of various societies. The magic, black magic, or evil power exists, and it works too.
Evil power causes, effects, and appears, as diseases and psychological issues since no one can realize, trace, and prove that horror practice; it is the secret and privilege of the evil-minded people that law fails to catch and punish them, for such crime.
I exemplify here, the two events briefly, one a very authentic that I suffered from it and another, a person, who also became a victim of it.
The first, when I landed on the soil of the Netherlands, I thought, I was in the safest place; however, within one year, I faced the incident, which was a practice of my family, involving my brothers, my country mates, who lived in the Netherlands. The most suspected were the evil-minded people of the Ahmadiyya movement of Surinam people, and possibly my ex-wife and a Pakistani couple. I had seen the evidence of the black magic, which my family did upon me, but I could not trace the reality of other suspected ones that destroyed my career, future, health, and even life.
The second, a Pakistani, who lived in Germany, for several years, as an active member of the Ahmadiyya Movement, he told me his story briefly, during a trip to London, attending a literary gathering. He received a gold medal for his poetry work, and also he served Ahmadiyya TV channel; however when he became a real Muslim; as a result, Ahmadiyya worriers turned against him. When they could not force him to back in their group, they practiced the devil's work to punish him. The symptoms of magic were well-known to me that he told me since I bore that on my body too.
The multiple other stories that reveal that the Ahmadiyya Movement, possibly practices black magic ways, to achieve its goals. As my observation, they involve, to eliminate Muslim Imams and scholars, who cause the failure of that new religion and false prophet, claiming as Jesus. I am a victim of their such practices. Social Media and such websites are a stronghold of their activities. In Pakistan, they are active, in the guise of the real Muslims, to dodge the simple ones, as they do in Europe and other parts of the word.
Such possibility and chance can be possible that use of drugs and chemicals, to defeat their opponents, it needs, wide-scale investigation to save, the humanity.
The incident that occurred to me, in the Netherlands, in 1980, I tried and appealed to the authorities of the Netherlands, but they openly refused to cooperate that. However, I still hope and look forward to any miracle that someone from somewhere gives the courage to verify that.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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(about Pilgrims) It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip. They found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey. One William Mullins packed 126 pairs of shoes and 13 pairs of boots. Yet, between them they failed to bring a single cow or horse or plough or fishing line. Among the professions represented on the Mayflower's manifest were two tailors, a printer, several merchants, a silk worker, a shopkeeper and a hatter- occupations whose importance is not immediately evident when one thinks of surviving in a hostile environment. Their military commander, Miles Standish, was so diminutive of stature that he was known to all as "Captain Shrimpe" hardly a figure to inspire awe in the savage natives from whom they confidently expected to encounter. With the uncertain exception of the little captain, probably none in the party had ever tried to bring down a wild animal. Hunting in seventeenth century Europe was a sport reserved for the aristocracy. Even those who labelled themselves farmers generally had scant practical knowledge of husbandry, since farmer in the 1600s, and for some time afterwards, signified an owner of land rather than one who worked it.
They were, in short, dangerously unprepared for the rigours ahead, and they demonstrated their manifest incompetence in the most dramatic possible way: by dying in droves. Six expired in the first two weeks, eight the next month, seventeen more in February, a further thirteen in March. By April, when the Mayflower set sail back to England just fifty-four people, nearly half of them children, were left to begin the long work of turning this tenuous toe-hold into a self-sustaining colony.
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Bill Bryson (Made in America an Informal History Of)
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it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.
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Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
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Okay.” The leader stood on the bed of his truck and clapped his hands over his head. “Listen up, everyone.”
No one was really listening, though they had dressed right. Everyone was all in black. A few guys wore ski masks, and others had black marks on their cheeks like football players. Personally, I didn’t understand the need for the black camouflage. Caden had explained that the cops had already been looped in on the operation. A few of the lawns getting flocked tonight actually belonged to cops, and anyway the whole blending-with-the-night effect didn’t work when you were carrying a bright neon-pink flamingo.
Still, I couldn’t deny the little spark of excitement building in my stomach.
We were all standing in some guy’s driveway, and as I looked around, I seemed to be the only girl. These guys meant business. I was in the middle of a real life Call of Duty operation.
The leader began speaking, his voice booming. “This is going to happen with precision and professionalism. No lingering, loitering, acting like stupid shits, and definitely no joking around. We’re not ladies. This isn’t going to be run like a bunch of pansy-shopping, pink-nail-polish pussies. You got that?!”
I frowned, tucking my nails inside my jacket.
“Every vehicle’s been filled with birds. The driver should have a text with all the locations, and the number of birds for each target. Pull up, find the group of birds labeled for that house, and work together. Take one bird a trip, two if you can manage, and ram those suckers down in the grass. Hurry back to the truck and keep going until all the birds for that location are in the ground. Shotgun Sally is in charge of hanging the sign on the bird closest to the street. Once the sign is hung, get back in the truck, and move to the next target. NO TALKING! This mission is all radio silent. Communicate with signals, and if you don’t know the appropriate signals, just SHUT THE HELL UP! Okay? Now, go flock some fuckers!
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Tijan (Anti-Stepbrother)
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Then there were those who were thrilling to Senator Sanders, who believed that Bernie would be the one to give them free college, to solve climate change, and even to bring peace to the Middle East, though that was not an issue most people associated with him. On a trip to Michigan, I met with a group of young Muslims, most of them college students, for whom this was the first election in which they planned to participate. I was excited that they had come to hear more about HRC's campaign. One young woman, speaking for her peers, said she really wanted to be excited about the first woman president, but she had to support Bernie because she believed he would be more effective at finally brokering a peace treaty in the Middle East. Everyone around her nodded. I asked the group why they doubted Hillary Clinton's ability to do the same.
"Well, she has done nothing to help the Palestinians."
Taking a deep breath, I asked them if they knew that she was the first U.S. official to ever call the territories "Palestine" in the nineties, that she advocated for Palestinian sovereignty back when no other official would. They did not. I then asked them if they were aware that she brought together the last round of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians? That she personally negotiated a cease-fire to stop the latest war in Gaza when she was secretary of state? They shook their heads. Had they known that she announced $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and $300 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza in her first year at State? They began to steal glances at one another. Did they know that she pushed Israel to invest in the West Bank and announced an education program to make college more affordable for Palestinian students? More head shaking. They simply had no idea.
"So," I continued, "respectfully, what is it about Senator Sander's twenty-seven-year record in Congress that suggests to you that the Middle East is a priority for him?"
The young woman's response encapsulated some what we were up against.
"I don't know," she replied. "I just feel it.
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Huma Abedin (Both/And: A Memoir)
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For Dylan, this electric assault threatened to suck the air out of everything else, only there was too much radio oxygen to suck. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the giant, all-consuming anthem of the new “generation gap” disguised as a dandy’s riddle, a dealer’s come-on. As a two-sided single, it dwarfed all comers, disarmed and rejuvenated listeners at each hearing, and created vast new imaginative spaces for groups to explore both sonically and conceptually. It came out just after Dylan’s final acoustic tour of Britain, where his lyrical profusion made him a bard, whose tabloid accolade took the form of political epithet: “anarchist.” As caught on film by D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back, the young folkie had already graduated to rock star in everything but instrumentation. “Satisfaction” held Dylan back at number two during its four-week July hold on Billboard’s summit, giving way to Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” and Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” come August, novelty capstones to Dylan’s unending riddle. (In Britain, Dylan stalled at number four.) The ratio of classics to typical pop schlock, like Freddie and the Dreamers’ “I’m Telling You Now” or Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” suddenly got inverted. For cosmic perspective, yesterday’s fireball, Elvis Presley, sang “Do the Clam.” Most critics have noted the Dylan influence on Lennon’s narratives. Less space gets devoted to Lennon’s effect on Dylan, which was overt: think of how Dylan rewires Chuck Berry (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) or revels in inanity (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). Even more telling, Lennon’s keening vocal harmonies in “Nowhere Man,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Dr. Robert” owed as much to the Byrds and the Beach Boys, high-production turf Dylan simply abjured. Lennon also had more stylistic stretch, both in his Beatle context and within his own sensibility, as in the pagan balalaikas in “Girl” or the deliberate amplifier feedback tripping “I Feel Fine.” Where Dylan skewed R&B to suit his psychological bent, Lennon pursued radical feats of integration wearing a hipster’s arty façade, the moptop teaching the quiet con. Building up toward Rubber Soul throughout 1965, Beatle gravity exerted subtle yet inexorable force in all directions.
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Tim Riley (Lennon)
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Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers… Parents and other passengers read on Kindles… Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing…
As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago… My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential “deep reading” processes may be under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading…
Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19thand 20th centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience,” however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts…
Karin Littau and Andrew Piper have noted another dimension: physicality. Piper, Littau and Anne Mangen’s group emphasize that the sense of touch in print reading adds an important redundancy to information – a kind of “geometry” to words, and a spatial “thereness” for text. As Piper notes, human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination – what he calls the “technology of recurrence”. The importance of recurrence for both young and older readers involves the ability to go back, to check and evaluate one’s understanding of a text. The question, then, is what happens to comprehension when our youth skim on a screen whose lack of spatial thereness discourages “looking back.
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Maryanne Wolf
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Cultivating loyalty is a tricky business. It requires maintaining a rigorous level of consistency while constantly adding newness and a little surprise—freshening the guest experience without changing its core identity.” Lifetime Network Value Concerns about brand fickleness in the new generation of customers can be troubling partly because the idea of lifetime customer value has been such a cornerstone of business for so long. But while you’re fretting over the occasional straying of a customer due to how easy it is to switch brands today, don’t overlook a more important positive change in today’s landscape: the extent to which social media and Internet reviews have amplified the reach of customers’ word-of-mouth. Never before have customers enjoyed such powerful platforms to share and broadcast their opinions of products and services. This is true today of every generation—even some Silent Generation customers share on Facebook and post reviews on TripAdvisor and Amazon. But millennials, thanks to their lifetime of technology use and their growing buying power, perhaps make the best, most active spokespeople a company can have. Boston Consulting Group, with grand understatement, says that “the vast majority” of millennials report socially sharing and promoting their brand preferences. Millennials are talking about your business when they’re considering making a purchase, awaiting assistance, trying something on, paying for it and when they get home. If, for example, you own a restaurant, the value of a single guest today goes further than the amount of the check. The added value comes from a process that Chef O’Connell calls competitive dining, the phenomenon of guests “comparing and rating dishes, photographing everything they eat, and tweeting and emailing the details of all their dining adventures.” It’s easy to underestimate the commercial power that today’s younger customers have, particularly when the network value of these buyers doesn’t immediately translate into sales. Be careful not to sell their potential short and let that assumption drive you headlong into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember that younger customers are experimenting right now as they begin to form preferences they may keep for a lifetime. And whether their proverbial Winstons will taste good to them in the future depends on what they taste like presently.
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Micah Solomon (Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Love Your Business)
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The school is teeming with activity. The rooms are small and large, many are special-purpose rooms, like shops and labs, but most are furnished like rather shabby living or dining rooms in homes: lots of sofas, easy chairs, and tables. Lots of people sitting around talking, reading, and playing games. On an average rainy day—quite different from a beautiful suddenly snowy day, or a warm spring or fall day—most people are inside. But there will also be more than a few who are outside in the rain, and later will come in dripping and trying the patience of the few people inside who think the school should perhaps be a “dry zone.” There may be people in the photo lab developing or printing pictures they have taken. There may be a karate class, or just some people playing on mats in the dance room. Someone may be building a bookshelf or fashioning chain mail armor and discussing medieval history. There are almost certainly a few people, either together or separate, making music of one kind or another, and others listening to music of one kind or another. You will find adults in groups that include kids, or maybe just talking with one student. It would be most unusual if there were not people playing a computer game somewhere, or chess; a few people doing some of the school’s administrative work in the office—while others hang around just enjoying the atmosphere of an office where interesting people are always making things happen; there will be people engaged in role-playing games; other people may be rehearsing a play—it might be original, it might be a classic. They may intend production or just momentary amusement. People will be trading stickers and trading lunches. There will probably be people selling things. If you are lucky, someone will be selling cookies they baked at home and brought in to earn money. Sometimes groups of kids have cooked something to sell to raise money for an activity—perhaps they need to buy a new kiln, or want to go on a trip. An intense conversation will probably be in progress in the smoking area, and others in other places. A group in the kitchen may be cooking—maybe pizza or apple pie. Always, either in the art room or in any one of many other places, people will be drawing. In the art room they might also be sewing, or painting, and some are quite likely to be working with clay, either on the wheel or by hand. Always there are groups talking, and always there are people quietly reading here and there. One
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Russell L. Ackoff (Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track)
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And then it sends a signal to turn off the system.” “So the universe with the wallet in the chamber waiting to be sent still exists,” added Allen. “But the universe from which it is actually sent never does.” “That is just so messed up,” said Blake in exasperation, and Jenna, Walsh, and Soyer nodded their agreement. “Here is my advice to all of you,” said Cargill. “The best thing to do is ignore time travel, and don’t think about the paradoxes too hard. If you do, your head really will explode,” he added with a wry smile. “Just think of it as duplication and teleportation. But always keep in mind that the universe seems to go out of its way to ensure that infinite alternate timelines aren’t allowed. So no matter what, we only ever get this one universe.” He sighed. “So we’d better make sure we don’t screw it up.” 48 Brian Hamilton hated Cheyenne Mountain. Sure, it was one of the most interesting places in the world to visit, but living there only worked if you were a bat. The Palomar facility had also been underground, but nothing like this. It had a much larger security perimeter, so trips to the surface were easier to make happen. Not that it really mattered. Soon enough he would be traveling on another assignment anyway, living in a hotel room somewhere. But what he really wanted was to work side by side with Edgar Knight, toward their common goal. He was tired of being Knight’s designated spy, having to watch Lee Cargill squander Q5’s vast resources and capabilities. Watching him crawl like a wounded baby when he could be soaring. Cargill was an idiot. He could transform the world, but he was too weak to do it. He could wipe out the asshole terrorists who wanted nothing more than to butcher the helpless. If you have the ultimate cure for cancer, you use it to wipe out the disease once and for all. You don’t wield your cure only as a last resort, when the cancer has all but choked the life out of you. Edgar Knight, on the other hand, was a man with vision. He was able to make the tough decisions. If you were captain of a life raft with a maximum capacity of ten people, choosing to take five passengers of a sinking ship on board was an easy decision, not a heroic one. But what about when there were fifty passengers? Was it heroic to take them all, dooming everyone to death? Or was the heroic move using force, if necessary, to limit this number, to ensure some would survive? Sure, from the outside this looked coldhearted, while the converse seemed compassionate. But watching the world circle the drain because you were too much of a pussy to make the hard decisions was the real crime. Survival of the fittest was harsh reality. In the animal kingdom it was eat or be eaten. If you saw a group of fuck-nuts just itching to nuke the world back into the Dark Ages—who believed the Messiah equivalent, the twelfth Imam, would only come out to play when Israel was destroyed, and worldwide Armageddon unleashed—you wiped them out. To a man. Or else they’d do the same to you. It had been three days since Cargill had reported that he was on the verge of acquiring Jenna Morrison and Aaron Blake.
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Douglas E. Richards (Split Second (Split Second, #1))
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British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria
• Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London
• They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities
• He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan
• Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia
A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka.
He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists.
Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh.
The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newspapers.
He is believed to have arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS, according Monirul Islam - joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police - who was speaking at a press briefing today.
Zakaria has openly shared Islamist extremist materials on his Facebook and other social media links.
An example of Zakaria Saqib Mahmood sharing Islamist materials on his Facebook profile
He targeted Muslims from Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Mr Islam added, before saying: 'He also went to Australia but we are yet to know the reason behind his trips'.
Zakaria saqib Mahmood trip to Australia in order to recruit for militant extremist groups
'From his passport we came to know that he went to Pakistan where we believe he met a Jihadist named Rauf Salman, in addition to Australia during September last year to meet some of his links he recruited in London, mainly from his weekly charity food stand in East London, ' the DMP spokesperson went on to say.
Police believes Zakaria Mahmood has met Jihadist member Rauf Salman in Pakistan
Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was identified by the local police in Pakistan in the last September. The number of extremists he has met in this trip remains unknown yet.
Zakaria Saqib Mahmood uses charity food stand as a cover to radicalise local people in Newham, London.
Investigators: Dhaka Metropolitan Police believe Zakaria Saqib Mhamood arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS
The news comes just days after a 40-year-old East London bogus college owner called Sinclair Adamson - who also had links to the northern city of Sylhet - was arrested in Dhaka on suspicion of recruiting would-be fighters for ISIS.
Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, who has studied at CASS Business School, was arrested in Dhaka on Thursday after being reported for recruiting militants.
Just one day before Zakaria Mahmood's arrest, local police detained Asif Adnan, 26, and Fazle ElahiTanzil, 24, who were allegedly travelling to join ISIS militants in Syria, assisted by an unnamed Briton.
It is understood the suspected would-be jihadists were planning to travel to a Turkish airport popular with tourists, before travelling by road to the Syrian border and then slipping across into the warzone.
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Zakaria Zaqib Mahmood
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The individual (as contrasted to unit) rotation policy practiced in Vietnam, which moved individual men in and out of combat units on a preordained time schedule, systematically destroyed the unit cohesion of combat groups. Very, very few Vietnam veterans went over with the unit they had trained with, fought with that unit, and returned "to the world" with it. I estimate of the three-quarters of a million Vietnam combat veterans, only a few hundred or thousand did so. By contrast, my impression is that this was the majority experience in World War II, particularly in the Pacific. Even men who went over as individual replacements in World War II spent weeks or months with their units after fighting ended and universally returned by boat. "The long trip home" is generally credited as an opportunity for mutual support and communal reworking of combat trauma.
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Jonathan Shay (Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character)
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The following example is adapted from a conversation a friend of mine had with his wife. She came to him frustrated with her sister and looking for support. Amy: “Ugh. Emily is driving me crazy!” David: “What happened?” Amy: “You know this sisters’ trip we’ve been planning? She keeps changing the plans and doesn’t seem to listen to—or care at all about—what the rest of us want to do.” David: “Well, have you just told her what you want to do?” Amy: “Of course I have. We all have! She always seems to have some reason for doing things her way. Ugh. I’m so sick of this.” David: “You should just tell her that—that you don’t feel like she’s listening.” Amy: “I’ve tried that. She always does this. I feel like I’m crazy because everyone else just backs down and lets her take over. I’m not about to spend all this money and take a week off work only to have to follow her strict schedule all day!” David: “Well, if you don’t want to go, don’t go.” Amy: “Of course I want to go! I just want to go and actually have fun!” David: “Then just talk to your other sisters. I’m sure you guys can figure it out. Or I’ll talk to her!” Amy: “No, I can take care of it. I’m just frustrated.” David: “What if you each planned one day?” Amy: “It’s not that easy. The sites we want to see are too far apart from each other.” David: “What if you just booked a tour group instead?” Amy: “No, we want to do it ourselves.” David (not quite sure what Amy is expecting from him at this point): “Well, you’d better figure it out soon. Isn’t the trip in a few weeks?” Amy (now frustrated and ready to end the conversation): “Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.” Why did David’s multiple attempts to help his wife go so poorly? In short, he didn’t recognize that she was looking for validation rather than advice. Amy remained frustrated because David tried to fix the problem right out of the gates instead of first validating her frustration. David also walked away feeling confused and unappreciated because Amy became more upset—and even a little defensive—as he tried to help.
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Michael S. Sorensen (I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships)
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You guys are planning to eat out, right? I wouldn’t want to drag everyone along on my personal shopping trip.” She waved her hands energetically. That’s when I realized what was going on. This was just Izumi’s personality. Even though she belonged to Erika Konno’s group, which was at the top of the class hierarchy, she was hyperaware of the general mood of a conversation and cared a lot about what other people thought of her. She was good at doing things for others and being considerate. The flip side was that she was bad at letting other people do things for her. It was like that saying about monks being bad at combat. If you’ve got a strength, then its opposite is likely to be your weak point. Maybe.
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Yuki Yaku (Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 2 (light novel))
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I move away from the group as I experience a moment of something that could be fear or excitement. The two are so closely linked it's often hard to pick them apart
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Kate Galley (The Golden Girls Road Trip)
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Soon we began to collect a little group of odd people who would drink with us every cocktail hour. Brigitte, who was a 22-year-old German, very beautiful, could have been on the cover of Stern magazine. Her boyfriend Volker was one of the most beautiful men I'd ever met - people said he looked like James Hunt, the English racecar driver. He was like Billy Budd. He was from Germany and had been a cowboy in Wyoming. Then there was Elford Elliot from England, who had something to do with producing garden gnomes. He was tripping on acid all the time and going out to Delos, this little island off Mykonos, chipping little pieces off the ancient ruins, which he then brought back in the pocket of his jumpsuit. Then there was Bryan, an IBM operator from Australia, who fancied himself as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure. I don't know why. The only story of his I remember was about some Australians who stole a garden gnome from the front lawn of a very elegant mansion and took it for a trip around the world. They would send postcards back to the owner saying things like, 'Having a lovely time in the Fiji Islands' and sign it, 'The Garden Gnome.' After six weeks, they brought the garden gnome back and left it on the lawn with little suitcases full of tiny clothing they'd knitted for it.
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Spalding Gray (Sex and Death to the Age 14)
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Meyrowitz writes that when he was in college in the 1950s, he’d gone on an exciting three-month summer vacation, and when he got home, he was eager to share his experiences with his friends, family, and other acquaintances. Obviously, he says, he varied the stories and the telling based on the audience: his parents got the clean version, his friends got the adventurous version, and his professors got the cultured version. Meyrowitz asks us to consider what would happen to his trip narrative if, on his return, his parents had thrown him a surprise homecoming party where all of those groups were present together. He ventures that he would have either 1) offended one or more of the groups, or 2) created a “synthesized” account that was “bland enough to offend no one.” But no matter which one, he writes, “the situation would have been profoundly different from the interactions I had with isolated audiences.
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Jenny Odell (How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy)
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onto a bus with an eager group of American and British tourists decked out in plaid shorts and sun hats and made the fourteen-kilometer trip from the hotel, across the Nile River,
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James Patterson (Danger Down The Nile (Treasure Hunters, #2))
“
One family described their core value of hospitality, lived out as they cleaned the house together each Friday for the express purpose of welcoming people over the weekend. They wanted to be able to spontaneously invite others over, knowing their space was ready to receive them. All this was explained to their kids by connecting the dots between the practice of keeping house and the immense welcome of God. They talked about their apartment as a gift and a refuge, and how important it was for it to feel inviting. Hosting people was not about living some Magnolia life; it was how they loved their neighbors. Thus, Friday night cleanup was a faith practice. One family used the tradition of a summer road trip to visit relatives as a means to support being who God uniquely made each of them to be. Each family member got to design the itinerary for one day of the trip. On that day, everyone else went along with that person’s choices for restaurants and an activity. They talked about the wonder of God’s image in each person and how this was a fun way to see each member of the family just as God made them to be. Thus, a family trip was a faith ritual. What about your family? What unique characteristics need to be accounted for as you craft a vision for faith? • Who makes up your family? List the members. You may share a living space with them or not, live in the same town or not, be relationally close or not. • Next to each person on the list, jot down a few distinguishing key traits of that person. What are they like? What are they interested in? • What are some of your family’s strengths and loves as a group? Do you love a good party? Cheer for a certain team? Love a particular place or meal? • What are some of your family’s unique challenges right now? Do you have a child who doesn’t “fit the mold,” for whatever reason? Are finances tight? Have any of the relationships been strained or broken? • List anything else that feels important to you about who your family is and what they are like. What other traits make you, you?
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Meredith Miller (Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal From)
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What did not happen in Florida, in either the Second or Third Seminole War, was the provision of enough forces and transportation to affect the object of these wars, the final removal of all Native Americans from the peninsula. Prior to the war’s end, rewards were offered by the United States government for the capture of Seminoles. This policy failed to bring in any significant number of Native Americans; however, by early 1858, the war was winding down. White flags and other signs were hung out on known paths used by the Seminoles, and military operations were ordered stopped by Colonel Loomis. Elias Rector, the superintendent for Indian Affairs in the southern superintendency, came to Florida in January 1858 to assist in the negotiations for peace. After a conference was held 35 miles from Fort Myers with Assinwah’s band and others, the terms were offered and monetary inducements guaranteed. On May 4, 1858, Billy Bowlegs and most of his band boarded the Grey Cloud and sailed to Egmont Key, at the mouth of Tampa Bay. Here this group was joined by 41 prisoners and made ready for the trip west. By May 8, the war was declared officially over. The army believed that there were only about 100 Seminoles and Miccosukees left in Florida. This number included the aged leader Sam Jones. There is a debate on just when this ancient and respected leader died; however, it is known that he was gone before the end of Civil War. Where his remains were deposited is a secret to this day. It is from this small number of Seminoles and Miccosukees that today’s recognized tribes have descended as a continuing tribute to the tenacity of their ancestors’ will to survive. As historian Patsy West has aptly called them, they are “The Enduring Seminoles.” BIBLIOGRAPHY DOCUMENTS A number of collections of documents exist from which the above was drawn, including the Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Registered Series, 1801–1860; Letters Sent by the Secretary of War Relating to Military Affairs, 1800–1889; Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General (Main Series) 1822–1860; and Letters Sent, Registers of Letters Received, and Letters Received by Headquarters, Troops in Florida, and Headquarters Department of Florida, 1850–1858. The collections are all on microfilm from the National Archives. Numerous Congressional documents were also consulted
”
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Joe Knetsch (Florida's Seminole Wars: 1817-1858 (Making of America))
“
Every genocide has its own particular characteristics, and every hated group is hated in its own special way.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World)
“
The earliest attempt to form an independent Zen group in Japan seems to have been led by Nōnin, who taught his form of Zen at Sanbōji (a Tendai temple in Settsu) during the latter part of the twelfth century. Because Nōnin's following, which styled itself the Darumashū (after Daruma, i.e., Bodhidharma, the semilegendary founder of the Chinese Ch'an school), failed to secure a permanent institutional base, scholars had not fully realized Nōnin's importance until recently. As early as 1272, however, less than eighty years after Nōnin's death, Nichiren had correctly identified Nōnin as the pioneer leader of the new Zen groups. Eisai, a contemporary of Nōnin, also founded several new centers for Zen practice, the most important of which was Kenninji in Kyoto. In contrast to Nōnin, who had never left Japan, Eisai had the benefit of two extended trips to China during which he could observe Chinese Ch'an (Jpn. Zen) teachers first hand. The third important early Zen leader in Japan was Dōgen, the founder of Japan's Sōtō school. Dōgen had entered Eisai's Kenninji in 1217 and, like Eisai, also traveled to China for firsthand study. Unlike Eisai (or Nōnin), after his return to Japan Dōgen attempted to establish the monastic structures he found in China. Dōgen's monasteries, Kōshōji (Dōgen's residence during 1230–1243) and Eiheiji (1244–1253), were the first in Japan to include a monks' hall (sōdō) within which Zen monks lived and meditated according to Chinese-style monastic regulations.
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William M. Bodiford (Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Kuroda Studies in East Asian Buddhism, 8))
“
I do not know if my mother broke off her studies at Charles University only because her parents’ money had run out. How far was she pushed to emigrate to Palestine by the violent hatred of Jews that filled the streets of Europe in the mid-1930s and spread to the universities, or to what extent
did she come here as the result of her education in a Tar-buth school and her
membership in a Zionist youth movement? What did she hope to find here,
what did she find, what did she not find? What did Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
look like to someone who had grown up in a mansion in Rovno and arrived
straight from the Gothic beauty of Prague? What did spoken Hebrew sound
like to the sensitive ears of a young lady coming with the refined, booklearned Hebrew of the Tar-buth school and possessing a finely tuned
linguistic sensibility? How did my young mother respond to the sand dunes,
the motor pumps in the citrus groves, the rocky hillsides, the archaeology
field trips, the biblical ruins and remains of the Second Temple period, the
headlines in the newspapers and the cooperative dairy produce, the wadis,
the hamsins, the domes of the walled convents, the ice-cold water from the
jarra, the cultural evenings with accordion and harmonica music, the
cooperative bus drivers in their khaki shorts, the sounds of English (the
language of the rulers of the country), the dark orchards, the minarets,
strings of camels carrying building sand, Hebrew watchmen, suntanned
pioneers from the kibbutz, construction workers in shabby caps? How much
was she repelled, or attracted, by tempestuous nights of arguments,
ideological conflicts, and courtships, Saturday afternoon outings, the fire of
party politics, the secret intrigues of the various underground groups and
their sympathizers, the enlisting of volunteers for agricultural tasks, the
dark blue nights punctuated by howls of jackals and echoes of distant
gunfire?
”
”
Amos Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness)
“
The executives on the trip were amazed by what they saw. The group on the fashion leg visited an apparel factory that was making $9 sport coats for the retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, which then sold them at retail for $500. The same factory was also selling the coats with a different button pattern directly online for $90—and still making a fat profit. They also visited a factory that made women’s tops for the retail chain Zara. As the Amazon execs looked down from a balcony onto the factory floor, one asked their host about a group of workers separate from the rest, making similar clothing as the others. They sold on Alibaba, the host said, under the factory’s own private label.
”
”
Brad Stone (Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire)
“
Republicans too have seen the influence of money from China. Since 2015, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has been Senate majority leader and the most powerful man in Washington after the president. Once a hardliner, in the 1990s he became a noted China dove (although in 2019, in a likely instance of ‘big help with a little badmouth’, he voiced support for Hong Kong protesters37). In 1993 he married the daughter of one of his donors, Chinese-American businessman James Chao. Elaine Chao went on to serve as secretary of labor under President George W. Bush and in 2017 was sworn in as President Trump’s transportation secretary. She wasted no time organising a trip to China that included meetings between members of her family and Chinese government officials, a plan that was spiked only when the State Department raised ethical concerns.38 James Chao has excellent guanxi—connections—in China, including his classmate Jiang Zemin, the powerful former president of China. Chao became rich through his shipping company, Foremost Group, which flourished due to its close association with the state-owned behemoth the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. McConnell, after his marriage to Chao’s daughter, was courted by the highest CCP leaders, and his in-laws were soon doing deals with Chinese government corporations.
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Clive Hamilton (Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World)
“
One year, a group of students, including Dahmer, traveled to Washington, DC, to see the sites and visit important landmarks. While on this trip, someone dared Dahmer to make a crank call. He contacted the offices of then Vice President Walter Mondale and managed to charm his way into an invitation for Dahmer and his fellow high school classmates from Ohio to meet the VP.
”
”
Patrick Kennedy (GRILLING DAHMER: The Interrogation Of "The Milwaukee Cannibal")
“
The group was known as Agassiz’s Club, more officially as the Saturday Club. One summer, when the club went off to the Adirondacks on a camping trip, Longfellow refused to go, because Emerson was taking a gun. “Somebody will be shot,” said Longfellow, explaining that Emerson was too vague to be trusted with a gun.
”
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John McPhee (Annals of the Former World)
“
Riding a bike through all this is like navigating the collective neural pathways of some vast global mind. It really is a trip inside the collective psyche of a compacted group of people.
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David Byrne (Bicycle Diaries)
“
Normally Anthony would have written something like this: “I’m so sorry, but unfortunately I’m no longer going to be able to join you on the trip to KL. We’ve recently taken on three big projects and I’m finding myself swamped with all that entails. As a result, I just can’t carve out the time to make it possible, despite my best efforts. Huge apologies again.” By comparison, his positive no went something like this: “I was honored that you invited me to KL. The work you’re doing is fascinating and impressive [warmth]. As you might know, our side of the business has also grown enormously in the past few months. We’ve taken on three exciting new projects that will really change the way our clients think about marketing. I’ll be setting up the projects in the coming month, and it’s my responsibility to make them the success they deserve to be [his yes]. To do a good job, though, I’m having to let go of a lot of things. And sadly, one of them is the chance to come to KL. I’m disappointed, as I was looking forward to it [his no]. Please let me know if it would be helpful to connect you with people who might take my place and add value to the group—I have a few ideas. In the meantime, I wish you all the best for a fruitful trip [warmth].
”
”
Caroline Webb (How To Have A Good Day: The Essential Toolkit for a Productive Day at Work and Beyond)
“
On an early morning scouting trip in the foothills north of Los Angeles, two van-loads of crew people fan out over an area that the production designer wants to make into a guerrilla army encampment. I stay close to the vans, keeping an overview of the area and waiting for the director to emerge. It’s a warm sunny day. Most of the crew is wearing shorts and running shoes.
The director is another story. He climbs out of his van wearing a location-specific hunter-outdoorsman khaki outfit complete with an impressive pair of lug-sole hiking boots and walks off in the general direction the crew has taken, thumbing through some script notes.
A few seconds later he steps squarely into a pile of dog-doo that everyone else has successfully navigated. I watch, transfixed, as he leaps back in horror and freezes. He does not spot me as he quickly looks around to see if anyone has noticed his predicament. No one else has. He hurriedly examines the bottom of his now-disgusting hiking boot.
I take a deep breath and step from beside the van, pretending I am deeply involved in a conversation on my walkie-talkie. As I walk toward him, I pull a little folding penknife from my pocket and flip the blade open. I hand it to him without a word as I pass and continue on toward the location, still pretending to be talking into the radio. I round the corner of a building and find a vantage point.
The director is hopping up and down on one foot, hurriedly scraping the bottom of his boot with the tiny knife. He finishes the messy job, pulls himself together, and strides purposefully around the building and toward a clearing where the crew has gathered, waiting for his comments. I quickly take my place as the director approaches. He walks briskly past me and without looking, hands the little knife back to me with the dog-doo-covered blade still open. He continues on to the front of the group and with complete authority runs through his ideas for the scene. Over the next few months of filming, neither of us ever mentions the incident.
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David McGiffert (Best Seat in the House - An Assistant Director Behind the Scenes of Feature Films)
“
The group at the dining room table all yelled like their favorite person in the world had just walked in, but he gave them a half smile and lifted a hand in the air as if this was normal. Actually, it seemed like everyone was happy to see him, and not just because of his apparent trivia prowess. Just about each person we passed as we went into the living room smiled and shouted in his direction. As if he were their old buddy back from some short of long trip. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I liked him- wow, I actually did like him- but it was somehow surprising that so many other people did. I would've imagined him being too much of an acquired taste for the general population. Kind of an IYKYK type of guy.
”
”
Lynn Painter (Betting on You)
“
Here he was at long last, to participate in the games of the machine – the games which meant wealth and position for those partially successful, and a trip to Venus for the special group that won top honors.
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”
A.E. van Vogt (The World of Null-A)
“
That saying, ‘The Trail Provides’, was one I’d come across a few times while researching our trip. Used by hikers, and believed to have originated from the popular Pacific Crest Trail in the United States, it refers to moments of magic and serendipity that occur while on a long-distance journey. On more than one occasion we’d been longing for or in need of something and, somehow, it would manifest. Like craving honey for days and passing a rare hiker who just happens to gift you some. Or losing your hiking sticks down a hole and then for a group to coincidently see a post about it who also just happen to be passing the exact area so they can fetch them and bring them back to you a day later.
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Bex Band (Three Stripes South)
“
By comparison, his positive no went something like this: “I was honored that you invited me to KL. The work you’re doing is fascinating and impressive [warmth]. As you might know, our side of the business has also grown enormously in the past few months. We’ve taken on three exciting new projects that will really change the way our clients think about marketing. I’ll be setting up the projects in the coming month, and it’s my responsibility to make them the success they deserve to be [his yes]. To do a good job, though, I’m having to let go of a lot of things. And sadly, one of them is the chance to come to KL. I’m disappointed, as I was looking forward to it [his no]. Please let me know if it would be helpful to connect you with people who might take my place and add value to the group—I have a few ideas. In the meantime, I wish you all the best for a fruitful trip [warmth].
”
”
Caroline Webb (How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life)
“
A well-organized revolt by the major members of its hard side can kill a product entirely. Twitter once bought an app called Vine for a reported $30 million. It let users create and view six-second looping video clips—it was ahead of its time, and not dissimilar from the insights behind TikTok. Like many social apps, the most popular content creators became very successful, and they were important to attract an audience. Unfortunately, a few years in, more than a dozen of the top content creators organized a revolt: Led by creators Marcus Johns and Piques, the group pitched an idea: If Vine paid each star $1.2 million and changed certain features of the app, each creator would post 12 Vines per month. Otherwise, all 18 would leave the platform. “We were driving billions of views—billions—before we left,” DeStorm Power explained of the monetary request.69 Vine turned down the plan, and a few years later, the service was shuttered. The hard side is worth the effort to cultivate. The most successful and prolific members of this side of the network also provide the highest level of service, are willing to make the investments to scale their impact, and ultimately become the defensible backbone of the network—assuming they can be retained. In Uber’s case, the power drivers represented the top 15 percent of drivers but constituted over 40 percent of our trips. They were also among the safest and most highly rated drivers—after all, it was their primary source of income.
”
”
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
“
Il vantaggio di Google su aziende come TripAdvisor, Trivago, Booking Holdings e Expedia Group è ovvio: la possibilità di intercettare il viaggiatore in tutti i micro momenti del viaggio.
”
”
Simone Puorto (Hotel Distribution 2050. (Pre)visioni sul futuro di hotel marketing e distribuzione alberghiera)
“
The battle within Colditz was now a two-sided conflict between the British and the Germans. There was no longer a danger that an escape plan secretly mounted by one nation might trip up another. Colditz became a British prison: the hierarchy of rank was more pronounced, as was the control exerted by the escape committee, and the opportunity for one-man ventures was reduced. The Dutch Hawaiian band, the French cuisine, and the Polish choir were gone. The informal cultural osmosis between nationalities was over, as was the fruitful Anglo-Dutch partnership and the daily babble of diverse languages in the inner courtyard. Padre Platt noticed that as an all-Anglo prison, the place seemed more cliquey, with “small friendship groups, complete in themselves and almost exclusive.
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Ben Macintyre (Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison)
“
the truth is that nothing of much consequence in the face of our rigged systems can be accomplished on our own—whether by our own small selves or even by our own identity groups. Change requires collaboration and coalition, even (especially) uncomfortable coalition. Mariame Kaba, a longtime prison abolitionist who has done as much as anyone to imagine what it would take to live in a world that does not equate safety with police and cages, puts the lesson succinctly, one passed on to her by her father: “Everything worthwhile is done with other people.
”
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
Placing and implementing black magic is a suicide that results in hell.”
---
The black magic that evil-minded people of all religions practice for their ugly and inhuman motives. The modern world ignores that and does not even believe in it. However, it exists, and it works sufficiently.
For many years, I edited and published these stories as an assistant editor for an evening newspaper, and as a believer, I believe that. It’s important to note that it doesn’t have any impact on everyone; otherwise, every human would be under attack from it.
No one can explain or define black magic or similar practices. Today’s scientists are not capable of recognizing, diagnosing, or even denying such a phenomenon; therefore, options are open for black magic to proceed with its practices without any obstacles.
By searching online websites and YouTube, one can uncover the many victims of the evil practices of evil-minded individuals in different societies. Evil power, black magic, and magic do exist and are also effective.
Evil power causes physical damage and appears as diseases and psychological issues since no one can realize, trace, or prove that horror practice; it is the secret and privilege of evil-minded people that the law fails to catch and punish them for such crimes.
I briefly exemplify two events, one of which was very authentic, and I suffered from it, and another of which also happened to someone who also became a victim.
The first time when I arrived in the Netherlands, I assumed I was in the most secure area; however, within a year, I faced an incident that was a tradition in my family, including the involvement of my brothers and my compatriots who lived in the Netherlands.
The most suspected were the evil-minded people of the Ahmadiyya movement from Surinam and possibly my ex-wife and a Pakistani couple. I had seen the evidence of the black magic that my family took upon me, but I could not trace the reality of other suspected ones that ruined my career, future, health, and even life.
The second person, a Pakistani who lived in Germany for several years as an active member of the Ahmadiyya Movement, told me his story briefly during a trip to London, attending a literary gathering. Besides receiving a gold medal for his poetry work, he also worked for the Ahmadiyya TV channel.
However, when he became a real Muslim, Ahmadiyya warriors turned against him. They practiced the devil’s work to punish him when they couldn’t force him back into their false group. The symptoms of magic became apparent to me after he mentioned that since I had them on my body as well.
Such a possibility and chance exist that can be created by using drugs and chemicals to defeat their opponents; it needs a comprehensive investigation to save humanity.
Multiple other stories reveal that the Ahmadiyya Movement may use black magic to achieve its goals. From my observation, they were involved in eliminating Muslim imams and scholars, which caused the failure of that new religion and the appearance of a false prophet claiming to be Jesus.
I have been a victim of these types of practices. Their activities revolve around social media and similar websites. In Pakistan, they are deceiving the uninformed by pretending to be genuine Muslims, just like they do in Europe and other parts of the world.
I tried to contact the Dutch authorities about the incident that occurred to me in 1980, but they ignored my request for cooperation; however, I still hope and look forward to any miracle that someone from somewhere gives me the courage to verify all this I want.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
Moreover, when entire categories of people are reduced to their race and gender, and labeled “privileged,” there is little room to confront the myriad ways that working-class white men and women are abused under our predatory capitalist order, with left-wing movements losing many opportunities for alliances that would make us stronger and more powerful. All of this is highly unstrategic, because whichever groups and individuals we kick to the curb, the Mirror World is there, waiting to catch them, praise their courage, and offer a sympathetic ear.
”
”
Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
“
Liberal investments in individualism result in thinking of power as residing in individuals and groups rather than structures. Without an analysis of capital or class they end up defaulting to the stories the West tells itself about the power of the individual to change the world. But hero narratives easily flip into villain narratives.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World)
“
It all started when my mom took a “girls’ trip” with her stitch-and-bitch group out to the Bahamas two years ago.
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”
Vera Valentine (Cold Sweat)
“
I once said to her on the phone, "Jann, this group of kids in Newfoundland have won a spot at a rock camp showcase in Madrid. They are fundraising. They need to raise ten thousand more dollars if they are going to make the trip."
Before I could finish talking, she said, "Okay, I'll give them five grand, you do the same, and it's done, easy."
I answered, "I was going to suggest we sign a picture for them for their auction."
Thanks to Jann, they made the trip. She changed the lives of a group of teenage rock and rollers that she didn't know.
”
”
Rick Mercer (The Road Years: A Memoir, Continued . . .)
“
Address
BARTON CENTRE, 912, 9th Floor, Mahatma Gandhi Rd,
Bengaluru, Karnataka - 560 001
Phone Number
+91 8884400919
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Kenya Tour Package From Bangalore