“
Nate called out, “Team Meeting!” and pointed a finger in the air.
When he had everyone’s attention, Nate cleared his throat. “There are a few Team Awesome things we need to discuss.”
Tristan leaned over to Gabriel. “What’s Team Awesome?”
“It’s our team name,” Heather smiled.
“We’re not a team,” Gabriel said.
“We are a team,” Nate corrected. “We’re Team Awesome and I’m team captain.” He looked at Tristan. “You can call me Captain. Or Captain America, if you’d like. I’m even willing to settle for Captain Jack.”
Tristan crossed his arms. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
Heather’s eyes lit up. “Ooh! Can we choose code names? Can I be Catwoman?”
“We’re not choosing code names.” Gabriel looked incredibly annoyed and Tristan almost smiled.
”
”
Chelsea Fine (Awry (The Archers of Avalon, #2))
“
You’re brave. Incredibly brave, and a goddamn survivor, and it’s admirable as fuck. You have no idea how proud of you I am. But you’re also impulsive, and reactive, and I refuse to lose you again, do you hear me? I won’t. Which means that you have to listen to me, and you cannot go off and do your own thing because you think you’re helping. We’re a team, baby. Got it?
”
”
H.D. Carlton (Hunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse, #2))
“
I'm sorry," she says.
I wheel around. "You know, you're a total know-it-all. And it's incredibly rude sometimes; I mean, you're not perfect either, and you act like it's my fault but it's not my fault for being quiet or your fault for being a know-it-all. It's not your problem or my problem; it's their problem. They're the demented ones, not us, so don't take it out on me, because the only thing that holds things together for me is having someone else on the Not Demented Team.
”
”
John Green (Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd)
“
She remembered Kelsier, standing boldly before a small group of thieves, proclaiming that they would
overthrow the Lord Ruler and free the empire. We're thieves, he'd said. And we're extraordinarily
good ones. We can rob the unrobbable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an
incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces.
That day, when he'd written up the team's goals and plans on a small board, Vin had been amazed by
how possible he had made an impossible task seem. That day, a little bit of her had begun to believe that
Kelsier could overthrow the Final Empire.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3))
“
Before Ethan went all Incredible Hulk on Thayer’s ass, the most exciting thing to happen was a spray-cheese fight some of the morons from the wrestling team got into on the back patio.
”
”
Sara Shepard (Cross My Heart, Hope to Die (The Lying Game, #5))
“
I think what you mostly do when you find you really are alone is to panic. You rush to the opposite extreme and pack yourself into groups - clubs, teams, societies, types. You suddenly start dressing exactly like the others. It's a way of being invisible. The way you sew the patches on the holes in your blue jeans becomes incredibly important. If you do it wrong you're not with it. That's a peculiar phrase, you know? With it. With what? With them. With the others. All together. Safety in numbers. I'm not me. I'm a basketball letter. I'm a popular kid. I'm my friend's friend. I'm a black leather growth on a Honda. I'm a member. I'm a teenager. You can't see me, all you can see is us. We're safe. And if We see You standing alone by yourself, if you're lucky we'll ignore you. If you're not lucky, we might throw rocks. Because we don't like people standing there with the wrong kind of patches on their jeans reminding us that we're each alone and none of us is safe.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (Very Far Away from Anywhere Else)
“
The odds were incredibly stacked against a werewolf ever meeting his one-in-a-billion soul mate. There was no way Becker could have met his in the midst of an armed robbery. That kind of crap didn't happen in the real world.
”
”
Paige Tyler (In the Company of Wolves (SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team, #3))
“
College families' were a new concept to me. At Durham, students in their second and third years paired up to act as a mentor team, or 'college parents' for a small group of incoming freshers, who were their 'college children'.
I kind of loved it. It made a romance out of something absolutely mundane, which was something that I was incredibly experienced at.
”
”
Alice Oseman (Loveless)
“
distinct vision, a precise plan, plenty of resources, and incredible leadership, but if you don’t have the right people, you’re not going to get anywhere.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork Workbook: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team)
“
She had no idea how she was supposed to act, no idea how to feel. Julian had just made incredible love to her, but he wasn't *in love* with her. He'd stamped himself forever on her--body, heart, and soul--but a year from now he probably wouldn't remember who she was. He'd rocked her world, and yet he was only temporarily a part of it.
What was a woman supposed to say? "Thanks, stud"?
”
”
Pamela Clare (Hard Evidence (I-Team, #2))
“
Here's what we're gonna do. You're going to give me that doubt. You're just going to hand it to me, and I'm going to hold it for you. I'm going to keep it for as long as you need me to. For the rest of our lives. I will be your safe place. The place you get to be soft. Right here, just like this. When you leave my arms, you leave whole. Because you already are.
You're not broken sweetie, you're human. You're incredibly strong. You're a wonder. You'll return to your team as the warrior you've always been. And you'll know that at any time, you can come to me, and you'll know my arms are strong enough." Sigh
”
”
Jo Leigh (SEAL of My Dreams)
“
A cool hand touched my arm. I jerked back. “Don’t! You’ll burn!”
“I’m used to it.” Ayden’s brown eyes twinkled. “In fact, I’ve been told I’m smokin’.” He held out a hand, his voice soft. “By an incredible redhead who I wish, for once, knew she could trust me.
”
”
A. Kirk (Demons at Deadnight (Divinicus Nex Chronicles, #1))
“
To be able to work together, communication is the biggest thing,’ says Smith. ‘And I think that comes from a team that has good links from off the field . . . a team able to spend time together and talk to one another and be honest with one another. It’s incredibly important.
”
”
James Kerr (Legacy)
“
For the first eight months of the war, as incredible as it sounds, William and Elizebeth, and their team at Riverbank, did all of the codebreaking for every part of the U.S. government: for the State Department, the War Department (army), the navy, and the Department of Justice.
”
”
Jason Fagone (The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies)
“
Why do we so mindlessly abuse our planet, our only home? The answer to that lies in each of us. Therefore, we will strive to bring about understanding that we are--each one of us--responsible for more than just ourselves, our family, our football team, our country, or our own kind; that there is more to life than just these things. That each one of us must also bring the natural world back into its proper place in our lives, and realize that doing so is not some lofty ideal but a vital part of our personal survival.
”
”
Lawrence Anthony (Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo)
“
Plenty of leaders end up shutting down good solutions because they just can’t give up control. Luckily, Major Hodges is not a “My way or the highway” type of leader.
”
”
Christina Soontornvat (All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team (Newbery Honor Book))
“
Over the last decades, the travel industry and media have unwittingly teamed up to create the gap this book aspires to fill. I read a lot of travel sections, travel sites, and travel magazines, and I realized one day I was getting punch-drunk on how fantastic everything was. There s just so much Escape, Undiscovered, Quaint, Top 10 Most Amazing . . . , Secret Beaches, Incredible Islands, Savvy, Frugal, Best Ever. These adjectives just don t connect with most of my experiences on the road life, misadventure, and a dose of Murphy s Law often get in the way.
”
”
Doug Lansky (The Titanic Awards: Celebrating the Worst of Travel)
“
Once you have conquered one challenge, you begin to wonder: What else have you told yourself is impossible? What else is there that you believed you could not overcome? Maybe the idea of impossible is only in your mind.
”
”
Christina Soontornvat (All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team (Newbery Honor Book))
“
My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn’t make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!
”
”
Dan Harmon
“
For six months following the accident, as the Sarcophagus was under construction, a team of courageous scientists from the V. I. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy re-entered Unit 4 as part of an investigation aptly named Complex Expedition.242
”
”
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
“
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”
”
HOW TO FIND LOST CRYPTOCURRENCY HIRE OPTIMUM HACKERS RECOVERY
“
The team next needed a closer look at the reactor itself, so they brought in oil industry engineers to drill through the reactor’s reinforced-concrete containment structure. They finally broke through in the summer of 1988 after 18 months of drilling in harsh conditions.
”
”
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
“
The team were in for a surprise; the reactor was empty, its smooth metal interior wall clearly visible. They were shocked. After drilling another hole through the bottom of the reactor, they discovered a few graphite blocks, but the fact remained that the reactor was essentially bare.
”
”
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
“
We spilled onto the court to celebrate, but most of the guys were confused about how excited they were supposed to be. I mean, sure we won the tournament, but at the end of the day it was the NIT and being the best team in the NIT is like being the most attractive Michigan cheerleader.
”
”
Mark Titus (Don't Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible NCAA Journey from the End of the Bench to the End of the Bench)
“
Taking a trip with the Air Force Special Operations Wing folks is not like a flight on a normal airliner. For one thing, passengers and crew are all armed to the teeth. The seating is awful, the noise is incredible, and there is no movie. Your stewardess is likely to be a guy wearing a shoulder holster, and he will not bring you a pillow.
”
”
Frank Antenori (Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-team at War)
“
Returning from a hunting trip, Orde-Lees, traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice, had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him. He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. The animal—a sea leopard—sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking-horse gait of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long, serpentine neck. After a half-dozen leaps, the sea leopard had almost caught up with Orde-Lees when it unaccountably wheeled and plunged again into the water. By then, Orde-Lees had nearly reached the opposite side of the floe; he was about to cross to safe ice when the sea leopard’s head exploded out of the water directly ahead of him. The animal had tracked his shadow across the ice. It made a savage lunge for Orde-Lees with its mouth open, revealing an enormous array of sawlike teeth. Orde-Lees’ shouts for help rose to screams and he turned and raced away from his attacker. The animal leaped out of the water again in pursuit just as Wild arrived with his rifle. The sea leopard spotted Wild, and turned to attack him. Wild dropped to one knee and fired again and again at the onrushing beast. It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped. Two dog teams were required to bring the carcass into camp. It measured 12 feet long, and they estimated its weight at about 1,100 pounds. It was a predatory species of seal, and resembled a leopard only in its spotted coat—and its disposition. When it was butchered, balls of hair 2 and 3 inches in diameter were found in its stomach—the remains of crabeater seals it had eaten. The sea leopard’s jawbone, which measured nearly 9 inches across, was given to Orde-Lees as a souvenir of his encounter. In his diary that night, Worsley observed: “A man on foot in soft, deep snow and unarmed would not have a chance against such an animal as they almost bound along with a rearing, undulating motion at least five miles an hour. They attack without provocation, looking on man as a penguin or seal.
”
”
Alfred Lansing (Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage)
“
The crowd started going crazy. Like even crazier than when Romeo got up from the hit. I was clinging to the railing, wondering if I would like prison, when Ivy sighed. "I swear. You have all the luck."
Confused, I glanced around. Romeo was jogging toward us, helmet in his hands. Quickly, I glanced at the big screen and it was showing a wide shot of me clinging onto the rails and him running toward us.
When he arrived, he slapped the guard on his back and said something in his ear. The guard looked at me and grinned and then walked away.
Romeo stepped up to where I was. At the height I was at one the railing, for once I was taller than him.
"You're killing me, Smalls," he said. "I had to interrupt a championship game to keep you from going to the slammer."
"I was worried. You didn't get up."
"And so you were just going to march out on the field and what?"
God, he looked so… so incredible right then. His uniform stretched out over his wide shoulders and narrow waist. The pads strapped to his body made him look even stronger. He had grass stains on his knees, sweat in his hair, and ornery laughter in his sparkling blue eyes.
I swear I'd never seen anyone equal parts of to-die-for good looks and boy-next-door troublemaker.
"I was going to come out there and kiss it and make it better."
He threw back his head and laughed, and the stadium erupted once more. I was aware that every moment between us was being broadcast like some reality TV show, but for once, I didn't care how many people were staring.
This was our moment.
And I was so damn happy he wasn't hurt.
"So you're okay, then?" I asked.
"Takes a lot more than a shady illegal attack to keep me down."
Behind him, the players were getting back to the game, rushing out onto the field, and the coach was yelling out orders.
"I'll just go back to my seat, then," I said.
He rushed forward and grabbed me off the railing. The crown cheered when he slid me down his body and pressed his lips to mine.
It wasn't a chaste kiss. It was the kind of kiss that made me blush when I watched it on TV.
But I kissed him back anyway. I got lost in him.
When he pulled back, I said, "By the way, You're totally kicking ass out there."
He chuckled and put me back on the railing and kept one hand on my butt as I climbed back over. Back in the stands, I gripped the cold metal and gave him a small wave.
He'd been walking backward toward his team, but then he changed direction and sprinted toward me. In one graceful leap, he was up on the wall and leaning over the railing.
"Love you," he half-growled and pressed a swift kiss to my lips. "Next touchdown's for you.
”
”
Cambria Hebert (#Hater (Hashtag, #2))
“
New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play.
Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister?
It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.
Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others.
That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success."
Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton.
So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
I think the real story of Destiny’s development is that just making any game is incredibly hard,” said Jaime Griesemer. “Trying to make an ambitious game under a lot of pressure is staggeringly hard. . . . When you have just quantic explosions and craterings and huge assimilation and communication problems on a team, you end up wasting so many resources and so much time that you see it in the final game.
”
”
Jason Schreier (Blood, Sweat, and Pixels)
“
Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?"
The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence.
"I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal, but with a faint two-edged deference.
"I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me with listen to what I say, but they spoil it--they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred words."
"Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr.
"I have. I sent you some."
"But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting talk but nothing more."
Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but non to amusement, and said:
"I don't think you people read things. The men are duelling when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket."
He barked again and subsided.
Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?"
"What? Naturally not."
"You'd consider it too cheap."
"Movie standards are different," said Boxley, hedging.
"Do you ever go to them?"
"No--almost never."
"Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?"
Yes--and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and unnatural dialogue."
"Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write--that's why we brought you out here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping down a well.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Love of the Last Tycoon)
“
That mental strength under pressure is absolutely critical for the long, deep dives that Rick and John tackle. When you are hundreds of yards into a sump, you are so isolated from the basic needs of survival that you may as well be on the surface of the moon. It’s no wonder, then, that sump divers seem to possess the same qualities as astronauts: the ability to prepare thoroughly, solve problems quickly, and keep cool in an emergency.
”
”
Christina Soontornvat (All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team (Newbery Honor Book))
“
As with everything she did, Aimi excelled. Academically, she was in the top one percent of students in the state and was in the track team that had just won the nationals. She said she only went in for cheerleading because she liked the physical activity. It made sense though, Sam thought. Because of her bright, cheerful attitude, she was also incredibly popular. At times Sam felt slightly jealous of her, but mostly he was just immensely proud.
”
”
Phillip W. Simpson (Rapture (Rapture Trilogy, #1))
“
For almost forty years now, I have lived on the ocean. I have dedicated myself to the sea, and wholly consecrated myself to it. I have explored depths that, until then, were unknown. I have had good days and bad days. I have dived in the waters of incredible transparency, and I have experienced the violence of waves like those at Europa, which tore the Calypso from its anchorage and battered its aging carcass with elemental fury. But, despite all the dangers, all the fatigue, all the sacrifices, I have never regretted the choice I made. The sea, in the final account, always brought me more joy than pain.
And that was true in this case also; for I had the pleasure of seeing us all together again - our entire team, gathered under a blue sky, on a blue sea. Once more, the sea had refused to exact a price for our audacity and our curiosity; and once more I was grateful to her for her generosity. -P219
”
”
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (Life and Death in a Coral Sea)
“
What I know now is that I would be a different person, or at the least a better version of myself, more rounded, more fulfilled, more in touch with myself and everyone around me. In so many ways, theater teaches the opposite of what I learned in sports, in which the model is that there is no self, no emotional landscape or core. Team sport is all about grit and team, about submerging self. To look within, to feel or imagine, is not encouraged. At the time, I couldn’t conceive of myself being up onstage.
”
”
Michael Sokolove (Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater)
“
symphony isn’t what you’re going for. Leave the conductor and the sheet music behind. Build a jazz band instead. Jazz emphasizes individual spontaneity. The musicians know the overall structure of the song but have the freedom to improvise, riffing off one another other, creating incredible music. Of course, you can’t just remove the rules and processes, tell your team to be a jazz band, and expect it to be so. Without the right conditions, chaos will ensue. But now, after reading this book, you have a map. Once you begin to hear the music, keep focused. Culture isn’t something you can build up and then ignore. At Netflix, we are constantly debating our culture and expecting it will continually evolve. To build a team that is innovative, fast, and flexible, keep things a little bit loose. Welcome constant change. Operate a little closer toward the edge of chaos. Don’t provide a musical score and build a symphonic orchestra. Work on creating those jazz conditions and hire the type of employees who long to be part of an improvisational band. When it all comes together, the music is beautiful.
”
”
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
“
Mission-driven “assholes”: The people who are crazy passionate—and a little crazy. They speak most frankly, trampling the politics of the modern office, and steamroll right over the delicate social order of “how things are done around here.” Much like true assholes, they are neither easygoing nor easy to work with. Unlike true assholes, they care. They give a damn. They listen. They work incredibly hard and push their team to be better—often against their will. They are unrelenting when they know they’re right, but are open to changing their minds and will praise other people’s efforts if they’re genuinely great. A good way to know if you’re working with a mission-driven "asshole" is to listen to the mythos around them—there are always a few choice stories floating around about some crazy thing they’ve done, and the people who’ve worked with them closely are always telling everyone that they’re not that bad, really. Most tellingly, the team ultimately trusts them, respects what they do, and looks back at the experience of working with them fondly, because they pushed the team to do the best work of their lives.
”
”
Tony Fadell (Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making)
“
On May 10th, the temperature and radioactive emissions from inside the reactor started to fall. By the 11th, days after the water finished draining, a team of technicians ventured into the sub-levels of the plant, bored a hole through a wall below the core and poked a radiometer through. It confirmed their worst fears: the molten core had cracked the reactor’s concrete foundations and at least partially poured into the basement. There was now next to nothing stopping it from breaking through the foundations of the building itself and reaching the water table below. A better and more permanent solution than injecting liquid nitrogen from the surface was required.
”
”
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
“
...It balances out my flaw of being too modest about my incredible dance moves.”
“Um, nice try.”
“Besides, I gotta believe we’re a good team because we make each other’s fatal flaws into slightly less fatal flaws. Like, maybe even fatal strengths.”
She squeezed my hand. “That doesn’t even make sense, Seaweed Brain. But I appreciate the thought. So you’re saying I shouldn’t feel guilty?”
“None of us should. Grover’s fatal flaw is apparently strawberry milkshakes, right? But sometimes life gives you strawberry milkshakes. Then you gotta count on your friends to look out for you. We’re a team. How many times have you propped me up?”
“I’ve lost count.”
“Exactly.
”
”
Rick Riordan (Wrath of the Triple Goddess (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Senior Year Adventures, #2))
“
Despite being a nonprofit, we have been able to build a team that rivals those of the most resource-rich tech companies. Hundreds of incredibly talented people have committed a major part of their careers to be part of the Khan Academy team, often taking considerable pay cuts to do so. Thousands of volunteers all over the world have now translated Khan Academy into over fifty languages. Inspirational leaders like Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, and Elon Musk have become some of our biggest supporters and advocates. This journey seems so serendipitous that it has become something of an inside joke among the Khan Academy team that perhaps benevolent aliens are helping us so that, through education, we can prepare humanity for first contact.
”
”
Salman Khan (Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing))
“
We live in incredibly violent times. The domestic terrorism rate, international terrorism acts and violent crime rates are at historical highs. When a police situation gets exceptionally violent, a tactical team is called in. If there is going to be a shooting, it is usually done by them, although in the vast majority of cases they do not have to shoot. When they do, there is a tendency to blame the killing on the tactical team, though blaming them for having to use deadly force is like blaming a headache on the aspirin. The tactical team is the solution, not the problem. The NTOA has powerful data demonstrating that if not for these highly trained teams, the number of people killed in the line of duty would be vastly higher than it is.
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Dave Grossman (On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace)
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You and Garcia aren't---"
"No. I'm a one-man kind of woman."
"And this one man..." His eyes lit up. Hopeful. Intent. "What's he like?"
"He's brave." I pressed a kiss to his forehead. "He's strong." Another kiss, this one on his cheek. "Funny and sarcastic." Kisses down his jaw despite the bristles. "Selfless." A kiss on the corner of his lips. "Loyal and honorable." Another kiss on the cheek. "A team player."
Jack gave a satisfied rumble. "He's always worked alone."
"Not anymore." I brushed his hair back from his face. "No one wanted to be left behind when it came time to save him. Everyone wanted to help. He was part of a team, and the team looks after each other."
"How is he in bed?" His voice dropped to a sensual rumble.
"Incredible."
"The best you ever had?"
"I wouldn't want him to get too cocky."
Jack laughed. "He's cocky now.
”
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Sara Desai (To Have and to Heist (Simi Chopra, #1))
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The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realising that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain's steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.
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Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)
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Since the volume of the Elephant’s Foot alone could not account for all the missing fuel, the team turned their attention to the room directly beneath the reactor, where they had already detected enormous levels of heat and radioactivity. Without access to a robot small enough to squeeze down the narrow tunnel they drilled into a wall, the team was forced to improvise. A plastic toy Army tank was bought from a Moscow toy store for 15 Roubles and strapped together with a torch and camera. The makeshift robot’s images were abysmal, but a vague, gigantic mass could be seen within the room. Lacking proper protective equipment and unable to venture into many areas of the basement, the expedition scientists toiled for a further year to get a better view of the room. When at last they did, they found it devastated by the reactor explosion, but still there was no fuel.
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Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
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During mission planning, we had intelligence concerning dogs that might impede our goal and were part of the target’s contingencies. The exact method used to neutralize aggressive dogs in the field is classified information. However, Special Ops has some really incredible dogs. In fact, during the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, the highly trained men of SEAL Team Six had with them a uniquely trained dog as part of the mission. SEAL canines are not your standard bomb-sniffing dogs. The dog on the bin Laden mission was specially trained to jump from planes and rappel from helicopters while attached to its handler. The dog wore ballistic body armor, had a head-mounted infrared (night-vision) camera, and wore earpieces to take commands from the handler. The dog also had reinforced teeth, capped with titanium. I would not want to try the techniques this book recommends on this dog. Thank God he’s on our side.
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Cade Courtley (SEAL Survival Guide: A Navy SEAL's Secrets to Surviving Any Disaster)
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Cultivate Level 5 Leadership Our research showed that having charismatic leadership doesn’t explain why some companies become great and others don’t. In fact, some of the most disastrous comparison cases had very strong, charismatic leadership in the very era that the companies fell or failed. Rather, our research found that the critical ingredient is Level 5 leadership. The essence of Level 5 leadership is a paradoxical combination of personal humility and indomitable will. The humility expressed at Level 5 isn’t a false humbleness; it’s a subjugation of personal ego in service to a cause beyond oneself. This humility is combined with the fierce resolve to do whatever it takes (no matter how difficult) to best serve that cause. Level 5 leaders are incredibly ambitious, but they channel their ambition into building a great team or organization and accomplishing a shared mission that’s ultimately not about them.
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Jim Collins (BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company)
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So what really happened, and what became of them? The basement entry, while dangerous, wasn’t quite as dramatic as modern myth would have you believe. The pressure suppression pool drainage valves couldn’t be reached because most watertight basement corridors and surrounding rooms were full of water. The solution required a team of highly trained firemen wearing respirators and rubber suits to charge their fire engines and the Chemical Troops’ protective armoured vehicles into a loading bay beneath the reactor. There, they placed four special, ultra-long hoses into the water before retreating to the safety of Bryukhanov’s bunker beneath the administration building. After three hours of almost zero water movement, the dejected firemen came to the crushing realisation that one of the armoured vehicles must have driven over and severed their hoses. A fresh team brought twenty new hoses and re-entered the reactor building. They emerged an hour later, feeling exhausted and nauseous but triumphant; the replacement hoses were in place, the remaining radioactive water could finally be drained.201
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Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
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A team of Mass-Observation researchers, experienced in chronicling the effects of air raids, had arrived on Friday afternoon. In their subsequent report they wrote of having found “more open signs of hysteria, terror, neurosis” than they had seen over the prior two months of chronicling air-raid effects. “The overwhelmingly dominant feeling on Friday was the feeling of utter helplessness.” (The italics were theirs.) The observers noted a widespread sense of dislocation and depression. “The dislocation is so total in the town that people feel that the town itself is killed.” In order to help stem the surge of rumors arising from the raid, the BBC invited Tom Harrisson, the twenty-nine-year-old director of Mass-Observation, to do a broadcast on Saturday night, at nine o’clock, during its prime Home Service news slot, to talk about what he had seen in the city. “The strangest sight of all,” Harrisson told his vast audience, “was the Cathedral. At each end the bare frames of the great windows still have a kind of beauty without their glass; but in between them is an incredible chaos of bricks, pillars, girders, memorial tablets.” He spoke of the absolute silence in the city on Friday night as he drove around it in his car, threading his way past bomb craters and mounds of broken glass. He slept in the car that night. “I think this is one of the weirdest experiences of my whole life,” he said, “driving in a lonely, silent desolation and drizzling rain in that great industrial town.
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
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In June 1981, a strike shuttered the major leagues for fifty days, the first time in baseball history that players walked out during the season. Determined to make his people earn their keep, George Steinbrenner ordered his major-league coaches into the minors to scout and help mentor the organization’s prospects. Berra drew Nashville, where Merrill was the manager. Merrill was a former minor-league catcher with a degree in physical education from the University of Maine. He began working for the Yankees in 1978 at West Haven, Connecticut, in the Eastern League and moved south when the Yankees took control of the Southern League’s Nashville team in 1980. Suddenly, in mid-1981, the former catcher who had never made it out of Double-A ball had the most famous and decorated Yankees backstop asking him, “What do you want me to do?” Wait a minute, Merrill thought. Yogi Berra is asking me to supervise him? “Do whatever you want,” Merrill said. “No,” Berra said. “Give me something specific.” And that was when Merrill began to understand the existential splendor of Yogi Berra, whom he would come to call Lawrence or Sir Lawrence in comic tribute to his utter lack of pretense and sense of importance. “He rode buses with us all night,” Merrill said. “You think he had to do that? He was incredible.” One day Merrill told him, “Why don’t you hit some rollers to that lefty kid over there at first base?” Berra did as he was told and later remarked to Merrill, “That kid looks pretty good with the glove.” Berra knew a prospect when he saw one. It was Don Mattingly, who at the time was considered expendable by a chronically shortsighted organization always on the prowl for immediate assistance at the major-league level.
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Harvey Araton (Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball's Greatest Gift)
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The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.
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Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
“
How Google Works (Schmidt, Eric) - Your Highlight on Location 3124-3150 | Added on Sunday, April 5, 2015 10:35:40 AM In late 1999, John Doerr gave a presentation at Google that changed the company, because it created a simple tool that let the founders institutionalize their “think big” ethos. John sat on our board, and his firm, Kleiner Perkins, had recently invested in the company. The topic was a form of management by objectives called OKRs (to which we referred in the previous chapter), which John had learned from former Intel CEO Andy Grove.173 There are several characteristics that set OKRs apart from their typical underpromise-and-overdeliver corporate-objective brethren. First, a good OKR marries the big-picture objective with a highly measurable key result. It’s easy to set some amorphous strategic goal (make usability better … improve team morale … get in better shape) as an objective and then, at quarter end, declare victory. But when the strategic goal is measured against a concrete goal (increase usage of features by X percent … raise employee satisfaction scores by Y percent … run a half marathon in under two hours), then things get interesting. For example, one of our platform team’s recent OKRs was to have “new WW systems serving significant traffic for XX large services with latency < YY microseconds @ ZZ% on Jupiter.”174 (Jupiter is a code name, not the location of Google’s newest data center.) There is no ambiguity with this OKR; it is very easy to measure whether or not it is accomplished. Other OKRs will call for rolling out a product across a specific number of countries, or set objectives for usage (e.g., one of the Google+ team’s recent OKRs was about the daily number of messages users would post in hangouts) or performance (e.g., median watch latency on YouTube videos). Second—and here is where thinking big comes in—a good OKR should be a stretch to achieve, and hitting 100 percent on all OKRs should be practically unattainable. If your OKRs are all green, you aren’t setting them high enough. The best OKRs are aggressive, but realistic. Under this strange arithmetic, a score of 70 percent on a well-constructed OKR is often better than 100 percent on a lesser one. Third, most everyone does them. Remember, you need everyone thinking in your venture, regardless of their position. Fourth, they are scored, but this scoring isn’t used for anything and isn’t even tracked. This lets people judge their performance honestly. Fifth, OKRs are not comprehensive; they are reserved for areas that need special focus and objectives that won’t be reached without some extra oomph. Business-as-usual stuff doesn’t need OKRs. As your venture grows, the most important OKRs shift from individuals to teams. In a small company, an individual can achieve incredible things on her own, but as the company grows it becomes harder to accomplish stretch goals without teammates. This doesn’t mean that individuals should stop doing OKRs, but rather that team OKRs become the more important means to maintain focus on the big tasks. And there’s one final benefit of an OKR-driven culture: It helps keep people from chasing competitors. Competitors are everywhere in the Internet Century, and chasing them (as we noted earlier) is the fastest path to mediocrity. If employees are focused on a well-conceived set of OKRs, then this isn’t a problem. They know where they need to go and don’t have time to worry about the competition. ==========
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Anonymous
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In The After Light
“They don’t burn do they? Not like us.” -Cole Stewart
“Darling, If it were between you and a hundred of Gray’s finest. I’d pick you everytime.” -Liam Stewart
“It raine the day I walked into Thurmond and It rained the day I walked out.” -Ruby
Never Fade
“Do I… look as pretty as I feel?” -Cole Stewart
“If you think you’re going to faint, sit your ass down. I told you this because you’re a big girl and I need your help’ -Cole Stewart
“That’s my Gem!” -Cole Stewart
“I have all the time in the world for you, Gem” -Cole Stewart
“I don’t want to just see someone’s face; I want to know his shadow, too” - Jude
“How cute! I have one of those too!” -Vida
“ ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m down to hear about that one-eyed chick’ Vida said. ‘You are actually the worst person I ever met’ Chubs said. ” -Chubs And Vida
“You had day of the week underwear growing up, didn’t you?” -Jude
“Ass-Clown” -Vida
The Darkest Minds
“I don’t know, Green; why don;t you hit her up for a chat and tea the next time she tries to capture us?” -Chubs
“Oh my God, Green. Just take the damn socks and put the kid out of his misery’ -Chubs
“I had pegged him’ -Ruby (Full sentence: I had pegged him for a Zepplin Fan)
“Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown.” -Liam Stewart
“Ruby! For the love of… We were talking about Black Betty not your Orange ass!” -Chubs
“...Crackers…Yesssss…” -Chubs
“Wake up, Team! Time to carpe the hell out of this diem!” -Liam Stewart
“I know who It is! Santa!” -Liam Stewart
“Did I just get sassed by a twelve-year-old?” -Liam Stewart
Extra Quotes From Through The Dark
“Home isn’t four walls, It’s the people you’re with”
“Of course. My girl? She’s incredible”
“Crazy is only crazy when it works
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Alexandra Bracken (The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds, #1))
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Society would have much to gain from decriminalization. On the immediate practical level, we would feel safer in our homes and on our streets and much less concerned about the danger of our cars being burgled. In cities like Vancouver such crimes are often committed for the sake of obtaining drug money. More significantly perhaps, by exorcising this menacing devil of our own creation, we would automatically give up a lot of unnecessary fear. We could all breathe more freely. Many addicts could work at productive jobs if the imperative of seeking illegal drugs did not keep them constantly on the street.
It’s interesting to learn that before the War on Drugs mentality took hold in the early twentieth century, a prominent individual such as Dr. William Stewart Halsted, a pioneer of modern surgical practice, was an opiate addict for over forty years. During those decades he did stellar and innovative work at Johns Hopkins University, where he was one of the four founding physicians. He was the first, for example, to insist that members of his surgical team wear rubber gloves — a major advance in eradicating post-operative infections. Throughout his career, however, he never got by with less than 180 milligrams of morphine a day.
“On this,” said his colleague, the world-renowned Canadian physician Sir William Osler, “he could do his work comfortably and maintain his excellent vigor.” As noted at the Common Sense for Drug Policy website: Halsted’s story is revealing not only because it shows that with a morphine addiction the proper maintenance dose can be productive. It also illustrates the incredible power of the drug in question. Here was a man with almost unlimited resources — moral, physical, financial, medical — who tried everything he could think of and he was hooked until the day he died. Today we would send a man like that to prison. Instead he became the father of modern surgery.
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Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
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In fact, the same basic ingredients can easily be found in numerous start-up clusters in the United States and around the world: Austin, Boston, New York, Seattle, Shanghai, Bangalore, Istanbul, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, and Dubai. To discover the secret to Silicon Valley’s success, you need to look beyond the standard origin story. When people think of Silicon Valley, the first things that spring to mind—after the HBO television show, of course—are the names of famous start-ups and their equally glamorized founders: Apple, Google, Facebook; Jobs/ Wozniak, Page/ Brin, Zuckerberg. The success narrative of these hallowed names has become so universally familiar that people from countries around the world can tell it just as well as Sand Hill Road venture capitalists. It goes something like this: A brilliant entrepreneur discovers an incredible opportunity. After dropping out of college, he or she gathers a small team who are happy to work for equity, sets up shop in a humble garage, plays foosball, raises money from sage venture capitalists, and proceeds to change the world—after which, of course, the founders and early employees live happily ever after, using the wealth they’ve amassed to fund both a new generation of entrepreneurs and a set of eponymous buildings for Stanford University’s Computer Science Department. It’s an exciting and inspiring story. We get the appeal. There’s only one problem. It’s incomplete and deceptive in several important ways. First, while “Silicon Valley” and “start-ups” are used almost synonymously these days, only a tiny fraction of the world’s start-ups actually originate in Silicon Valley, and this fraction has been getting smaller as start-up knowledge spreads around the globe. Thanks to the Internet, entrepreneurs everywhere have access to the same information. Moreover, as other markets have matured, smart founders from around the globe are electing to build companies in start-up hubs in their home countries rather than immigrating to Silicon Valley.
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Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
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It was a Friday evening, and I can still vividly recall the moment everything went wrong. I had been diving into cryptocurrency trading for a while, trying to grow my investments and make some serious profits. That night, feeling confident, I decided to make a larger transfer. In my excitement, I mistakenly sent my coins to the wrong wallet address. The moment I realized my mistake, panic and dread set in. I had just lost a significant amount of money, and I felt completely helpless. I spent hours trying to figure out a solution, but everything I read seemed to only deepen my confusion and frustration. I felt completely overwhelmed. In my distress, I decided to step away for a bit. I went to a nearby bar, hoping a drink would calm my nerves. I ended up drinking whiskey, hoping to drown my worries and clear my head, but instead, it only clouded my judgment further. The more I drank, the more I felt the weight of the situation bearing down on me. I could barely think straight. As I sat there, trying to gather myself, a relative who was visiting for the festive season noticed my state. After listening to my story, he suggested I contact SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL, a fund recovery service he’d heard about. At first, I was skeptical. Having seen so many fraudulent recovery services online, I wasn’t sure if this was just another scam. But my relative reassured me, telling me that SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL had a solid reputation and had successfully helped others in similar situations. With little left to lose, I decided to give them a try. I reached out to SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL, and their team responded quickly, explaining how the recovery process worked. They assured me that there would be no upfront fees and immediately began working on my case. Over time, they managed to successfully trace and recover my lost coins. I couldn't believe it what I thought was gone forever was returned to me. I was incredibly relieved and thankful. The experience taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of caution when dealing with online transactions, especially in the fast-paced world of cryptocurrency. If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation, I highly recommend contacting a professional recovery service like SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL. They helped me recover my funds when I thought all hope was lost, and I’m confident they can do the same for others.
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HOW TO RECOVER YOUR STOLEN BITCOIN AND ASSETS WITH SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL
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On Sunday, I reached out to Cyber Constable Intelligence, desperate for help after losing all my savings 200,000 Ethereum due to a scam. It all started when I received a message on Twitter (X) from what seemed like official blockchain support. The account looked genuine, and they claimed they could assist me with an issue I was facing. Trusting them, I shared my wallet details, never once suspecting that I was talking to fraudsters. They quickly gained access to my wallet and drained all my Ethereum. I was left in complete shock, feeling foolish and heartbroken, as this was all my life savings, the future I had been relying on. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. The feeling of helplessness and despair was overwhelming, and I couldn’t comprehend how easily I had been duped. I was devastated, thinking I had lost everything and there was no way to recover it. In my panic, I began searching online for any possible solutions. That’s when I stumbled upon a comment on Quora recommending Cyber Constable Intelligence. Someone had shared their success story about recovering stolen funds, and reading it gave me a glimmer of hope. Without wasting any time, I reached out to Cyber Constable Intelligence and explained my situation. The team was incredibly understanding and reassured me that they could help me recover my lost Ethereum. I was still shaken, but they immediately got to work. On that very Sunday, they launched the recovery program, and within a day, they had already identified the culprits. The efficiency of their work was astonishing. Not only did they track down the scammers, but they also managed to recover all of my stolen Ethereum, returning it to my wallet. The relief I felt when I saw the funds back in my account was indescribable. I couldn’t believe that it was possible to recover what seemed like an irretrievable loss. I owe it all to the professionalism and expertise of the team at Cyber Constable Intelligence. They not only helped me reclaim my stolen funds but also provided valuable advice on how to protect myself from future scams. If you’ve fallen victim to any form of online scam or cryptocurrency theft, I highly recommend contacting Cyber Constable Intelligence. They are true experts in their field and can help you recover lost funds. I hope my experience helps others who find themselves in a similar situation. Stay vigilant and always be cautious with your online security.
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DIGITAL HACK RECOVERY ⁄⁄ TRUSTED CRYPTOCURRENCY RECOVERY EXPERT
I initially started trading with Pips Global because of the variety of trading accounts they offered, including their Funded Next accounts. These accounts seemed like an appealing opportunity, as they gave traders the chance to trade with a larger balance after successfully passing a challenge. For someone like me who was looking to scale up my trading without having to risk a significant amount of my own capital, it seemed like the perfect option. At first, I started with their Micro account, which had high leverage, fast market execution, and tight variable spreads. All these features seemed to align well with my trading goals, and I felt confident moving forward.However, things took a turn for the worse as I continued trading. I ended up losing a significant amount, around 30,000 AUD, due to what I now believe was a scam. The trades I placed weren’t executing properly, and there were discrepancies with the spreads and market conditions. I tried to reach out to Pips Global’s customer support, but I wasn’t receiving the kind of help I expected. It became increasingly clear that the platform wasn’t as reliable as I had originally thought, and I felt completely stuck.In my search for a solution, I came across Digital Hack Recovery, a service that specializes in helping people recover lost funds from fraudulent brokers. Their team was highly professional, thorough, and patient. They guided me step by step through the entire recovery process, keeping me informed at every stage. They also provided me with solid advice on how to avoid falling into similar traps in the future. Thanks to Digital Hack Recovery, I was able to recover my 30,000 AUD, which was an incredible relief after such a stressful experience.If you’re considering trading with Pips Global, I strongly recommend doing thorough research before committing. While their Funded Next accounts and other account options might seem enticing, my personal experience with them was ultimately disappointing. I would advise anyone looking to trade with them to be cautious, especially if things don’t seem to be going as expected.If you find yourself in a situation similar to mine, I can’t recommend Digital Hack Recovery enough. Their expertise in fund recovery was a lifesaver, and they were instrumental in helping me get my money back. Thanks to their support, I’m now back on track, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson about being more cautious with online trading platforms. Contact Digital Hack Recovery through⁚
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It felt like fate when I first encountered the automated trading system that promised to transform small investments into substantial wealth over time. The marketing was aggressive, bombarding my social media feeds with images of people lounging on exotic beaches, driving fancy cars, and celebrating their newfound financial freedom. WhatsApp info:+12723328343 As a recent college graduate struggling to make ends meet, I was desperate for a way out of my financial rut, and the allure of easy money was too tempting to ignore. On a whim, I decided to take the plunge. I borrowed from my meager savings and even took out a small loan to fund my excitement. The rush I felt when signing up was like nothing I had ever experienced—an intoxicating thrill, like hopping onto a rollercoaster at full speed. At first, everything seemed to be going exactly as promised. My investment seemed to grow almost overnight, doubling and tripling in value.
My skepticism began to fade, replaced by a sense of confidence and hope for the future. I even shared my success with friends and family, excitedly telling them about the platform that was going to change my life. I imagined a future free from financial worries, a life of luxury and freedom, all thanks to this “revolutionary” trading system. But soon, a familiar sense of unease began to settle in. What had been an impressive surge in profits suddenly plateaued, and I found myself facing unexpected hurdles when trying to withdraw my funds. Pop-up messages about my “account needing an upgrade” and “market tightening” explained away the issues, but the discomfort grew. Still, I convinced myself that success required patience and continued to hold out hope that the system would recover. As weeks turned into months, my investment continued to dwindle. The once-promising account balance plummeted, and each attempt to reach customer support went unanswered. The promises of easy wealth had turned into an unsettling nightmare. Email info: Adwarerecoveryspecialist@auctioneer. net Desperate for answers, I began scouring the internet for any information or advice. That’s when I stumbled across reviews of ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST , a service that seemed to specialize in helping people like me recover lost funds from fraudulent platforms. I felt a glimmer of hope as I read about others who had managed to retrieve their investments with the help of ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST. Perhaps, after all, there was still a way out of this mess. I reached out to their team, and to my relief, they were able to assist me in recovering a portion of the money I thought I had lost for good. ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST gave me the guidance and support I needed to navigate this complicated process, helping me regain control of a situation that had seemed hopeless. Their professionalism and expertise allowed me to salvage what I could, and for that, I am incredibly grateful.
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CRYPTO RECOVERY COMPANIES FOR HIRE CONTACT ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST
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WHY ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE In its present-day form, the disease model of addiction asserts that addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. This disease is evidenced by changes in the brain, especially alterations in the striatum, brought about by the repeated uptake of dopamine in response to drugs and other substances. But it’s also shown by changes in the prefrontal cortex, where regions responsible for cognitive control become partially disconnected from the striatum and sometimes lose a portion of their synapses as the addiction progresses. These are big changes. They can’t be brushed aside. And the disease model is the only coherent model of addiction that actually pays attention to the brain changes reported by hundreds of labs in thousands of scientific articles. It certainly explains the neurobiology of addiction better than the “choice” model and other contenders. It may also have some real clinical utility. It makes sense of the helplessness addicts feel and encourages them to expiate their guilt and shame, by validating their belief that they are unable to get better by themselves. And it seems to account for the incredible persistence of addiction, its proneness to relapse. It even demonstrates why “choice” cannot be the whole answer, because choice is governed by motivation, which is governed by dopamine, and the dopamine system is presumably diseased. Then why should we reject the disease model? The main reason is this: Every experience that is repeated enough times because of its motivational appeal will change the wiring of the striatum (and related regions) while adjusting the flow and uptake of dopamine. Yet we wouldn’t want to call the excitement we feel when visiting Paris, meeting a lover, or cheering for our favourite team a disease. Each rewarding experience builds its own network of synapses in and around the striatum (and OFC), and those networks continue to draw dopamine from its reservoir in the midbrain. That’s true of Paris, romance, football, and heroin. As we anticipate and live through these experiences, each network of synapses is strengthened and refined, so the uptake of dopamine gets more selective as rewards are identified and habits established. Prefrontal control is not usually studied when it comes to travel arrangements and football, but we know from the laboratory and from real life that attractive goals frequently override self-restraint. We know that ego fatigue and now appeal, both natural processes, reduce coordination between prefrontal control systems and the motivational core of the brain (as I’ve called it). So even though addictive habits can be more deeply entrenched than many other habits, there is no clear dividing line between addiction and the repeated pursuit of other attractive goals, either in experience or in brain function. London just doesn’t do it for you anymore. It’s got to be Paris. Good food, sex, music . . . they no longer turn your crank. But cocaine sure does.
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Marc Lewis (The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease)
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Should I be scared?”
“I think you should get ready for quite an inquiry, but they’re necessary questions that must be answered if I want to ask you out on a second date.”
“What if I don’t want to go on a second date?”
“Hmm.” He taps his chin with his fork, ready to dig in the minute the plate arrives at our table. “That’s a good point. All right. If the question arose, would you go on a second date with me?”
“Well, now I feel pressured to say yes just so I can hear the inquiry.”
“You’re going to have to deal with the pressure, sweet cheeks.”
“Fine. Hypothetically, if you were to ask me out on a second date, I would hypothetically, possibly say yes.”
“Great.” He bops his own nose with his fork and then sets it down on the table. “Here goes.” He looks serious; both his hands rest palm down on the table and his shoulders stiffen. Looking me dead in the eyes, he asks, “Bobbies and Rebels are in the World Series, what shirt do you wear?”
“Bobbies obviously.”
He blinks. Sits back. “What?”
“Bobbies for life.”
“But I’m on the Rebels.”
“Yes, but are we dating, are we married? Are we just fooling around? There’s going to have to be a huge commitment on my part in order to put a Rebels shirt on. Sorry.”
“We’re dating.”
“Eh.” I wave my hand.
“Fine. We’re living together.”
“Hmm, I don’t know.” I twist a strand of hair in my finger.
“Christ, we’re married.”
“Ugh.” I wince. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think it will ever happen.”
“Not even if we’re married, for fuck’s sake?” he asks, dumbfounded. It’s endearing, especially since he’s pushing his hand through his hair in distress, tousling it.
“Do we have kids?” I ask.
“Six.”
“Six?” Now it’s time for my eyes to pop out of their sockets. “Do you really think I want to birth six children?”
“Hell, no.” He shakes his head. “We adopted six kids from all around the world. We’re going to have the most diverse and loving family you’ll ever see.”
Adopting six kids, now that’s incredibly sweet. Or mad? No, it’s sweet. In fact, it’s extremely rare to meet a man who not only knows he wants to adopt kids, but is willing to look outside of the US, knowing how much he could offer that child. Good God, this man is a unicorn.
“We have the means for it, after all,” he says, continuing. “You’re taking over the city of Chicago, and I’ll be raining home runs on every opposing team. We would be the power couple, the new king and queen of the city. Excuse me, Oprah and Steadman, a new, hip couple is in town. People would wear our faces on their shirts like the royals in England. We’re the next Kate and William, the next Meghan and Harry. People will scream our name and then faint, only for us to give them mouth-to-mouth because even though we’re super famous, we are also humanitarians.”
“Wow.” I sit back in my chair. “That’s quite the picture you paint.” I know what my mom will say about him already. Don’t lose him, Dorothy. He’s gold. Gorgeous and selfless.
“So . . . with all that said, our six children at your side, would you wear a Rebels shirt?”
I take some time to think about it, mulling over the idea of switching to black and red as my team colors. Could I do it?
With the way Jason is smiling at me, hope in his eyes, how could I ever deny him that joy—and I say that as if we’ve been married for ten years.
“I would wear halfsies. Half Bobbies, half Rebels, and that’s the best I can do.”
He lifts his finger to the sky. “I’ll take it.
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Meghan Quinn (The Lineup)
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All the many successes and extraordinary accomplishments of the Gemini still left NASA’s leadership in a quandary. The question voiced in various expressions cut to the heart of the problem: “How can we send men to the moon, no matter how well they fly their ships, if they’re pretty helpless when they get there? We’ve racked up rendezvous, docking, double-teaming the spacecraft, starting, stopping, and restarting engines; we’ve done all that. But these guys simply cannot work outside their ships without exhausting themselves and risking both their lives and their mission. We’ve got to come up with a solution, and quick!” One manned Gemini mission remained on the flight schedule. Veteran Jim Lovell would command the Gemini 12, and his space-walking pilot would be Buzz Aldrin, who built on the experience of the others to address all problems with incredible depth and finesse. He took along with him on his mission special devices like a wrist tether and a tether constructed in the same fashion as one that window washers use to keep from falling off ledges. The ruby slippers of Dorothy of Oz couldn’t compare with the “golden slippers” Aldrin wore in space—foot restraints, resembling wooden Dutch shoes, that he could bolt to a work station in the Gemini equipment bay. One of his neatest tricks was to bring along portable handholds he could slap onto either the Gemini or the Agena to keep his body under control. A variety of space tools went into his pressure suit to go along with him once he exited the cabin. On November 11, 1966, the Gemini 12, the last of its breed, left earth and captured its Agena quarry. Then Buzz Aldrin, once and for all, banished the gremlins of spacewalking. He proved so much a master at it that he seemed more to be taking a leisurely stroll through space than attacking the problems that had frustrated, endangered, and maddened three previous astronauts and brought grave doubts to NASA leadership about the possible success of the manned lunar program. Aldrin moved down the nose of the Gemini to the Agena like a weightless swimmer, working his way almost effortlessly along a six-foot rail he had locked into place once he was outside. Next came looping the end of a hundred-foot line from the Agena to the Gemini for a later experiment, the job that had left Dick Gordon in a sweatbox of exhaustion. Aldrin didn’t show even a hint of heavy breathing, perspiration, or an increased heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice was crisp, sharp, clear. What he did seemed incredibly easy, but it was the direct result of his incisive study of the problems and the equipment he’d brought from earth. He also made sure to move in carefully timed periods, resting between major tasks, and keeping his physical exertion to a minimum. When he reached the workstation in the rear of the Gemini, he mounted his feet and secured his body to the ship with the waist tether. He hooked different equipment to the ship, dismounted other equipment, shifted them about, and reattached them. He used a unique “space wrench” to loosen and tighten bolts with effortless skill. He snipped wires, reconnected wires, and connected a series of tubes. Mission Control hung on every word exchanged between the two astronauts high above earth. “Buzz, how do those slippers work?” Aldrin’s enthusiastic voice came back like music. “They’re great. Great! I don’t have any trouble positioning my body at all.” And so it went, a monumental achievement right at the end of the Gemini program. Project planners had reached all the way to the last inch with one crucial problem still unsolved, and the man named Aldrin had whipped it in spectacular fashion on the final flight. Project Gemini was
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Alan Shepard (Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon)
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ORDINARY PEOPLE
Guess what? Most of us are ordinary people just trying to live our lives. We worry about paying bills, educating kids, our favorite team winning a championship, getting a promotion, caring for elderly parents, taking an occasional vacation, having time for a hobby, and relaxing now and then. We are more alike than we are different, and our commonality as human beings opens the door for connection and conversation. Even ordinary people have extraordinary things happen to them that make for excellent conversation. Every person I know has had an extraordinary experience of one kind or another. Lurking somewhere in your conversation is a hilarious event, a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, a ridiculous moment, an ex-citing accomplishment, a hair-raising happy-ending tale an uncanny coincidence, or an incredible adventure. Find it and bring it out! Almost anything is a conversation in the making.
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Debra Fine (The Fine Art of Small Talk: How to Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills and Leave a Positive Impression!)
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But what happened next really surprised me.” “Yeah?” “The master of ceremonies announced the first-place school.” Mimimi took a deep breath. “When they said the word ‘first place,’ Aoi’s mask finally broke, and she started crying.” “…Wow.” That was all I could say. “She didn’t cry when her own team’s name was called for second place, but when the other school’s name was called for first, she did. It was like, this girl only sees victory. It was incredible.
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Yuki Yaku (Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, Vol. 2 (light novel))
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yet it’s so simple. A conscious leader needs to be actively appreciative. We can be tough leaders at times, we can and should be strong, but at the end of the day, human beings respond best to care and appreciation. It’s important to remember that in business, everything we accomplish is ultimately done with and through other people. That is what conscious leaders do—we inspire, motivate, develop, and lead others. To be appreciative of the gifts that other people share with us and with our teams is uplifting and creates a rewarding feeling of fulfillment. Appreciations are easy for leaders and organizations to implement, as we have done at Whole Foods, and they have very powerful reverberations. They unite people, create camaraderie, and help build trust. Conscious leaders should consider ways to institutionalize a culture of appreciation—their teams will thank them for it. Let me end this section on appreciation with a personal note. I have always felt so grateful for the truly amazing people I have worked with over the past forty-plus years at Whole Foods. Without them, the company never would have amounted to much of anything, and neither would I. Every day I work with people who I know are incredibly smart, talented, caring, and passionate
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John Mackey (Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business)
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Group flow is a team performing at its very best: an incredible brainstorming session, a fantastic fourth-quarter comeback, a band coming together and blowing the roof off the auditorium. It’s also considered the most pleasurable state on Earth
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Peter H. Diamandis (The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives)
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Services Provided by TRIRID
Welcome to TRIRID.
Services Provided By TRIRID
Mobile Application Development
Web Application Development
Custom Software Development
Database Management
Wordpress / PHP
Search Engine Optimization
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Web Application Development technologies include PHP, Ajax, .Net, WordPress, HTML, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Joomla, etc. PHP language is considered one of the most popular & most widely accepted open source web development technology. PHP development is gaining ground in the technology market. Web development using these technologies is considered to offer the most efficient website solutions. The open source based products and tools are regularly studied, used,
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TRIRID has incredible mastery in Windows Apps Development platform working on the .NET framework. We have done bunch of work for some companies and helping them to migrate to a new generation windows based solution. We at TRIRID absolutely comprehend your custom needs necessities and work in giving high caliber and adaptable web API services for your web presence. TRIRID offers a range of utility software packages to meet and assortment of correspondence needs while including peripherals. We offer development for utility software like plugin play, temperature controller observation or embedding solutions.
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Wordpress / PHP
WordPress, based on MySQL and PHP, is an open source content management system and blogging tool. TRIRID have years of experience in offering different Web design and Web development solutions to our clients and we specialize in WordPress website development. Our capable team of WordPress designers offers all the essential services backed by the stat-of-the-art technology tools. PHP is perhaps the most effective and powerful programming language used to create dynamic sites and applications. TRIRID has extensive knowledge and experience of giving web developing services using this popular programming language.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO stands for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
Call now 8980010210
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ellen crichton
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3D Art Outsourcing & Game Art Design Companies By Game Art Outsourcing Studio
A 3D game art outsourcing company can outsource the game art to extra game developers. Game art is separated into two categories which are 2D and 3D game art. In 2D art outsourcing, game developers outsource their 2D oriented design to the game artists. 2D game artist focus in produce the thought as well as the texture of the game. 3D game artist deliberate on fabricating the animation of games; which include models and 3D environment. It is also potential to get a game art company that has artists who focus in both 2D and 3D game art. Game 3D Art Outsourcing company give lots of reward to game developers.
The major advantage is that game developers are able to delegate all their work to diverse companies so that the work get concluded in a very short length of time. This, therefore, make it feasible for a game developer to discharge a game in lesser phase of time. Time full in developing a game is very central since if the game take too long to be unconfined, technology worn in the game may quickly be out of manner. Hence, it is very significant for 3D Game Designer to outsource their gaming growth work to guarantee that all games are out in ideal occasion, i.e., while there is publicity in the market.
3D Game outsourcing company make it potential for a game developer to construct games of finest value. It is well-known by professional and while game developers rush with their work in arrange to try and cut the occasion really required in increasing a game, quality of the pastime is regrettably compromised. On the other pass, if they break down the labor into programming, art, level scheming and sound engineering, they can shun poverty of superiority. It is potential to outsource every work to the diverse team of game development company.
By receiving in touch with encoding and Art Outsourcing Studio game designers, it is probable to get the best entity for each part of game conniving. When the labour is outsourced, every section will have adequate time to focus in their area and once everything has been mutual together, a superb game is shaped. As a game developer, it is very significant to outsource your Game Art Design Company frequently. This is because hiring diverse game art designers make your games exclusively diverse each time.
This is incredibly significant if you want to market a game effectively because it must have amazing completely diverse to offer as compare to your previous games. For example, it should contain the upgrade of features that were liked by patrons who used last account. Doing that is very easy as you only require a long term game outsourcing company for your game art and design.
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GameYan
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A much-underrated and incredibly simple considering factor when it comes to choosing a partner is how much you love their company. Since my friends have started having babies and I’ve watched how they operate as couples, it’s become even more apparent to me that the most important thing in a relationship is how well you work as a team. It’s a hackneyed notion for a reason: a couple needs to be really, really good friends.
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Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir)
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I know you’re not using me. I know you’re not trying to trap me. I fucking love living with you. The guys love living with you, we all want you here. I know you like me, even though you definitely hate it,” he adds, chuckling as he presses his lips to my forehead. “Really, really hate it.” “I don’t know how much you care about my opinion on this, but you’re an incredibly talented skater. I have every faith you’re going to achieve all your goals. I would not be forcing my tree trunk body into fucking yoga positions if I didn’t think you and your talent were worth it.” “Nate…” “I’m not done. You’re a good person, Anastasia. I’m sorry I don’t tell you every day. You make me feel cared for, feel listened to, and the other stuff I don’t even know how to put into words properly. You make me feel valued, for who I am as me, not who I am as team captain or whatever.” “I do value you.” “That isn’t a feeling I’ve had in a long time. Not since my mom was alive. I love the guys, but it’s not the same thing. I can’t think how to describe it… It’s like there’s a spot in your life you keep just for me. One I don’t have to share, one where you don’t expect anything from me. Do you know how amazing it is? How lucky I feel to know you? You make me want to be the best I can be.” “Oh…” “You’re smart and determined, and you are so fucking worthy of love, Anastasia. So worthy. You’re surrounded by people who love you, and we’re all on your team. Aaron isn’t, and it’s why he’s trying to hurt you. I’m sorry you had to listen to it.
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Hannah Grace (Icebreaker)
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The funny thing is, it is actually incredibly easy to identify the high performers of low trust on any team. Simply go to the people on the team and ask them who the asshole is. They will likely all point to the same person.
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Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
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Hazel Hartley, my high school tutor who had a boyfriend, who can’t stand me and doesn’t date hockey players anymore. Despite Pippa wearing a Storm jersey with the name of her fiancé, goaltender Jamie Streicher, on the back, and despite Hartley working for the team, I haven’t seen her in a jersey since high school. Tonight, my gaze catches on her chestnut hair pulled up in a ponytail, her pale purple puffer jacket. I bet she’s wearing the black leggings that always make her ass look incredible. I wink at her; she rolls her eyes. I grin; she pretends to yawn.
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Stephanie Archer (The Fake Out (Vancouver Storm, #2))
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Baseball was Expos' play-by-play man Dave Van Horne's livelihood, and he had to press on. He got back to work when play resumed, though he did stage a kind of silent protest. Van Horne carefully wrote the names of the entire 25-man roster on a little index card, then placed that card in his wallet, where it would sit through the harsh winter that followed the '94 disaster, into 1995 and onward.
Ask him about it today and Van Horne will pull out that card, read through the names, and flash a sad smile. Twenty years after baseball sabotaged the best team in Expos history, he remembers what might have been. That card-that incredible roll call-will sit in his pocket for as long as he lives, a reminder of a dream destroyed.
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Jonah Keri (Up, Up, and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos)
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Training pays off and hard work pays off and repetition pays off,” O’Reilly adds. “When you do those things with purpose year-in and year-out, then when these big moments come, people think it’s so incredible and such a miracle, but in reality, it was just practice and, in the biggest moment, being able to execute.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
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The USOC told U.S. Soccer officials they had to cooperate with the team, and after some back-and-forth, the federation agreed to send the team to the 2005 Algarve Cup. “They were incredibly reluctant to cooperate until the USOC told them they had to cooperate,” Langel says. Tiffeny Milbrett, who returned to the team after April Heinrichs left, says the ordeal reinforced a second-class status for the women’s national team with the federation. “U.S. Soccer had to be threatened by the Olympic Committee that they weren’t managing their governing status toward the women appropriately,” she says. “It was like, Why do we have to deal with this discrimination and these attitudes? It was the Olympic Committee that changed things, not these men at the federation saying, Yes, the women deserve it.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
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Right’ was not how I would describe the AFL’s decision to play our final against Geelong at Skilled Stadium. It had always been our understanding that the venue for finals should be the best available stadium, in the home state of the higher-ranked team. But apparently this was a guideline rather than a rule and the AFL, no stranger to running an agenda that suited their objectives, decided the match would earn more revenue played in Geelong.
I found this incredibly disrespectful to Fremantle. It was inappropriate, it was arrogant, it was flawed. Internally, we were seething but focused. Externally, we stuck by our ‘anywhere, anytime’ mantra, and vowed to make the best of the situation.
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Matthew Pavlich (Purple Heart)
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having the will to carry on is sometimes the only thing that separates survivors from victims. Despair can kill as surely as starvation or cold.
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Christina Soontornvat (All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team (Newbery Honor Book))
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They taught me that “impossible” exists only in your mind. You are capable of so much more than you can even imagine.
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Christina Soontornvat (All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team (Newbery Honor Book))
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What are you talking about? That’s even better. Your voice is incredible. It could calm a vicious pack of dogs, an angry mob of zombies, or the ultimate team of idiotic hockey players.”
“Well maybe. If I didn’t puke all over them first.
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Nikki Jewell (The Comeback (Lakeview Lightning #1))
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The incredible thing is, if the money doesn’t come, who gives a shit? We’re happy every day, and we can keep being happy for the foreseeable future because we have focused on making this happiness sustainable over time. Success comes first, and if achievements follow, it’s icing on the cake.
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Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
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Tinder would work with Justin’s younger brother to throw a birthday party for one of his popular, hyperconnected friends on campus, and use it to promote Tinder. The Tinder team would do all the work to make it an incredible party. The day of the party, students from USC were getting bused to a luxurious house in LA, where everything had been set up to pull you inside. Sean described how it worked: There was one catch with the party: First, you had to download the Tinder app to get in. We put a bouncer in the house to check that you had done it. The party was great—it was a success, and more importantly, the next day, everyone at the party woke up and remembered they had a new app on their phone. There were attractive people they hadn’t gotten to talk to, and this was their second chance. The college party launch tactic worked. For the Tinder team, this one party created the highest ever one-day spike of downloads, however modest it might seem in retrospect. It’s not just the number that matters here, but that it was “500 of the right people”—Sean would explain to me later. It was a group of the most social, most hyperconnected people on the USC campus, all on Tinder at the same time. Tinder started to work. Matches began to happen, as the students who met each other from the previous night started to swipe through and then chat. Amazingly, 95 percent of this initial cohort started to use this app every day for three hours a day.
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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Tinder would work with Justin’s younger brother to throw a birthday party for one of his popular, hyperconnected friends on campus, and use it to promote Tinder. The Tinder team would do all the work to make it an incredible party. The day of the party, students from USC were getting bused to a luxurious house in LA, where everything had been set up to pull you inside. Sean described how it worked: There was one catch with the party: First, you had to download the Tinder app to get in. We put a bouncer in the house to check that you had done it. The party was great—it was a success, and more importantly, the next day, everyone at the party woke up and remembered they had a new app on their phone. There were attractive people they hadn’t gotten to talk to, and this was their second chance. The college party launch tactic worked. For the Tinder team, this one party created the highest ever one-day spike of downloads, however modest it might seem in retrospect. It’s not just the number that matters here, but that it was “500 of the right people”—Sean would explain to me later. It was a group of the most social, most hyperconnected people on the USC campus, all on Tinder at the same time. Tinder started to work. Matches began to happen, as the students who met each other from the previous night started to swipe through and then chat. Amazingly, 95 percent of this initial cohort started to use this app every day for three hours a day. The Tinder team built one atomic network, but soon figured out how to build the next one—just throw another party. And then another, by going to other schools, and throwing even more parties. Each network was successively easier to start. Tinder quickly reached 4,000 downloads, then 15,000 within a month, and then 500,000 just a month after that—first by replicating the campus launch, but then letting the organic viral growth take over.
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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Anti-Network Effects Hit the Google+ Launch A charismatic executive from one of the most powerful technology companies in the world introduces a new product at a conference. This time, it’s June 2011 at the Web 2.0 Summit, where Google vice president Vic Gundotra describes the future of social networking and launches Google+. This was Google’s ambitious strategy to counteract Facebook, which was nearing their IPO. To give their new networked product a leg up, as many companies do, it led with aggressive upsells from their core product. The Google.com homepage linked to Google+, and they also integrated it widely within YouTube, Photos, and the rest of the product ecosystem. This generated huge initial numbers—within months, the company announced it had signed up more than 90 million users. While this might superficially look like a large user base, it actually consisted of many weak networks that weren’t engaged, because most new users showed up and tried out the product as they read about it in the press, rather than hearing from their friends. The high churn in the product was covered up by the incredible fire hose of traffic that the rest of Google’s network generated. Even though it wasn’t working, the numbers kept going up. When unengaged users interact with a networked product that hasn’t yet gelled into a stable, atomic network, then they don’t end up pulling other users into the product. In a Wall Street Journal article by Amir Efrati, Google+ was described as a ghost town even while the executives touted large top-line numbers: To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch. But those numbers mask what’s really going on at Google+. It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there. Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage.86 The fate of Google+ was sealed in their go-to-market strategy. By launching big rather than focusing on small, atomic networks that could grow on their own, the teams fell victim to big vanity metrics. At its peak, Google+ claimed to have 300 million active users—by the top-line metrics, it was on its way to success. But network effects rely on the quality of the growth and not just its quantity
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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Cynthia Shapiro's take on Self-Talk
Cynthia Shapiro, in her wonderful book, What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get A Job Around Here? says:
What you’re telling yourself with your inner voice comes through in every stage of your job search process.
When you have negative or insecure self-talk constantly running through your head, it will tend to govern the tone of your cover letters, e-mails, phone screenings, and interviews.
Cynthia shares how successful athletes visualize getting baskets, making touchdowns, or hitting home runs.
Job seekers need to do the same thing. We need to visualize succeeding in interviews, excitedly sharing our achievement stories, and enjoying getting to know hiring managers and their teams.
Your self-talk plays an incredible role in your life. If you say anything that sounds the least bit negative, STOP yourself, and say:
I’m better than that. I’m capable and talented.
I’m going to share my achievement stories with hiring managers and help them understand how I can help them solve their problems.
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Clark Finnical (Job Hunting Secrets: (from someone who's been there))
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I know that these are incredible people with the incredible and audacious agenda to discover their own talents. This team knows what it is to be invested in a plan, to be dedicated to a system that simultaneously scares the hell out of you and makes you so excited you can barely hold it in.
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Chris Lear (Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross-Country Team)
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Winks Photo Booth
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A team of scientists in Israel confirmed James’s notion in a series of six studies. They surveyed groups of people doing things that were either new or old to them. “In all studies,” the scientists wrote, “we found that…people remember duration as being shorter on a routine activity than on a nonroutine activity.” This slowing down of time is something Parrish told me happens in misogi. “I become incredibly focused on the task at hand,” he said. “When I look back on a misogi that was a few hours it will seem like days, because I remember every detail.
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Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
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I hold her to me as it hits me like a fucking bolt of lightning. The realization makes my heart pound. “Charlotte, I need you to know something.” I take a deep breath. “I love you.” At first, she’s quiet. “You do?” I turn my head to look her in the eye and brush her hair out of her beautiful face. “Of course. You’re the most incredible woman I know. Beautiful inside and out. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know.” I graze my lips against hers. “I love you. I think I’ve always loved you in one way or another. But this, where we’re at now, I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. Just you.” Her eyes well again, but the smile on her lips as she says those sweet words back is one I’ll never forget. “I love you, too, Jake.” She trails her fingers through my hair as she kisses me, and for the first time in my life, my future is clear. I love my family. Football. My team. But the woman in my arms gives everything else meaning. If I can wife her up someday, I’ll die a happy man.
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Lex Martin (Second Down Darling (Varsity Dads #4))
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I know you’re not using me. I know you’re not trying to trap me. I fucking love living with you. The guys love living with you, we all want you here. I know you like me, even though you definitely hate it,” he adds, chuckling as he presses his lips to my forehead.
“Really, really hate it.”
“I don’t know how much you care about my opinion on this, but you’re an incredibly talented skater. I have every faith you’re going to achieve all your goals. I would not be forcing my tree trunk body into fucking yoga positions if I didn’t think you and your talent were worth it.”
“Nate…”
“I’m not done. You’re a good person, Anastasia. I’m sorry I don’t tell you every day. You make me feel cared for, feel listened to, and the other stuff I don’t even know how to put into words properly. You make me feel valued, for who I am as me, not who I am as a team captain or whatever.”
“I do value you.”
“That isn’t a feeling I’ve had in a long time. Not since my mom was alive. I love the guys, but it’s not the same thing. I can’t think how to describe it… It’s like there’s a spot in your life you keep just for me. One I don’t have to share, one where you don’t expect anything from me. Do you know how amazing it is? How lucky I feel to know you? You make me want to be the best I can be.
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Hannah Grace (Icebreaker (UCMH, #1))
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One other thing about the Trump team was just how incredibly wealthy it was. It was flush with billionaires, multi-millionaires – oh, and a smattering of generals. It was the richest group ever assembled. The joke was you either needed to have bread or braid to get into a Trump cabinet. Presumably the military men were the poorest of those who sat round the famous table, but it should be recorded that none of them was caught up in any of these scandals.
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Jon Sopel (A Year At The Circus: Inside Trump's White House)
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She was the quintessential girl next door, if the girl next door was the most intelligent woman in the city, had incredible instincts for drama and story, and was in better shape than a professional athlete.
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Brad Lee (A Team of Two (Unsanctioned Asset, #2))
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It’s getting-up time,” Alessandro declares. “Today is the day.”
“What day?”
“The release date.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Daa-add. The new XBOX game. Hunting Old Sammie.”
Armand opens his eyes. He looks at his son looking at him. The boy’s eyes are only inches away. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s the newest best game. You hunt down terrorists and kill them.” Lifting his voice, “‘Deploy teams of Black Berets into the ancient mountains of Tora Bora. Track implacable terrorists to their cavernous lairs. Rain withering fire down on the homicidal masterminds who planned the horror of September eleven, two-thousand-and-one.’” The kid’s memory is canny.
Armand lifts Alex off his chest and sits up. “Who invented it?”
“I’m telling you, dad. It’s an XBOX game.”
“We can get it today?”
“No,” Leah says. “Absolutely not. The last thing he needs is another violent video game.”
“Mahhuum!”
“How bad can it be?” says Armand.
“How would you know? A minute ago you hadn’t heard of it.”
“And you had?”
“I saw a promo. Helicopter gunships with giant machine guns. Soldiers with flamethrowers, turning bearded men into candles.”
“Sounds great.”
“Armand, really. How old are you?”
“I don’t see what my age has to do with it.”
“Dad, it’s totally cool. ‘Uncover mountain strongholds with thermal imaging technology. Call in air-strikes by F-16s. Destroy terrorist cells with laser weaponry. Wage pitched battles against mujahideen. Capture bin Laden alive or kill him on the spot. March down Fifth Avenue with jihadists’ heads on pikes. Make the world safe for democracy.’”
Safe for Dick Cheney’s profits, Armand thinks, knowing all about it from his former life, but says nothing. It’s pretty much impossible to explain the complexity of how things work within the greater systemic dysfunction. Instead, he asks the one question that matters.
“How much does it cost?”
Alessandro’s mouth minces sideways. He holds up fingers, then realizes he needs more than two hands.
Armand can see the kid doesn’t want to say. “C’mon. ’Fess up.”
Alex sighs. “A one with two zeros.”
“One hundred dollars.”
Alex’s eyes slide away. Rapid nods, face averted. “Yeah.”
“For a video game, Alex.”
“Yhep.”
“No way.”
“Daa-add! It’s the greatest game ever!” The boy is beginning to whine.
“Don’t whine,” Armand tells him.
“On TV it’s awesome. The army guys are flaming a cave and when the terror guys try to escape, they shoot them.”
“Neat.”
“Their turbans are on fire.”
“Even better.”
“Armand,” Leah says.
“Dad,” says Alessandro.
He will not admit it but Armand is hooked. It would be deeply satisfying in the second-most intimate way imaginable to kill al Qaida terrorists holed up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border—something the actual U.S. military cannot or will not completely do. But a hundred bucks. It isn’t really the money, although living on interest income Armand has become more frugal. He can boost the C-note but what message would it send? Hunting virtual terrorists in cyberspace is all well and good. But plunking down $100 for a toy seems irresponsible and possibly wrong in a country where tens of thousands are homeless and millions have no health insurance and children continue, incredibly, to go hungry. Fifty million Americans live in poverty and he’s looking to play games.
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John Lauricella (Hunting Old Sammie)
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Moral courage is what you do when no one is watching. It relies heavily on trust and doing what is right no matter who is around. During the SEAL selection process someone is always watching. Problem solving is also paramount to being a SEAL. Survival when the bullets start flying is 100% dependent on your ability to think accurately and create sound judgment. Teamability is defined by how well an individual works in the team environment. It requires that all members put the mission and team before themselves. SEALs are taught to prioritize team issues
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John Collins (Self-Discipline: The Ultimate Guide to Self-Discipline like a US NAVY SEAL: Gain Incredible Self Confidence, Motivation, & True Discipline with Techniques used only by these Elite Warriors!)
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The second element to why the show has worked is undoubtedly my team.
And guess what? I am not alone out there.
I work with a truly brilliant, small tight-knit crew. Four or five guys. Heroes to a man.
They work their nuts off. Unsung. Up to their necks in the dirt. Alongside me in more hellholes than you could ever imagine.
They are mainly made up of ex-Special Forces buddies and top adventure cameramen--as tough as they come, and best friends.
It’s no surprise that all the behind-the-scenes episodes we do are so popular--people like to hear the inside stories about what it is really like when things go a little “wild.” As they often do.
My crew are incredible--truly--and they provide me with so much of my motivation to do this show. Without them I am nothing.
Simon Reay brilliantly told me on episode one: “Don’t present this, Bear, just do it--and tell me along the way what the hell you are doing and why. It looks amazing. Just tell me.”
That became the show.
And there is the heroic Danny Cane, who reckoned I should just: “Suck an earthworm up between your teeth, and chomp it down raw. They’ll love it, Bear. Trust me!”
Inspired.
Producers, directors, the office team and the field crew. My buddies. Steve Rankin, Scott Tankard, Steve Shearman, Dave Pearce, Ian Dray, Nick Parks, Woody, Stani, Ross, Duncan Gaudin, Rob Llewellyn, Pete Lee, Paul Ritz, and Dan Etheridge--plus so many others, helping behind the scenes back in the UK.
Multiple teams. One goal.
Keeping one another alive.
On, and do the field team share their food with me, help collect firewood, and join in tying knots on my rafts?
All the time. We are a team.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
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I have been so lucky to lead amazing teams to incredible places: the remote Venezuelan jungles of the “Lost World” in search of Jimmy Angel’s lost gold; or the remote white desert that is Antarctica to climb unclimbed peaks. (I managed to break my shoulder in a fall on that trip, but you can’t win them all!)
Then we returned to the Himalayas, where my buddy Gilo and I flew powered paragliders to above the height of Everest. Once again, we were raising funds for the charity Global Angels, an extraordinary charity that champions the most needy kids around the world. But the flight itself was a mission that so nearly had fatal consequences.
All the aviation and cold-weather experts predicted almost certain disaster; from frozen parachutes to uncontrollable hurricane-force winds, from impossible takeoffs to bone-breaking landings--and that was before they even contemplated whether a small one-man machine could even be designed to be powerful enough to fly that high.
And if we could, it certainly then would not be possible to lift it on to our backs. But we pulled it off: Gilo designed and built the most powerful, supercharged, fuel-injected, one-man powered paraglider engine in history, and by the grace of God we somehow got airborne with these monsters on our backs.
Some blessed weather and some ball-twitching flying, and we proved the skeptics wrong--even, at the end, landing effortlessly at the foot of the Everest range, nimbly on two feet, like twinkle-toes. Mission complete.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
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The Harvard discussions were chaotic, at least in part because the Trump team’s fractured leadership was overrepresented in many of the panels. Corey Lewandowski, for example, was included in both the primary-election panel and, inexplicably, the general-election panel. He seemed to play a bigger role at the conference than he had on the campaign trail. Incredibly, Lewandowski would tell the Harvard conference that he had written Trump’s announcement speech, which was ludicrous given that Trump spoke without notes and there was no prepared text to memorize. The
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Roger Stone (The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution)
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Oh, I see how it is.” Matt reached both his arms into the air. “Hang on, let me just do a few stretches.” Then he rolled his head from front to back. “Loosen up a bit.”
His little spectacle made me laugh, a genuine These are my friends; why not enjoy myself? kind of laugh, and my body finally relaxed.
“Hey, laugh all you want, but just remember half of my team is completely sober. We have a fifty-percent advantage.” He slung his arm around Taylor.
“Or disadvantage—have you never seen me play beer pong? I kind of suck,” she admitted.
“Shh, babe, this is the mental game. We’re just psyching them out. I know you can’t play for shit.”
I lifted my hair into a ponytail and pulled a hair tie from my wrist. “You do realize we can hear you, right?”
“You do realize I can hear you too?” Taylor added. “I mean, way to boost my confidence right before the big game,” she teased.
“I know, babe, and I’m sorry, but look—it’s working. Isla’s getting ready for a throwdown. She’s pulling her hair up and she’s all ‘Hold my purse.’ ”
“Purse?” Taylor mouthed.
I shrugged and forced back another smile. Game face, right?
Landon chuckled. “Okay, okay, let’s go. Someone needs to get their ass kicked before they just pass out altogether. I’m winning this game by merit, not default.”
As the game started, I found myself letting go. Colby drifted from the forefront of my thoughts. Forgotten were Landon’s supposed feelings for me. And I had fun. I laughed at how incredibly off our aims were. And when one of us succeeded by chance, we’d turn to one another and high-five without even a second thought. We were in sync. We were having fun. And we were winning. The perfect team.
Landon tossed the final ball. It bounced effortlessly into a cup, and I squealed as he covered his mouth with his hand. “Ohh, is that what I think it is?” he mocked the losing team. “Isla, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we just kicked some serious ass.”
I stared at the table and nodded, my expression one of mock-seriousness. “Why Landon, I believe you are correct.”
He then busted out some sort of celebratory end zone dance.
Laughing, I nudged him and shook my head. “Okay, okay.” But when he wouldn’t stop, I finally grabbed both his hands. “Oh my god, we won. Now don’t spoil that with whatever this is!”
He flipped his hands so that he was now holding my wrist and tugged me into his arms. Then he pumped one hand into the air and shouted, “Victory!
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Renita Pizzitola (Addicted to You (Port Lucia #1))
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NBA 2K18 Wishlist - Good Badges To Deal Problems In 2K17
The NBA 2K18 release date has basketball fans hyped. The new game in the series will be the definitive way for fans to take control of their favorite franchises and players on the Xbox One and PS4. As of the features player wish to be added into NBA 2K18, we can compare it with NBA 2K17. Today, we'll list the best badges players would like to see in the latest NBA franchise.
Flashy Dunker
2K Sports has spent a large amount of time recording flashy dunk animations that look great when they trigger. Unfortunately players do not equip any of these because they get blocked at a higher rate than the basic one and two hand dunk packages. NBA 2K17 has posterizer to help with contact dunks but Flashy Dunker would be for non-contact animations. The badge would allow you to use these flashy dunk packages in traffic while getting blocked at a lower rate in NBA 2K18.
Bullet Passer Badge
Even with a high passer rating and Hall of Fame dimer you can still find yourself throwing slow lob passes inexplicably. These passes are easy to intercept and give the defense too much time to recover. Bullet Passer would be an increase in the speed of passes that you throw, allowing you to create open looks for teammates in 2K18 that were not possible in NBA 2K17. A strong passing game is more important than ISO ball and this badge would help with that style of play.
3 And D Badge
The 3 and D badge would be an archetype in NBA 2K18 ideally but a badge version would be an acceptable substitute. This badge would once again reward players for playing good defense. The badge would trigger after a block, steal, or good shot defense and would lead to an increase in shooting percentage on the next possession from behind the 3 point arc.
Dominant Post Presence Badge
It's a travesty that post scorer is one of the more under-utilized archetypes in NBA 2K17. Many players that have created a post scorer can immediately tell you why they do not play it as much as their other MyPlayers, it is incredibly easy to lose the ball in the post. Whether it is a double team or your matchup, getting the ball poked loose is a constant problem. Dominant Post Presence would trigger when you attempt to post up and would be an increase in your ability to maintain possession of the ball as long as NBA 2K18 add this badge. In addition the badge would be an increase in the shooting percentage of your teammate when you pass out of the post to an open man.
The Glove
NBA 2K17 has too many contested shots. The shot contest rating on most archetypes is not enough to outweigh the contested midrange or 3 point rating and consistently force misses. It's obviously that height helps you contest shots in a major way but it also slows you down. However, the Glove would solve this problem in NBA 2K18. This badge would increase your ability to contest shots effectively, forcing more misses and allowing you to play better defense.
Of course, there should be more other tips and tricks for NBA 2K18. If you have better advices, tell us on the official media. The NBA 2K18 Early Tip-Off Weekend starts September 15th. That's a total of four days for dedicated fans to get in the game and try its new features before other buyers. The game is completely unlocked for Early Tip-Off Weekend. Be sure to make enough preparation for the upcoming event.
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Bunnytheis
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However, the biggest disappointment was Klay getting pulled over by a cop for a busted car light. The officer smelled marijuana in the vicinity and eventually found some in his car. The aforementioned event led to Klay’s arrest as well as a suspension for a game against the Bruins near the end of the season. Klay’s costly mistake ended up ruining the Cougars’ chance to make it to the NCAA tournament. His father was extremely disappointed in him since he had always taught him to stay away from such things not only in school, but as well as in his professional life. Mychal thought he had made a big enough impact to prevent his son from making foolish choices. Klay quickly regretted the situation and learned from his mistake. The team did qualify for the NIT, which was an exciting opportunity in itself.
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Clayton Geoffreys (Klay Thompson: The Incredible Story of One of Basketball's Sharpest Shooters (Basketball Biography Books))
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When starting out in this field it’s extremely important to remember that, even though you may be an incredibly talented digital artist, part of working in production is the ability to work as a part of a team. No matter how good your reel of previous work is, supervisors and management want to feel comfortable that you are capable of being responsible, efficient and, quite honestly, reasonably pleasant to deal with. Production can be difficult and stressful—nobody wants to deal with personality issues on top of all that.
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Ron Brinkmann (The Art and Science of Digital Compositing: Techniques for Visual Effects, Animation and Motion Graphics)
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I take it you have some sort of plan going? Something that calls for you to be arrested?"
"There, now, you see? I told Drake you'd grasp the gist of things right away, but he had his doubts."
"Drake?" I straightened up. "Is Gabriel with him? Did he get my message?"
"Of course he got your message. That's why I'm here. Is there no chair?" she asked, frowning around the empty room.
"No. I hate to let down the team and all, but what exactly are you doing here? Is Gabriel going to be able to get me out of being sent to the Akasha? Is he going to appeal the conviction?"
"Better than that," she said with smile, glancing around quickly before leaning in closely, her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "We're going to bust you out of here."
"Bust me..." I closed my eyes for a moment. "You've been watching too many old westerns. No one conducts jailbreaks these days. Especially not when the jailers are the L'au-dela committee."
"That's why this plan is so incredibly cunning," she said, giving my arm a little squeeze. "They're all expecting you to try to escape-they'll never expect us to break you out of here."
"Oy," I said, sliding down the wall to the floor. "This has 'doomed from the start' written all over it. You didn't think up this plan yourself, did you?" I asked suspiciously.
She looked offended. "No, I didn't, and you can stop being such a negative Nelly. Gabriel thought up the plan, and Drake and I are helping. I'm the decoy, you see."
"Of course you are. What, exactly, is this grandiose escape plan?"
Her mouth set in a prim manner. "I can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"There could be bugs. We don't want them to know our plans."
"If they were listening in, you just told them there's a plan, so they'll be expecting something to happen," I pointed out.
"Yes, but they won't know what," she said, pulling off her jacket. Her shirt followed almost immediately, as did her jeans, shoes, and the sparkly pink socks that she was so prone to wearing despite the fact they would look more at home on a twelve-year-old.
I watched her striptease with confusion for a moment before a thought struck me.
"You don't mean-"
"Shhh," she said, waving a vague hand around as she pulled off the scarf she wore to confine her bangs. "Bugs, remember?"
I bit back an obvious reply, thought for a moment, then decided that although the plan Gabriel had come up with was too I Love Lucy for words, I didn't have any alternative. I stripped.
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Katie MacAlister (Playing With Fire (Silver Dragons, #1))
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Winning Teams Execute Plans to Perfection Teams like these, that can dominate, are often excellent at converting their plans into action. They do the small things better than the opposition can, or wants to. It is incredible how many matches are won by teams that do the simple things, the one per cent things, better.
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Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle (The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers)