Instant Messaging Quotes

So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page: I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand from me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a FRIEND… I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too.

I can't keep doing this to myself, getting my hopes up so high, only to have them come crashing down. I can't keep waiting for him to come to his senses, having my whole emotional state rest on what he decides. What if he never wakes up to how perfect we'd be together? What if I spend another year pining for him - or longer even? In a terrible flash, I see my future stretching out before me: waiting for his calls, rearranging my life around college visits, and decoding texts and instant messages like they could be something real, something true. This isn't love; this is pure torment.

It's often suggested that as a culture, we're only interested in immediate gratification. Fast food. Self-checkout. Downloadable music, movies, books. Instant coffee, instant rebates, instant messaging. Instant weight loss! Shall I go on?

You cannot expect an app dreamed up in a dorm room, or among the Ping-Pong tables of a Silicon Valley incubator, to successfully replace the types of rich interactions to which we’ve painstakingly adapted over millennia. Our sociality is simply too complex to be outsourced to a social network or reduced to instant messages and emojis.

Veronica ran out to tell Amber the shocking news - and returned in less than a minute with another message for Yo-Yoji: "Amber says she was watching and she knows you got in detention on purpose," she said breathlessly. "Because you have a crush on Cass!" Cass's ears instantly turned red. Max-Ernest looked like he'd been hit by a truck.

It's much easier to be convincing if you care about your topic. Figure out what's important to you about your message and speak from the heart.

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee. Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle? Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks. Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone. Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.

Her body faded away so far, she almost lost her connection to it. Utter blackness enveloped her, shutting off all warmth. All light. All love. All support. All hope. She was pinned, alone, naked, and freezing before a beast so terrifying she struggled to avert her gaze but could not. Horns arose from the top of what had to be a head. Fangs protruded obscenely from a frowning hole that must have been a mouth. Unsheathed claws threatened instant evisceration. Horrifying eyes. Two cesspits of black fury in which red flames churned like burning blood. They bore down on Helen, intensifying the pressure on her to the point of agony. Inside her head a message played over and over. You are helpless. Helen’s fragmented thoughts spun wildly. What to do? How to stop this nightmare? The wretched voice roared again, like nails clashing against slate. “Give me the stone! Now!

You know that when your partner deletes their messages to a past lover after being accused of cheating, then it is likely that they were being unfaithful in some way.

Our sociality is simply too complex to be outsourced to a social network or reduced to instant messages and emojis.

And it occurred to me that in this new millennial life of instant and ubiquitous connection, you don't in fact communicate so much as leave messages for one another, these odd improvisational performances, often sorry bits and samplings of ourselves that can't help but seem out of context. And then when you do finally reach someone, everyone's so out of practice or too hopeful or else embittered that you wonder if it would be better not to attempt contact at all.

A long time ago, Trinity and I made a list of types of guys you should never date. We add to it every now and then. It includes things like never date a guy whose computer costs more than his car (you'll never get him to pay attention to you except over instant messages), never date a guy who has a pet lizard (he's probably into weird stuff in bed) and never under any circumstances go on a second date with a guy who says the word "married" on the first date (he'll turn out to be a mama's boy or a religious type)

Lure him out. Send in a 'customer' with a message from me needing to meet him. I'm not the kind of person he can ignore-well, that he used to not-never mind. Once he's out, we can get him to a place we choose." I nodded. "I can do that." "No," said Dimitri. "You can't." "Why not?" I asked, wondering if he thought it was too dangerous for me. "Because they'll know you're a dhampir the instant they see you. They'll probably smell it first. No Strigoi would have a dhampir working for him-only humans." There was an uncomfortable silence in the car. "No!" said Sydney. "I am not doing that!

In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion. We ask to be indulged and comforted by clichés, stereotypes, and inspirational messages that tell us we can be whoever we seek to be, that we live in the greatest country on earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities, and that our future will always be glorious

I detected instantly that she didn’t like me. It’s a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her. Feely says that there is a broken telephone connection between men and women, and we can never know which of us rang off. With a boy you never know whether he’s smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds. Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals, like the high frequency wireless messages between the shore and the ships at sea, and this secret flow of dots and dashes was signalling that Mary detesting me.

One look at an email can rob you of 15 minutes of focus. One call on your cell phone, one tweet, one instant message can destroy your schedule, forcing you to move meetings, or blow off really important things, like love, and friendship.

Al-Matari and each of his cell members had loaded the application Silent Phone onto their smartphones, and with this app they could communicate via end-to-end encryption, using either instant messaging or voice calls, and they could also send files to one another. Al-Matari,

There is a law out there, if not of thermodynamics then of something equally primary and inescapable, that explains why everything from instant messaging to fabulous sex to aspic can in the end be defined as an illustration of the futility of existence. And it really, really sucks.

Our sociality is simply far too complex to be outsourced to a social network or reduced to instant messages & emojis. Any digital minimalist must confront this reality & manage his or her relationship with these tools accordingly. [...] The key is the intention behind what you decide, not necessarily its details.

It’s foolish to expect that one exposure to your message will instantly convert someone from stranger to raving ideavirus-spreading fan. So plan on a process. Plan on a method that takes people from where they are to where you want them to go.

...we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face. We are offered robots and a whole world of machine-mediated relationships on networked devices. As we instant-message, e-mail, text, and Twitter, technology redraws the boundaries between intimacy and solitude. We talk of getting “rid” of our e-mails, as though these notes are so much excess baggage. Teenagers avoid making telephone calls, fearful that they “reveal too much.” They would rather text than talk. Adults, too, choose keyboards over the human voice. It is more efficient, they say. Things that happen in “real time” take too much time. Tethered to technology, we are shaken when that world “unplugged” does not signify, does not satisfy. After an evening of avatar-to avatar talk in a networked game, we feel, at one moment, in possession of a full social life and, in the next, curiously isolated, in tenuous complicity with strangers. We build a following on Facebook or MySpace and wonder to what degree our followers are friends. We recreate ourselves as online personae and give ourselves new bodies, homes, jobs, and romances. Yet, suddenly, in the half-light of virtual community, we may feel utterly alone. As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves. Sometimes people experience no sense of having communicated after hours of connection. And they report feelings of closeness when they are paying little attention. In all of this, there is a nagging question: Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

Your best friends are in trouble and you say 'of course' and forget them instantly.

In the modern world, human beings display little tolerance for waiting. We are addicted to fast food, instant messaging, and other conveniences of life. Patience is a lost virtue.

In saying no one knew about the ideas implicit in the telegraph, I am not quite accurate. Thoreau knew. Or so one may surmise. It is alleged that upon being told that through the telegraph a man in Maine could instantly send a message to a man in Texas, Thoreau asked, "But what do they have to say to each other?" In asking this question, to which no serious interest was paid, Thoreau was directing attention to the psychological and social meaning of the telegraph, and in particular to its capacity to change the character of information -- from the personal and regional to the impersonal and global.

To a large extent, the millennial generation is setting consumer trends. We now live in an on-demand world where 30 billion WhatsApp messages are sent every day32 and where 87% of young people in the US say their smart phone never leaves their side and 44% use their camera function daily.33 This is a world which is much more about peer-to-peer sharing and user-generated content. It is a world of the now: a real-time world where traffic directions are instantly provided and groceries are delivered directly to your door. This “now world” requires companies to respond in real time wherever they are or their customers or clients may be.

This one,” he said, “is for my wife.” With a pointed glance, Gideon signaled the band to start. An instantly recognizable bass beat ratcheted up my pulse. “Lifehouse!” Shawny crowed, clapping her hands. “I love them!” “He’s calling you his wife already!” Megumi yelled, leaning toward me. “How freaking’ lucky are you?” I didn’t glance at her. I couldn’t. My attention was riveted on Gideon as he looked directly at me and sang, telling me in a lusciously raspy voice that he was desperate for change and starving for truth. He was answering my song. My eyes burned even as my heart began to beat with a different rhythm. Had I thought he’d be unemotional? My Good, he was killing me, baring his soul in the rough timbre of his voice. “Holy fuck,” Cary said, his eyes on the stage. “The man can sing.” I was hanging by a moment, too, hanging on to every word, hearing his message about chasing after me and falling more in love.

When the cure for insecurity and meaningful conversation is to slap a cell phone against your ear, hide within your iPod, or tap out a cryptic instant message, is it any wonder that we find comfort and solace in hairy, furry, and scaly companions?

Questions you can wait hours to learn the answers to are fine to put in an email. Questions that require answers in the next few minutes can go into an instant message. For crises that truly merit a sky-is-falling designation, you can use that old-fashioned invention called the telephone.

When you don the pelt of a particular animal--snake, beaver, marmoset--the effect on the viewer is dramatic [...]. You will instantly and shockingly be perceived as having the same traits as your chosen varmint. [...] The wearing of moleskin says, "I am soft and velvety and mysterious and like to hide underground." A mink coat says, "I'm a tough cookie. Though I may not have the wherewithal to actually kill you, please expect to be nipped on a regular basis." The pelts of predators always give the impression that you are a man-stealing, window-smashing home wrecker. This also applies to animal-printed fabric. The message of a leopard-print jumpsuit is clear, "I am a huntress who delights in eating the offal of her prey.

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Messages of instant gratification leads to a corrupt society

No, it wasn’t the words so much as the fact that she used an authentic label maker to send me the message. Damn, I felt an instant connection to this woman

Rejection is inevitable. The goal is to minimize it.

You aren’t looking for a pen pal, and if need be, say that.

I fixed her a drink, then lowered myself on the spider's silk of my attention back into One Hundred Years of Solitude and the adventures of the Buendia family. The scene where the prodigal Jose Arcadio hoisted his adopted sister by her waist into his hammock and, in my translation, 'quartered her like a little bird' made my face hot. I bent down the page, whose small triangle marks the instant. Touching that triangle of yellowed paper today is like sliding my hand into the glove of my seventeen-year-old hand. Through magic, there are the Iowa fields slipping by... And there is my mother, not yet born into the ziplock baggie of ash my sister sent me years ago with the frank message 'Mom 1/2', written in laundry pen, since no-one in our family ever stood on ceremony.

Wait!” I turn and put my hands in the air. The figure halts. “The dead Mask in the desert,” I say. “You did that?” “A message for you, little singer,” the woman rasps. “So you wouldn’t be stupid enough to fight me. Don’t feel badly about it. He was a murderer and a rapist. He deserved to die. Which reminds me.” She tilts her head. “The girl—Laia. Don’t touch her. If any harm comes to her, no force in this land will stop me from gutting you. Slowly.” With that, she is moving again. I leap up and unsheathe my blade. Too late. The woman is through the open window and scuttling away across the rooftops. But not before I catch sight of her face—hardened by hatred, mangled beyond belief, and instantly recognizable. The Commandant’s slave. The one who is supposed to be dead. The one everyone called Cook.

Picnic, Lightning It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane while reading in a chair at home. Safes drop from rooftops and flatten the odd pedestrian mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible, as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over, spilling out on the grass. And we know the message can be delivered from within. The heart, no valentine, decides to quit after lunch, the power shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body’s rivers, the brain a monastery, defenseless on the shore. This is what I think about when I shovel compost into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill the long flower boxes, then press into rows the limp roots of red impatiens— the instant hand of Death always ready to burst forth from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then the soil is full of marvels, bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco, red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick to burrow back under the loam. Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the clouds a brighter white, and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge against a round stone, the small plants singing with lifted faces, and the click of the sundial as one hour sweeps into the next.

The Hyperactive Hive Mind A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services.

EXERCISE Creating Authentic Relationships The questions below deal with issues most people take for granted and let society define for them. You can start with a blank canvas and create your own definitions. • How do you define intimacy and closeness? • What constitutes a relationship for you? • Are there different types of relationships you wish you could have? • How long should a significant relationship last? • What is sex? Is it intercourse? Is it more specific: penis-in-vagina or penis-in-ass intercourse? What about manual stimulation and penetration, oral sex, sex toys, BDSM play? • What kinds of things do you consider intimate? Sex, sexual touch, genital contact, a BDSM scene with no sexual aspect? • Must you live near a partner for a relationship to be important? • How do you define fidelity? • What constitutes loving, affectionate, sexual, and romantic behavior? Where do things like flirting, kissing, love letters, gift giving, dating, courting, phone calls, emails, and instant messages fit into your definitions? • What does commitment mean to you? How do you define a committed relationship? • What are the most important things you need in a relationship? • How important is it for you to live with a partner? • Realistically , how much time and energy do you have to give to a relationship?  

With 21 million people following her on Facebook and 18 million on Twitter, pop singer Ariana Grande can’t personally chat with each of her loves, as she affectionately calls her fans. So she and others are spreading their messages through new-style social networks, via mobile apps that are more associated with private, intimate conversation, hoping that marketing in a cozier digital setting adds a breath of warmth and a dash of personality. It’s the Internet’s equivalent of mailing postcards rather than plastering a billboard. Grande could have shared on Twitter that her most embarrassing moment on stage was losing a shoe. The 21-year-old instead revealed the fact during a half-hour live text chat on Line, an app built for close friends to exchange instant messages. It’s expensive to advertise on Facebook and Twitter, and the volume of information being posted creates uncertainty over what people actually notice. Chat apps including Line, Kik, Snapchat, WeChat and Viber place marketing messages front and center. Most-used apps The apps threaten to siphon advertising dollars from the social media leaders, which are already starting to see chat apps overtake them as the most-used apps on smartphones, according to Forrester Research. Chat apps “demand attention,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at consulting firm Altimeter Group.

In 90% of cases, you can start with one of the two most effective ways to open a speech: ask a question or start with a story. Our brain doesn’t remember what we hear. It remembers only what we “see” or imagine while we listen. You can remember stories. Everything else is quickly forgotten. Smell is the most powerful sense out of 4 to immerse audience members into a scene. Every sentence either helps to drive your point home, or it detracts from clarity. There is no middle point. If you don’t have a foundational phrase in your speech, it means that your message is not clear enough to you, and if it’s not clear to you, there is no way it will be clear to your audience. Share your failures first. Show your audience members that you are not any better, smarter or more talented than they are. You are not an actor, you are a speaker. The main skill of an actor is to play a role; to be someone else. Your main skill as a speaker is to be yourself. People will forgive you for anything except for being boring. Speaking without passion is boring. If you are not excited about what you are talking about, how can you expect your audience to be excited? Never hide behind a lectern or a table. Your audience needs to see 100% of your body. Speak slowly and people will consider you to be a thoughtful and clever person. Leaders don’t talk much, but each word holds a lot of meaning and value. You always speak to only one person. Have a conversation directly with one person, look him or her in the eye. After you have logically completed one idea, which usually is 10-20 seconds, scan the audience and then stop your eyes on another person. Repeat this process again. Cover the entire room with eye contact. When you scan the audience and pick people for eye contact, pick positive people more often. When you pause, your audience thinks about your message and reflects. Pausing builds an audiences’ confidence. If you don’t pause, your audience doesn’t have time to digest what you've told them and hence, they will not remember a word of what you've said. Pause before and after you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. After you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. Speakers use filler words when they don’t know what to say, but they feel uncomfortable with silence. Have you ever seen a speaker who went on stage with a piece of paper and notes? Have you ever been one of these speakers? When people see you with paper in your hands, they instantly think, “This speaker is not sincere. He has a script and will talk according to the script.” The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten. Bad speakers create a 10 minutes speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Great speakers create a 5 minute speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Explain your ideas in a simple manner, so that the average 12-year-old child can understand the concept. Good speakers and experts can always explain the most complex ideas with very simple words. Stories evoke emotions. Factual information conveys logic. Emotions are far more important in a speech than logic. If you're considering whether to use statistics or a story, use a story. PowerPoint is for pictures not for words. Use as few words on the slide as possible. Never learn your speech word for word. Just rehearse it enough times to internalize the flow. If you watch a video of your speech, you can triple the pace of your development as a speaker. Make videos a habit. Meaningless words and clichés neither convey value nor information. Avoid them. Never apologize on stage. If people need to put in a lot of effort to understand you they simply won’t listen. On the other hand if you use very simple language you will connect with the audience and your speech will be remembered.

Practically from the moment they’re born, kids have all these forces clamoring for their attention, begging to entertain them and sell them something. Then they come to school, where they and their parents tell administrators that it’s the teachers’ job to engage them and break through all that other stuff. As far as the kids are concerned, they’ve done their part if they show up. They sit in front of the teacher the same way they sit in front of a computer screen, waiting for that instant message.

You have to practice what you preach. Declare the family dinner table to be an electronics-free zone: no texting and no cell phone use allowed at the dinner table. That means you too, Dad. Although teenage girls are more likely than teenage boys to be addicted to texting and instant messaging, there seems to be a gender reversal in the over-30 crowd, with Dad more likely than Mom to be surreptitiously checking messages on his Blackberry at the dinner table.19 All electronic devices should be prohibited at mealtime.

This would not have come as news to Jason Fried, cofounder of the web application company 37signals. For ten years, beginning in 2000, Fried asked hundreds of people (mostly designers, programmers, and writers) where they liked to work when they needed to get something done. He found that they went anywhere but their offices, which were too noisy and full of interruptions. That’s why, of Fried’s sixteen employees, only eight live in Chicago, where 37signals is based, and even they are not required to show up for work, even for meetings. Especially not for meetings, which Fried views as “toxic.” Fried is not anti-collaboration—37signals’ home page touts its products’ ability to make collaboration productive and pleasant. But he prefers passive forms of collaboration like e-mail, instant messaging, and online chat tools. His advice for other employers? “Cancel your next meeting,” he advises. “Don’t reschedule it. Erase it from memory.” He also suggests “No-Talk Thursdays,” one day a week in which employees aren’t allowed to speak to each other.

A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services. The hyperactive hive mind workflow has become ubiquitous in the knowledge sector.

Again, we are not writing things down as a ritual. We are not doing it so the Universe can see what we are doing and pick up on it. We are not trying to send messages to the Universe or to petition the Universe for something. Get these obsolete ideas about manifestations out of your head!

In almost every situation, the expectation of an immediate response is an unreasonable expectation. Yet with more and more real-time communication tools creeping into daily work—especially instant-messaging tools and group chat—the expectation of an immediate response has become the new normal.

A hurricane delayed our meeting. First date force majeure. Online late one night we rescheduled – "Right now! As-is!" Sleep pants and t-shirts were good enough for Waffle House. Over coffee and pie we said the same sorts things we had sent as instant messages. To a person not a screen name. After she gave me the tour. Her cat's old collar on the rear-view mirror. A place where graffiti was allowed. The Slab by the river. Places where the young could be young. She stopped for cigarettes. The cashier had dirt on her face and ate an onion like an apple. We pretended not to notice. It only seemed polite.

She extends a fingertip. After a moment's hesitation, Manfred extends a fingertip of his own. They touch, exchanging vCards and instant-messaging handles. She stands and stalks from the breakfast room, and Manfred's breath catches at a flash of ankle through the slit in her skirt, which is long enough to comply with workplace sexual harassment codes back home. Her presence conjures up memories of her tethered passion, the red afterglow of a sound thrashing. She's trying to drag him into her orbit again, he thinks dizzily. She knows she can have this effect on him any time she wants: She's got the private keys to his hypothalamus, and sod the metacortex. Three billion years of reproductive determinism have given her twenty-first-century ideology teeth: If she's finally decided to conscript his gametes into the war against impending population crash, he'll find it hard to fight back. The only question: Is it business or pleasure? And does it make any difference, anyway?

A cell phone rang from the end table to my right and Kristen bolted up straight. She put her beer on the coffee table and dove across my lap for her phone, sprawling over me. My eyes flew wide. I’d never been that close to her before. I’d only ever touched her hand. If I pushed her down across my knees, I could spank her ass. She grabbed her phone and whirled off my lap. “It’s Sloan. I’ve been waiting for this call all day.” She put a finger to her lips for me to be quiet, hit the Talk button, and put her on speaker. “Hey, Sloan, what’s up?” “Did you send me a potato?” Kristen covered her mouth with her hand and I had to stifle a snort. “Why? Did you get an anonymous potato in the mail?” “Something is seriously wrong with you,” Sloan said. “Congratulations, he put a ring on it. PotatoParcel.com.” She seemed to be reading a message. “You found a company that mails potatoes with messages on them? Where do you find this stuff?” Kristen’s eyes danced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have the other thing though?” “Yeeeess. The note says to call you before I open it. Why am I afraid?” Kristen giggled. “Open it now. Is Brandon with you?” “Yes, he’s with me. He’s shaking his head.” I could picture his face, that easy smile on his lips. “Okay, I’m opening it. It looks like a paper towel tube. There’s tape on the—AHHHHHH! Are you kidding me, Kristen?! What the hell!” Kristen rolled forward, putting her forehead to my shoulder in laughter. “I’m covered in glitter! You sent me a glitter bomb? Brandon has it all over him! It’s all over the sofa!” Now I was dying. I covered my mouth, trying to keep quiet, and I leaned into Kristen, who was howling, our bodies shaking with laughter. I must not have been quiet enough though. “Wait, who’s with you?” Sloan asked. Kristen wiped at her eyes. “Josh is here.” “Didn’t he have a date tonight? Brandon told me he had a date.” “He did, but he came back over after.” “He came back over?” Her voice changed instantly. “And what are you two doing? Remember what we talked about, Kristen…” Her tone was taunting. Kristen glanced at me. Sloan didn’t seem to realize she was on speaker. Kristen hit the Talk button and pressed the phone to her ear. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you!” She hung up on her and set her phone down on the coffee table, still tittering. “And what did you two talk about?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. I liked that she’d talked about me. Liked it a lot. “Just sexually objectifying you. The usual,” she said, shrugging. “Nothing a hot fireman like you can’t handle.” A hot fireman like you.I did my best to hide my smirk. “So do you do this to Sloan a lot?” I asked. “All the time. I love messing with her. She’s so easily worked up.” She reached for her beer. I chuckled. “How do you sleep at night knowing she’ll be finding glitter in her couch for the next month?” She took a swig of her beer. “With the fan on medium.” My laugh came so hard Stuntman Mike looked up and cocked his head at me. She changed the channel and stopped on HBO. Some show. There was a scene with rose petals down a hallway into a bedroom full of candles. She shook her head at the TV. “See, I just don’t get why that’s romantic. You want flower petals stuck to your ass? And who’s gonna clean all that shit up? Me? Like, thanks for the flower sex, let’s spend the next half an hour sweeping?” “Those candles are a huge fire hazard.” I tipped my beer toward the screen. “Right? And try getting wax out of the carpet. Good luck with that.” I looked at the side of her face. “So what do you think is romantic?” “Common sense,” she answered without thinking about it. “My wedding wouldn’t be romantic. It would be entertaining. You know what I want at my wedding?” she said, looking at me. “I want the priest from The Princess Bride. The mawage guy.

I found myself in this world one day, I don't know when, and until then, from birth I presume, I had lived without feeling. If I asked where I was, everyone deceived me, everyone contradicted everyone else. If I asked them to tell me what to do, everyone lied and told me something different. If I became lost and stopped along the road, everyone was shocked that I did not just continue on to wherever the road led (though no one knew where that was), or did not simply retrace my steps - I, who did not even know whence I came, having only woken up at the crossroads. I realized that I was on a stage and did not know the words that everyone else picked up instantly even though they did not know them either. I saw that though I was dressed as a page they had given me no queen to wait on and blamed me for that. I saw that I had in my hands a message to deliver and when I told them the paper was blank, they laughed at me. I still don't know if they laughed because all such pieces of paper are blank or because all messages are only hypothetical.

Do you remember the Third Insight, that humans are unique in a world of energy in that they can project their energy consciously?” “Yes.” “Do you remember how this is done?” I recalled John’s lessons. “Yes, it is done by appreciating the beauty of an object until enough energy comes into us to feel love. At that point we can send energy back.” “That’s right. And the same principle holds true with people. When we appreciate the shape and demeanor of a person, really focus on them until their shape and features begin to stand out and to have more presence, we can then send them energy, lifting them up. “Of course, the first step is to keep our own energy high, then we can start the flow of energy coming into us, through us, and into the other person. The more we appreciate their wholeness, their inner beauty, the more the energy flows into them, and naturally, the more that flows into us.” She laughed. “It’s really a rather hedonistic thing to do,” she said. “The more we can love and appreciate others, the more energy flows into us. That’s why loving and energizing others is the best possible thing we can do for ourselves.” “I’ve heard that before,” I said. “Father Sanchez says it often.” I looked at Julia closely. I had the feeling I was seeing her deeper personality for the first time. She returned my gaze for an instant, then focused again on the road. “The effect on the individual of this projection of energy is immense,” she said. “Right now, for instance, you’re filling me with energy. I can feel it. What I feel is a greater sense of lightness and clarity as I’m formulating my thoughts to speak. “Because you are giving me more energy than I would have otherwise, I can see what my truth is and more readily give it to you. When I do that, you have a sense of revelation about what I’m saying. This leads you to see my higher self even more fully and so appreciate and focus on it at an even deeper level, which gives me even more energy and greater insight into my truth and the cycle begins over again. Two or more people doing this together can reach incredible highs as they build one another up and have it immediately returned. You must understand, though, that this connection is completely different from a co-dependent relationship. A co-dependent relationship begins this way but soon becomes controlling because the addiction cuts them off from their source and the energy runs out. Real projection of energy has no attachment or intention. Both people are just waiting for the messages.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Christianity was originally called good news. It used to be a happy message that people wanted to be a part of. The original version of the gospel seemed too good to be true. That’s why it spread like wildfire. Heaven as a free gift. Your sinfulness abolished. Effortless union with God. Amazing benefits! Easy, instant soul purge. Let me tell you, if the gospel you’ve heard is not too good to be true, it probably isn’t. The frequency of the gospel always inspires, always brings life and hope. The flavor and sound of the true gospel never puts rule and regulation and heavy trips on you. Never makes you feel you have to live up to any systematic expectations for acceptance. It always encourages, always hopes, always trusts, and always loves.

A ce moment-là, Maxim me regarda enfin. Il me regarda pour la première fois de la soirée et, dans ses yeux, je lus un message d'adieu. C'était comme s'il se penchait au bastingage d'un navire, et que je me tenais en contrebas sur le quai. Il y avait d'autres gens qui touchaient son épaule et qui touchaient la mienne, mais nous ne les remarquions pas. Nous ne nous parlions pas et ne nous hélions pas, car le vent et la distance emportaient le son de nos voix. Mais je vis ses yeux, tout comme lui vit les miens, avant que le navire se détache du quai. Favell, Mme Danvers, le colonel Julyan, Frank avec son bout de papier à la main, tous furent oubliés à cet instant-là. Cet instant-là était le nôtre, inviolé, communion éphémère entre nos deux êtres.

This is the portrait of the future customers—connected yet distracted. A survey by the National Center for Biotechnological Information shows that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. This can be attributed to the massive and overwhelming volume of messages that constantly bombard our connected mobile devices and demand instant attention.

One study estimates that by 2019 the average worker was sending and receiving 126 business emails per day, which works out to about one message every four minutes.2 A software company called RescueTime recently measured this behavior directly using time-tracking software and calculated that its users were checking email or instant messenger tools like Slack once every six minutes on average.3 A

We feel the emotions of the people whom we have helped or hurt, loved and hated, or affected positively or negatively. We feel their emotions very deeply, because this is a powerful learning device, a sort of instant intense feedback about our behavior while we were on earth, in physical bodies. We learn through relationships, and thus it is important that we understand how we have touched others.

[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically re-signed their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

I've found lately that when people message me, perhaps suggesting meeting up, or in a potentially romantic situation, they drop personal pronouns - it's all 'Be in touch?' or 'Wanna meet up?' rather than 'Would you like to meet up with me?' - never implicating themselves, or making firm plans, always suggesting they have somewhere else or better to be. We like to give the impression that things don't mean that much and we're not taking risks.

But, at the end of the day, the problem isn’t money, lies, propaganda, negative ads, dirty tricks, decentralized news, talking points, or trumped up investigations. The problem is that they work on us. And they work because we’re uncritical, uneducated, and uninformed. A smarter electorate would be more skeptical of the lies. In fact, the incendiary tone and hyperbolic rhetoric in the message would instantly lead one to question the content. And

The whole message of the Course is: do not wait. In other words, salvation is offered to you this instant; be vigilant! Watch your mind. Be as attentive as you can this very instant. And the Course does not give specifics, like if this arises, do that. It is all based on sorting out the two thinking systems; the right mind and the wrong mind. That is where healing takes place. It draws attention away from symptoms level, whether it be financial problems, health issues or whatever.

Anywhere in the world, East or West, you can walk up to a stranger and say, “let me show you how to be saved.” And you’ll be understood. You may not be believed or welcomed when you speak those words, but you will be understood. The fact that you’ll be understood should astonish you, but it doesn’t, because you’ve been prepared from childhood by a hundred thousand voices-a million voices- to understand those words yourself. You know instantly what it means to be “saved” and it doesn’t matter in the least whether you believe in the salvation referred to. You also know the methods can be used by everyone and works for everyone. A complex and profound worldview is implicit in salvationist messages. According to this worldview, the human condition is such that everyone is born in an unsaved state and remains unsaved until the requisite ritual or inner action is performed, and all who die in this state either fail to attain eternal happiness with god, or fail to escape the weary cycle of death and rebirth.

Most of the crime-ridden minority neighborhoods in New York City, especially areas like East New York, where many of the characters in Eric Garner’s story grew up, had been artificially created by a series of criminal real estate scams. One of the most infamous had involved a company called the Eastern Service Corporation, which in the sixties ran a huge predatory lending operation all over the city, but particularly in Brooklyn. Scam artists like ESC would first clear white residents out of certain neighborhoods with scare campaigns. They’d slip leaflets through mail slots warning of an incoming black plague, with messages like, “Don’t wait until it’s too late!” Investors would then come in and buy their houses at depressed rates. Once this “blockbusting” technique cleared the properties, a company like ESC would bring in a new set of homeowners, often minorities, and often with bad credit and shaky job profiles. They bribed officials in the FHA to approve mortgages for anyone and everyone. Appraisals would be inflated. Loans would be approved for repairs, but repairs would never be done. The typical target homeowner in the con was a black family moving to New York to escape racism in the South. The family would be shown a house in a place like East New York that in reality was only worth about $15,000. But the appraisal would be faked and a loan would be approved for $17,000. The family would move in and instantly find themselves in a house worth $2,000 less than its purchase price, and maybe with faulty toilets, lighting, heat, and (ironically) broken windows besides. Meanwhile, the government-backed loan created by a lender like Eastern Service by then had been sold off to some sucker on the secondary market: a savings bank, a pension fund, or perhaps to Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage corporation. Before long, the family would default and be foreclosed upon. Investors would swoop in and buy the property at a distressed price one more time. Next, the one-family home would be converted into a three- or four-family rental property, which would of course quickly fall into even greater disrepair. This process created ghettos almost instantly. Racial blockbusting is how East New York went from 90 percent white in 1960 to 80 percent black and Hispanic in 1966.

Every instant of every day we are bombarded by information. In fact, all complex organisms, especially those with brains, suffer from information overload. Our eyes and ears receive lights and sounds (respectively) across the spectrums of visible and audible wavelengths; our skin and the rest of our innervated parts send their own messages of sore muscles or cold feet. All told, every second, our senses transmit an estimated 11 million bits of information to our poor brains, as if a giant fiber-optic cable were plugged directly into them, firing information at full bore. In light of this, it is rather incredible that we are even capable of boredom.

More than anything, we have lost the cultural customs and traditions that bring extended families together, linking adults and children in caring relationships, that give the adult friends of parents a place in their children's lives. It is the role of culture to cultivate connections between the dependent and the dependable and to prevent attachment voids from occurring. Among the many reasons that culture is failing us, two bear mentioning. The first is the jarringly rapid rate of change in twentieth-century industrial societies. It requires time to develop customs and traditions that serve attachment needs, hundreds of years to create a working culture that serves a particular social and geographical environment. Our society has been changing much too rapidly for culture to evolve accordingly. There is now more change in a decade than previously in a century. When circumstances change more quickly than our culture can adapt to, customs and traditions disintegrate. It is not surprising that today's culture is failing its traditional function of supporting adult-child attachments. Part of the rapid change has been the electronic transmission of culture, allowing commercially blended and packaged culture to be broadcast into our homes and into the very minds of our children. Instant culture has replaced what used to be passed down through custom and tradition and from one generation to another. “Almost every day I find myself fighting the bubble-gum culture my children are exposed to,” said a frustrated father interviewed for this book. Not only is the content often alien to the culture of the parents but the process of transmission has taken grandparents out of the loop and made them seem sadly out of touch. Games, too, have become electronic. They have always been an instrument of culture to connect people to people, especially children to adults. Now games have become a solitary activity, watched in parallel on television sports-casts or engaged in in isolation on the computer. The most significant change in recent times has been the technology of communication — first the phone and then the Internet through e-mail and instant messaging. We are enamored of communication technology without being aware that one of its primary functions is to facilitate attachments. We have unwittingly put it into the hands of children who, of course, are using it to connect with their peers. Because of their strong attachment needs, the contact is highly addictive, often becoming a major preoccupation. Our culture has not been able to evolve the customs and traditions to contain this development, and so again we are all left to our own devices. This wonderful new technology would be a powerfully positive instrument if used to facilitate child-adult connections — as it does, for example, when it enables easy communication between students living away from home, and their parents. Left unchecked, it promotes peer orientation.

Michelangelo, who had already spent much time studying Roman architecture in the ruins, proposed a revolutionary “flying bow bridge” scaffold. It was based on the principles of the Roman arch, whose weight presses out against the sides it is spanning. This ingenious structure could be inserted in just a few small holes made in the side walls, since all its pressure would flow there, and none down to the floor. It would also allow Michelangelo to fresco the ceiling a whole strip at a time, moving to the next strip as soon as one was finished, and thus progressing across the length of the chapel. He got approval to construct it, and it was an instant success, allowing the papal court to have its regular processions under it without any obstruction.

Lord, with love and mercy you protect us from the dangers of the world. When I spend too much time looking into my smartphone, paying little attention to the beautiful faces of the people around me, I know I am in danger of forgetting who I am. When I text and tweet all sorts of messages to people I hardly know, making no time to have a meaningful conversation with a stranger or even a loved one, I know I am in danger of losing sight of God in others. When I indulge myself by buying things instantly and mindlessly, I am in danger of becoming indifferent to the needs of others. Lord, save me from my selfish ways and addictive attachment to the things of this world. Fill me with love, mercy and inner peace, that I may long to truly be present to those who cry for help. Amen. Read

A light was flashing on the desktop display when Kira entered. Another message. With a sense of trepidation, she pulled it up. I am the spark in the center of the void. I am the wider shin scream that cleaves the night. I am your eschatological nightmare. I am the one and the word and the fullness of the light. Would you like to play a game? Y/N -Gregorovitch As a rule, ship minds tended to be eccentric, and the larger they were, the more eccentricities they displayed. Gregorovich was on the outer tail of that bell curve, though. She couldn’t tell if it was just his personality or if his behavior was the result of too much isolation. Surely, Falconi isn’t crazy enough to fly around with an unstable ship mind… Right? Either way, best to play it safe: No. -Kira An instant later, a reply popped up: ☹️ -Gregorovich

A light was flashing on the desktop display when Kira entered. Another message. With a sense of trepidation, she pulled it up. I am the spark in the center of the void. I am the widdershin scream that cleaves the night. I am your eschatological nightmare. I am the one and the word and the fullness of the light. Would you like to play a game? Y/N -Gregorovitch As a rule, ship minds tended to be eccentric, and the larger they were, the more eccentricities they displayed. Gregorovich was on the outer tail of that bell curve, though. She couldn’t tell if it was just his personality or if his behavior was the result of too much isolation. Surely, Falconi isn’t crazy enough to fly around with an unstable ship mind… Right? Either way, best to play it safe: No. -Kira An instant later, a reply popped up: ☹️ -Gregorovich

We are invited to bless the Lord; we are commanded to bless the Lord. And then someone says, “But I don’t feel like it. And I won’t be a hypocrite. I can’t bless God if I don’t feel like blessing God. It wouldn’t be honest.” The biblical response to that is “Lift up your praising hands to the Holy Place, and bless GOD!” You can lift up your hands regardless of how you feel; it is a simple motor movement. You may not be able to command your heart, but you can command your arms. Lift your arms in blessing; just maybe your heart will get the message and be lifted up also in praise. We are psychosomatic beings; body and spirit are intricately interrelated. Go through the motions of blessing God and your spirit will pick up the cue and follow along. “For why do men lift their hands when they pray? Is it not that their hearts may be raised at the same time to God?

Generation Y is said to have a sense of entitlement. Many employers complain of the demands their entry-level employees often make. But I, as one observer, do not believe it is a sense of entitlement. This generation wants to work hard and is willing to work hard. What we perceive as entitlement is, in fact, impatience. An impatience driven by two things: First is a gross misunderstanding that things like success, money or happiness, come instantly. Even though our messages and books arrive the same day we want them, our careers and fulfillment do not. The second element is more unsettling. It is a result of a horrible short circuit to their internal reward systems. These Gen Yers have grown up in a world in which huge scale is normal, money is valued over service and technology is used to manage relationships. The economic systems in which they have grown up, ones that prioritize numbers over people, are blindly accepted, as if that’s the way it has always been.

When ad legend Lee Clow took the imagery from George Orwell’s 1984 to create the most iconic TV commercial of all time, almost no one watching Apple’s Super Bowl ad understood all of the references. (They’d read the book in high school, but if you want to impact a hundred million beer-drinking sports fans, an assigned high school book is not a good place to start.) But the media-savvy talking heads instantly understood, and they took the bait and talked about it. And the nerds did, and they eagerly lined up to go first. The lesson: Apple’s ad team only needed a million people to care. And so they sent a signal to them, and ignored everyone else. It took thirty years for the idea to spread from the million to everyone, thirty years to build hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap. But it happened because of the brilliant use of semiotics, not technology. At every turn, Apple sent signals, and they sent them in just edgy enough words, fonts, and design that the right people heard the message.

Ronan was waiting for her beyond the estate’s guarded gate. From the looks of things, he had been waiting for some time. His horse was nosing brown grass as Ronan sat on a nearby boulder, throwing pebbles at the general’s stone wall. When he saw Kestrel ride through the gate on Javelin, he flung his handful of rocks to the path. He remained sitting, elbows propped on his bended knees as he stared at her, his face pinched and white. He said, “I have half a mind to tear you down from your horse.” “You got my message, then.” “And rode instantly here, where guards told me that the lady of the house gave strict orders not to let anyone--even me--inside.” His eyes raked over her, taking in the black fighting clothes. “I didn’t believe it. I still don’t believe it. After you vanished last night, everyone at the party was talking about the challenge, yet I was sure it was just a rumor started by Irex because of whatever has caused that ill will between you. Kestrel, how could you expose yourself like this?” Her hands tightened around the reins. She thought about how, when she let go, her palms would smell like leather and sweat. She concentrated on imagining that scent. This was easier than paying heed to the sick feeling swimming inside her. She knew what Ronan was going to say. She tried to deflect it. She tried to talk about the duel itself, which seemed straightforward next to her reasons for it. Lightly, she said, “No one seems to believe that I might win.” Ronan vaulted off the rock and strode toward her horse. He seized the saddle’s pommel. “You’ll get what you want. But what do you want? Whom do you want?” “Ronan.” Kestrel swallowed. “Think about what you are saying.” “Only what everyone has been saying. That Lady Kestrel has a lover.” “That’s not true.” “He is her shadow, skulking behind her, listening, watching.” “He isn’t,” Kestrel tried to say, and was horrified to hear her voice falter. She felt a stinging in her eyes. “He has a girl.” “Why do you even know that? So what if he does? It doesn’t matter. Not in the eyes of society.” Kestrel’s feelings were like banners in a storm, snapping at their ties. They tangled and wound around her. She focused, and when she spoke, she made her words disdainful. “He is a slave.” “He is a man, as I am.” Kestrel slipped from her saddle, stood face-to-face with Ronan, and lied. “He is nothing to me.

Eeh, but whah’s the use, the fuckin’ use?” Dixon resting his head briefly tho’ audibly upon the Table. “It’s over . . . ? Nought left to us but Paper-work . . . ?” Their task has shifted, from Direct Traverse upon the Line to Pen-and-Paper Representation of it, in the sober Day-Light of Philadelphia, strain’d thro’ twelve-by-twelve Sash-work, as in the spectreless Light of the Candles in their Rooms, suffering but the fretful Shadows of Dixon at the Drafting Table, and Mason, seconding now, reading from Entries in the Field-Book, as Dixon once minded the Clock for him. Finally, one day, Dixon announces, “Well,— won’t thee at least have a look . . . ?” Mason eagerly rushes to inspect the Map of the Boundaries, almost instantly boggling, for there bold as a Pirate’s Flag is an eight-pointed Star, surmounted by a Fleur-de-Lis. “What’s this thing here? pointing North? Wasn’t the l’Grand flying one of these? Doth it not signify, England’s most inveterately hated Rival? France?” “All respect, Mason,— among Brother and Sister Needle-folk in ev’ry Land, ’tis known universally, as the ‘Flower-de-Luce.’ A Magnetickal Term.” “ ‘Flower of Light’? Light, hey? Sounds Encyclopedistick to me, perhaps even Masonick,” says Mason. A Surveyor’s North-Point, Dixon explains, by long Tradition, is his own, which he may draw, and embellish, in any way he pleases, so it point where North be. It becomes his Hall-Mark, personal as a Silver-Smith’s, representative of his Honesty and Good Name. Further, as with many Glyphs, ’tis important ever to keep Faith with it,— for an often enormous Investment of Faith, and Will, lies condens’d within, giving it a Potency in the World that the Agents of Reason care little for. “ ’Tis an ancient Shape, said to go back to the earliest Italian Wind-Roses,” says Dixon, “— originally, at the North, they put the Letter T, for Tramontane, the Wind that blew down from the Alps . . . ? Over the years, as ever befalls such frail Bric-a-Brack as Letters of the Alphabet, it was beaten into a kind of Spear-head,— tho’ the kinder-hearted will aver it a Lily, and clash thy Face, do tha deny it.” “Yet some, finding it upon a new Map, might also take it as a reassertion of French claims to Ohio,” Mason pretends to remind him. “Aye, tha’ve found me out, I confess,— ’tis a secret Message to all who conspire in the Dark! Eeh! The old Jesuit Canard again!

That is the work of my life. To teach people to look into the words of God until they see the heart of everything. Imagine it: the Romans and the Greeks and the Syrians and the Babylonians and the Persians, imagine if we all learned, together, to love one another.” Iehuda allowed his mind to follow, across the map of the wide world, across the empires and kingdoms that fought and tried to rule and subdue each other. And he imagined what might happen if these words traveled from mouth to mouth, from mind to mind, from one city to the next to the next, if this simple message—love your enemy—were the accepted creed of all the world. He did not see how it could happen. “If one man went against it,” he said at last, “the whole thing would be broken. In a world like that, a world of peace, a world of soft people with no knives, one man could destroy everything.” “Then we cannot rest until every man has heard it. Think,” said Yehoshuah softly, “what shall we use up our lives for? More war, like our fathers and their fathers, more of that? Or shall we use ourselves for a better purpose? Is this not worth your life?” And Iehuda saw it, just for a moment. In this instant, the whole world was new to him.

As much depended on the priest's willingness to listen to his imploring cry, a leprous Israelite would often go up to the spot whence he could call on him desponding or fearful. And the priest, however willing, might be busy so as not to be able to come at once. As, with most wistful eye, the man gazes on the living, cheerful camp, he sees one and another meet the priest and pour some message or entreaty into his ear—so that the priest is detained, and hurried away to this and that part of the camp, while the trembling, weary leper waits at the gate. In this we see that our high priest hath the pre-eminence— never too busy—never unwilling—never unable. "He waits that he may be gracious." (Isa. 30.18). Neither the business nor the bliss of heaven will detain him from a wretched soul. He who in the days of his flesh forgot to eat, and even ceased to feel faintness, when a soul stood before him in his leprosy, has nothing now to keep him from instant compassion. He who on the cross, under the dark shade of the approaching cloud of wrath and of death, heard the heaving of his mother's bosom and the rush of anguish through her heart—has nothing now to hinder him freely to direct his ever ready compassions towards the coming leper. Even as this is true in regard to those already come, so also is it to the coming.

Layla skimmed the legal opinion. The one-page document stated in no uncertain terms that Sam had the full legal right of occupancy to the office and that her claims had no merit. John had signed and dated it at the bottom. Instantly, she understood why Royce had let her read it. "This is dated the day after Sam and I met." "Fancy that." Her heart skipped a beat. "He always knew I had no right to be here. He could have kicked me out at any time." "If it had been me, you and your purple couch would have been out on the street on day one, but then I'm coldhearted that way." Layla sat heavily on the nearest chair. "Then why did he play the game?" Royce shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want you to marry a douche." "Or someone like Ranjeet," she said, considering. "He was trying to protect me. But if I didn't find someone, would he have honored the rules and walked away?" "He does have that character flaw." Royce leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "That's why we made a good team. I have no scruples and he has too many." "Would you give him a message from me?" An idea started to form in her mind. "I deleted his contact details from my phone." "Do I look like a receptionist?" "You look like a guy who pretends not to care, but whose colorful clothes hide a warm heart." His lips curved. "What does that make me in this tragedy? The comic relief?" "It's not a tragedy." Layla wrote a quick note on the back of the legal opinion. "It's a romance. Except in this version, Buttercup saves herself.

Swan had used them to send Sophie messages. He fished out the tiny velvet pouch and Sophie caught herself clutching her allergy remedy necklace. She still kept the silver moonlark pin that Calla had given her attached to the cord—a reminder of the friend she’d lost, and a symbol of the role she needed to figure out how to play. “Looks like we’re good,” Sandor said, handing her the small boobrie pin—a strange black bird with bright yellow tail feathers. “Can’t imagine that means anything important.” Sophie couldn’t either. Especially since the Black Swan had been annoyingly silent. No notes. No clues. No answers during their brief meetings. Apparently they were “regrouping.” And it was taking forever. At least the Council was doing something—setting up goblin patrols and trying to arrange an ogre Peace Summit. The Black Swan should at least be . . . Actually, Sophie didn’t know what they should be doing. That was the problem with having her friend join the enemy. “There you are!” a familiar voice said behind her. “I was starting to think you’d ditched us.” The deep, crisp accent was instantly recognizable. And yet, the teasing words made Sophie wish she’d turn and find a different boy. Fitz looked as cute as ever in his red Level Five uniform, but his perfect smile didn’t reach his trademark teal eyes. The recent revelations had been a huge blow for all of her friends, but Fitz had taken it the hardest. Both his brother and his best friend had run off with the Neverseen. Alvar’s betrayal had made Fitz wary—made him doubt every memory. But Keefe’s?

For one, mad instant, she thought he planned to kiss her, but instead, he ducked under her chin and nuzzled against her shoulder at the site where her pulse pounded so furiously. A shiver of excitement tore through her, and she swallowed a baffled squeal that could have been either delight or indignation. His lips were heated and soft, and he tenderly kissed against her nape then, to her astonishment, he licked across her skin. She jumped then twirled away, only to end up facing the mirror, with him behind her, and she assessed the two of them, evaluating the differences: his tall to her short, bronzed to fair, brawn to lean. Boldly, he settled his hands on her hips and snuggled her backside against him, and she was assailed by an array of unique anatomical impressions. As though she'd been searching for this man all her life and had finally found him, she ignited with sensation, every pore alert and animated, and her nipples tightened painfully, poking at the towel. The knave immediately noticed how they'd peaked. "I can't wait to have my mouth on you." The declaration kindled cryptic messages, and restlessly, she scrambled to flee---from the unusual fleshly perturbation and from him---but because of their positions, he merely nestled her close and flexed against her. His groin stroked across her bottom in a manner she'd never presumed a man might attempt with a woman. There was a solid ridge along his abdomen that dug into her buttocks, and her traitorous body reacted by squirming to get nearer to it. He appreciated her participation and gripped her firmly, flexing again.

#14: SNAP OUT OF IT! One of the primary reasons for our unhappiness and discomfort is our attack thoughts. All day long, without even realizing it, we’re attacking ourselves and others. Attacks don’t have to be massive to inflict real damage—each small attack, from a negative thought about ourselves to a cold comment toward another person, adds up. Attack breeds attack. Attacking others in our mind or in our actions directly harms us. Our attack thoughts and actions are particularly dangerous because they can be so subtle and insidious that we might not realize how much they’ve taken over our minds. But as fiendish as they are, they’re surprisingly easy to let go of. All it takes is an ordinary rubber band. One day—today—wear a rubber band on your wrist. Whenever you notice an attack thought arise, flick your rubber band against your arm. Does this seem jarring? Good! It’s exactly what you need to literally snap yourself out of your unconscious attack thoughts. Once you’ve snapped out of the attack cycle, it’s time to clean up your thoughts. Use this exercise based on lesson 23 of A Course in Miracles: “I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.” The moment you snap the rubber band, witness your attack thought and say to yourself: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about________. You can fill in the blank with whatever you’re attacking, whether it’s broad or very specific. Practice this exercise throughout the day. Notice your attack thought, snap out of it with your rubber band, and then use the Course message as a reminder that you can think your way out in an instant. Miracle

Just how important a close moment-to-moment connection between mother and infant can be was illustrated by a cleverly designed study, known as the “double TV experiment,” in which infants and mothers interacted via a closed-circuit television system. In separate rooms, infant and mother observed each other and, on “live feed,” communicated by means of the universal infant-mother language: gestures, sounds, smiles, facial expressions. The infants were happy during this phase of the experiment. “When the infants were unknowingly replayed the ‘happy responses’ from the mother recorded from the prior minute,” writes the UCLA child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, “they still became as profoundly distressed as infants do in the classic ‘flat face’ experiments in which mothers-in-person gave no facial emotional response to their infant’s bid for attunement.” Why were the infants distressed despite the sight of their mothers’ happy and friendly faces? Because happy and friendly are not enough. What they needed were signals that the mother is aligned with, responsive to and participating in their mental states from moment to moment. All that was lacking in the instant video replay, during which infants saw their mother’s face unresponsive to the messages they, the infants, were sending out. This sharing of emotional spaces is called attunement. Emotional stress on the mother interferes with infant brain development because it tends to interfere with the attunement contact. Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional selfregulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain herself in a relatively nonstressed, non-anxious, nondepressed state of mind. Its clearest expression is the rapturous mutual gaze infant and mother direct at each other, locked in a private and special emotional realm, from which, at that moment, the rest of the world is as completely excluded as from the womb. Attunement does not mean mechanically imitating the infant. It cannot be simulated, even with the best of goodwill. As we all know, there are differences between a real smile and a staged smile. The muscles of smiling are exactly the same in each case, but the signals that set the smile muscles to work do not come from the same centers in the brain. As a consequence, those muscles respond differently to the signals, depending on their origin. This is why only very good actors can mimic a genuine, heartfelt smile. The attunement process is far too subtle to be maintained by a simple act of will on the part of the parent. Infants, particularly sensitive infants, intuit the difference between a parent’s real psychological states and her attempts to soothe and protect the infant by means of feigned emotional expressions. A loving parent who is feeling depressed or anxious may try to hide that fact from the infant, but the effort is futile. In fact, it is much easier to fool an adult with forced emotion than a baby. The emotional sensory radar of the infant has not yet been scrambled. It reads feelings clearly. They cannot be hidden from the infant behind a screen of words, or camouflaged by well-meant but forced gestures. It is unfortunate but true that we grow far more stupid than that by the time we reach adulthood.

He had brought her to this house, “and,” continued the priest, while genuine tears rose to his eyes, “here, too, he shelters me, his old tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of his father’s family. To our sustenance, and to other charities, I know he devotes three-parts of his income, keeping only the fourth to provide himself with bread and the most modest accommodations. By this arrangement he has rendered it impossible to himself ever to marry: he has given himself to God and to his angel-bride as much as if he were a priest, like me.” The father had wiped away his tears before he uttered these last words, and in pronouncing them, he for one instant raised his eyes to mine. I caught this glance, despite its veiled character; the momentary gleam shot a meaning which struck me. These Romanists are strange beings. Such a one among them—whom you know no more than the last Inca of Peru, or the first Emperor of China—knows you and all your concerns; and has his reasons for saying to you so and so, when you simply thought the communication sprang impromptu from the instant’s impulse: his plan in bringing it about that you shall come on such a day, to such a place, under such and such circumstances, when the whole arrangement seems to your crude apprehension the ordinance of chance, or the sequel of exigency. Madame Beck’s suddenly-recollected message and present, my artless embassy to the Place of the Magi, the old priest accidentally descending the steps and crossing the square, his interposition on my behalf with the bonne who would have sent me away, his reappearance on the staircase, my introduction to this room, the portrait, the narrative so affably volunteered—all these little incidents, taken as they fell out, seemed each independent of its successor; a handful of loose beads: but threaded through by that quick-shot and crafty glance of a Jesuit-eye, they dropped pendent in a long string, like that rosary on the prie-dieu. Where lay the link of junction, where the little clasp of this monastic necklace? I saw or felt union, but could not yet find the spot, or detect the means of connection.

The message. This was the leap of faith Vittoria was still struggling to accept. Had God actually communicated with the camerlengo? Vittoria’s gut said no, and yet hers was the science of entanglement physics—the study of interconnectedness. She witnessed miraculous communications every day—twin sea-turtle eggs separated and placed in labs thousands of miles apart hatching at the same instant . . . acres of jellyfish pulsating in perfect rhythm as if of a single mind. There are invisible lines of communication everywhere, she thought. But between God and man? Vittoria wished her father were there to give her faith. He had once explained divine communication to her in scientific terms, and he had made her believe. She still remembered the day she had seen him praying and asked him, “Father, why do you bother to pray? God cannot answer you.” Leonardo Vetra had looked up from his meditations with a paternal smile. “My daughter the skeptic. So you don’t believe God speaks to man? Let me put it in your language.” He took a model of the human brain down from a shelf and set it in front of her. “As you probably know, Vittoria, human beings normally use a very small percentage of their brain power. However, if you put them in emotionally charged situations—like physical trauma, extreme joy or fear, deep meditation—all of a sudden their neurons start firing like crazy, resulting in massively enhanced mental clarity.” “So what?” Vittoria said. “Just because you think clearly doesn’t mean you talk to God.” “Aha!” Vetra exclaimed. “And yet remarkable solutions to seemingly impossible problems often occur in these moments of clarity. It’s what gurus call higher consciousness. Biologists call it altered states. Psychologists call it super-sentience.” He paused. “And Christians call it answered prayer.” Smiling broadly, he added, “Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.” Now, as she dashed down, headlong into the dark, Vittoria sensed perhaps her father was right. Was it so hard to believe that the camerlengo’s trauma had put his mind in a state where he had simply “realized” the antimatter’s location? Each of us is a God, Buddha had said. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.

Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, "My fellow citizens, as the President of the United States of America, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we're all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us—and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!" That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet and shouted at Lee Sarason, "This is what I've been planning to do now for six years! I bet this is what Lincoln used to do! Now let 'em assassinate me!" His third, in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers, to Buzz, and to High Marshal Sarason; and that rifles, bayonets, automatic pistols, and machine guns be instantly issued to them by government arsenals. That was at 4 P.M. Since 3 P.M., all over the country, bands of M.M.'s had been sitting gloating over pistols and guns, twitching with desire to seize them. Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress (in session since January fourth, the third having been a Sunday), demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform—that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do. By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 P.M., on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the "present crisis," and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men, on direct orders from the President. The Congressmen who were hotheaded enough to resist were cynically charged with "inciting to riot"; they who went quietly were not charged at all. It was blandly explained to the agitated press by Lee Sarason that these latter quiet lads had been so threatened by "irresponsible and seditious elements" that they were merely being safeguarded. Sarason did not use the phrase "protective arrest," which might have suggested things.

Sometimes you spend hours contemplating a tree, describing it, dissecting it: the roots, the trunk, the branches, the leaves, every leaf, every rib of every leaf, every branch again, and the unending play of the indifferent shapes that your eager gaze solicits or conjures up: a face, a town, a maze or a path, coats of arms and cavalcades. As your perception gets sharper, more patient and more versatile, the tree shatters and then reforms, a thousand shades of green, a thousand leaves, identical and yet all different. You think that you could spend your whole life in front of a tree, never exhausting it and never understanding it, because there is nothing for you to understand, just something to look at: when all is said and done, all you can say about this tree is that it is a tree; all this tree can say to you is that it is a tree, a root, then a trunk, then branches, then leaves. You can't expect to extract any other truth from it. The tree has no moral to offer you, no message to impart. Its strength, its majesty, its life - if you still hope to draw some meaning, some courage, from these outworn metaphors - are only ever images, neat illustrations, as useless as the tranquillity of the fields, as the still waters which, reputedly, run deep, or the courage of the little paths that don't climb very high but do so all alone, or the smiling hillsides upon which bunches of grapes ripen in the sun. And that is why the tree fascinates you, or astounds you, or calms you: because of the unsuspected and unimpeachable obviousness of the bark, the branches and the leaves. That is why, perhaps, you never go walking with a dog, because the dog looks at you, pleads with you, speaks to you. Its eyes brimming with tears of gratitude, its servile expression, its canine frolicking, constantly force you to confer on it the ignoble status of pet. You cannot remain neutral in the company of a dog any more than in the company of a man. But you will never hold a conversation with a tree. You cannot live in the company of a dog, because the dog is constantly calling upon you to make it live, to feed it, to stroke it, to be a man for it, to be its master, to be the god roaring the name - dog - that will make it instantly grovel on the ground. But the tree asks nothing of you. You can be the God of the dogs, God of the cats, God of the poor, all you need is a leash, a little tenderness, a little money, but you will never be master of the tree. All you can ever wish for is to become a tree in your turn.

The little sneak caught me one day, coming around the car when I was outside puffing away. “I was wondering what you were doing,” he said, spying me squatting behind the truck. He’d nailed me, but the look on his face made it seem as if our roles were reversed--he looked as if he were in shock, as if I’d just slapped him. When I went back inside, I found he’d taped signs to the walls: DON’T SMOKE! I laugh about it now, but not then. “Why are you so devastated that I’m smoking?” I asked when I found him. “Because. I already lost one parent. I don’t want to lose you, too.” “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m going to stop.” But of course it wasn’t nearly that easy. As horrible as I felt, I was deep into the habit. I would quit for a while--a day, an hour--then somehow a cigarette would find its way to my mouth. I continued to rationalize, continued to struggle--and Bubba continued to call me out. “I’m trying,” I told him. “I’m trying.” He’d come up and give me a hug--and smell the cigarette still on me. “Did you have one?” “Yes.” “Hmmmm…” Instant tears. “I’m trying, I’m trying.” One day I went out to the patio to take what turned out to be a super stressful call--and I started to smoke, almost unconsciously. In the middle of the conversation, Bubba came out and threw a paper airplane at me. What!!! My son scrambled back inside. I was furious, but the call was too important to cut short. Wait until I get you, mister! Just as I hung up, Bubba appeared at the window and pointed at the airplane at my feet. I opened it up and read his message. YOU SUCK AT TRYING. That hurt, not least of all because it was true. I tried harder. I switched to organic cigarettes--those can’t be that bad for you, right? They’re organic! Turns out organic tars and nicotine are still tars and nicotine. I quit for day, then started again. I resolved not to go to the store so I couldn’t be tempted…then found myself hunting through my jacket for an old packet, rifling around in my hiding places for a cigarette I’d forgotten. Was that a half-smoked butt I saw on the ground? Finally, I remembered one of the sayings SEALs live by: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Not exactly the conventional advice one uses to stop smoking, but the conventional advice had failed me. For some reason I took the words and tried applying them to my heartbeat, slowing my pulse as it ramped up. It was a kind of mini-meditation, meant to take the place of a cigarette. The mantra helped me take control. I focused on the thoughts that were making me panic, or at least getting my heart racing. Slow is smooth. Slow down, heart. Slow down--and don’t smoke. I worked on my breathing. Slow is smooth. Slow is smooth. And don’t smoke.

IT WAS ALMOST December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen it both times. Squinting toward the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the opposite direction, the same plane. At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community. Occasionally, when supplies were delivered by cargo planes to the landing field across the river, the children rode their bicycles to the riverbank and watched, intrigued, the unloading and then the takeoff directed to the west, always away from the community. But the aircraft a year ago had been different. It was not a squat, fat-bellied cargo plane but a needle-nosed single-pilot jet. Jonas, looking around anxiously, had seen others—adults as well as children—stop what they were doing and wait, confused, for an explanation of the frightening event. Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there. IMMEDIATELY, the rasping voice through the speakers had said. LEAVE YOUR BICYCLES WHERE THEY ARE. Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his family’s dwelling. He had run indoors and stayed there, alone. His parents were both at work, and his little sister, Lily, was at the Childcare Center where she spent her after-school hours. Looking through the front window, he had seen no people: none of the busy afternoon crew of Street Cleaners, Landscape Workers, and Food Delivery people who usually populated the community at that time of day. He saw only the abandoned bikes here and there on their sides; an upturned wheel on one was still revolving slowly. He had been frightened then. The sense of his own community silent, waiting, had made his stomach churn. He had trembled. But it had been nothing. Within minutes the speakers had crackled again, and the voice, reassuring now and less urgent, had explained that a Pilot-in-Training had misread his navigational instructions and made a wrong turn. Desperately the Pilot had been trying to make his way back before his error was noticed. NEEDLESS TO SAY, HE WILL BE RELEASED, the voice had said, followed by silence. There was an ironic tone to that final message, as if the Speaker found it amusing; and Jonas had smiled a little, though he knew what a grim statement it had been. For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

The Brain Song Reviews (2025) Official Website and Try Today (hfu) The Brain Song Reviews (2025) Official Website and Try Today (hfu) November 29, 2025 Mikaela Cougar's "The Brain Song": Deconstructing an Alt-Rock Anthem CLICK HERE TO Visit The Official Website CLICK HERE TO Visit The Official Website CLICK HERE TO Visit The Official Website In a music scene saturated with polished pop and predictable beats, Mikaela Cougar’s late 2024 release, "The Brain Song," offers something different: a raw, unfiltered sonic experience. Critics have described it as a "gritty, grungy track," reminiscent of Kurt Cobain's angst and Sheryl Crow's honest storytelling. This isn't designed for instant gratification; it's a 2-minute, 31-second journey into the messy reality of the modern mind. This review delves into the cultural, emotional, and musical layers of Cougar's track. It explores the song as a rebellious statement, a response to the pressures and expectations bombarding our psyches. Unlike other "brain songs" promising order, Cougar's embraces the beautiful chaos of genuine human thought. The Sonic Landscape: Grunge, Grit, and a Feminine Perspective Cougar describes herself as "the girl all those 90's rock boy bands were singing about, and these are my response songs." This provides a crucial framework for understanding the track. "The Brain Song" isn't just influenced by 90s alt-rock; it actively continues the themes of alienation, introspection, and resistance to oversimplification. Why Grunge? Distortion as Emotional Expression The "grungy" and "raw" production is intentional. Instead of the polished sound of modern music, this track uses distortion and a minimalist soundscape to reflect the overwhelmed, fragmented state of mind. The thick, abrasive guitar tone embodies mental friction – the anxiety, inner conflict, and constant noise that disrupts our peace. The raw production becomes the song's initial message: This isn't clean or easy. This is what honest thinking sounds like. The Vocals: Confession and Confrontation Cougar's vocal performance is a standout. Channeling the power of Alanis Morrissette and the theatricality of P!NK, she delivers a masterclass in controlled intensity. * **The Verse:** Expect a lower, conversational tone conveying brooding paranoia – the sound of quiet desperation as someone analyzes their flaws and the world's constraints. * **The Chorus:** The song likely explodes into a cathartic shout, unleashing the track's "gritty" core. This isn't a plea for help but a confrontation. It's the brain, tired of its own loops and societal pressures, finally screaming its truth. This dynamic between the quiet verse and explosive chorus mirrors the inner struggle – the sudden bursts of clarity or anger that cut through mental fog. Lyrical Themes: What the Brain Sings About Without readily available lyrics, we can infer the song's themes based on its title, genre, and Cougar's artistic vision. "The Brain Song" likely explores these alt-rock conflicts: Internal Censorship and Self-Doubt: The brain is often our harshest critic. The song likely confronts this inner voice, challenging the self-criticism or refusing to let negative thoughts win. It's the soundtrack to differentiating between your true self and the noise that tries to silence you. * **Possible Lyric:** “You built a cage with all the things you thought you knew / But the noise I hear is just the engine shaking loose.” The Overload of Modern Information: This song contrasts sharply with neuro-acousti

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

1 It was early December. The streets of Milan glistened with Christmas decorations, with people coming and going carefree, carrying elegant shopping bags. It was past eight, and several minutes earlier I had closed behind me the door of Passerella, the modelling agency I ran. I had let my assistant, Giovanni, file the photos of the new faces we had initially chosen for Dante’s summer collection. He was an up-and-coming designer. The minute I walked down Monte Napoleone, one of the city’s most commercial streets, the chilly air forced me to wrap up well in my brand new light green coat. An original piece of cashmere, the five letters embossed on its lapel making it even more precious in that cold weather. My fingers contentedly groped for the word “Prada” before I stuck my hand into its warm pocket, while clutching my favourite handbag tight. A huge red ostrich Hermes where you could find cosmetics, scarves, and accessories, which I could use throughout the day, giving a different twist to my appearance. I wanted to walk a little bit to let off steam. My job may have been pleasant as it had to do with the world’s most beautiful creatures, men and women, but it wasn’t without its tensions. Models went to and fro, trade representatives looking for new faces, endless castings, phone calls, text messages, tailors, photographers, reports from my secretary and assistants—a rowdy disorder! I had already left the building where my job was, and I was going past another two entrances of nearby premises, when my leg caught on something. I instantly thought of my brand new Manolo Blahnik shoes. I’d only put them on for the second time, and they were now falling victim to the rough surface of a cardboard box, where a homeless man slept, at the entrance of a building. My eyes sparked as I checked if my high heels were damaged. On the face of it, they were intact. But that wasn’t enough for me. I found a lighter, and tried to check their red leather in the dim light. Why should the same thing happen over and over again every time I buy new shoes? I wondered and walked on, cursing. Why had that bloke chosen that specific spot to sleep, and why had I headed for his damn cardboard box! As I held my lighter, my angry gaze fell on the man who was covered with an impermeable piece of nylon, and carried on sleeping. He looked so vulnerable out in the cold that I didn’t dare rouse him from his sleep. After all, how could I hold him responsible in this state? I quickened my gait. Bella was waiting for me to start our night out with a drink and supper at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, the imposing arcade with a dome made of glass, its ambience warm and romantic. Bella’s office was nearby, and that meeting place was convenient for both of us. That’s where we made up our minds about how to spend the night.I walked several metres down the road, but something made me stop short. I wanted to have a second look at that man. I retraced my steps. He was a young man who, despite his state, seemed so out of place. His unkempt hair and unshaven face didn’t let me see anything else but his profile, which reminded of an ancient Greek statue, with pronounced cheekbones and a chiselled nose. This second time, he must have sensed me over him. The man’s body budged, and he eyed me without making me out, dazzled by the lighter flame. As soon as I realised what I had done, I took to my heels. What had made me go back? Maybe, the sense of guilt I felt inside my warm Prada coat, maybe, the compassion I had to show as Christmas was just around the corner. All I knew was that a small bell jingled within, and I obeyed it. I walked faster, as if to escape from every thought. As I left, I stuck my hand in my bag, and got hold of my mobile. My secretary’s voice on the other end of the line sounded heavy and imposing. Giovanni wasn’t the embodiment of “macho” man, but he had all it takes to be the perfect male. Having chosen to quit modelling, he still looked gorgeous at the age of

Research shows that 65% of our thoughts are negative and staying positive in today's world is almost a full-time job. You just have to turn on the TV, or open a news app on your smartphone, and you are confronted with fear-inducing messages instantly. We hear that the economy is bad, people are killed and that companies go bust. The general tone of the news is negative, which I understand.

If you send and answer e-mails at all hours, if you schedule and attend meetings constantly, if you weigh in on instant message systems like Hall within seconds when someone poses a new question, or if you roam your open office bouncing ideas off all whom you encounter—all of these behaviors make you seem busy in a public manner. If you’re using busyness as a proxy for productivity, then these behaviors can seem crucial for convincing yourself and others that you’re doing your job well.

The lexis is a measure of shared experience, which comes from interconnectedness. The number of users of the language forms only the first part of the equation jumping in four centuries from 5 million English speakers to a billion. The driving factor is the number of connections between and among those speakers. A mathematician might say that messaging grows not geometrically, but combinatorially, which is much, much faster. "I think of a saucepan under which the temperature has been turned up," Gilliver said. "Any word, because of the interconnectedness of the English-speaking world, can spring from the backwater. And they are still backwaters, but they have this instant connection to ordinary, everyday discourse.

I don't know what I'm writing about: I am obscure to myself. I only had initially a lunar and lucid vision, and so I plucked for myself the instant before it died and perpetually dies. This is not a message of ideas that I am transmitting to you but an instinctive ecstasy of whatever is hidden in nature and that I foretell. And this is a feast of words. I write in signs that are more a gesture than voice. All this is what I got used to painting, delving into the intimate nature of things. But now the time to stop painting has come in order to remake myself, I remake myself in these lines. I have a voice. As I throw myself into the line of my drawing, this is an exercise in life without planning. The world has no visible order and all I have is the order of my breath. I let myself happen.

swallowed heavily, staring down at the screen. For Madison Kate. Someone knew I didn't have my phone on me... so they'd messaged Steele instead. Archer reached out and hit play on the video link, and instantly my skin prickled. Cold sweat broke out all over my body and my heart raced so hard I thought it might stop beating. The video was shaky and a bit blurred, seemingly taken on someone’s phone through the window at our front door. But the content was clear enough. It showed me shooting Scott in the head, then standing over his body totally expressionless and cold. Then I just... walked away with the gun in my hand.

Sighing, she leans contently against the door.  It’s great to be out of school. She hasn’t seen her aunt and uncle in almost three years and has been dreaming about this adventure for weeks.  Some of her friends don’t understand how she can be excited about spending so much time away from her computer and instant messaging. To be honest, her parents only allowed her to have a smart phone since her twelfth birthday, six months ago, and she finds all the drama associated with it stressful.

One of the biggest benefits of mass email marketing, you can directly reach your customers with your message in no time. With the advent of smartphones, people can check their emails anywhere and on the go. So, when a business or marketer wants to speak to their target audience, bulk emails can be a great and instant way.

If you couldn’t count on this quick response time you’d instead have to do more advance planning for your work, be more organized, and be prepared to put things aside for a while and turn your attention elsewhere while waiting for what you requested. All of this would make the day to day of your working life harder (even if it produced more satisfaction and a better outcome in the long term). The rise of professional instant messaging, mentioned earlier in this chapter, can be seen as this mind-set pushed toward an extreme.

A Tale of Two Brains Let me paint a picture of a day in the life of someone who doesn’t have a Second Brain, and someone who does. See if either of these descriptions sounds familiar. Nina wakes up on Monday morning, and before her eyes even open, thoughts are flooding her brain. Things to do, things to think about, things to decide. It all comes rushing in from the depths of her subconscious, where it’s been simmering all weekend. Nina’s thoughts continue to swirl around her brain as she gets ready for work. Like jittery birds, they flit and flutter around her head because they have nowhere else to rest. There is a constant hum of background anxiety that she has come to expect, as she wonders what needs her attention and what she may be missing. After a hectic morning, Nina finally sits down at her desk to start her workday, opens up her email inbox, and is instantly engulfed by a torrent of new messages. Flashing with urgent subject lines and the names of important senders, these demands fill her with a cold adrenaline rush. She knows that her morning is shot, her own plans ruined. Pushing aside the important work she wanted to focus on this morning, Nina settles in for a long slog of replying to emails. By the time she gets back from lunch, Nina is finally done handling the most urgent issues. It’s finally time to focus on the priorities she’s set for herself. This is when the reality sets in: after a morning spent fighting fires, she’s far too scatterbrained and tired to focus. Like so many times before, Nina lowers her expectations, settling for chipping away slowly at her ever-expanding to-do list full of other people’s priorities.

The search for comfort and security rarely yields the desired fruit. We want the easy way, but the easy way is a trap. Complacency is the enemy, and settling down is settling. Our desire for an easier life gets us stuck in a smaller one, judging everything by the comfort and ease it brings, not by what it costs our soul. We willingly kill time “just chillin’,” while the muscles of our instinct and intuition grow flabby. We’ve got games, toys, and instant messaging but are spiritually and emotionally empty. We look around the internet and ogle others’ creativity but put off developing our own. The search for meaning is replaced by shopping on the weekend. Even our food is calorie-rich but nutrient-weak. The answer is to burn it all down and trust that you can build a better, roomier life.

Respond slowly to emails, chats, texts, and other messages. Let hours, days, and sometimes weeks go by before you get back to people. This may sound like a total jerk move. It’s not. [...] Online, anyone can contact you, not just the highly relevant people in your physical vicinity. They have questions about their priorities—not yours—when it’s convenient for them—not you. Every time you check your email or another message service, you’re basically saying, “Does any random person need my time right now?” And if you respond right away, you’re sending another signal both to them and to yourself: “I’ll stop what I’m doing to put other people’s priorities ahead of mine no matter who they are or what they want.” Spelled out, this sounds insane. But instant-response insanity is our culture’s default behavior. [...] You can change this absurd default. You can check your inbox rarely and let messages pile up till you get around to answering them in a batch. You can respond slowly to make more time for Laser mode, and if you’re worried about coming off like a jerk, remind yourself that being focused and present will make you more valuable as a colleague and friend, not less.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, TRULY present in the Holy Eucharist, I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Thy Heart, being sacrificed at every instant on all the altars of the world and giving praise to the Father pleading for the coming of his Kingdom. Please receive this humble offering of myself. Use me as Thou wilt for the glory of the Father and salvation of souls. Most Holy Mother of God, never let me be separated from Thine Divine Son. Please defend and protect me as Thy special child. Amen.

1. Create intimacy: You’ll get more trust—and capture the attention of your prospects—by establishing a personal connection. Your emails should read as if one person has written it to another: one to one. This can be achieved by: using a personal, or plain-text template; using “you” instead of “we”, or “I”; telling stories; and making good use of personalization. For an even greater effect, you can add subtle personalization throughout your copy. For example: “…this is what we’ve heard from other people in [ Tampa ]”. 2. Make users feel special: On top of personalization, you can create exclusivity: “This offer is only for our most engaged users” “…it’s for early adopters” Or appeal to vanity: “Our most successful users want to feel this way…” 3. Demonstrate that you understand their reality: You can create obvious qualifications everyone wants to have assigned to themselves, for example “…people who care about maximizing their return on investment”; or “…savvy marketers”. Illustrate product benefits and value with clear examples that relate to the unique situation of your users. 4. Create urgency: As Zapier did, you can also get creative with deadlines. Use coupons with limited-time offers to accentuate the fear of missing out (FOMO)17: “Offer only available until June 4th…” “Only a few people get this plan…” 5. Use clear actions: Use a CTA that clearly establishes the next steps. Repeat it throughout the email, coming at it from different angles. Use the P.S. to attract the eye and to reinforce the action you want users to take (when appropriate). Keep your emails simple and your messaging scannable. It’s important for users to be able to get the email at a glance. Short and sweet often outperforms long and complex emails. You want a near-instant reaction from your readers. Your email has to build up to the desired action. Use copy to overcome objections, and accentuate the desire to buy or engage. A good email has to: capture attention through the subject line, personalization, or a story; build reader interest by demonstrating either the benefit or the problem; build desire to act by creating information gaps, time constraints, or the fear of missing out; and drive action through a well-timed CTA, telling users exactly what you want them to do. These are really just the four steps of the AIDA model18 (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) applied to email copywriting. Don’t get intimidated by copywriting. Emails that are too polished often don’t work as well. Get started crafting your own email offers. We’ll get started working on subject lines in the next chapter.

Think of the flow of friends through Facebook, the flow of renters through Airbnb, the flow of opinions through Twitter, the flow of e-commerce through Amazon, Tencent, and Alibaba, the flow of crowdfunding through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe, the flow of ideas and instant messages through WhatsApp and WeChat, the flow of peer-to-peer payments and credit through PayPal and Venmo, the flow

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had taken a $2 billion stake in the company, instantly making it one of the carmaker’s largest shareholders. Minutes later, as Musk headed to the airport to fly to the Gigafactory in Nevada, he typed out a fateful message on Twitter: “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.

if it please Heaven that I return home safe to my Country, and give perfect Instructions how those almost incredible and impossible Acquirements may be imparted to the World. You shall then see Men flying in the Air, from one Place to another, you shall then be able to send Messages many hundred Miles in an Instant, and receive Answers immediately

Our instant, touchscreen culture bombards us daily with messages pointing to the future, trying to convince us that our happiness lies in the next hit of pleasure, a new gadget, or tantalizing experience. Our newsfeeds are programmed with algorithms to maximize engagement, leading to further distraction. In this blitz of information and consumption, face-to-face human interaction is becoming less a part of life. Ever notice how many people are glued to screens in public, even in parks and restaurants? Yet, no matter how long we spend meandering online or getting lost in thought, we all eventually come back to presence, here in our body.

Rate of myelination in different brain areas The various brain areas begin and end myelination at different ages. For example, visual areas finish myelinating by six months. At that age an infant can see an object moving through space as a homogeneous object; before that, it’s just a collection of disconnected colors and edges. Watch babies wave a toy back and forth in front of their eyes. This rehearsal wires up the visual areas so they can begin to recognize and track objects. Over and over, the same groups of neurons fire together, forming visual functional groups that eventually work together well enough to let the baby recognize familiar objects. Babies’ other senses work along with sight to help form a mental image of objects. Here’s one study that continues to astonish me every time I think about it: Newborns, still in the hospital, were given pacifiers to suck. There were several different shapes: square, round, pointed. Large models of all the different-shaped pacifiers were hung above their cribs. The babies stared longest at the pacifier that matched the one that had been in their mouth. These infants appeared able to relate the mental image created with touch — what was in their mouths — with the one created with vision — what was dangling above their heads. I remember the first time our oldest daughter saw a book. She was about three months old — barely able to sit up — and we put a cardboard book with very simple pictures of toys in front of her. Instantly she put her face right above the book, and she inspected every square inch of the page from about an inch away. Then she sat back up and slapped the pages all over. We could almost see her brain working: “What is this? It’s flat but it reminds me a lot of the things I see around me.” She combined the senses of touch and sight together to examine a new phenomenon in her world. Speech begins with babbling at around six months of age. I remember our youngest daughter beginning speech by mimicking the up and down flow of the sentence before she began to make individual sounds. The flow of speech is supported by language centers in the right hemisphere; the details of speech are supported by language centers in the left hemisphere. Our daughter was practicing how to talk, using the brain areas that were currently available. Her right hemisphere appeared to mature before her left hemisphere. As the speech areas develop and these groups become more extensively coordinated, the child’s speech becomes clearer and connected. The auditory areas finish myelinating by two years. The child now has the brain foundation for speech production. She can distinguish the individual sounds that make up words, and can begin to string words together into phrases and sentences. The motor system is myelinated by four years. Before that, children are very slow to respond. Have you ever played catch with a three-year-old? He holds out his arms, the ball hits his chest, it falls on the ground — and then he closes his arms. It takes so long for the message to move from his eyes to his brain, from his brain to the spinal cord, and finally from his spinal cord to his arms, that he misses the ball. You can practice with him all you like, but his reactions won’t speed up until his motor system myelinates.

To a highly literate and mechanized culture the movie appeared as a world of triumphant illusions and dreams that money could buy. It was at this moment of the movie that cubism occurred, and it has been described by E. H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion) as “the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture — that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas.” For cubism substitutes all facets of an object simultaneously for the “point of view” or facet of perspective illusion. Instead of the specialized illusion of the third dimension on canvas, cubism sets up an interplay of planes and contradiction or dramatic conflict of patterns, lights, textures that “drives home the message” by involvement. This is held by many to be an exercise in painting, not in illusion. In other words, cubism, by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole. Cubism, by seizing on instant total awareness, suddenly announced that the medium is the message. Is it not evident that the moment that the sequence yields to the simultaneous, one is in the world of the structure and of configuration? Is that not what has happened in physics as in painting, poetry, and in communication? Specialized segments of attention have shifted to total field, and we can now say, “The medium is the message” quite naturally.

Lily yanks my phone away and reads the message, swooning instantly. “Dear God, that’s adorable. Guys only text me when they miss my vagina.

The Hebrew and Eastern mode of thought tackles problem and resolution, at the outset of a discussion, in a way typical of oral societies in general. The entire message is then traced and retraced, again and again, on the rounds of a concentric spiral with seeming redundancy. One can stop anywhere after the first few sentences and have the full message, if one is prepared to “dig” it. This kind of plan seems to have inspired Frank Lloyd Wright in designing the Guggenheim Art Gallery on a spiral, concentric basis. It is a redundant form inevitable to the electric age, in which the concentric pattern is imposed by the instant quality, and overlay in depth, of electric speed. But the concentric with its endless intersection of planes is necessary for insight. In fact, it is the technique of insight, and as such is necessary for media study, since no medium has its meaning or existence alone, but only in constant interplay with other media.

Do you have plans tonight?” It was Christina. I smirked. “Yes, I do.” I waited for the three dots, telling me that she was texting me back, but there was nothing. I shook my head. I shouldn’t tease her. Not unless we were in bed. I typed another message. “I have plans with you.” The three dots instantly appeared. “Asshole.

In 1950, the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954) published an article in Mind titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”[1] In it, Turing asked one of the most profound questions in the history of science: “Can machines think?” While the idea of thinking machines dates back at least as far as the bronze automaton Talos in Greek myth,[2] Turing’s breakthrough was boiling the concept down to something empirically testable. He proposed using the “imitation game”—which we now know as the Turing test—to determine whether a machine’s computation was able to perform the same cognitive tasks that our brains can. In this test, human judges interview both the AI and human foils using instant messaging without seeing whom they are talking to. The judges then pose questions about any subject matter or situation they wish. If after a certain period of time the judges are unable to tell which was the AI responder and which were the humans, then the AI is said to have passed the test.

A successful alone-time period means letting go of communication addiction. During alone time, give up instant messages, phone calls, e-mail, and meetings. Just shut up and get to work. You'll be surprised how much more you get done.

Consider your own answers to these questions. In the past two months, either privately or professionally, in order to find an answer to a problem or research (or buy) a product, have you: (1) Responded to a direct-mail advertisement? (2) Used magazines, newspapers, TV, or radio? (3) Used Google or another search engine? (4) Emailed a friend, colleague, or family member (or used instant messaging, chat rooms, or equivalent) and received as a response a URL, which you then clicked to visit the web site? (Apologies to those of you who have answered these questions already.)

By the time students reach their early twenties, they have spent some 10,000 hours playing video games, on average, sent and received 200,000 e-mail messages and instant messages, but have allotted just 5,000 hours to reading books.

for the interworking of a multi-network handover technology and cable/wireless instant messaging/presence service; creation

Does participating in social networks improve the quality of our offline relationships or expand the number of our real connections? Not according to a study titled “Use of Social Network Sites and Instant Messaging Does Not Lead to Increased Offline Social Network Size, or to Emotionally Closer Relationships with Offline Network Members.” According to this study, “time spent using social media was not associated with larger offline networks, or feeling emotionally closer to offline network members. Further, those that used social media, as compared to non-users of social media, did not have larger offline networks, and were not emotionally closer to offline network members.” (Pollet,

Now kiss your bride, man.” “If I kiss her now, she’s likely to bite my lip off.” Aodhan and Hammish chuckled. Steafan said, “If she tries, then ye’ll give her a taste of a husband’s discipline.” The laird pinned her with a look of challenge. She glared right back. “Kiss her,” he commanded. “I’m sorry, Malina,” Darcy whispered, as he dipped his face to hers. To his credit, he did, in fact, look sorry. But neither his apologetic look nor his special version of her name softened her this time. She tucked her chin and growled, “Don’t you dare.” He paused with his lips an inch from hers. He sighed, his breath sweet and smoky from scotch. Then he closed the distance and pressed a quick kiss to her mouth. When he lifted his face, she wound up and let her hand fly for a good slap. He caught her wrist. Damn his quick reflexes. Steafan chortled while Darcy’s fingers encircled her like a living handcuff. “You willna raise a hand to me ever again, Malina mine,” he said in a quiet voice laced with steel. That voice alone might have cowed her if she weren’t spitting mad. But something was off about his expression. He didn’t look angry that she had tried to slap him. He looked apologetic, sympathetic. She didn’t trust the expression for one instant. But when he increased the pressure of his grip and his eyes intensified with an imploring look, she wondered if he was trying to pass along some hidden message to her. She stopped trying to pull out of his grasp and tried to read him, tried to see past what he wanted her to see, to the heart of the man.

Andy’s Message Around the time I received Arius’ email, Andy’s message arrived. He wrote: Young, I do remember Rick Samuels. I was at the seminar in the Bahriji when he came to lecture. Like you I was at once mesmerized by his style and beauty, which of course was a false image manufactured by the advertising agencies and sales promoters. I was surprised to hear your backroom story of him being gangbanged in the dungeon. We are not ones to judge since both of us had been down that negative road of self-loathing. This seems to be a common thread with people whom others considered good-looking or beautiful. In my opinion, it’s a fake image that handsome people know they cannot live up to. Instead of exterior beauty being an asset, it often becomes a psychological burden. During the years when I was with Toby, I delved in some fashion modeling work in New Zealand. I ventured into this business because it was my subconscious way of reminding me of the days we posed for Mario and Aziz. It was also my twisted way of hoping to meet another person like me, with the hope of building a loving long-term relationship. It was also a desperate attempt to break loose from Toby’s psychosomatic grip on my person. Ian was his name and he was a very attractive 24 year old architecture student. He modeled to earn some extra spending money. We became fast friends, but he had this foreboding nature which often came on unexpectedly. A sentence or a word could trigger his depression, sending the otherwise cheerful man into bouts of non-verbal communication. It was like a brightly lit light bulb suddenly being switched off in mid-sentence. We did have an affair while I was trying to patch things up with Toby. As delightful as our sexual liaisons were there was a hidden missing element, YOU! Much like my liaisons with Oscar, without your presence, our sexual communications took on a different dynamic which only you as the missing link could resolve. There were times during or after sex when Ian would abuse himself with negative thoughts and self-denigration. I tried to console him, yet I was deeply sorrowed about my own unresolved issues with Toby. It was like the blind leading the blind. I was gravely saddened when Ian took his own life. Heavily drugged on prescriptive anti-depressant and a stomach full of extensive alcohol consumption, he fell off his ten story apartment building. He died instantly. This was the straw that threw me into a nervous breakdown. Thank God I climbed out of my despondencies with the help of Ari and Aria. My dearest Young, I have a confession to make; you are the only person I have truly loved and will continue to love. All these years I’ve tried to forget you but I cannot. That said I am not trying to pry you away from Walter and have you return to me. We are just getting to know each other yet I feel your spirit has never left. Please make sure that Walter understands that I’m not jeopardizing your wonderful relationship. I am happy for the both of you. You had asked jokingly if I was interested in a triplet relationship. Maybe when the time and opportunity arises it may happen, but now I’m enjoying my own company after Albert’s passing. In a way it is nice to have my freedom after 8 years of building a life with Albert. I love you my darling boy and always will. As always, I await your cheerful emails. Andy. Xoxoxo

the average knowledge worker opens his or her email program fifty times a day and uses instant messaging seventy-seven times a day.

Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner. This mind-set provides another explanation for the popularity of many depth-destroying behaviors. If you send and answer e-mails at all hours, if you schedule and attend meetings constantly, if you weigh in on instant message systems like Hall within seconds when someone poses a new question, or if you roam your open office bouncing ideas off all whom you encounter—all of these behaviors make you seem busy in a public manner.

The door opened and Kitty jerked free from the remaining bands of sleep, hurling back to the dank night that surrounded her. Struggling to her feet, she gripped her stomach as the soldier entered. Closing the door, he stalked forward. Fear raged through her like a rabid animal.  She pressed harder against the wood. “Don’t touch me!” He lunged and covered her mouth. “Quiet!” Kitty writhed under his strong hands, struggling to get free. She tried to scream but his grasp was too tight. “Be still, Kitty, please!” All fight left her limbs in an instant and she dropped her arms to her sides. Blinking, she tried to clear the dream from her vision. It couldn’t be… He removed his hand from her mouth and stroked her cheek, his husky tone warm with concern. “Are you hurt?” She could hardly breathe. “I... I don’t believe it.” Her words quivered as much as her body.  “Believe.” Nathaniel studied her face and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “’Tis I.” Kitty took in quick short bursts of air and her voice cracked as tears burned her eyes. “I thought... I thought...”  “I was a fool.” He tugged her to him, holding her hard against his chest. His deep whisper caressed her heart. “Forgive me.” “Nay.” She pushed away from him, gazing up into his shadowed face. The words she harbored for so many weeks suddenly poured from her mouth like a river surging beyond its banks. “’Tis I who must beg forgiveness—” “Shhh.” He placed a finger to her lips. “There isn’t time, my love.” “But I must explain—” “Later. Come, we must take you away from here.” He tugged her toward the door.  “Not yet.” Kitty tugged at his arm. “I must get to Plymouth. They must know what’s coming.” “Nay, you mustn’t worry about Plymouth.” Nathaniel’s tone dropped. “The British believe you are the second courier.” A smile tilted one side of his mouth. “But you are not.” The meaning of his words settled upon her like dew. “So, the message has gotten through.” Nathaniel nodded and the solemn expression in his eyes softened to longing as his gaze lowered to her mouth. ***

Our fascination with the gothic peaks in times of anxiety, panic, and upheaval. The Victorian gothic revival of the 1890s was stoked by scientific, technological, and social change. Industrialization and urbanization sparked feelings of alienation. Darwin's theories of evolution and the changing roles of women fanned racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and colonialist fears of 'primitivism,' moral decay, and sexual depravity. In the nineteenth century, terror-inducing imagery had shifted away from crumbling castles to crime-infested cities, and fear of villains and ghosts was supplanted by a fear of madness and degeneration. In the twentieth century, we celebrated/mourned the death of authorship, of the grand narrative, of the self, 'going-one-better in eschatological eloquence,' as Jacques Derrida put it, 'the end of history...the end of subject, the end of man, the end of the West, the end of Oedipus, the end of the earth, Apocalypse Now.' A few years into the new millennium, we were zombie hordes, stalking social media for brains. The gothic is the fucked-either-way-and-freaking-the-fuck-out school of artistic interpretation, the hysterical framework of doom. And this tension between horror as morality tale and horror as decadent spectacle is, I believe, what fueled the pandemic of tabloid stories about wayward starlets that raged throughout 2006 and 2007. Celebrity train wreck stories begin, conservatively, as cautionary tales. A young woman, unprotected or legally emancipated, has moved alone from the relatively sheltered and secluded condition of parent-managed child stardom (because who, nowadays, is more cut off from the world than a child star?) into a corrupt and dangerous world, where her beauty, fame, youth, fortune, and sexual allure are regarded with a charged, ambivalent awe. She is instantly besieged with dangers, and preyed upon by unscrupulous adults. Until they can be contained again, by marriage or paternal protection, she exists in a constant state of uncertainty and peril. The peril is created, of course, by the 'author' - the media outlets that shape the train wreck's life, again and again, into thrilling, chilling tales of suspense.

I was trying to hide the evidence; stop them tracking me. They’ve not found me yet, so maybe it worked?’ she said, her voice becoming a touch brighter at the end of that sentence. The door to her apartment exploded off its hinges and fell to the floor between them. Frankie reacted almost instantly, rolling over the seat to find some cover from whatever had just made its entrance. She saw Gibson do the same, ducking behind the sofa as gunfire erupted through the door, spraying her apartment with bullets that slammed into the chair with a “WHUMP” as each one hit. A message flashed up in her vision. It was another one from Gibson.   - You had to say it didn’t you!-

Alternate universe in which the 1995 movie Waterworld wasn’t a box office flop, causing instant, worldwide acceptance of its important message about the dangers of global warming.

Why did so few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience starting companies? As these thoughts rolled around in my head, I sent Marc Andreessen an instant message: “We ought to start a venture capital firm. Our motto for general partners would be ‘some experience required’ as in some experience in founding and running companies is required to advise people who are founding and running companies.” To my surprise, he replied, “I was thinking the same thing.

the chaff here, however, burns with “unquenchable” fire (cf. Isa 66:24). Jewish people had various views of Gehinnom (or Gehenna), or hell: the wicked would burn up instantly; they would be tortured for a year and then either released or destroyed; or they would burn forever. In his message to the religious elite (v. 7) John sides with the harshest option articulated by his contemporaries.

Peace and tranquility flow like water. May the light of All That Is free my soul and awaken me fully to the truth of who I am. I am far more than the physical body. I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time. I am in everything, and everything is in me. I am the light. I am the light. I am the light.’ This is alignment—this state of being in the heart, no longer prisoner to the head, but in a state of awareness of your true being … a unified whole comprised of the Earth energies and the spirit energies. You are all of that. Know that you can return to this place of peace, this place of tranquility, at any time. Know that here you will always be home. Return here often. This is the real you. Gratitude will bring you here instantly. Come to know it intimately as you kindle more and more the flame within you. For now, take a cleansing breath and slowly return

To paraphrase the very quotable Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, in the future there will be two types of jobs: people who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do. Wall Street was merely the first inkling. The next place where this shift would be seen at whopping scale in terms of both money and technology (though I didn’t realize at the time) was in Internet advertising. And after that, it would hit transportation (Uber), hostelry (Airbnb), food delivery (Instacart), and so on. To take the theory further, computation would no longer fill some hard gap in a human workflow process, such as the calculators used by accountants. Humans would fill the hard gaps in a purely computer workflow process, like Uber’s drivers. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There’s an additional lesson here. This shift from humans to computers took place predominantly on the equity side of things. The debt side of the financial world, for various reasons, still traded in what amounted to open-outcry markets with humans talking to one another, whether through phones or instant messaging systems. It was capitalism at the speed a tongue can wag or hands can type. This was mostly because a company’s debt is complex and multifarious, and entities like General Motors have hundreds if not thousands of different types of debt floating around the world’s trading floors. Briefly, they are not what economists call “fungible,” meaning interchangeable the way quarter-inch screws or bottle caps are.

When you accept the survival signal as a welcome message and quickly evaluate the environment or situation, fear stops in an instant. Thus, trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear. In fact, the role of fear in your life lessens as your mind and body come to know that you will listen to the quiet wind-chime, and have no need for

We outsource human interaction with likes and pokes on facebook. We forego meaningful person to person conversation with instant messaging and texts. We trade harsh bitter truths for sweet palatable lies. We exchange feeling for a kind of synthetic numbness, a makeshift apathy. We’re suffering from a self-induced de-evolution of humanity.

Merely to ask, “Is that true? Do I and my hearers believe that?” does not produce instant answers. But failing to contend with those basic questions means we will speak only to those who are already committed.

Miracle centered messages encourages instant gratification.

There are so many downsides to the message of instant gratification.

I need some time for the rest. I just don’t take something like marriage lightly. If I do it, I’ll mean it, and I won’t change my mind. But I think you’d do it right now for all the wrong reasons.” “Does this have anything to do with the guy you didn’t let stay last night?” he asked. “My boyfriend?” she asked, smiling. She knew it was naughty to taunt him like that; she wasn’t thinking of T.J. as a boyfriend at the moment. “It would be nice of me to tell him if things change in my personal life. But until I have matters settled…” “No, Franci, tell him matters are settled. You won’t be dating him!” “And the woman who keeps calling you?” “What woman?” he asked. “Your phone keeps picking up text messages and voice mails. That has to be a woman.” He took a deep breath. This didn’t seem like a good time to lie, just as he was trying to close a deal. “I dated this girl a few times back at Beale and I told her I wasn’t getting into a steady thing. When I went on leave, I told her we had to cool it because it wasn’t working for me, but she’s deaf. I thought when I left town for a couple of months she’d let it go, but she’s hounding me. I’m going to call her, Franci, and tell her I’m off the market. That I’m getting married. She won’t call anymore. Now, come on.” “Poor thing,” Franci said. “She might be as sick in love with you as I was.” “As you were?” he asked, a little frightened of the answer. “And I said I’m not marrying you.” “Okay, let me get this right—I suggested marriage and you said no?” “How about that? What a shocker, huh?” “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? I thought that’s what I should do!” “Okay, you still don’t get it. We don’t want to because you’re doing what you should. Listen carefully, Sean. I want you to be absolutely sure you want to commit to a life with me and Rosie, because you don’t have to marry me to have time with your daughter. She’s your daughter—I won’t get in the way of that. Though I have to admit, the way you suggested marriage really just knocked me off my feet.” He would never admit it to anyone, but her refusal gave him an instant feeling of relief. He wasn’t ready to take it all on. But it would sure make things tidier if they could just do it the way it probably should be done. He slid close to her and, before she could protest, pulled her right up against him. “You wanna get knocked off your feet, sweetheart? Because we both know we do that to each other.” He put a big hand around the back of her neck and ran his thumb from her earlobe to the hollow of her throat. Then he kissed that spot. “I want you with me, Franci. Tonight, and from now on.” “Sean,” she said gravely, “when you rejected me four years ago, there were times I wondered if I’d lost my mind and my heart. The things we said to each other—I don’t want to risk a marriage like that. After we split and I moved to Santa Rosa, sometimes I grieved so badly I worried that I was hurting the baby with endless crying, sleepless nights, loss of appetite. I just can’t face something like that again.” He ran a knuckle across her soft cheek. “Baby, I didn’t reject you. I wanted to be with you—I just had a hang-up with marriage.” “Well, now the shoe’s on the other foot. Suck it up.” Life

warming tale with a message of hope’ Daily Mail ‘An instantly bestselling memoir that, beside its heart-warming tale of their friendship, offers an insight into the injustice of life on the streets that’s by turns frustrating and life-affirming.’ The Times The moving, uplifting true story of an unlikely friendship between a man on the streets and the ginger cat who adopts him and helps him heal

the message at the core of this book: Working right trumps finding the right work—it’s a simple idea, but it’s also incredibly subversive, as it overturns decades of folk career advice all focused on the mystical value of passion. It wrenches us away from our daydreams of an overnight transformation into instant job bliss and provides instead a more sober way toward fulfillment.

Professional help for those suffering with their mental health is now only a key stroke away, thanks to a new online directory. BALLARAT, VIC - Website truecounsellor.com.au is one of the only online catalogues of mental health services in Australia, allowing people to source, and instantly reach out for help - all from their computer. Website truecounsellor.com.au is one of the only online catalogues of mental health services in Australia, allowing people to source, and instantly reach out for help - all from their computer. Launched in 2015, the website allows people to simply search professionals nearby and review their profile, background, specialisations and fees. Once they have selected a professional, they can immediately connect with them via phone, Skype or instant message to book an appointment. Website founder Luciano Devoto was keen to establish the online directory after experiencing his own struggles. “As a person who has suffered from bullying, as well as depression, I know how hard it can be to reach out for help,” he said. “TrueCounsellor aims to make it easier for people to share their concerns safely and privately with experienced mental health professionals” The website boasts a large number of qualified and experienced counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, couples’ therapists and other mental health practitioners in various suburbs across Australia. “What makes TrueCounsellor exciting is that we are the only directory offering mental health professionals the opportunity to promote their services for free,” Luciano said. “We believe that by making it easy for these professionals to list their practices, we create real value for the public as they are able to find the right support.” The website also offers extensive advice about conditions like depression and anxiety, along with information about common stressors including debt, relationship issues and career worries. Watersedge Counselling director Colleen Morris, who is part of the online directory, said the website was a vital resource. “Finding a mental healthcare professional that you consider to be safe, trustworthy, empathetic and effective can often be challenging and at times, a confusing process,” she said. “Websites like TrueCounsellor make this task less confusing by allowing consumers to make a more informed choice that suits their need.” To find a mental health expert or for more information, visit truecounsellor.com.au About TrueCounsellor TrueCounsellor is Australia’s online directory of mental health professionals. Our mission is to help people experiencing emotional challenges discover a better and happier version of themselves. TrueCounsellor gives people access to a large number of qualified and experienced counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, couples therapists and other mental health practitioners across Australia. Visitors can review profiles and learn about the practitioner’s background, specialisations and fees in order to make the best decision when booking an appointment! In addition to offer a comprehensive list of qualified and experienced mental health professionals, TrueCounsellor has detailed information on mental health issues and types of therapy available. For more information, visit truecounsellor.com.au

Children who have a wider range of instant heart response have a more efficient feedback system, and this increased efficiency helps them regulate their emotion state: their heart speed up more when they are excited, and slow down more when they are calm Conscious contemplation takes at least half a second, so anyone who even tries to think about how to return a serve will end up endlessly watching the ball fly by. Their goal is not necessarily to be first but to be just right. An unwanted message might lead us to make a decision too quickly, even if we do not realize it. The greatest comedians are masters of delay most of us could become better communicators without changing a word we say - just by saying some of those words a little bit faster The two most important elements of a relationship are chemistry and compatibility, and a photo won't help you with either Time-based theory of conflict, derived from Sun Tzu, in which the crucial insights for a fighter come in stages: first, observe the rapidly changing environment; second, orient yourself based on these observations, process the disorder, and understand when and how your opponent might become confused; third, decide what to do; and finally, act quickly at just the right moment, when your opponent is most vulnerable. active procrastination is smart: it simply means managing delay, putting of projects that really don't need to be done right away passive procrastination is dumb, equivalent to laziness. This group says proscrastination might be a good or bad, depending on how much effort we put into it.

When they communicated, it was by e-mail or text message. The instant gratification of modern communication killed some of the magic between them.

Soon, nobody was leaving their cubicles to talk anymore, and we were either e-mailing each other random thoughts or scheduling meetings, or speaking over an instant message chat.

around his waist. The feel of his skin against her nipples sent messages firing to her brain. The first message being that she really liked him undressed like this. The second message: I lost my towel. His gaze dropped to her breasts, which were flattened against his lower abdomen. His hands went to her naked hips. “Jake?” a female voice called. Then footsteps. “Sweetheart? Did you forget our date? Oh, my!” The last two words were said in panic. Date? Instantly Macy realized that “sweetheart’s” date was probably staring at her naked ass. Her gaze shot to Jake’s towel, and instantly she developed a plan. Since his date had probably seen him before, Macy took what she needed—providing everyone a good look at Jake Baldwin and the full monty.

Aransas Pass had once been called the shrimp capital of the world. Over three hundred shrimp boats had graced its docks until the industry had collapsed back in the 1970’s—a message from the natural world that the fortunes of man and the bounty of the sea could change in an instant. Walking

I fixed her a drink, then lowered myself on the spider's silk of my attention back into One Hundred Years of Solitude and the adventures of the Buendia family. The scene where the prodigal Jose Arcadio hoisted his adopted sister by her waist into his hammock and, in my translation, 'quartered her like a little bird' made my face hot I bent down the page, whose small triangle marks the instant. Touching that triangle of yellowed paper today is like sliding my hand into the glove of my seventeen-year-old hand. Through magic, there are the Iowa fields slipping by... And there is my mother, not yet born into the ziplock baggie of ash my sister sent me years ago with the frank message 'Mom 1/2', written in laundry pen, since no-one in our family ever stood on ceremony.

Now, as a culture, we’ve accepted that texting, video chatting, and instant messaging are to be respected, and that means that you stop whatever you are doing in real life, pick up your smartphone and respond to whatever push notification you are receiving.

They pause, almost but not quite clutching each other, with their ears cocked. The hideous dried-out croak is drawing inevitably closer – apparently, whether by some quirk of the architecture, the type of stone in the masonry perhaps or the curious way the corridor bends, from both directions at once. The boys gibber at each other helplessly. With every passing instant now the temperature drops precipitously, the grey light wanes; the ghastly voice chants its message, necrotic and Latin, over and again, as though doomed to repeat it, doomed for eternity, a doom that any second now they will be sharing, when the voice’s owner comes around that corner, or the other corner, or possibly even both corners, to find them quaking before her –

carried the Makarov outside to watch the fireworks. Thirty yards beyond the spot where Brendan Magill lay dead was a rock wall running on a north-south axis. Gabriel took cover behind it after a 7.62x39mm round shredded the air a few inches from his right ear. Keller hit the ground next to him as rounds exploded against the stones of the wall, sending sparks and fragments flying. The source of the fire was silenced, so Gabriel had only a vague idea of the direction from which it was coming. He poked his head above the wall to search for a muzzle flash, but another burst of rounds drove him downward. Keller was now crawling northward along the base of the wall. Gabriel followed after him, but stopped when Keller suddenly opened up with the dead man’s AK-47. A distant scream indicated that Keller’s rounds had found their mark, but in an instant they were taking fire from several directions. Gabriel flattened himself on the ground at Keller’s side, the Glock in one hand, the dead man’s phone in the other. After a few seconds he realized it was pulsing with an incoming text. The text was apparently from Eamon Quinn. It read KILL THE GIRL . . . 79 CROSSMAGLEN, SOUTH ARMAGH A MID THE HEAP OF BROKEN and dismembered farm implements in Jimmy Fagan’s shed, Katerina had found a scythe, rusted and caked in mud, a museum piece, perhaps the last scythe in the whole of Ireland, north or south. She held it tightly in her hands and listened to the sound of men pounding up the track at a sprint. Two men, she thought, perhaps three. She positioned herself against the shed’s sliding door. Madeline was at the opposite end of the space, hooded, hands bound, her back to the bales of hay. She was the first and only thing the men would see upon entry. The latch gave way, the door slid open, a gun intruded. Katerina recognized its silhouette: an AK-47 with a suppressor attached to the barrel. She knew it well. It was the first weapon she had ever fired at the camp. The great AK-47! Liberator of the oppressed! The gun was pointed upward at a forty-five-degree angle. Katerina had no choice but to wait until the barrel sank toward Madeline. Then she raised the scythe and swung it with every ounce of strength she had left in her body. Two hundred yards away, crouched behind a stone wall at the western edge of Jimmy Fagan’s property, Gabriel showed the text message to Christopher Keller. Keller immediately poked his head above the wall and saw muzzle flashes in the doorway of the shed. Four flashes, four shots, more than enough to obliterate two lives. A burst of AK-47 fire drove him downward again. Eyes wild, he grabbed Gabriel savagely by the front of his coat and shouted, “Stay here!” Keller hauled himself over the wall and vanished from sight. Gabriel lay there for a few seconds as the rounds rained down on his position. Then suddenly he was on his feet and running across the darkened pasture. Running toward a car in a snowy square in Vienna. Running toward death. The blow that Katerina delivered to the neck of the man holding the AK-47 resulted in a partial decapitation. Even so, he had managed to squeeze off a shot before she wrenched the gun from his grasp—a shot that struck the hay bales a few inches from Madeline’s head. Katerina shoved the dying man aside and quickly fired two shots into the chest of the second man. The fourth shot she fired into the partially decapitated creature twitching at her feet. In the lexicon of the SVR, it was a control shot. It was also a shot of

The spirit people showed me that we physical beings tend to experience time like those in the first group, whereas spirit people exist outside of time, as in the second group. What is interesting about this example, they told me, was that ultimately both groups of people end up in the same place. The spirit people showed me that they experience our reunion as if only an instant has passed. We here in the physical world, who miss and remember them, may dwell on every passing moment and how uncomfortable it can be without them. And yet we, too, will eventually experience the joy of our reunion. Their suggestion to us is this: if you know we will be together in the end, but you also must live in the physical world with the dimension of time, then try to make it as comfortable as you can. Because the moment we reunite all pain and longing falls away, even for those of us who were uncomfortable up until that point. Even the most painful journey seems like it took just an instant, once you get to your destination.

My sense is that there is happiness to be found, but it is not “ever after”—it comes in starts and stops or at unexpected moments that do not necessarily have anything to do with love. Let me reverse that. Happiness always has to do with love—but not just romantic love. Sometimes love is feeding a cat. Sometimes it’s singing Abba songs with a friend in a car in Wyoming. Sometimes love just happens, in an instant, when you see something beautiful. Romantic love is more about willingness than wedding bells and destiny. Or maybe it is willingness and destiny, or destiny is what we choose to believe it is because we’re afraid to believe that life is all about luck.

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One of the most powerful ways we do this is by creating stereotypes. We begin to learn how to “read” different kinds of people. As we encounter them, we instantly compare them to other people we have encountered before. Were the others friendly, safe, and welcoming? If so, then we are likely to feel comfortable with these individuals. On the other hand, were the others hostile or unfriendly? Then the mind sends a different message: Be careful! Stereotypes provide a shortcut that helps us navigate through our world more quickly, more efficiently, and, our minds believe, more safely. Of course, even when we haven’t encountered a particular kind of person before, we may have the same judgments and assessments based on things that we have heard or learned about “people like that.” As far back as 1906, William Graham Sumner, the first person to hold an academic chair in sociology at Yale University, identified the phenomenon of “in-group/out-group bias.” Sumner wrote that “each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exists in its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.”[6] This phenomenon is magnified when the “in” group is the dominant or majority culture in a particular circumstance.

Mary and I have spent quite a bit of time with the Master. I saw him teach, I saw him heal, I saw him dine with his disciples, I saw him leave, and I saw him return. And this is what I think: I believe every moment of his entire life has been spent setting an example. Every breath, every act, every word, carries message upon message upon message. His every instant was meant to bring eternity into the moment and hope to this fallen world. The death of my brother, our time of broken mourning, our loss of hope . . .

She picked up the phone message pad and turned on her computer, watching as Safari automatically loaded Yahoo news.

When you just dump information onto your audience, you are not really making an impact on their hearts and minds. But, when you start telling a story, a magic thing happens: They instantly give you their full attention.

In an instant, the weight of her own beliefs began to crush her. The noise in her head grew deafening. The mitote, that war of words within the human mind, the thing that Miguel had turned into a familiar mythology, was suddenly real. It seemed that every human on the planet was yelling at her or at someone else. Everybody was shouting, nagging, arguing against the truth, and their noise was unbearable. There was anger and raw fear behind the noise, and the intensity was shocking. Even more shocking was the realization that every voice was hers. Every argument, assumption, and conclusion was a part of her own thought process; every judgment came from her. Every complaint and contradiction was a reflection of her. She was the mayhem, the deafening noise in her own head. She was the liar, the deranged storyteller. She had imagined herself to be an angel of life, but death was closing in now and dulling her senses. All she could hear were messages of fear. Terror seared her brain until, suddenly unleashed, it thundered through the ruins of Teotihuacan.

She wanted to lift it. But first she ran Jared’s disc cautiously over its surface. Nothing. She glanced around once. Everything was quiet. So she picked up the key. The room crashed. Alarms howled; rays of laserfire shot up from the floor, ringing her in a cage of red light. A metal grille slammed over the door; hidden lights burst on and she stood frozen in the uproar in terror, her heart slamming in her chest, and in that instant the disc jabbed a pepperpoint of red pain urgently into her thumb. She glanced down at it. Jared’s message was breathless with terror.

Kit Carson, fighting the Indians with knives and six-shooters. Brave men. But that’s all gone now. Now, some pencil-neck geek sitting at a computer can launch a thousand missiles and kill a million people. The world’s run by a bunch of fat-ass wimps who only know how to double-click their way to power. Think they should get a Purple Heart for a paper cut.” “I like that.” “Their idea of power is PowerPoint. They got headsets on their heads and their fingers on keyboards and they think they’re macho men when they’re just half wimp and half machine. Nothing more than sports-drink-gulping, instant-message-sending,

instant-message-sending, mouse-clicking, iPod-listening, web-surfing pussies, and God didn’t mean for the likes of them to run this planet on the backs of real men.

For example, in one early experiment, we changed our entire website, home page, and product registration flow to replace “avatar chat” with “3D instant messaging.” New customers were split automatically between these two versions of the site; half saw one, and half saw the other. We were able to measure the difference in behavior between the two groups.

Yeux mi-clos, il humait à présent dans les souffles du large l’âcreté du sel, il écoutait les vents siffler à son oreille, messagers rafraîchissants annonciateurs d’orage. Célian sentait à travers le tissu du hamac la peau réchauffée de Nyssa toujours endormie, sa longue chevelure princière apanagée de la lumière du jour. L’agile équipage de l’Astéropée, muscles tendus, œuvrait d’un bel ensemble autour des écoutes, habitué à manœuvrer les cordages et les voiles sur les mâts protégés de plusieurs couches d’huile de lin ; mais à cet instant les marins qui prenaient leur quart étaient allongés sur le pont pour admirer le lever de soleil.

Kookdokoo is a simple web-based real-time group chat tool for business. It makes real-time communication with more people as simple as visiting a web page. Kookdokoo business communication app helps the owner can easily share product details, images take orders and promote, also instant connect through messaging.

Questions you can wait hours to learn the answers to are fine to put in an email. Questions that require answers in the next few minutes can go into an instant message. For crises that truly merit a sky-is-falling designation, you can use that old-fashioned invention called the telephone. With

In I went to John Bickel’s office. We hit it off instantly. I did something all job applicants should do—I asked for the job. I told him that if they extended an offer, I would accept it on the spot, that I had done the research and investigation, and this was where I wanted to be. Don’t underestimate the power this message can have on a potential employer. Everyone likes to be flattered. Of course it works better if it’s true. I left the office cautiously optimistic. That night, between my ridiculously soft sheets, with that feeling of a new city around me and a new beginning on the horizon, I stared at the ceiling and felt elated at the possibilities. Things were happening that could alter the course of my life. One step at a time, I was starting to run. I hadn’t grown up with high hopes for my future, but in that moment I had a sense of opportunity knocking, of imagining that I might actually be able to make something out of my life.

He had to do his best, and depending on the game—a good night, a bad night, ahead or behind—he had to come up with a few things he hadn’t thought of before. He may have seemed only a cheerleader, even to himself, but in a tone, a gesture, a look in his eye, he needed to get across his message. And do it instantly. “You just played it by the seat of your pants,” he says about coaching those games in Verdun. On the rinks of Willibrord Park, he was learning to become a game coach.

At first, the Other Side will use what I call default signs to communicate with us: objects, animals, or events that jolt us into seeing a meaning that might otherwise escape us. Default signs might be coins, birds, butterflies, deer, numbers, and electrical disturbances, such as empty cellphone messages, among other things. You find a dime standing on its edge in the dryer just as you are thinking of and missing someone (this very thing happened to me). A butterfly lands on your arm for an instant on your birthday. A car drives past with a license plate that has the birthdate of a loved one who has crossed, who was just on your mind. You get blank cellphone messages on the anniversary of a loved one’s crossing.

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Before I could read Emily’s text my phone lit up with a second notification, and I froze in place three steps up the staircase. Emily’s text was there, but I didn’t register it. All my attention was focused on the instant message icon below it, along with the first few words: I have to say first that getting your message the other night was such a surprise. But . . . Jesus Christ, phone. That’swhere you chose to cut off the preview? Despite the heat of early afternoon, I went cold all over. Tingles spread from the back of my neck down my arms, every little hair standing at attention, while my entire consciousness focused on that one little word on my phone screen. But.

That is how I first came to take an interest in the message of the tape. The fluctuations were from the first associated in my mind with upward or downward movements. Of course there is always a reason for fluctuations, but the tape does not concern itself with the why and wherefore. It doesn’t go into explanations. I didn’t ask the tape why when I was fourteen, and I don’t ask it to-day, at forty. The reason for what a certain stock does to-day may not be known for two or three days, or weeks, or months. But what the dickens does that matter? Your business with the tape is now—not to-morrow. The reason can wait. But you must act instantly or be left.

After showing the ad, Steve asked the question again a little differently, “What desire was this marketing message created for?” Instantly everyone responded, “Relationships!

The central function of the amygdala, which I call the brain’s smoke detector, is to identify whether incoming input is relevant for our survival.11 It does so quickly and automatically, with the help of feedback from the hippocampus, a nearby structure that relates the new input to past experiences. If the amygdala senses a threat—a potential collision with an oncoming vehicle, a person on the street who looks threatening—it sends an instant message down to the hypothalamus and the brain stem, recruiting the stress-hormone system and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to orchestrate a whole-body response. Because the amygdala processes the information it receives from the thalamus faster than the frontal lobes do, it decides whether incoming information is a threat to our survival even before we are consciously aware of the danger. By the time we realize what is happening, our body may already be on the move.

When eBay entered the Chinese market in 2002, they did so by buying the leading Chinese online auction site—not Alibaba but an eBay impersonator called EachNet. The marriage created the ultimate power couple: the top global e-commerce site and China’s number one knockoff. eBay proceeded to strip away the Chinese company’s user interface, rebuilding the site in eBay’s global product image. Company leadership brought in international managers for the new China operations, who directed all traffic through eBay’s servers back in the United States. But the new user interface didn’t match Chinese web-surfing habits, the new leadership didn’t understand Chinese domestic markets, and the trans-Pacific routing of traffic slowed page-loading times. At one point an earthquake under the Pacific Ocean severed key cables and knocked the site offline for a few days. Meanwhile, Alibaba founder Jack Ma was busy copying eBay’s core functions and adapting the business model to Chinese realities. He began by creating an auction-style platform, Taobao, to directly compete with eBay’s core business. From there, Ma’s team continually tweaked Taobao’s functions and tacked on features to meet unique Chinese needs. His strongest localization plays were in payment and revenue models. To overcome a deficit of user trust in online purchases, Ma created Alipay, a payment tool that would hold money from purchases in escrow until the buyer confirmed the receipt of goods. Taobao also added instant messaging functions to allow buyers and sellers to communicate on the platform in real time. These business innovations helped Taobao claw away market share from eBay, whose global product mentality and deep centralization of decision-making power in Silicon Valley made it slow to react and add features. But Ma’s greatest weapon was his deployment of a “freemium” revenue model, the practice of keeping basic functions free while charging for premium services. At the time, eBay charged sellers a fee just to list their products, another fee when the products were sold, and a final fee if eBay-owned PayPal was used for payment. Conventional wisdom held that auction sites or e-commerce marketplace sites needed to do this in order to guarantee steady revenue streams.

Dear Daughter, Hard work may not give you instant results, but one day you will look back and be proud.

Diana Fox, a striking young beauty of only twenty-two. She had gotten into trouble when she was a teenager, when another student at her high school had been arrested for plotting a shooting at the school. He had been infatuated with her, and all of his social media ramblings indicated that she was part of the plan, but she had denied it. Unfortunately, she had once engaged him on instant messenger when he was ranting about how the privileged students were causing so much havoc for everyone else, and she thought he was only joking when he talked about killing them all. She had gone along with it during the chat, thinking it was only some sort of cathartic role-play, but that series of messages was enough to convict her of being a co-conspirator. Because of the severity of the threat, the sixteen-year-old girl was tried as an adult and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison.

Dear Daughter, Hard work may not give you instant results, but one day you will look back and be proud.

The Unbelief of the Crowd 37Even with the overwhelming evidence of all the many signs and wonders that Jesus had performed in front of them, his critics still refused to believe. 38This fulfilled the prophecy given by Isaiah: Lord, who has believed our message? Who has seen the unveiling of your great power?aj 39And the people were not able to believe, for Isaiah also prophesied: 40God has blinded their eyes and hardened their heartsak to the truth. So with their eyes and hearts closed they cannot understand the truth nor turn to me so that I could instantly cleanse and heal them.

The rise of professional instant messaging, mentioned earlier in this chapter, can be seen as this mind-set pushed toward an extreme. If receiving an e-mail reply within an hour makes your day easier, then getting an answer via instant message in under a minute would improve this gain by an order of magnitude.

The reason why sensuality isn’t always an instantly digestible message is because, like a five course meal in a five star restaurant, it took time to prepare and therefore requires time to take it all in.

Yet other men came with the idea of setting up links between the East and the West. In 1850 Henry Wells and his partner, William Fargo, were operating American Express, an express company in the burgeoning city of Buffalo. An express company’s business was to ship things quickly but expensively. Messages, banknotes, and valuables were the primary goods transported by express companies. To hedge against the risks to his express company from the instant telegraph, Wells had invested in local telegraph companies, including Ezra Cornell’s. Sensing the opportunity in the West, especially as laying telegraph lines across a desolate country was a practical impossibility, Wells and Fargo proposed expanding their company, American Express, to the West. Their investors balked. So starting in 1852, Wells and Fargo set up a new company to provide express services to California. In addition to simple messages, Wells, Fargo & Co. ventured into the business of bringing gold back east. And since an express company was already entrusted with valuables, it soon made sense for Wells, Fargo & Co. to also offer banking services locally.

When Jimmy Wales launched Nupedia he recognized what had been lost in the fight to win encyclopedias. He sought to revive something like the original Britannica but enabled by instant communication and low-cost digital publishing. Yet Jimmy and his team still placed themselves at the top of the system, making it dependent on them and their process. His caution had made him a gatekeeper. His rigorous filtering and fact-checking system blocked all the energy. The implied message was that Nupedia was Jimmy’s platform, not everyone’s. Despite its newfangled technology, Nupedia was still a Pyramid.

The vestibular system tells us about up and down and whether we are upright or not. It tells us where our heads and bodies are in relation to the earth’s surface. It sends sensory messages about balance and movement from the neck, eyes, and body to the CNS for processing and then helps generate muscle tone so we can move smoothly and efficiently. This sense tells us whether we are moving or standing still, and whether objects are moving or motionless in relation to our body. It also informs us what direction we are going in, and how fast we are going. This is extremely useful information should we need to make a fast getaway! Indeed, the fundamental functions of fight, flight, and foraging for food depend on accurate information from the vestibular system. Dr. Ayres writes that the “system has basic survival value at one of the most primitive levels, and such significance is reflected in its role in sensory integration.” The receptors for vestibular sensations are hair cells in the inner ear, which is like a “vestibule” for sensory messages to pass through. The inner-ear receptors work something like a carpenter’s level. They register every movement we make and every change in head position—even the most subtle. Some inner-ear structures receive information about where our head and body are in space when we are motionless, or move slowly, or tilt our head in any linear direction—forward, backward, or to the side. As an example of how this works, stand up in an ordinary biped, or two-footed, position. Now, close your eyes and tip your head way to the right. With your eyes closed, resume your upright posture. Open your eyes. Are you upright again, where you want to be? Your vestibular system did its job. Other structures in the inner ear receive information about the direction and speed of our head and body when we move rapidly in space, on the diagonal or in circles. Stand up and turn around in a circle or two. Do you feel a little dizzy? You should. Your vestibular system tells you instantly when you have had enough of this rotary stimulation. You will probably regain your balance in a moment. What stimulates these inner ear receptors? Gravity! According to Dr. Ayres, gravity is “the most constant and universal force in our lives.” It rules every move we make. Throughout evolution, we have been refining our responses to gravitational pull. Our ancient ancestors, the first fish, developed gravity receptors, on either side of their heads, for three purposes: 1) to keep upright, 2) to provide a sense of their own motions so they could move efficiently, and 3) to detect potentially threatening movements of other creatures through the vibrations of ripples in the water. Millions of years later, we still have gravity receptors to serve the same purposes—except now vibrations come through air rather than water.

Information technology is never asleep, as is manifested through cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, beepers, and other electronic leashes. We cannot get away. There is no “downtime” anymore. Our support systems are eroding,

Early in his life, Dostoevsky underwent a virtual resurrection. He had been arrested for belonging to a group judged treasonous by Tsar Nicholas I, who, to impress upon the young parlor radicals the gravity of their errors, sentenced them to death and staged a mock execution. A firing squad stood at the ready. Bareheaded, robed in white burial shrouds, hands bound tightly behind them, they were paraded through the snow before a gawking crowd. At the very last instant, as the order, “Ready, aim!” was heard and rifles were cocked and lifted, a horseman galloped up with a message from the tsar: he would mercifully commute their sentences to hard labor. Dostoevsky never recovered from this experience. He had peered into the maw of death, and from that moment life became for him precious beyond all calculation. “Now my life will change,” he said; “I shall be born again in a new form.” As he boarded the convict train toward Siberia, a devout woman handed him a New Testament, the only book allowed in prison. Believing that God had given him a second chance to fulfill his calling, Dostoevsky pored over that New Testament during his confinement. After ten years he emerged from exile with unshakable Christian convictions, as expressed in a letter to the woman who had given him the New Testament, “If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth … then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth.” Prison offered Dostoevsky another opportunity, which at first seemed a curse: it forced him to live at close quarters with thieves, murderers, and drunken peasants. His shared life with these prisoners later led to unmatched characterizations in his novels, such as that of the murderer Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky’s liberal view of the inherent goodness in humanity could not account for the pure evil he found in his cell mates, and his theology had to adjust to this new reality. Over time, though, he also glimpsed the image of God in the lowest of prisoners. He came to believe that only through being loved is a human being capable of love.

I actually like hearing about people’s childhoods. It’s nice to listen to, a bit like overhearing a really lovely secret.” He instantly looks both embarrassed and aggrieved, as if I’ve made him say such a whimsical thing.

I freeze, my sense of relief gone in an instant. Because although their words differ, my parents’ message is the same. Never go back there. It’s not safe there. Not for you.

The bonanza had begun nearly two decades earlier. In 1998, America Online bought Mirabilis, an Israeli pioneer in instant Internet messaging. The people who spoke the revived tongue of the Bible had invented ICQ, the first online chat program, then sold it for more than $400 million. It was an almost inconceivable fortune at the time for an invisible product with no business plan to drive it; as Israel’s first big exit, it was hailed as a high-tech milestone.

For one weird instant Thacker feels as hollow as a dead steer he came upon the other day, a sun-bleached hide stretched taut over a cage of bones. The wind races through his emptiness like it did through the carcass, the moan it makes coming dangerously close to thickening into a message.

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