Post Break Up Quotes

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

From the baking aisle to the post office line to the wrapping paper bin in the attic, women populate every dark corner of Christmas. Who got up at 4 a.m. to put the ham in the oven? A woman. . . . Who sent the Christmas card describing her eighteen-year-old son's incarceration as 'a short break before college?' A woman. Who remembered to include batteries at the bottom of each stocking? A woman. And who gets credit for pulling it all off? Santa. That's right. A man.

When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats—their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives. Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, more animalistic. No classical music for us—no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in means, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor—that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now—for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. You must never, never forget when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post code. It's a miracle when someone from a bad post code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.

When you’ve had a life of overthinking, you have the same reaction time and time again. Shyness becomes habitual. When you’re put in an unfamiliar situation, all you want to do is retreat and hide by default. You watch but don’t participate. You listen but don’t respond. You read, but rarely comment. You take a photo, but you rarely post. You write, but you rarely publish. All of this is because your overthinking mind cannot stop thinking about how you will be perceived by the outside world.

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

He saw a baby elephant tied to a post with a steel chain. The baby ripped and scratched and tried to get free, but the chain wouldn't break. Then, he saw a grown elephant tied to a post with nothing but a little piece of rope. He asked his mother how the little piece of rope held the big elephant in place. She explained they chain the babies until they give up. The elephants think that little piece of rope is still a chain.

The real issue isn’t whether our generation is wearing enough bedazzled cross T-shirts; it’s whether we are allowing the message of Jesus to root deeper than our wardrobe, blog posts, music playlists, tweets, and Facebook statuses. We’ve become a tribe of people who rank our faith in a measurement of likes, re-tweets, and memory verses. We need to up our game.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Facebook, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through photo slideshows at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connections of their youth through the machinery of night, who clicking and poking and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural brightness of tiny screens floating across the tops of cities contemplating likes, who bared their brains to the network and saw who got pregnant and who got fat and who’s living the life best lived by posting Instagrams of themselves staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through newly cropped profile pics with radiant cool eyes obsessing over whose ex’s new lover is the best looking ex-lover’s lover, who breaking their backs falling out of ergonomic chairs while shouting into the icy streets, Everybody look how clever I am, Look how much fun I am having, Look at this amazing party I went to, Look at how well-liked I am, Look at my effortless carefully constructed casual desperate thrown together fun, Everybody look, This is fun, Look, Look, I swear to God I am having so much fun.

unsolicited advice to adolescent girls with crooked teeth and pink hair When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys call asking your cup size, say A, hang up. When he says you gave him blue balls, say you’re welcome. When a girl with thick black curls who smells like bubble gum stops you in a stairwell to ask if you’re a boy, explain that you keep your hair short so she won’t have anything to grab when you head-butt her. Then head-butt her. When a guidance counselor teases you for handed-down jeans, do not turn red. When you have sex for the second time and there is no condom, do not convince yourself that screwing between layers of underwear will soak up the semen. When your geometry teacher posts a banner reading: “Learn math or go home and learn how to be a Momma,” do not take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom. When the boy you have a crush on is sent to detention, go home. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boy with the blue mohawk swallows your heart and opens his wrists, hide the knives, bleach the bathtub, pour out the vodka. Every time. When the skinhead girls jump you in a bathroom stall, swing, curse, kick, do not turn red. When a boy you think you love delivers the first black eye, use a screw driver, a beer bottle, your two good hands. When your father locks the door, break the window. When a college professor writes you poetry and whispers about your tight little ass, do not take it as a compliment, do not wait, call the Dean, call his wife. When a boy with good manners and a thirst for Budweiser proposes, say no. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys tell you how good you smell, do not doubt them, do not turn red. When your brother tells you he is gay, pretend you already know. When the girl on the subway curses you because your tee shirt reads: “I fucked your boyfriend,” assure her that it is not true. When your dog pees the rug, kiss her, apologize for being late. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Jersey City, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Harlem, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because your air conditioner is broken, leave him. When he refuses to keep a toothbrush at your apartment, leave him. When you find the toothbrush you keep at his apartment hidden in the closet, leave him. Do not regret this. Do not turn red. When your mother hits you, do not strike back.

What the hell is taking so long?” Elijah complained. “Elijah, hush,” Legna admonished. “It is their joining. Let them be.” Legna moved to snuggle up against her brother, allowing him to keep her warm as the three of them awaited the bride and her groom. “Jacob! I swear if you don’t put me down this very instant I’m going to marry someone else!” Isabella’s voice carried shrilly through the night, half annoyed, half laughing. The three waiting at the altar turned in unison to see the couple break from the tree line. Jacob had indeed carried his bride out of the woods, but he’d done so by slinging her over a shoulder, leaving her backside displayed prominently. Elijah choked on a laugh and Legna released a horrified gasp. Noah reached out to stay her from moving. “Let it be, Legna. What did you expect from the two of them?” Serves you right, you little tease. Jacob, please! You’re embarrassing me! And having me walk out of the woods in a state of arousal would not have embarrassed me? I said I was sorry! Was that before or after the mental striptease you sent me? Isabella sighed with exasperation, and then giggled. “You know, Emily Post is having heart failure right about now.” “Good, then that makes two of us.

We have imagined that a white hospital train with a white Diesel engine has taken you through many a tunnel to a mountainous country by the sea. You are getting well there. But you cannot write because your fingers are so very weak. Moonbeams cannot hold even a white pencil. The picture is pretty, but how long can it stay on the screen? We expect the next slide, but the magic-lantern man has none left. Shall we let the theme of a long separation expand till it breaks into tears? Shall we say (daintily handling the disinfected white symbols) that the train is Death and the nursing home Paradise? Or shall we leave the picture to fade by itself, to mingle with other fading impressions? But we want to write letters to you even if you cannot answer. Shall we suffer the slow wobbly scrawl (we can manage our name and two or three words of greeting) to work its conscientious and unnecessary way across a post card which will never be mailed? Are not these problems so hard to solve because my own mind is not made up yet in regard to your death? My intelligence does not accept the transformation of physical discontinuity into the permanent continuity of a nonphysical element escaping the obvious law, nor can it accept the inanity of accumulating incalculable treasures of thought and sensation, and thought-behind-thought and sensation-behind-sensation, to lose them all at once and forever in a fit of black nausea followed by infinite nothingness. Unquote.

Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on the New York Times to see if there’s a new thing, it’s not even about the content. It’s just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling. —Aziz Ansari

I click to buy it and I’m furious to discover that it’s not available in Ireland and they won’t post it from abroad and the only place that sells it is Harrods and it’s impossible for me to go to Harrods because it’s like being trapped in an Escher painting.

Are you okay?" Bill asks. Oh, these questions. I could say: "Yes," which would mean, "No." "No," which would mean, "No, but I'm probably not going to tell you what's the matter anyway." "Yeah," which would mean, "I've been better." "I guess," which would mean, "If you press me, I will probably give you some information." "I don't know," which would mean, "I am breaking down, take what you want - it's all lying in piles of smoky, burning debris on the floor anyway, and I want you to take some pleasure in it. Rub it on your body, you bastard. Love it. Yes, I have post-traumatic stress disorder. Yes, my relationship with Becca is falling apart. Yes, I am spiraling downward. Yes, yes, yes, okay? Everything is fucked up! Is that what you want to hear? Is it? Is it?" "I don't know," I say.

When he wrote back, he pretended to be his old self, he lied his way into sanity. For fear of his psychiatrist who was also their censor, they could never be sensual, or even emotional. His was considered a modern, enlightened prison, despite its Victorian chill. He had been diagnosed, with clinical precision, as morbidly oversexed, and in need of help as well as correction. He was not to be stimulated. Some letters—both his and hers—were confiscated for some timid expression of affection. So they wrote about literature, and used characters as codes. All those books, those happy or tragic couples they had never met to discuss! Tristan and Isolde the Duke Orsino and Olivia (and Malvolio too), Troilus and Criseyde, Once, in despair, he referred to Prometheus, chained to a rock, his liver devoured daily by a vulture. Sometimes she was patient Griselde. Mention of “a quiet corner in a library” was a code for sexual ecstasy. They charted the daily round too, in boring, loving detail. He described the prison routine in every aspect, but he never told her of its stupidity. That was plain enough. He never told her that he feared he might go under. That too was clear. She never wrote that she loved him, though she would have if she thought it would get through. But he knew it. She told him she had cut herself off from her family. She would never speak to her parents, brother or sister again. He followed closely all her steps along the way toward her nurse’s qualification. When she wrote, “I went to the library today to get the anatomy book I told you about. I found a quiet corner and pretended to read,” he knew she was feeding on the same memories that consumed him “They sat down, looked at each other, smiled and looked away. Robbie and Cecilia had been making love for years—by post. In their coded exchanges they had drawn close, but how artificial that closeness seemed now as they embarked on their small talk, their helpless catechism of polite query and response. As the distance opened up between them, they understood how far they had run ahead of themselves in their letters. This moment had been imagined and desired for too long, and could not measure up. He had been out of the world, and lacked the confidence to step back and reach for the larger thought. I love you, and you saved my life. He asked about her lodgings. She told him. “And do you get along all right with your landlady?” He could think of nothing better, and feared the silence that might come down, and the awkwardness that would be a prelude to her telling him that it had been nice to meet up again. Now she must be getting back to work. Everything they had, rested on a few minutes in a library years ago. Was it too frail? She could easily slip back into being a kind of sister. Was she disappointed? He had lost weight. He had shrunk in every sense. Prison made him despise himself, while she looked as adorable as he remembered her, especially in a nurse’s uniform. But she was miserably nervous too, incapable of stepping around the inanities. Instead, she was trying to be lighthearted about her landlady’s temper. After a few more such exchanges, she really was looking at the little watch that hung above her left breast, and telling him that her lunch break would soon be over.

Dani’s mild eating disorder was definitely the most annoying thing about her. One Christmas break I’d gained ten pounds and went up two cup-sizes—a post episode binge that finally made me look normal, like a woman. I would have killed to hold onto that version of me and all Dani did was count calories and complain about her non-existent cellulite. She was lucky. Most people were, they just couldn’t see it.

a vast majority of us vandwellers are white. The reasons range from obvious to duh, but then there’s this.” Linked below the post was an article about the experience of “traveling while black.” That made me think: America makes it hard enough for people to live nomadically, regardless of race. Stealth camping in residential areas, in particular, is way outside the mainstream. Often it involves breaking local ordinances against sleeping in cars. Avoiding trouble—hassles with cops and suspicious passersby—can be challenging, even with the Get Out of Jail Free card of white privilege. And in an era when unarmed African Americans are getting shot by police during traffic stops, living in a vehicle seems like an especially dangerous gambit for anyone who might become a victim of racial profiling. All that made me think about the instances when I could have gotten in trouble and didn’t. One time I got pulled over at night while reporting in North Dakota. The cops asked where I was from and recommended some local tourist attractions before letting me off with a warning. In general, people didn’t give me grief when I was driving Halen. I wish I could chalk that up to good karma or some kind of cosmic benevolence, but the fact remains: I am white. Surely privilege played a role.

The latter part of our Journey from the entrance of Wiltshire into Salisbury was very rough and abounded with Jolts, the Holes we were obliged to go through being very many and some of them Deep; and so it was with much Relief that we left the Coach at Salisbury and hired two Horses for the road across the Avon to the Plain and Stone-henge. When we came to the edge of this sacred Place, we tethered our Horses to the Posts provided and then, with the Sunne direct above us, walked over the short grass which (continually cropt by the flocks of Sheep) seemed to spring us forward to the great Stones. I stood back a little as Sir Chris. walked on, and I considered the Edifice with steadinesse: there was nothing here to break the Angles of Sight and as I gaz'd I opened my Mouth to cry out but my Cry was silent; I was struck by an exstatic Reverie in which all the surface of this Place seemed to me Stone, and the Sky itself Stone, and I became Stone as I joined the Earth which flew on like a Stone through the Firmament. And thus I stood until the Kaw of a Crow rous'd me: and yet even the call of the black Bird was an Occasion for Terrour, since it was not of this Time. I know not how long a Period I had traversed in my Mind, but Sir Chris. was still within my Sight when my Eyes were cleard of Mist. He was walking steadily towards the massie Structure and I rushed violently to catch him, for I greatly wished to enter the Circle before him. I stopped him with a Cry and then ran on: when Crows kaw more than ordinary, said I when I came up to him all out of Breath, we may expect Rain. Pish, he replied. He stopped to tye his Shooe, so then I flew ahead of him and first reached the Circle which was the Place of Sacrifice. And I bowed down.

The one universal balm for the trauma of war was tea. It was the thing that helped people cope. People made tea during air raids and after air raids, and on breaks between retrieving bodies from shattered buildings. Tea bolstered the network of thirty thousand observers who watched for German aircraft over England, operating from one thousand observation posts, all stocked with tea and kettles. Mobile canteens dispensed gallons of it, steaming, from spigots. In propaganda films, the making of tea became a visual metaphor for carrying on. “Tea acquired almost a magical importance in London life,” according to one study of London during the war. “And the reassuring cup of tea actually did seem to help cheer people up in a crisis.” Tea ran through Mass-Observation diaries like a river. “That’s one trouble about the raids,” a female diarist complained. “People do nothing but make tea and expect you to drink it.” Tea anchored the day—though at teatime, Churchill himself did not actually drink it, despite reputedly having said that tea was more important than ammunition. He preferred whiskey and water. Tea was comfort and history; above all, it was English. As long as there was tea, there was England. But now the war and the strict rationing that came with it threatened to shake even this most prosaic of pillars.

Break up your cycle. Get out of your rut. Find a way in your normal setting to "feel alive." One thing I'll do is get up early and see the sunrise from my yard, or for some bonus points, from my roof or a nearby hilltop. Jump in a chilly swimming pool! If it belongs to your neighbor, experiment with not telling them. Don a thong and maybe a midriff tank and head to the post office. I have not tried that one yet but I'll bet it won't be boring.

The firm did this at the local level, creating right-wing pages with vague names like Smith County Patriots or I Love My Country. Because of the way Facebook’s recommendation algorithm worked, these pages would pop up in the feeds of people who had already liked similar content. When users joined CA’s fake groups, it would post videos and articles that would further provoke and inflame them. Conversations would rage on the group page, with people commiserating about how terrible or unfair something was. CA broke down social barriers, cultivating relationships across groups. And all the while it was testing and refining messages, to achieve maximum engagement. Now CA had users who (1) self-identified as part of an extreme group, (2) were a captive audience, and (3) could be manipulated with data.

It was the weekend. She was watching a film on TV. It was about four teenage girls, friends who’d been devastated to find that they were all going to have to spend their summer holidays in different parts of the world. So they made a pact that they’d share a pair of jeans, meaning they’d send the jeans by post from one to the next to the next and so on as a sign of their undying friendship. What happened next was that the pair of jeans acted as a magic catalyst to their lives and saw them through lots of learning curves and self-esteem-getting and being in love, parents’ breaking up, someone dying etc. When it got to the part where a child was dying of cancer and the jeans helped one of the girls to cope with this, George, sitting on the floor in the front room, howled out loud like a wolf at its crapness.

Fuckboys (and Fuckboy Prospects), read this closely: When a woman breaks up with you (usually because she is fed up with your shit) it’s never easy. I understand your ego is bruised, you can’t imagine another dude doing things you used to do with/to her and that shit will eat you up! I understand. That doesn’t mean you should disrespect her – or kill her goddamit! That doesn’t mean you should post revenge porn pictures and videos of her to your 5000 online friends. It does not justify you calling her a hoe to ease your lil battered ego. Doing any of those makes you a certified upper echelon fuckboy bro. Walk away – just go on airplane mode, remove yourself from the situation and allow yourself to heal. If you are one of those social-media love butterflies who advertises every moment with your boo, then log out of all your profiles and go into cocoon mode.

Jack coughed slightly and offered his hand. “Hi, uh. I’m Jack.” Kim took it. “Jack what?” “Huh?” “Your last name, silly.” “Jackson.” She blinked at him. “Your name is Jack Jackson?” He blushed. “No, uh, my first name’s Rhett, but I hate it, so…” He gestured to the chair and she sat. Her dress rode up several inches, exposing pleasing long lines of creamy skin. “Well, Jack, what’s your field of study?” “Biological Engineering, Genetics, and Microbiology. Post-doc. I’m working on a research project at the institute.” “Really? Oh, uh, my apple martini’s getting a little low.” “I’ve got that, one second.” He scurried to the bar and bought her a fresh one. She sipped and managed to make it look not only seductive but graceful as well. “What do you want to do after you’re done with the project?” Kim continued. “Depends on what I find.” She sent him a simmering smile. “What are you looking for?” Immediately, Jack’s eyes lit up and his posture straightened. “I started the project with the intention of learning how to increase the reproduction of certain endangered species. I had interest in the idea of cloning, but it proved too difficult based on the research I compiled, so I went into animal genetics and cellular biology. It turns out the animals with the best potential to combine genes were reptiles because their ability to lay eggs was a smoother transition into combining the cells to create a new species, or one with a similar ancestry that could hopefully lead to rebuilding extinct animals via surrogate birth or in-vitro fertilization. We’re on the edge of breaking that code, and if we do, it would mean that we could engineer all kinds of life and reverse what damage we’ve done to the planet’s ecosystem.” Kim stared. “Right. Would you excuse me for a second?” She wiggled off back to her pack of friends by the bar. Judging by the sniggering and the disgusted glances he was getting, she wasn’t coming back. Jack sighed and finished off his beer, massaging his forehead. “Yes, brilliant move. You blinded her with science. Genius, Jack.” He ordered a second one and finished it before he felt smallish hands on his shoulders and a pair of soft lips on his cheek. He turned to find Kamala had returned, her smile unnaturally bright in the black lights glowing over the room. “So…how did it go with Kim?” He shot her a flat look. “You notice the chair is empty.” Kamala groaned. “You talked about the research project, didn’t you?” “No!” She glared at him. “…maybe…” “You’re so useless, Jack.” She paused and then tousled his hair a bit. “Cheer up. The night’s still young. I’m not giving up on you.” He smiled in spite of himself. “Yet.” Her brown eyes flashed. “Never.

The one universal balm for the trauma of war was tea. It was the thing that helped people cope. People made tea during air raids and after air raids, and on breaks between retrieving bodies from shattered buildings. Tea bolstered the network of thirty thousand observers who watched for German aircraft over England, operating from one thousand observation posts, all stocked with tea and kettles. Mobile canteens dispensed gallons of it, steaming, from spigots. In propaganda films, the making of tea became a visual metaphor for carrying on. “Tea acquired almost a magical importance in London life,” according to one study of London during the war. “And the reassuring cup of tea actually did seem to help cheer people up in a crisis.” Tea ran through Mass-Observation diaries like a river. “That’s one trouble about the raids,” a female diarist complained. “People do nothing but make tea and expect you to drink it.

So, then...” Petra interjected, caught up for the moment in the story, “nobody knows who was right? “Who was right?” Growland repeated slowly. “How do you mean?” “In the war.” As she tried to articulate her question, she became less sure of it. “You don't know which side was... right?” “Cub,” the big bear explained patiently, “nobody has ever gone to war believing their cause to be wrong!” “Well, sure, I get that. But afterwards... don't people usually... figure out... who was really right?” she finished lamely. “What people?” “I don't know!” Petra said, flinging her arms wide. “Historians, maybe?” Jumphrey snorted and removed his pipe from between his teeth. “Historians are people, and people have opinions and sympathies. I think if you pay attention, you'll find that histories usually demonstrate that the winning side was in the right all along; or else, occasionally, they demonstrate that those who won are despots and tyrants who deserved to be fought against, and still should be. You see? Everyone has a perspective. If you convened a representative post-war council to discuss what started the conflict and who ought to have given way to whom, a new war would break out from their arguments.” Petra felt her spirits slump a little. “But then... how–” “As everyone has always done,” the rabbit answered. “You pray that war does not come. But if it does come, you fight in accordance with your own convictions, or to defend the home or people you love; or you take a vow of pacifism, and follow your conscience some other way, if you are allowed. Whatever the political justification for war is said to be, armies are invariably made up of ordinary people fighting for the most basic of ideas, the simplest of reasons. 'Sides' are largely determined by the happenstance of birth, nothing more.” “That's... tragic,” Petra said, realizing a truth she'd heard before but never really processed. Jumphrey shrugged, and said simply, “All war is.

I also worried about her morale. During Linda’s first season working for Amazon, she had seen up close the vast volume of crap Americans were buying and felt disgusted. That experience had planted a seed of disenchantment. After she left the warehouse, it continued to grow. When she had downsized from a large RV to a minuscule trailer, Linda had also been reading about minimalism and the tiny house movement. She had done a lot of thinking about consumer culture and about how much garbage people cram into their short lives. I wondered where all those thoughts would lead. Linda was still grappling with them. Weeks later, after starting work in Kentucky, she would post the following message on Facebook and also text it directly to me: Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don’t need to impress people I don’t like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don’t have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won’t last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don’t have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world. After sending that, she continued: Radical I know, but this is what goes through my head when I’m at work. There is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. It’s really depressing to be there. Linda added that she was coping

Incidentally, those who were shocked by Bush the Younger’s shout that we are now “at war” with Osama should have quickly put on their collective thinking caps. Since a nation can only be at war with another nation-state, why did our smoldering if not yet burning bush come up with such a war cry? Think hard. This will count against your final grade. Give up? Well, most insurance companies have a rider that they need not pay for damage done by “an act of war.” Although the men and women around Bush know nothing of war and less of our Constitution, they understand fund-raising. For this wartime exclusion, Hartford Life would soon be breaking open its piggy bank to finance Republicans for years to come. But the mean-spirited Washington Post pointed out that under U.S. case law, only a sovereign nation, not a bunch of radicals, can commit an “act of war.” Good try, G.W. This now means that we the people, with our tax money, will be allowed to bail out the insurance companies, a rare privilege not afforded to just any old generation.

Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime's representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the post-totalitarian system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, "The emperor is naked!"—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

All week, we’ve heard pep talks like this one from Scott at last night’s post-Razzle’s debrief: “To me, here’s the motivation to evangelize: If I’m a doctor, and I find the cure for a terminal illness, and if I care about people, I’m going to spread that cure as widely as possible. If I don’t, people are going to die.” Leave the comparison in place for a second. If Scott had indeed found the cure to a terminal illness and if this Daytona mission were a vaccination campaign instead of an evangelism crusade, my group members would be acting with an unusually large portion of mercy—much more, certainly, than their friends who spent the break playing Xbox in their sweatpants. And if you had gone on this immunization trip, giving up your spring break for the greater good, and had found the sick spring breakers unwilling to be vaccinated, what would you do? If a terminally ill man said he was “late for a meeting,” you might let him walk away. But—and I’m really stretching here—if you really believed your syringe held his only hope of survival, and you really cared about him, would you ignore the rules of social propriety and try every convincement method you knew?

To purchase a Volkswagen, customers were required to make a weekly deposit of at least 5 Reichsmarks into a DAF account on which they received no interest. Once the account balance had reached 750 Reichsmarks, the customer was entitled to delivery of a VW. The DAF meanwhile achieved an interest saving of 130 Reichsmarks per car. In addition, purchasers of the VW were required to take out a two-year insurance contract priced at 200 Reichsmarks. The VW savings contract was non-transferable, except in case of death, and withdrawal from the contract normally meant the forfeit of the entire sum deposited. Remarkably, 270,000 people signed up to these contracts by the end of 1939 and by the end of the war the number of VW-savers had risen to 340,000. In total, the DAF netted 275 million Reichsmarks in deposits. But not a single Volkswagen was ever delivered to a civilian customer in the Third Reich. After 1939, the entire output was reserved for official uses of various kinds. Most of Porsche’s half-finished factory was turned over to military production. The 275 million Reichsmarks deposited by the VW savers were lost in the post-war inflation. After a long legal battle, VW’s first customers received partial compensation only in the 1960s.

Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression." TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy. Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know -- TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases. Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false. TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible. Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling. TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind? Freyd: Does that happen? TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.

Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity. Two of the biggest proven hoaxes of our time have involved allegations of white men gang-raping a black woman-- first the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987 and later the false rape charges against three Duke University students in 2006. In both cases, editorial indignation rang out across the land, without a speck of evidence to substantiate either of these charges. Moreover, the denunciations were not limited to the particular men accused, but were often extended to society at large, of whom these men were deemed to be symptoms or 'the tip of the iceberg.' In both cases, the charges fit a pre-existing vision, and that apparently made mundane facts unnecessary. Another widely publicized hoax-- one to which the President of the United States added his sub-hoax-- was a 1996 story appearing in USA Today under the headline, 'Arson at Black Churches Echoes Bigotry of the Past.' There was, according to USA Today, 'an epidemic of church burning,' targeting black churches. Like the gang-rape hoaxes, this story spread rapidly through the media. The Chicago Tribune referred to 'an epidemic of criminal and cowardly arson' leaving black churches in ruins. As with the gang-rape hoaxes, comments on the church fire stories went beyond those who were supposed to have set these fires to blame forces at work in society at large. Jesse Jackson was quoted was quoted in the New York Times as calling these arsons part of a 'cultural conspiracy' against blacks, which 'reflected the heightened racial tensions in the south that have been exacerbated by the assault on affirmative action and the populist oratory of Republican politicians like Pat Buchanan.' Time magazine writer Jack White likewise blamed 'the coded phrases' of Republican leaders for 'encouraging the arsonists.' Columnist Barbara Reynolds of USA Today said that the fires were 'an attempt to murder the spirit of black America.' New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said, "The fuel for these fires can be traced to a carefully crafted environment of bigotry and hatred that was developed over the last century.' As with the gang-rape hoaxes, the charges publicized were taken as reflecting on the whole society, not just those supposedly involved in what was widely presumed to be arson, rather than fires that break out for a variety of other reasons. Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam said that society in effect was 'giving these arsonists permission to commit these horrible crimes.' The climax of these comments came when President Bill Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said that these church burnings recalled similar burnings of black churches in Arkansas when he was a boy. There were more that 2,000 media stories done on the subject after the President's address. This story began to unravel when factual research showed that (1) no black churches were burned in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was growing up, (2) there had been no increase in fires at black churches, but an actual decrease over the previous 15 years, (3) the incidence of fires at white churches was similar to the incidence of fires at black churches, and (4) where there was arson, one-third of the suspects were black. However, retractions of the original story-- where there were retractions at all-- typically were given far less prominence than the original banner headlines and heated editorial comments.

forgot about my huge goal. I focused on what I could control: what I did every day. After a little experimentation and a lot of thought, I settled on a process. Because the Internet never sleeps, here’s what I did every day: Write a new post. Without fail. No excuses. Build relationships. I contacted three people who tweeted my posts that day, choosing the three who seemed most influential, the most noteworthy, the most “something” (even if that “something” was just “thoughtful comment”). Then I sent an e-mail—not a tweet—and said thanks. My goal was to make a genuine connection. Build my network. I contacted one person who might be a great source for a future post. I aimed high: CEOs, founders, entrepreneur-celebrities . . . people with instant credibility and engaged followings. Many didn’t respond. But some did. And some have become friends and appear in this book. Add three more items to my “list of great headlines.” Headlines make or break posts: A great post with a terrible headline will not get read. So I worked hard to learn what worked for other people—and to adapt their techniques for my own use. Evaluate recent results. I looked at page views. I looked at shares and likes and tweets. I tried to figure out what readers responded to, what readers cared about. Writing for a big audience has little to do with pleasing yourself and everything to do with pleasing an audience, and the only way to know what worked was to know the audience. Ignore my editor. I liked my editor. But I didn’t want her input because she knew only what worked for columnists who were read by a maximum of 300,000 people each month. My goal was to triple that, which meant I needed to do things differently. We occasionally disagreed, and early on I lost some of those battles. Once my numbers started to climb, I won a lot more often, until eventually I was able to do my own thing. Sounds simple, right? In a way it was, because I followed a self-reinforcing process:

Betsy didn’t want to be at the party any more than Cole did. She’d met the birthday girl in a spin class a couple of years earlier and had been declining her Evites ever since. In an effort to meet new people, however, this time Betsy replied “Yes.” She took a cab to the party, wondering why she was going at all. When Betsy met Cole there was a spark, but she was ambivalent. Cole was clearly smart and well educated, but he didn’t seem to be doing much about it. They had some nice dates, which seemed promising. Then, after sleeping over one night and watching Cole wake up at eleven a.m. and grab his skateboard, Betsy felt less bullish. She didn’t want to help another boyfriend grow up. What Betsy didn’t know was that, ever since he’d started spending time with her, Cole had regained some of his old drive. He saw the way she wanted to work on her sculptures even on the weekend, how she and her friends loved to get together to talk about their projects and their plans. As a result, Cole started to think more aspirationally. He eyed a posting for a good tech job at a high-profile start-up, but he felt his résumé was now too shabby to apply. As luck would have it—and it is often luck—Cole remembered that an old friend from high school, someone he bumped into about once every year or two, worked at the start-up. He got in touch, and this friend put in a good word to HR. After a handful of interviews with different people in the company, Cole was offered the position. The hiring manager told Cole he had been chosen for three reasons: His engineering degree suggested he knew how to work hard on technical projects, his personality seemed like a good fit for the team, and the twentysomething who vouched for him was well liked in the company. The rest, the manager said, Cole could learn on the job. This one break radically altered Cole’s career path. He learned software development at a dot-com on the leading edge. A few years later, he moved over and up as a director of development at another start-up because, by then, the identity capital he’d gained could speak for itself. Nearly ten years later, Cole and Betsy are married. She runs a gallery co-op. He’s a CIO. They have a happy life and gladly give much of the credit to Cole’s friend from high school and to the woman with the Evites.

When Musk took delivery of his F1, CNN was there to cover it. “Just three years ago I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor,” he told the camera sheepishly, “and now obviously, I’ve got a million-dollar car… it’s just a moment in my life.” While other McLaren F1 owners around the world—the sultan of Brunei, Wyclef Jean, and Jay Leno, among others—could comfortably afford it, Musk’s purchase had put a sizable dent in his bank account. And unlike other owners, Musk drove the car to work—and declined to insure it. As Musk drove Thiel up Sand Hill Road in the F1, the car was the subject of their chat. “It was like this Hitchcock movie,” Thiel remembered, “where we’re talking about the car for fifteen minutes. We’re supposed to be preparing for the meeting—and we’re talking about the car.” During their ride, Thiel looked at Musk and reportedly asked, “So, what can this thing do?” “Watch this,” Musk replied, flooring the accelerator and simultaneously initiating a lane change on Sand Hill Road. In retrospect, Musk admitted that he was outmatched by the F1. “I didn’t really know how to drive the car,” he recalled. “There’s no stability systems. No traction control. And the car gets so much power that you can break the wheels free at even fifty miles an hour.” Thiel recalls the car in front of them coming fast into view—then Musk swerving to avoid it. The McLaren hit an embankment, was tossed into the air—“like a discus,” Musk remembered——then slammed violently into the ground. “The people that saw it happen thought we were going to die,” he recalled. Thiel had not worn a seat belt, but astonishingly, neither he nor Musk were hurt. Musk’s “work of art” had not fared as well, having now taken a distinctly cubist turn. Post-near-death experience, Thiel dusted himself off on the side of the road and hitchhiked to the Sequoia offices, where he was joined by Musk a short while later. X.com’s CEO, Bill Harris, was also waiting at the Sequoia office, and he recalled that both Thiel and Musk were late but offered no explanation for their delay. “They never told me,” Harris said. “We just had the meeting.” Reflecting on it, Musk found humor in the experience: “I think it’s safe to say Peter wouldn’t be driving with me again.” Thiel wrung some levity out of the moment, too. “I’d achieved lift-off with Elon,” he joked, “but not in a rocket.

I'm renowned within the ton as being cool under fire- around you, I'm never cool. I'm heated- I seethe- I burn with desire. If I'm in the same room, all I can think about is heat- your heat- and how you'll feel around me." Patience felt the heat rise, a real force between them. "I've gained the reputation of being the soul of discretion- now look at me. I've seduced my godmother's niece- and been seduced by her. I share her bed openly, even under my godmother's roof." His lips twisted wryly. "So much for discretion." He drew a deep breath; his chest brushed her breasts. "And as for my vaunted, up-until-you 'legendary' control- the instant I'm inside you that evaporates like water on hot steel." What prompted her Patience never knew. His lips were so close- with her teeth, she nipped the lower. "I told you to let go- I won't break." The tension, pouring off him in waves, eased, just a little. He sighed, and rested his forehead on hers. "I don't like losing control- it's like losing myself- in you." She felt him gather himself, felt the tension swell and coalesce about them. "It's giving myself to you- so that I'm in your keeping." The words, low and gravelly, rolled through her; closing her eyes, she drew in a shallow breath. "And you don't like doing that." "I don't like it- but I crave it. I don't approve of it, yet I yearn for it." His words feathered her cheek, then his lips touched hers. "Do you understand? I haven't any choice." Patience felt his chest swell as he drew a deep breath. "I love you." She shivered, eyes shut tight, and felt the world shift about her. "Losing myself in you- giving my heart and soul into your keeping- is part of that." His lips brushed hers in an inexpressibly tender caress. "Trusting you is part of that. Telling you I love you is part of that." His lips touched hers; Patience didn't wait for more. She kissed him. Letting go of the post, she slid her hands up, framing his face, so she could let him know- let him feel- her response to all he'd said. He felt it, sensed it- and reacted; his arms locked tight about her. She couldn't breathe, but she didn't care. All she cared about was the emotion that held them, that flowed so effortlessly between them. Silver and gold, it wound about them, investing each touch with its magic. Silver and gold, it shimmered about them, and quivered in their fractured breaths. It was immediate compulsion and future promise, heavenly delight and earthly pleasure. It was here and now- and forever.

She clicks on the last slide, and that’s when it happens. “Me So Horny” blasts out of the speakers and my video, mine and Peter’s, flashes on the projector screen. Someone has taken the video from Anonybitch’s Instagram and put their own soundtrack to it. They’ve edited it too, so I bop up and down on Peter’s lap at triple speed to the beat. Oh no no no no. Please, no. Everything happens at once. People are shrieking and laughing and pointing and going “Oooh!” Mr. Vasquez is jumping up to unplug the projector, and then Peter’s running onstage, grabbing the microphone out of a stunned Reena’s hand. “Whoever did that is a piece of garbage. And not that it’s anybody’s fucking business, but Lara Jean and I did not have sex in the hot tub.” My ears are ringing, and people are twisting around in their seats to look at me and then shifting back around to look at Peter. “All we did was kiss, so fuck off!” Mr. Vasquez, the junior class advisor, is trying to grab the mic back from Peter, but Peter manages to maintain control of it. He holds the mic up high and yells out, “I’m gonna find whoever did this and kick their ass!” In the scuffle, he drops the mic. People are cheering and laughing. Peter’s being frog-marched off the stage, and he frantically looks out into the audience. He’s looking for me. The assembly breaks up then, and everyone starts filing out the doors, but I stay low in my seat. Chris comes and finds me, face alight. She grabs me by the shoulders. “Ummm, that was crazy! He freaking dropped the F bomb twice!” I am still in a state of shock, maybe. A video of me and Peter hot and heavy was just on the projector screen, and everyone saw Mr. Vasquez, seventy-year-old Mr. Glebe who doesn’t even know what Instagram is. The only passionate kiss of my life and everybody saw. Chris shakes my shoulders. “Lara Jean! Are you okay?” I nod mutely, and she releases me. “He’s kicking whoever did it’s ass? I’d love to see that!” She snorts and throws her head back like a wild pony. “I mean, the boy’s an idiot if he thinks for one second it wasn’t Gen who posted that video. Like, wow, those are some serious blinders, y’know?” Chris stops short and examines my face. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Everybody saw us.” “Yeah…that sucked. I’m sure that was Gen’s handiwork. She must’ve gotten one of her little minions to sneak it onto Reena’s PowerPoint.” Chris shakes her head in disgust. “She’s such a bitch. I’m glad Peter set the record straight, though. Like, I hate to give him credit, but that was an act of chivalry. No guy has ever set the record straight for me.

As Frank promised, there was no other public explosion. Still. The multiple times when she came home to find him idle again, just sitting on the sofa staring at the rug, were unnerving. She tried; she really tried. But every bit of housework—however minor—was hers: his clothes scattered on the floor, food-encrusted dishes in the sink, ketchup bottles left open, beard hair in the drain, waterlogged towels bunched on bathroom tiles. Lily could go on and on. And did. Complaints grew into one-sided arguments, since he wouldn’t engage. “Where were you?” “Just out.” “Out where?” “Down the street.” Bar? Barbershop? Pool hall. He certainly wasn’t sitting in the park. “Frank, could you rinse the milk bottles before you put them on the stoop?” “Sorry. I’ll do it now.” “Too late. I’ve done it already. You know, I can’t do everything.” “Nobody can.” “But you can do something, can’t you?” “Lily, please. I’ll do anything you want.” “What I want? This place is ours.” The fog of displeasure surrounding Lily thickened. Her resentment was justified by his clear indifference, along with his combination of need and irresponsibility. Their bed work, once so downright good to a young woman who had known no other, became a duty. On that snowy day when he asked to borrow all that money to take care of his sick sister in Georgia, Lily’s disgust fought with relief and lost. She picked up the dog tags he’d left on the bathroom sink and hid them away in a drawer next to her bankbook. Now the apartment was all hers to clean properly, put things where they belonged, and wake up knowing they’d not been moved or smashed to pieces. The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang’s cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the wall she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed. That was what her parents had taught her and what she had promised them: To choose, they insisted, and not ever be moved. Let no insult or slight knock her off her ground. Or, as her father was fond of misquoting, “Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A tougher lady never lived. Find your talent and drive it.” The afternoon Frank left, Lily moved to the front window, startled to see heavy snowflakes powdering the street. She decided to shop right away in case the weather became an impediment. Once outside, she spotted a leather change purse on the sidewalk. Opening it she saw it was full of coins—mostly quarters and fifty-cent pieces. Immediately she wondered if anybody was watching her. Did the curtains across the street shift a little? The passengers in the car rolling by—did they see? Lily closed the purse and placed it on the porch post. When she returned with a shopping bag full of emergency food and supplies the purse was still there, though covered in a fluff of snow. Lily didn’t look around. Casually she scooped it up and dropped it into the groceries. Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright, seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money’s empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones.

THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape. When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man. She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street. For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit. She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.

We started with no tables in the room, only chairs. This was intended to keep the tables from being a barrier and to create an openness that could lead to different possibilities. We met in a semi-circle where we could easily break into pairs for story telling. There was enough space to set up side tables for work groups to sketch out ideas. We used the walls around the semi-circle to post their ideas about trust and the work could be easily seen by everyone.

Singing a New Song He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD. PSALM 40:3 NLT For many, the New Year is a good time to reflect on the events of the past year, to review what God has done, to praise Him for deliverance and safety, and to thank Him for His provision—both individually and corporately. Some of the social networks online have software that will look at the posts and pictures an individual has made and put together a year in review, hitting the highlights and major events. But those “reviews” don’t always pick up on the praise and thanksgiving to God that should result from such an accounting. Take a moment to reflect on all that God has done in the previous months. Then proclaim the works of the Lord, be amazed at His outpouring of love, grace, and mercy. Break out in song, spontaneous and free. Praise God in hymns, praise songs, and scripture songs. Even those who can’t “carry a tune in a bucket,” as the saying goes, can praise God with a joyful noise. If God’s people don’t proclaim the glorious works of their God, how can they expect the world to ever have a right view of Him? Sing a new song of praise to God for His many and varied works, and renew your trust in Him for the new year ahead. Father, thank You for the new song of praise You have placed in my heart.

Usually, it is a simple hustle. Someone pays me, I manufacture a story for them, and we trade it up the chain—from a tiny blog to Gawker to a website of a local news network to the Huffington Post to the major newspapers to cable news and back again, until the unreal becomes real.* Sometimes I start by planting a story. Sometimes I put out a press release or ask a friend to break a story on their blog. Sometimes I “leak” a document. Sometimes I fabricate a document and leak that. Really, it can be anything, from vandalizing a Wikipedia page to producing an expensive viral video. However the play starts, the end is the same: The economics of the Internet are exploited to change public perception—and sell product.

Who was that?” His voice was cold enough to freeze ice. “My friend, Sophie.” Unable to stand the tension any longer, she blurted, “I didn’t mean it.” “Guess she’s not happy about your post-wedding sex romp.” Maddie wanted to cringe at the words and the menace in his voice, but she stood and walked to him, putting her hand on his chest. Other than the muscle that jumped under her touch, he didn’t move, and his hard expression didn’t waver. “I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t mean it. I was upset and defensive. I spoke without thinking.” “Sure, forget it.” He shrugged as if it were no big deal. This pretending was worse than if he’d raged in fury. But the truth was, with things so fragile between them, she was too scared to push. It would break them. She closed the physical distance, resting her cheek against his heart. It beat strong and fast against her ear while he stayed ridged as stone. She whispered the truth and hoped he believed. “You’re important to me. I need you. Please believe me.” His arms closed around her, but he didn’t squeeze as tightly as he usually did. “Did she ask you when you were coming home?” “Yes.” “What did you say?” “I said soon.” His muscles tensed. “What does soon mean?” “I don’t know.” She tilted her chin looking up into his handsome face. “Do you want me to leave?” His gaze met hers, and he gave her a sharp shake of the head. She traced the line of his hard jaw. “I can’t leave yet.” His golden eyes flashed, then shuttered closed. His hand slid up her back to curl around her neck. “Let’s go to bed.” She knew what he was doing and let him. She’d hurt him and couldn’t deny him. She needed to make it right. Only

Reading Group Guide  1.   The river town of Hobnob, Mississippi, is in danger of flooding. To offset the risk, the townspeople were offered the chance to relocate in exchange for money. Some people jumped at the opportunity (the Flooders); others (the Stickers) refused to leave, so the deal fell through. If you lived in Hobnob, which choice would you make and why? If you’d lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina, would you have fled the storm or stayed to protect your house? Did the two floods remind you of each other in terms of official government response or media coverage?  2.   How are the circumstances during the Prohibition era (laws against consuming or selling alcohol, underground businesses that make and sell booze on the black market, corruption in the government and in law enforcement) similar to what’s happening today (the fight to legalize and tax marijuana, the fallout of the drug war in countries like Mexico and Colombia, jails filled with drug abusers)? How are the circumstances different? Do you identify with the bootleggers or the prohibitionists in the novel? What is your stance on the issue today?  3.   The novel is written in third person from two different perspectives—Ingersoll’s and Dixie Clay’s—in alternating chapters. How do you think this approach adds to or detracts from the story? Are you a fan of books written from multiple perspectives, or do you prefer one character to tell his/her side of the story?  4.   The Tilted World is written by two authors. Do you think it reads differently than a book written by only one? Do you think you could coauthor a novel with a loved one? Did you try to guess which author wrote different passages?  5.   Language and dialect play an important role in the book. Do you think the southern dialect is rendered successfully? How about the authors’ use of similes (“wet towels hanging out of the upstairs windows like tongues”; “Her nylon stockings sagged around her ankles like shedding snakeskin.”). Do they provide necessary context or flavor?  6.   At the end of Chapter 5, when Jesse, Ham, and Ingersoll first meet, Ingersoll realizes that Jesse has been drinking water the entire time they’ve been at dinner. Of course, Ham and Ingersoll are both drunk from all the moonshine. How does this discovery set the stage for what happens in the latter half of the book?  7.   Ingersoll grew up an orphan. In what ways do you think that independence informed his character? His choices throughout the novel? Dixie Clay also became independent, after marrying Jesse and becoming ostracized from friends and family. Later, after Ingersoll rescues her, she reflects, “For so long she’d relied only on herself. She’d needed to. . . . But now she’d let someone in. It should have felt like weakness, but it didn’t.” Are love and independence mutually exclusive? How did the arrival of Willy prepare these characters for the changes they’d have to undergo to be ready for each other?  8.   Dixie Clay becomes a bootlegger not because she loves booze or money but because she needs something to occupy her time. It’s true, however, that she’s not only breaking the law but participating in a system that perpetrates violence. Do you think there were better choices she could have made? Consider the scene at the beginning of the novel, when there’s a showdown between Jesse and two revenuers interested in making an arrest. Dixie Clay intercepts the arrest, pretending to be a posse of gunslingers protecting Jesse and the still. Given what you find out about Jesse—his dishonesty, his drunkenness, his womanizing—do you think she made the right choice? If you were in Dixie Clay’s shoes, what would you have done?  9.   When Ham learns that Ingersoll abandoned his post at the levee to help Dixie Clay, he feels not only that Ingersoll acted

novelty. I’m definitely in the familiarity camp. I love to reread my favorite books and to watch movies over and over. I eat the same foods, more or less, every day. I like returning to places I’ve visited before. Other people thrive on doing new things. For familiarity lovers, a habit becomes easier as it becomes familiar. When I felt intimidated by the library when I started law school, I made myself walk through it a few times each day until I felt comfortable enough to work there. When I started blogging, my unfamiliarity with the mechanics of posting made me dread it. But I forced myself to post every day so that the foreign became familiar, and the difficult became automatic. Novelty lovers may embrace habits more readily when they seem less … habit-like. A guy told me, “I feel stale when I go to work every day and see the same faces all the time, so once a week I work in a different satellite office, to shake thing up.” In

So-called “battered women’s shelters” have been called “one-stop divorce shops” because they are “extreme militant feminist” operations that exist mostly to separate children from their fathers, even without any demonstration of violence. Erin Pizzey, who founded the first shelter in London in 1971, claims that her movement has been “hijacked” by feminists. Extended investigations by Canada’s National Post and others revealed a violently anti-male agenda, corruption, drug and alcohol use, child abuse, and even, ironically, violence against women. Yet they continue to receive government funding. One woman whose husband “didn’t beat me up or nothing, we just had an argument,” says shelter workers ignored her pleas and pressured her to leave her marriage. “They asked me if I was abused, and I said, ‘No.’ They wanted me to get a lawyer, and I said, ‘For what?’” She maintains shelter employees tried to “trick” her into making incriminating statements about her husband. “Everything negative about him, they wrote it down. If I said something nice about him, they wouldn’t write it down. I kept telling them, ‘No, he didn’t hit me.’” She was offered financial incentives to leave her husband. “They said, ‘If you leave him, we can help you find a place right away.’ But I said, ‘I don’t want to leave him.’ . . . They wanted that so bad. They were trying to break up a family, and I didn’t want that.

Colorado Springs can be traced to the city’s founding, but it was in the post-WWII era that the city began to emerge as a nerve center for a politically engaged, globally expansive evangelicalism intent on winning the country, and the world, for Christ. The entrenchment of evangelicalism in Colorado Springs coincided with the growth of the military in the region. In 1954, the United States Air Force Academy was established in Colorado Springs. The city would eventually house three air force bases, an army fort, and the North American Air Defense Command. In the 1960s, the Nazarene Bible College opened its doors, and soon an array of evangelical, charismatic, and fundamentalist churches, colleges, ministries, nonprofits, and businesses took root. Lured by local tax breaks and drawn to the growing epicenter of evangelical power, nearly one hundred Christian parachurch organizations sprouted up within a five-mile vicinity of the academy, including Officers’ Christian Fellowship, the International Bible Society, Youth for Christ, the Navigators, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Christian Booksellers Association, Fellowship of Christian Cowboys, Christian Camping International, and, most significantly, Dobson’s Focus on the Family. 2

The average veteran who joined the Legion in the 1920’s had been unaware that big-business men were backing it to use it as a strikebreaking agency. When workers struck against wage cuts, Legion posts were informed that the strikers were Communists trying to create national chaos so that the Reds could take over. Legionnaires were given baseball bats to break up strikes and civil rights demonstrations. The American Civil Liberties Union later reported, “Of the forces most active in attacking civil rights, the American Legion led the field.

Stop looking for sympathy by posting about your breakup or the pain they cause. Move on! Do it for you!

Jucikas typed in a query, and a list of links popped up. He clicked on one of the many people who went by that name in Nebraska – and there was everything about her, right up on the screen. Here’s her photo, here’s where she works, here’s her house. Here are her kids, this is where they go to school, this is the car she drives. She voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, she loves Katy Perry, she drives an Audi, she’s a bit basic … and on and on and on. We knew everything about her – and for many records, the information was updated in real time, so if she posted to Facebook, we could see it happening.

For one thing, they share a willingness to consider New York from a cinematic distance, overlooking the city’s many irritants except insofar as they add grit and drama to their personal story. In day-to-day terms, this manifests as complaining vigorously about subway hardships and bedbug plagues, and then posting Instagram photos of the skyline at sunset. A not insignificant number of the New York lovers I know—especially the twenty-somethings—are actually pretty unhappy day-to-day. I picture the prom king’s date sitting near him at a party, ignored but still kind of proud to be in the room and on his arm—and incredibly offended at the suggestion that she should break up with him for someone who dotes on her more. Oh, how California dotes! Sun yourself. Take the car. Let your guard down. Breathe deeply, and you’ll smell the jasmine and dusty sage. Show up twenty minutes late. (Just text “Sorry—traffic.”) Explore the weirder corners of your spirituality. Describe yourself, without sarcasm, as a writer slash creative entrepreneur. Work from home. Spread out. Wear the comfortable pants. When I describe this sunshine-and-avocado-filled existence to some New Yorkers, they acknowledge that they really like California, too, but could never move here because they’d get too “soft.

Let us turn now to a study of a small Newfoundland fishing village. Fishing is, in England at any rate – more hazardous even than mining. Cat Harbour, a community in Newfoundland, is very complex. Its social relationships occur in terms of a densely elaborate series of interrelated conceptual universes one important consequence of which is that virtually all permanent members of the community are kin, ‘cunny kin’, or economic associates of all other of the 285 permanent members. The primary activity of the community is cod fishing. Salmon, lobster, and squid provide additional sources of revenue. Woodcutting is necessary in off-seasons. Domestic gardening, and stints in lumber camps when money is needed, are the two other profitable activities. The community's religion is reactionary. Women assume the main roles in the operation though not the government of the churches in the town. A complicated system of ‘jinking’ – curses, magic, and witchcraft – governs and modulates social relationships. Successful cod fishing in the area depends upon highly developed skills of navigation, knowledge of fish movements, and familiarity with local nautical conditions. Lore is passed down by word of mouth, and literacy among older fishermen is not universal by any means. ‘Stranger’ males cannot easily assume dominant positions in the fishing systems and may only hire on for salary or percentage. Because women in the community are not paid for their labour, there has been a pattern of female migration out of the area. Significantly, two thirds of the wives in the community are from outside the area. This has a predictable effect on the community's concept of ‘the feminine’. An elaborate anti-female symbolism is woven into the fabric of male communal life, e.g. strong boats are male and older leaky ones are female. Women ‘are regarded as polluting “on the water” and the more traditional men would not consider going out if a woman had set foot in the boat that day – they are “jinker” (i.e., a jinx), even unwittingly'. (It is not only relatively unsophisticated workers such as those fishermen who insist on sexual purity. The very skilled technicians drilling for natural gas in the North Sea affirm the same taboo: women are not permitted on their drilling platform rigs.) It would be, however, a rare Cat Harbour woman who would consider such an act, for they are aware of their structural position in the outport society and the cognition surrounding their sex….Cat Harbour is a male-dominated society….Only men can normally inherit property, or smoke or drink, and the increasingly frequent breach of this by women is the source of much gossip (and not a negligible amount of conflict and resentment). Men are seated first at meals and eat together – women and children eating afterwards. Men are given the choicest and largest portions, and sit at the same table with a ‘stranger’ or guest. Women work extremely demanding and long hours, ‘especially during the fishing season, for not only do they have to fix up to 5 to 6 meals each day for the fishermen, but do all their household chores, mind the children and help “put away fish”. They seldom have time to visit extensively, usually only a few minutes to and from the shop or Post Office….Men on the other hand, spend each evening arguing, gossiping, and “telling cuffers”, in the shop, and have numerous “blows” (i.e., breaks) during the day.’ Pre-adolescents are separated on sexual lines. Boys play exclusively male games and identify strongly with fathers or older brothers. Girls perform light women's work, though Faris indicates '. . . often openly aspire to be male and do male things. By this time they can clearly see the privileged position of the Cat Harbour male….’. Girls are advised not to marry a fisherman, and are encouraged to leave the community if they wish to avoid a hard life. Boys are told it is better to leave Cat Harbour than become fishermen....

It took me a couple of years after I woke up in that cold sweat to figure out what flag I was going to plant, and then how to do something with it. Using the process in Step 1, I found the things that I wanted to be known for and the work that I was passionate about. And then I started telling my story all the time to anyone who would actually listen. For me, this story was around Lean UX because of who I was at the time. I created a pitch based on design for designers, by designers, to change the way that they were working. And I honed that voice and that tone and that dialogue by telling the story over and over and over again using blog posts and articles and eventually in-person talks. The first talk I ever gave as a part of my new professional trajectory was on August 12, 2010. I told the story about how we solved the problem of integrating UX into Agile at TheLadders. And then the timeline started to accelerate from there. A month later, on September 24, I gave my first talk about Lean UX and it was in Paris. I was communicating about this topic publicly, and people were saying, “Hey, come give us a talk about it.” And I was writing about the topic in any publication that would actually listen to this kind of thing. I kept speaking and writing and making presentations, and as I got my ideas out into the world and put them into play in any way I could, on March 7, 2011, I finally hit the jackpot. This was three years after I had my 35th-birthday epiphany and the pressure was on—I knew I had just two years left before I was going to become obsolete, an also-ran. I hit the jackpot when I managed to get an article published in Smashing magazine. At the time, Smashing had a million readers online, and so the scale of my conversation was growing and growing because I was becoming known as the guy who had some answers to this question. That was a massive break for me because the article provided me with a global audience for the first time. Obviously, anything you publish on the internet is global and distributed, but the bottom line is that, if the platform you choose or that chooses you has a built-in audience, you stand a much bigger chance. Smashing magazine had an audience. The article, titled “Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business” became very successful, and that’s where I planted my flag—providing solutions to the Agile and design problem with a real-world tested solution nicely packaged and labeled as Lean UX.

Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on the New York Times to see if there’s a new thing, it’s not even about the content. It’s just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling.

Alright, guards, keep up the good work, and thanks for breaking our fall,” I said as I climbed back up the ladder. “Anytime, General Steve,” said David. Hayden and I returned to our post and were delighted to see a new clone standing on the bedrock blocks. “How’s that for a surprise?” the clone said with a smirk on his face. Hayden’s good mood quickly turned sour. “You’ll pay for that!” “Serves you right for interrupting me. Hm, but I guess the real surprise is that you’re still alive.” “It’ll take a whole lot more than one skinny enderman to take me down!” “I’m sure something can be arranged. How about five creepermen?

Which color?” he asks, holding up a green and a yellow ball. His knuckles are flecked with a different-colored paint now. Eggshell blue. “What if I say red?” “Then I guess I’ll have to go wade through the creek and find the red ball.” “You’d do that?” He looks down toward the creek, his hair flashing gold in the sun. “You’d make me?” I hesitate. “Yellow.” He drops both balls at the starting post, and they make a satisfying clunk against each other. “Why’d you choose yellow?” “I’m an artist,” I say. “Yellow is sunlight.” “Sunlight? I don’t know. I think of lemons or butter before I think of sunlight.” “But you’re a chef.” “I am a chef.” “Lemons and butter are nice but not exactly essentials. I can’t live without sunlight.” He puts his hand over his chest. “And my chef ’s heart is breaking right now

Pink passes by me with a wicked look on his face. He walks over to where Elle is sitting, and before she can protest, he scoops her up out of her stool, dips her back dramatically like something from an old movie, and plants a kiss right on her lips. After a moment, he breaks the kiss, sets her back down on the stool, and walks away. “Asshole,” Elle mumbles as she touches her lips, and her cheeks turn bright red. “As much as you keep mentioning your ass, Prinzessin, I can see that’s going to need attention first,” Pink says, not looking back as he walks out the door. I look over to see Elle’s mouth drop open and her cheeks burn even brighter, so I leave her and a laughing Zoey alone in the apartment. When we get outside, I talk to my guys posted outside as a precaution, then Pink and I head to my truck. “You sure you want to keep digging that grave?” I ask, looking over as Pink gets in the truck. “As long as I end up buried inside her, I’m good.

Taking a deep breath, Sailor decided to lay himself at her feet. "I was imagining the future and thinking of how if everything went according to plan, I'd have a very successful business with a high turnover." He made sure his hands were locked behind Ísa's back--just in case she decided to leave him in her dust a fourth time. "And since I'd be rich, I'd be able to buy houses and other nice things for my family." Ísa frowned. "I don't think your family expects that." "They don't exactly need my largess either," Sailor muttered. "But in my future fantasy, I'm buying everyone fancy cars and houses. Go with it." Ísa's lips twitched. "Okay, big spender. What else is fantasy Sailor doing?" "He's building a ginormous mansion. Swimming pool, tennis court, the works." "Is he hiring a buff personal masseuse named Sven?" "Hell no." He glared at her. "The masseuse is a fifty-year-old forner bodybuilder named Helga. Now, can I carry on?" Pretending to zip up her lips and throw away the key, Ísa made a "go on" motion. "Future Sailor is also creating a huge walk-in closet for you and filling it with designer shoes and clothes. He's giving you everything your heart desires." A flicker of darkness in Ísa's gaze, but she didn't interrupt... though her hands went still on his shoulders. "And there's a tricked-out nursery too," he added. "Plus a private playground for our rug rats." Throat moving, Ísa said, "How many?" It was a husky question. "Seven, I think." "Very funny, mister." "I'm not done." Sailor was the one who swallowed this time. "And in this fantasy house, future Sailor walks in late for dinner again because of a board meeting, and he has a gorgeous, sexy, brilliant wife and adorable children. But his redhead doesn't look at him the same anymore. And it doesn't matter how many shoes he buys her or how many necklaces he gives her, she's never again going to look at him the way she did before he stomped on her heart. Ísa's lower lip began to quiver, but she didn't speak. "I'm so sorry, baby." Sailor cupped her face, made sure she saw the sheer terror he felt at the thought of losing her. "I've been so tied to this idea of becoming a grand success that I forgot what it was all about in the first place--being there for the people I love. Sticking through the good and the bad. Never abandoning them." Silent tears rolled own Ísa's face. "But that great plan of mine?" he said, determined not to give himself any easy outs. "It'd have mean abandoning everyone. How can I be there for anyone when all I do is work? When I shove aside all other commitments? When the people I love hesitate to ask for my time because I'm too tired and too busy?" Using his thumbs, he rubbed away her tears. More splashed onto the backs of his hands, her hurt as hot as acid. "Spitfire, please," he begged, breaking. "I'll let you punch me as many times as you want if you stop crying. With a big red glove. And you can post photos online." Ísa pressed her lips together, blinked rapidly several times. And pretended to punch him with one fist, the touch a butterfly kiss. Catching her hand, he pressed his lips to it. "That's more like my Ísa." He wrapped his arms around her again. And then he told her the most important thing. "I realized that I could become a multimillionaire, but it would mean nothing if my redhead didn't look at me the way she does now, if she expected to have to take care of everything alone like she's always done--because her man was a selfish bastard who was never there." Ísa rubbed her nose against his. "You're being very hard on future Sailor," she whispered, her voice gone throaty. "That dumbass deserves it," Sailor growled. "He was going to put his desire to be a big man above his amazing, smart, loving redhead.

In fact, the child is no longer a child. Children are substitute beings, who are losing their natural otherness and entering upon a satellite existence on the artificial orbit of sameness. They will find it increasingly difficult to detach themselves; to find, not their identity and their autonomy — as they are constantly being told they must — but their distance and their strangeness. The more genetic heredity is foregrounded, the more the symbolic heritage disappears. Even the Oedipal drama is not played out any longer. There is no longer any resolution of childhood, since the psychical and symbolic conditions of childhood no longer even exist. Childhood is losing even the chance of surpassing and denying itself as such. It is disappearing as a phase in the metamorphosis of the human being. At the same time as it is losing this distinctive spirit of its own and its singularity, it is becoming a sort of dark continent. For otherness inevitably re-emerges, but differently, in the form of a vast, shady complicity on the part of a generation which is at last free from adult attention, but is no longer minded to grow up. An endless, purposeless adolescence, which is acquiring autonomy with no reference to the Other, acquiring it for itself — and turning, in some cases violently, against the Other, against the adult with whom it now has no sense either of descendance or solidarity. This is no longer a symbolic break, but a pure and simple rejection, which may find expression in a lethal 'acting out' . And it is not even 'acting out' , since that still presupposes the irruption of the phantasm into a real world , whereas here we are dealing with an infantile, quasi-hallucinatory state which reaches back before the reality principle. Moreover, this pre-reality-principle, infantile state coincides strangely with the world of virtual reality, our adult media world, the post-reality-principle world, in which the real and the virtual merge.

Turn him loose, and the American White Man can and has whipped anything in sight. Sooner or later, the Jews will finally cross the borderline of American patience as they have done all throughout their history. When they do, the reaction of the American White Man will make the Jews get on their knees and pray for Adolf Hitler to save them. The revenge taken upon them by other outraged host people will seem like heaven compared to the ferocity of the White American, once he has had all he is going to take from these arrogant Jews. It is my hope to be organized and ready to channel this damned-up flood of righteous American rebellion against Jew tyranny, once it breaks loose, into CONSTRUCTIVE, rather than purely destructive directions. If I am successful, we can find a just solution to the Jewish problem. If I am unsuccessful, there will be Jews swinging from every lamp post in America.

Turn him loose, and the American White Man can and has whipped anything in sight. Sooner or later, the Jews will finally cross the borderline of American patience as they have done all throughout their history. When they do, the reaction of the American White Man will make the Jews get on their knees and pray for Adolf Hitler to save them. The revenge taken upon them by other outraged host people will seem like heaven compared to the ferocity of the White American, once he has had all he is going to take from these arrogant Jews. It is my hope to be organized and ready to channel this damned-up flood of righteous American rebellion against Jew tyranny, once it breaks loose, into CONSTRUCTIVE, rather than purely destructive directions. If I am successful, we can find a just solution to the Jewish problem. If I am unsuccessful, there will be Jews swinging from every lamp post in America.

Here are a few different types of emails you can send: Common FAQs – An email that answers repeat questions you get from readers and subscribers Affiliate case study – An email that details the results from taking a course or using a tool that you’re an affiliate for Teaser to an existing post – An email that links to pillar or cornerstone pieces on your blog Tools and resources – An email that shares your favorite tool collection The Start Here – An email that links to your most important resources Break the myths – An email that lays out myths that your subscribers may think are true Behind the scenes – An email that gives an insiders’ peek into what’s going on with your business Personal story – An email that gives an insiders’ peek into your struggles or backstory One-click survey – An email that asks a simple question to segment subscribers or allows them to choose their own email journey Survey or How can I help you? – An email asking for responses or providing an offer to help Postpurchase welcome email – An email sent immediately after purchase to buyers of your offer Unexpected incentive email – A simple cheat sheet, guide, or PDF that subscribers were not expecting Favorite thing – A collection of your favorite books/blogs/stock photo sites, etc. I have used every one of these emails in my email marketing mix. Doing so breaks up the monotony of sending the same style of email each week, and each of these emails feeds your marketing goals differently as well.

down. ‘Good evening,’ he said innocently. ‘Just checking why you’re parked here at 10.30 p.m. on a Saturday night,’ the security guard said suspiciously, eyeing our baby wipes in the middle of the seats. ‘We’re just out for a drive,’ Dan replied. ‘Seeing the sights.’ ‘Round ’ere? Good luck finding them,’ he scoffed, taking a cigarette from the pocket of his shirt. ‘Not to worry, mate. Drive on. Just checking you’re not up to no good.’ He winked, slapping the side of the van as he walked back to his post. Dan started the knackered engine of the scruffy Volkswagen. ‘Let’s get all this food back to the fridge at the kitchen. We can sort through it in the morning,’ he said. His hand brushed mine as I reached over to turn the radio on, and he changed gear. ‘Sorry,’ we mumbled at the same time, but I couldn’t ignore the rush of excitement I felt when our skin touched. I averted my eyes from Dan to the window and watched his reflection in the driver’s seat as we trundled through the dark streets. ‘You survived your first dumpster diving trip then,’ Dan said, breaking the tension between us. ‘It appears so,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you’re free tomorrow afternoon, after work, are you?’ My stomach did a teeny flip.

as soon as you sign a commitment and post it on your wall, you’ve created a mental cost for writing an unnecessary prescription. If you’re tempted to write that script, you’ll now be hyperaware that doing so means breaking your word. After all, you signed your name to a framed letter promising not to do this very thing. In short, the “price” of prescribing an unnecessary antibiotic has gone up.

She has a point,” Caleb’s voice came from the shadows behind the massive Dragon who was taking all of my attention and I turned my head to find him, Seth and Max all watching this exchange with interest. That would explain the stars not smiting us or whatever other bullshit they might want to do. Though I was guessing I should really stop touching him…not that I did. “You did this to…help him?” Darius asked like he couldn’t understand why the fuck I’d do that and I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m only an asshole like, ninety percent of the time,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “The other ten percent I’m a fucking saint. So yes, I did it to help him. Turns out I only hold two members of your family in low regard.” “You pushed my brother out of a fucking window,” he growled. “I would have caught him with my air magic if I had to. Besides, this way Daddy Acrux can’t try and claim he was in on it. It’s a genius plan and you know it. Plus, your mom told me to post it so I don’t have to explain myself to you.” “Mother?” Darius scoffed. “She hardly notices anything beyond appearances. The last thing she’d encourage is a scandal like this. She-” “That’s not true, she loves you, she just…” I trailed off as the deal I’d made with Catalina stayed my tongue. I’d sworn not to tell a soul about the way I’d freed herfrom Lionel’s Dark Coercion and I wasn’t going to take even more punishment from the stars by breaking my word. “Just what?” Darius demanded. Phoenix fire burned hot beneath my skin and my palms twitched against his chest as a thought occurred to me. One I really should have considered before now if I hadn’t been so caught up with studying, the shadows, cheer practice and just plain old pining away for this monster before me to think of it. “Do you trust me?” I asked, my fingers shifting on his skin just enough to draw his attention. “Why?” “I want to try something. Something I did for your mother. But you’ll have to stay still while I do it.” Darius looked at me for a long moment and a faint tremor in the ground beneath my feet let me know that the stars had realised just how close we were to one another. Even with company they didn’t like us to touch each other, though it seemed to take them a lot longer to notice if we were. Darius exhaled angrily but his eyes shifted back as he managed to rein in some of his temper, their deep brown colour ringed with black once again. “I trust you,” he growled and the other Heirs muttered something behind him, but I didn’t care to hear it because there had been a sincerity in his words which reached out and touched my soul. He meant it. For whatever reason, despite everything we’d been through, he was still able to put his trust in me. I offered him the hint of a smile as my Phoenix fire reared up to the surface of my skin before I guided it into his flesh where I touched him. His muscles tightened beneath my hands, his eyes widening as he looked at me but he didn’t pull back, waiting as the liquid fire tore beneath his skin and sought out any signs of Lionel placing restrictions on his soul. ... “You…” Darius lifted me into his arms, staring at me with wide eyes like he didn’t even have words to explain what I’d just done for him. ,,, “She…I think she…but I don’t understand how-” “Phoenix fire burns through bullshit,” I supplied. “I just released him from every Dark Coercion spell Lionel has ever placed on him.” The Heirs all turned to stare at me like I’d just told them an alien named Clive lived up my butt and I sighed as I leaned my head back against Caleb’s shoulder. I felt like I’d just gone ten rounds in the ring against a Dragon with toothache. My eyes were hooded already and I was pretty sure that if we stood here much longer I’d fall asleep. “Thank you, Roxy,” Darius breathed and the look he was giving me made my heart do a weird squeezing kind of thing as I bit down on my bottom lip. (Tory POV)

He was the biggest fool pup I ever saw, chuck full of life and spirits, always going at racing speed, generally into mischief; breaking his neck nearly over some small matter; breaking his heart if his master did not notice him, chewing up clothing, hats, and boots, digging up garden stuff that he could not eat, mistaking every leg of every chair and table for a lamp-post, going direct from wallow in the pigstye to frolic in the baby’s cradle, getting kicked in the ribs by horses and tossed by cows, but still the same hilarious, rollicking, endlessly good-natured, energetic fool pup, and given by common consent the fit and lasting name of “Silly Billy.

Transforming Challenges into Opportunities: Enhancing Problem-Solving Skills through Critical Thinking In today's fast-paced and competitive business world, the ability to think critically and solve problems effectively is crucial for success. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or a budding startup owner, developing strong problem-solving skills can give you a significant edge in the market. By harnessing the power of critical thinking, you can transform challenges into opportunities and propel your business towards success. As a coach for business start-ups and a catalyst for innovation, I understand the importance of equipping entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to overcome obstacles and thrive in the face of adversity. In this blog post, I will explore how honing your critical thinking skills can help you navigate the challenges of starting and growing a business. 1. Identifying the Problem: Critical thinking involves the ability to accurately identify and define the problem at hand. As a coach for business start-up ideas, I can help you analyze your unique challenges and break them down into manageable parts. By clarifying the problem, you can focus your efforts on finding the most effective solution. 2. Analyzing Different Perspectives: One of the key aspects of critical thinking is considering different perspectives and viewpoints. When faced with a problem, it is important to step back and evaluate the situation from various angles. This allows you to gain valuable insights and uncover opportunities that may not be immediately apparent. As a coach, I can guide you through this process, helping you see the bigger picture and explore alternative solutions. 3. Developing Creative Solutions: Critical thinking encourages out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to generate creative solutions. By breaking away from conventional thought patterns, you can discover innovative approaches to solving problems. As your coach, I can help you tap into your creative potential and unlock new possibilities for your business. 4. Evaluating Risks and Benefits: Effective problem-solving requires a thorough analysis of the risks and benefits associated with different solutions. Through critical thinking, you can weigh the pros and cons, assess potential outcomes, and make informed decisions. As your coach, I can guide you in evaluating the risks and benefits of various options, enabling you to make strategic choices that align with your business goals. 5. Adapting to Change: In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, adaptability is crucial. Critical thinking allows you to embrace change and adapt your strategies as needed. By honing your problem-solving skills, you can navigate unexpected challenges with ease and turn them into opportunities for growth. As your coach, I can provide you with the tools and techniques to foster adaptability and resilience in the face of change. In conclusion, developing strong problem-solving skills through critical thinking is essential for entrepreneurs and business start-ups. By working with a coach who specializes in business start-up ideas, you can enhance your problem-solving abilities, uncover new opportunities, and position your business for long-term success. So, why wait? Invest in your critical thinking skills today and unlock the potential within your business. If you are looking for a coach to guide you in transforming challenges into opportunities, I am here to help. Contact me to explore how we can work together to enhance your problem-solving skills and achieve your business goals. Keywords: coach startup ideas, coach for business start-up, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, challenges, opportunities, entrepreneurs, innovation, analyze, creative solutions, risks, benefits, adaptability.

Works of post-Wagnerian modernism, Ulysses included, superimpose myth and modernity in a way that promises a comprehensive revelation of the world, both its variegated surfaces and its primordial roots. In The Waste Land, such correspondences tend to break down. Archetypes float up from the depths of the past, but they ultimately find little lasting resonance in contemporary lives. Instead, they provide a reassuring clutter of allusions for the stranded intellect: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins." In that sense, Eliot's poem is, more than Ulysses, an irrevocably anti-Romantic, anti-Wagnerian work.

You want to know how long it takes for the fabric of society to break down? I’ll tell you. The same time it takes to kick a door down. I once read a book about Japanese veterans remembering the darkness of the Second World War. They seemed like old men with happy families at peace with the world, but they could still recall the hunger that drove them to kill and eat Chinese women. More often than not they would rape them first. Ask anyone who has been in a crowd that becomes too strong, where bodies begin to crush you. Is your first instinct to lift others up, or to trample them down? That beast inside you, the one you think is tethered tightly to the post, the

King knows what scares us. He has proven this a thousand times over. I think the secret to this is that he knows what makes us feel safe, happy, and secure; he knows our comfort zones and he turns them into completely unexpected nightmares. He takes a dog, a car, a doll, a hotel—countless things that we know and love—and then he scares the hell out of us with those very same things. Deep down, we love to be scared. We crave those moments of fear-inspired adrenaline, but then once it’s over we feel safe again. King’s work generates that adrenaline and keeps it pumping. Before King, we really didn’t have too many notables in the world of horror writers. Poe and Lovecraft led the pack, but when King came along, he broke the mold. He improved with age just like a fine wine and readers quickly became addicted, and inestimable numbers morphed into hard-core fans. People can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. What innocent, commonplace “thing” will he come up with and turn into a nightmare? I mean, think about it…do any of us look at clowns, crows, cars, or corn fields the same way after we’ve read King’s works? SS: How did your outstanding Facebook group “All Things King” come into being? AN: About five years ago, I was fairly new to Facebook and the whole social media world. I’m a very “old soul” (I’ve been told that many times throughout my life: I miss records and VHS tapes), so Facebook was very different for me. My wife and friends showed me how to do things and find fan pages and so forth. I found a Stephen King fan page and really had a fun time. I posted a lot of very cool things, and people loved my posts. So, several Stephen King fans suggested I do my own fan page. It took some convincing, but I finally did it. Since then, I have had some great co-administrators, wonderful members, and it has opened some amazing doors for me, including hosting the Stephen King Dollar Baby Film fest twice at Crypticon Horror Con in Minnesota. I have scored interviews with actors, writers, and directors who worked on Stephen King films or wrote about King; I help promote any movie, or book, and many other things that are King related, and I’ve been blessed to meet some wonderful people. I have some great friends thanks to “All Things King.” I also like to teach our members about King (his unpublished stories, lesser-known short stories, and really deep facts and trivia about his books, films, and the man himself—info the average or new fan might not know). Our page is full of fun facts, trivia, games, contests, Breaking News, and conversations about all things Stephen King. We have been doing it for five years now as of August 19th—and yes, I picked that date on purpose.

Let’s just work with one category right now. Let’s break up the ‘Marketing’ category into Category > Sub-Category > Blog posts Category - Marketing yourself I have two sub-categories at this moment: 1.

Ch 7: Read Blogs, Periodicals, and Other Web Content for Free on the Kindle Amazon might prefer that you get all your Kindle blogs and periodicals for a price in the Kindle Store, and those Kindle editions are tough to match when it comes to elegant formatting and the convenience of having new issues and posts pushed wirelessly to your Kindle in real time. However, there are a number of increasingly user-friendly ways to enjoy newspapers, magazines, and blogs free of charge on a Kindle, and we'll break them down and show you how in this chapter and the next. Here are the basic approaches: •     You can use your Kindle's web browser to read any of millions of blogs and online periodical editions directly from the web. •     You can use any of several RSS feed services such as Google Reader to read content summaries on your Kindle and then click through to content that interests you. •     You can use Instapaper to flag, sort, and organize interesting articles as you surf the web and send them individually or in digest form to your Kindle. •     You can set up Calibre to fetch the latest issues of newspapers, magazines and blogs and transfer them directly to your Kindle via an easy-to-use Calibre-to-Kindle USB connection. All of these feature are better than ever on the latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models for the following reasons: •     Both models come with wi-fi, which is must faster than 3G for any activities other than reading an ebook or listening to an audio file. •     These latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models both come with the Kindle's relatively new WebKit web browser based on the same platform that powers the Safari web browser. It's still a bit slow, but it is miles ahead of the previous Kindle web browser. •     These latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models feature the new eInk Pearl display that renders 50 percent better contrast than previous Kindle displays, which is especially important when viewing web content formatted for a larger color screen. •     These latest generation Kindle 3G and Kindle Wi-Fi models provide other features to enhance web page viewing and reading, including Article Mode (a Menu selection while viewing any web page on these Kindles) and several different "zoom" options using the "Aa" font key or the Menu. Reading

Here was both a very American personal success story and a glimpse of what post-democracy strongman rule might look like in the United States, signaled not by a uniformed march on Rome or a Reichstag fire but by a governor who became senator while simultaneously keeping the governor’s job, breaking the spine of democracy in his state with the help of a cadre of brass-knuckled bodyguards, engineering kidnappings of his enemies, and defeating or sidestepping multiple impeachments and indictments and investigations, all while soaking up adoration at a muddy rural rally with farmers or in a roaring ballroom full of tuxedoed and gowned admirers, his vast and disparate audiences too in love with his charm to much care what he actually meant. Somehow simultaneously cherubic and menacing in appearance, Huey Long was a populist, a rule breaker, a shockingly gifted orator, and a thug. He once commanded National Guard troops to mount an actual true-blue armed military assault on the municipal government of the largest city in his state. The man launched an armed invasion of New Orleans!—and got away with it. The best contemporaneous biography of Long in Louisiana was subtitled “The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship.

Wishes Mindfulness is nevermore a good thing, as any other accident-prone fumbler would accept. No one wants a floodlight when they're likely to stumble on their face. Moreover, I would extremely pointedly be asked- well, ordered really-that no one gave me any presents this year. It seemed like Mr. Anderson and Ayanna weren't the only ones who had decided to overlook that. I would have never had much wealth, furthermore, that had never more disturbed me. Ayanna had raised me on a kindergarten teacher's wage. Mr. Anderson wasn't getting rich at his job, either; he was the police chief here in the tiny town of Pittsburgh. My only personal revenue came from the four days a week I worked at the local Goodwill store. In a borough this small, I was blessed to have a career, after all the viruses in the world today having everything shut down. Every cent I gained went into my diminutive university endowment at SNHU online. (College transpired like nothing more than a Plan B. I was still dreaming for Plan A; however, Marcel was just so unreasonable about leaving me, mortal.) Marcel ought to have a lot of funds I didn't even want to think about how much. Cash was involved alongside oblivion to Marcel or the rest of the Barns, like Karly saying she never had anything yet walked away with it all. It was just something that swelled when you had extensive time on your hands and a sister who had an uncanny ability to predict trends in the stock market. Marcel didn't seem to explain why I objected to him spending bills on me, why it made me miserable if he brought me to an overpriced establishment in Los Angeles, why he wasn't allowed to buy me a car that could reach speeds over fifty miles an hour, approximately how? I wouldn't let him pay my university tuition (he was ridiculously enthusiastic about Plan B.) Marcel believed I was being gratuitously difficult. Although, how could I let him give me things when I had nothing to retaliate amidst? He, for some amazing incomprehensible understanding, wanted to be with me. Anything he gave me on top of that just propelled us more out of balance. As the day went on, neither Marcel nor Olivia brought my birthday up again, and I began to relax a little. Then we sat at our usual table for lunch. An unfamiliar kind of break survived at that table. The three of us, Marcel, Olivia, including myself hunkered down on the steep southerly end of the table. Now that is ‘superb’ and scarier (in Emmah's case, unquestionably.) The Natalie siblings had finished. We were gazing at them; they're so odd, Olivia and Marcel arranged not to seem quite so intimidating, and we did not sit here alone. My other compatriots, Lance, and Mikaela (who were in the uncomfortable post-breakup association phase,) Mollie and Sam (whose involvement had endured the summertime...) Tim, Kaylah, Skylar, and Sophie (though that last one didn't count in the friend category.) Completely assembled at the same table, on the other side of an interchangeable line. That line softened on sunshiny days when Marcel and Olivia continuously skipped school times before there was Karly, and then the discussion would swell out effortlessly to incorporate me.

Vaishusmriti (The Sonnet) Those few afternoon trips back from uni, With her head on my shoulder, were utopia. My stomach was bursting with butterflies, But my lips could barely utter a word. My shirt got seeped with her intoxicating scent, But her heart was posted to another man's mail. Yet how can you begrudge someone you once loved! It's okay to lose your heart to the wrong people. Hadn't she rejected me, I'd have ended up yet another nobody in the sea of engineers. When life shatters you to a million pieces, Get up and give back life some middle finger. If you must love, love without any agenda, If they love you back, your heart grows softer, If they break you, your heart grows stronger, Either way, in act of love there is no failure.

Militancy was at the core of suffragette identity: ‘To be militant in some form, or other, is a moral obligation’, Pankhurst lectured. ‘It is a duty which every woman will owe her own conscience and self-respect, to women who are less fortunate than she is herself, and to all who are to come after her.’ The latest full-body portrait of the movement, Diane Atkinson’s Rise Up, Women!, gives an encyclopaedic listing of militant actions: suffragettes forcing the prime minister out of his car and dousing him with pepper, hurling a stone at the fanlight above Winston Churchill’s door, setting upon statues and paintings with hammers and axes, planting bombs on sites along the routes of royal visits, fighting policemen with staves, charging against hostile politicians with dogwhips, breaking the windows in prison cells. Such deeds went hand in hand with mass mobilisation. The suffragettes put up mammoth rallies, ran their own presses, went on hunger strikes: deploying the gamut of non-violent and militant action. After the hope of attaining the vote by constitutional means was dashed once more in early 1913, the movement switched gears. In a systematic campaign of arson, the suffragettes set fire to or blew up villas, tea pavilions, boathouses, hotels, haystacks, churches, post offices, aqueducts, theatres and a liberal range of other targets around the country. Over the course of a year and a half, the WSPU claimed responsibility for 337 such attacks. Few culprits were apprehended.

CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY: BEST WAYS 71–80 71. When it comes to ensuring your family’s financial well-being, and securing a meaningful and rewarding job, you need to create a written action plan or a MAP (Meticulous Action Plan). 72. When you create a MAP, you are actually programming your own “employment GPS” so you can go from where you are to where you want to be. 73. When you’re done developing your action plan, you’ll have a highly structured schedule of activities for each day of the week. This includes your job transition campaign as well as your personal, social, and fitness activities. 74. If you are unemployed, you should invest 50, 60, or 70 hours a week on your job campaign. If you have a full-time job, you need to set aside a defined number of hours every week as your investment in your future. 75. Whether you are employed and looking for a better job or out of work seeking a new one, you must hold yourself fully accountable for putting in as many hours as possible and getting the most out of every hour you put in. 76. The first question you will need to address is, how many hours a week will you commit to your job transition campaign? Then, based on the number of weekly hours you’ll invest in getting a new job, your next step is to break weekly hours down into daily hours. 77. There are 13 primary job transition strategies for landing a job in troubled economic times. Your job is to determine which 4 to 6 strategies will be most effective for you. a. Networking and contact development b. Target marketing (identifying companies you want to work for) c. Internet searches and postings d. Federal jobs e. Search firms and employment agencies f. Blogs with job listings g. Classified advertisements in newspapers and trade journals h. Job fairs i. College placement departments and alumni associations j. Workforce System and One-Stops k. Volunteer work l. Job transition strategists m. Creative self-marketing 78. Once you have identified which job transition strategies will work best for your campaign, determine when, during the week, you will work on each. You want to create a structured weekly schedule. When you create a structured weekly schedule, you will have a detailed plan with specific daily tasks both for your job campaign and for personal and social activities. 79. Once you have a structured weekly schedule, you must set goals that you want to achieve from your weekly activities. A MAP without specific goals is not an effective plan. You will want to set specific goals for each strategy so you can track your success or modify the MAP if you are not achieving your weekly goals. 80. Prepare for the worst-case scenario. It is vitally important to remain in a positive, optimistic, and enthusiastic state of mind. But sometimes your plan won’t come to fruition as quickly as you’d like. So expect the best, but plan for the worst. This would include looking at your long- and short-term finances and health and other issues that need to be addressed to free you up to concentrate on getting your next job.

All right, so . . . she’d expected there to be more people here. The Facebook group she’d found—Camp Star Wars: Omaha!!!—had eighty-five members, not including Elena, who was more of a lurker than a joiner. This was definitely the right theater; the Facebook posts had been very clear. (Maybe it was Troy who posted them.) Elena had planned to continue her more-lurker-than-joiner strategy in the line. She thought she’d show up and then sort of disappear into the crowd until she got her sea legs. Her line legs. It was a pretty good strategy for most social situations: show up, fall back, let somebody else break the ice and take the spotlight. Somebody else always would. Extroverts were nothing if not dependable. But even an expert mid-trovert like Elena couldn’t lie low in a crowd of three. (Though this Gabe kid seemed to be trying.) Elena was going to be here for four days. She was going to have to talk to these people, at least until someone else showed up.

It was staggering. They roared and boomed and trumpeted, until stones began to crack and fall at the mere noise of them. Merry and I lay on the ground and stuffed our cloaks into our ears. Round and round the rock of Orthanc the Ents went striding and storming like a howling gale, breaking pillars, hurling avalanches of boulders down the shafts, tossing up huge slabs of stone into the air like leaves. The tower was in the middle of a spinning whirlwind. I saw iron posts and blocks of masonry go rocketing up hundreds of feet, and smash against the windows of Orthanc. But

But vain in every respect are they who despise the entire dispensation of God, and disallow the salvation of the flesh, and treat with contempt its regeneration, maintaining that it is not capable of incorruption. But if this indeed do not attain salvation, then neither did the Lord redeem us with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of His body. For blood can only come from veins and flesh, and whatsoever else makes up the substance of man, such as the Word of God was actually made. By His own blood he redeemed us, as also His apostle declares, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the remission of sins.” And

HOW TO UNLIKE “LIKES” If you find yourself obsessed with amassing likes, you may want to install a Facebook demetricator browser plug-in – it removes all the “scores” from Facebook so that instead of saying “57 people liked your post”, it will simply say, “People like this”. See if this makes a difference. Then ask yourself why Facebook itself doesn’t provide this option.

People, says Tarantoga, believe what they want to believe. Take astrology for instance. Astronomers, who after all should know more than anyone about the stars, tell us that they are giant balls of incandescent gas spinning since the world began and that their influence on our fate is considerably less than the influence of a banana peel, on which you can slip and break your leg. But there is no interest in banana peels, whereas serious periodicals include horoscopes and there are even pocket computers you can consult before you invest in the stock market to find out if the stars are favorable. Anyone who says that the skin of a fruit can have more effect on a person’s future than all the planets and stars combined won’t be listened to. An individual comes into the world because his father, say, didn’t withdraw in time, thereby becoming a father. The mother-to-be, seeing what happened, took quinine and jumped from the top of the dresser to the floor but that didn’t help. So the individual is born and he finishes school and works in a store selling suspenders, or in a post office. Then suddenly he learns that that’s not the way it was at all. The planets came into conjunction, the signs of the zodiac arranged themselves carefully into a special pattern, half the sky cooperated with the other half so that he could come into being and stand behind this counter or sit behind this desk. It lifts his spirits. The whole universe revolves around him, and even if things aren’t going well, even if the stars are lined up in such a way that the suspenders manufacturer loses his shirt and the individual consequently loses his job, it’s still more comforting than to know that the stars don’t really give a damn. Knock astrology out of his head, and the belief too that the cactus on his windowsill cares about him, and what is left? Barefoot, naked despair. So says Professor Tarantoga, but I see I am digressing.

CHORES Together, make a list of chores he can do to help around the house: Make his bed, walk the dog, empty wastebaskets, take out trash, pull weeds, rake, shovel, sweep, vacuum, fold laundry, empty the dishwasher, set and clear the table. Let him know you need and appreciate him. Make a routine and stick to it. If the child is forgetful, make a chart and post it on the refrigerator. When he finishes a chore, let him stick a star on the chart. Reward him with a special privilege or outing when he accumulates several stars. Break chores down into small steps. Let her clear the table one plate at a time. (She doesn’t have to clear all the dishes.) BATHING Let the child help regulate the water temperature. Provide an assortment of bath toys, soaps, and scrubbers. Scrub the child with firm, downward strokes. Provide a large bath sheet for a tight wrap-up. SLEEPING Give your child notice: “Half an hour until bedtime!” or “You can draw for five more minutes.” Stick to a bedtime routine. Include stories and songs, a look at a sticker collection, a chat about today’s events or tomorrow’s plans, a back rub and snug tuck-in. Children with tactile defensiveness are very particular about clothing, so provide comfortable pajamas. Some like them loose, some like them tight; some like them silky, some don’t like them at all. Nobody likes them bumpy, scratchy, lacy, or with elasticized cuffs. Use percale or silk sheets for a smooth and bumpless bed. Let your child sleep with extra pillows and blankets, in a sleeping bag or bed tent, or on a waterbed. Life at home can improve with a sensory diet and attention to your child’s special needs, and life at school can improve as well.

Today the cloud is the central metaphor of the internet: a global system of great power and energy that nevertheless retains the aura of something noumenal and numnious, something almost impossible to grasp. We connect to the cloud; we work in it; we store and retrieve stuff from it; we think through it. We pay for it and only notice it when it breaks. It is something we experience all the time without really understanding what it is or how it works. It is something we are training ourselves to rely upon with only the haziest of notions about what is being entrusted, and what it is being entrusted to. Downtime aside, the first criticism of this cloud is that it is a very bad metaphor. The cloud is not weightless; it is not amorphous, or even invisible, if you know where to look for it. The cloud is not some magical faraway place, made of water vapor and radio waves, where everything just works. It is a physical infrastructure consisting of phone lines, fibre optics, satellites, cables on the ocean floor, and vast warehouses filled with computers, which consume huge amounts of water and energy and reside within national and legal jurisdictions. The cloud is a new kind of industry, and a hungry one. The cloud doesn't just have a shadow; it has a footprint. Absorbed into the cloud are many of the previously weighty edifices of the civic sphere: the places where we shop, bank, socialize, borrow books, and vote. Thus obscured, they are rendered less visible and less amenable to critique, investigation, preservation and regulation. Another criticism is that this lack of understanding is deliberate. There are good reasons, from national security to corporate secrecy to many kinds of malfeasance, for obscuring what's inside the cloud. What evaporates is agency and ownership: most of your emails, photos, status updates, business documents, library and voting data, health records, credit ratings, likes, memories, experiences, personal preferences, and unspoken desires are in the cloud, on somebody else's infrastructure. There's a reason Google and Facebook like to build data centers in Ireland (low taxes) and Scandinavia (cheap energy and cooling). There's a reason global, supposedly post-colonial empires hold onto bits of disputed territory like Diego Garcia and Cyprus, and it's because the cloud touches down in these places, and their ambiguous status can be exploited. The cloud shapes itself to geographies of power and influence, and it serves to reinforce them. The cloud is a power relationship, and most people are not on top of it. These are valid criticisms, and one way of interrogating the cloud is to look where is shadow falls: to investigate the sites of data centers and undersea cables and see what they tell us about the real disposition of power at work today. We can seed the cloud, condense it, and force it to give up some of its stories. As it fades away, certain secrets may be revealed. By understanding the way the figure of the cloud is used to obscure the real operation of technology, we can start to understand the many ways in which technology itself hides its own agency - through opaque machines and inscrutable code, as well as physical distance and legal constructs. And in turn, we may learn something about the operation of power itself, which was doing this sort of thing long before it had clouds and black boxes in which to hide itself.

Before we left, I asked Sven to catch me up on the sixteen months of history that I’d overshot since November 2016. Big mistake. After twenty minutes, I made him stop playing me Internet clips. “David, you look kind of green,” worried Sven. I took a deep breath. “He pulled out of the Paris climate deal because climate change is a hoax. He threatened to start a nuclear war with North Korea. He gave away intel methods to the Russians. In the Oval Office. “He says the FBI and the CIA are conspiring against him. He admits he fired the head of the FBI because of the Russia probe. He tried to fire the Special Counsel investigating him. He called the press ‘enemies of the people.’ He calls everything that isn’t from Fox News or The National Enquirer ‘fake news.’ “He starts every day posting boasts and threats on Twitter like a disturbed ten-year-old. He insulted the widow of a dead war hero. He dictated a false statement for his son about why he met with Russians. He says there are good people marching with the KKK and the Nazis. Everyone in his inner circle is either being investigated or indicted for obstruction, perjury, wife beating, failure to register as a foreign agent, money laundering and/or breaking campaign finance laws. “He called Africa a shithole. He paid off a porn star he screwed right after his son was born. And told her she reminded him of his daughter. He’s being sued for rape. And the only person he hasn’t got a single bad thing to say about is the journalist-murdering Russian dictator he colluded with.” “’Fraid so,” said Sven. “All that happened in just sixteen months?” I exclaimed. “How is he still president?” Sven shrugged, sympathetic. “It’s not like we weren’t warned. Bottom line, some very rich, powerful people are going to get far richer, and that’s how America is run at the moment.” “I swear to God, Sven, I’m tempted to go back and save Lincoln all over again. That can’t turn out any worse than this.

PRE- AND POST-SLEEP ROUTINES: SEVEN STEPS TO SLEEP SMARTER Pre- and post-sleep routines directly affect the quality of your sleep and waking day: value them as the important activities they are, and you’ll be more efficient all day and night. Take technology breaks during the day as a reward and training for body and mind. Post-sleep is vitally important for PMers if they want to keep up with the AMers – don’t forgo this in favour of the ‘snooze’ button. Don’t text drunk! Raise your alertness before you reach for your phone. Moving your body from warm to cooler helps trigger the natural drop in body temperature – a quick warm rinse under the shower and a cooler sleeping environment will achieve this. Declutter your environment and mind and download your day before bed, so you don’t lie awake thinking when you could be asleep. Pre-sleep is about shutting down – nose-breathing, relaxing, light to dark – while post-sleep is about starting up in an unrushed way: these periods belong to you and no one else.

There were certainly multiple factors contributing to these men’s post-moonwalk slump, but the question What do you do after walking on the moon? became a gigantic speed bump. The trouble with moonwalkers and billionaires is when they arrive at the top, their momentum often stops. If they don’t manage to find something to parlay, they turn into the kid on the jungle gym who just hangs from the ring. Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that only one-third of Americans are happy at their jobs. When there’s no forward momentum in our careers, we get depressed, too. As Newton pointed out, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. So how does one avoid billionaire’s depression? Or regular person’s stuck-in-a-dead-end-job, lack-of-momentum-fueled depression? Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile took on the question in the mid-2000s in a research study of white-collar employees. She tasked 238 pencil pushers in various industries to keep daily work diaries. The workers answered open-ended questions about how they felt, what events in their days stood out. Amabile and her fellow researchers then dissected the 12,000 resulting entries, searching for patterns in what affects people’s “inner” work lives the most dramatically. The answer, it turned out, is simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless how small. And that’s the interesting part. Amabile found that minor victories at work were nearly as psychologically powerful as major breakthroughs. To motivate stuck employees, as Amabile and her colleague Steven J. Kramer suggest in their book, The Progress Principle, businesses need to help their workers experience lots of tiny wins. (And as we learned from the bored BYU students in chapter 1, breaking up big challenges into tiny ones also speeds up progress.) This is helpful to know when motivating employees. But it also hints at what billionaires and astronauts can do to stave off the depression that follows the high of getting to the top. To get out of the funk, say Joan DiFuria and Stephen Goldbart, cofounders of the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute, depressed successes simply have to start the Olympic rings over. Some use their money to create new businesses. Others parlay sideways and get into philanthropy. And others simply pick up hobbies that take time to master. Even if the subsequent endeavors are smaller than their previous ones, the depression dissipates as they make progress.

FOCUS is one of the most valuable skills in business, and is becoming increasingly rare. If you can master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results and make more money than most people. In his book, "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success In a Distracted World", Cal Newport says: “Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep – spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.” When I started writing a book a month, I have to admit, it was challenging. I quickly realized I had a focus problem. Coincidentally, I attended a book festival and picked up a book by Catherine Price, "How to Break Up With Your Phone", and discovered my life was being sucked away one text message, one social media post, and one email at a time. If I wanted to write a book a month, I needed to get my life and my time back. I read Catherine’s book, and the following especially resonated with me: “Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we’re beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good. We feel busy but ineffective… The same technology that gives us freedom can also act like a leash—and the more tethered we become, the more it raises the question of who’s actually in control.” I had lost control of my time and my ability to focus. It wasn’t an overnight event, it was a slow, insidious change that happened over a long period of time. Below are some other interesting statistics from Price’s book: Americans check their phones 47 times per day.

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65 or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen. Anne Lamott, Facebook post, May 12, 2014

The powers that be don’t want people thinking about any of these things. If the people must politick, then let them do it in the proper arena, in elections between Wall Street–sponsored Democrats and Wall Street–sponsored Republicans. They want half the country lined up like the Tea Partiers against overweening government power, and the other half, the Huffington Post crowd, railing against corporate excess. But don’t let the two sides start thinking about the bigger picture and wondering if the real problem might be a combination of the two.