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I'm living proof that dreams do come true. Work hard. Pray. Believe.
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Justin Bieber (Justin Bieber: Just Getting Started)
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...What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might.
When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day... If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology.
The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased... I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim.
I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do... I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study.
...Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.
[Columbian Magazine interview]
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Thomas A. Edison
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If you take responsibility for anything in your life, know that you’ll feel fear. That fear will manifest itself in many ways: fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of hurt. Such fears are entirely natural and healthy, and you should recognize them as proof that you’ve chosen work worth doing. Every worthy challenge will inspire some fear. A
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Eric Greitens (Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life)
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I think beyond the superficial accolades, at its core, fans stream and buy albums and merchs, because they want to show that they acknowledge the hard work of the artists and their staff. The stream count, album sales and awards are tangible proof that the idols’ music is good. That they are popular. That they are better.
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Arushi Raj (Understand K-pop: Deconstructing the Obsession and Toxicity in K-pop Stan Culture)
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Not a single thought managed to take shape in her mind: for the likeness of this day to the last seemed to her the clearest proof that it would be another quite useless day, a day she would gladly have done without. For a moment she thought that a day like this would be pointless for anyone on earth, then abruptly changed her mind as she realised that thousands of women, after a hard week's work, or a family quarrel, or even just after catching a cold, would envy her just for having the leisure to rest in comfort.
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Ismail Kadare (The File on H.)
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Everything, including your set of hand-blown green glass dishes with the tiny bubbles and imperfections, little bits of sand, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous aboriginal people of wherever, well, these dishes all get blown out by the blast. Picture floor-to-ceiling drapes blown out and flaming to shreds in the hot wind.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
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To “know thyself” is hard work. Harder still is to believe that you, with all your flaws, are enough—without checking in, tweeting an update, or sharing a photo as proof of your existence for the approval of your 719 followers.
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Jocelyn K. Glei (Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind)
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I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on. But I had also come to recognize that not everything needs to be durable. the lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient.
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Susan Orlean
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Dear Jim."
The writing grew suddenly blurred and misty. And she had lost him again--had lost him again! At the sight of the familiar childish nickname all the hopelessness of her bereavement came over her afresh, and she put out her hands in blind desperation, as though the weight of the earth-clods that lay above him were pressing on her heart.
Presently she took up the paper again and went on reading:
"I am to be shot at sunrise to-morrow. So if I am to keep at all my promise to tell you everything, I must keep it now. But, after all, there is not much need of explanations between you and me. We always understood each other without many words, even when we were little things.
"And so, you see, my dear, you had no need to break your heart over that old story of the blow. It was a hard hit, of course; but I have had plenty of others as hard, and yet I have managed to get over them,--even to pay back a few of them,--and here I am still, like the mackerel in our nursery-book (I forget its name), 'Alive and kicking, oh!' This is my last kick, though; and then, tomorrow morning, and--'Finita la Commedia!' You and I will translate that: 'The variety show is over'; and will give thanks to the gods that they have had, at least, so much mercy on us. It is not much, but it is something; and for this and all other blessings may we be truly thankful!
"About that same tomorrow morning, I want both you and Martini to understand clearly that I am quite happy and satisfied, and could ask no better thing of Fate. Tell that to Martini as a message from me; he is a good fellow and a good comrade, and he will understand. You see, dear, I know that the stick-in-the-mud people are doing us a good turn and themselves a bad one by going back to secret trials and executions so soon, and I know that if you who are left stand together steadily and hit hard, you will see great things. As for me, I shall go out into the courtyard with as light a heart as any child starting home for the holidays. I have done my share of the work, and this death-sentence is the proof that I have done it thoroughly. They kill me because they are afraid of me; and what more can any man's heart desire?
"It desires just one thing more, though. A man who is going to die has a right to a personal fancy, and mine is that you should see why I have always been such a sulky brute to you, and so slow to forget old scores. Of course, though, you understand why, and I tell you only for the pleasure of writing the words. I loved you, Gemma, when you were an ugly little girl in a gingham frock, with a scratchy tucker and your hair in a pig-tail down your back; and I love you still. Do you remember that day when I kissed your hand, and when you so piteously begged me 'never to do that again'? It was a scoundrelly trick to play, I know; but you must forgive that; and now I kiss the paper where I have written your name. So I have kissed you twice, and both times without your consent.
"That is all. Good-bye, my dear"
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
Or if I die
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Ethel Lilian Voynich
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Why was she always so cruel, I wondered, even after I had worked so hard for her? Perhaps she needed someone beneath her to know for certain that she was not on the bottom rung. Perhaps being cruel was proof of her success.
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Edward Carey (Little)
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[T]hat’s the thing about American governmental intervention: When it’s effective, it’s enveloped in a narrative of “American ingenuity and hard work”; when it’s ineffective, it’s proof of the fundamentally immoral nature of government assistance.
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Anne Helen Petersen
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On Harlan’s World, you don’t see many mandroids. They’re expensive to build, compared to a synthetic or even a clone, and most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives. The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms designed to spec for the task at hand. The last robot I’d seen on the World was a gardening crab.
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Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1))
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But I was here then, and I don’t see it now, and that’s why I did it. I did it for them back there under them trees. I did it ’cause that tractor is getting closer and closer to that graveyard, and I was scared if I didn’t do it, one day that tractor was go’n come in there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all proof that we ever was. Like now they trying to get rid of all proof that black people ever farmed this land with plows and mules—like if they had nothing from the starten but motor machines. Sure, one day they will get rid of the proof that we ever was, but they ain’t go’n do it while I’m still here. Mama and Papa worked too hard in these fields. They mama and they papa worked too hard in these same fields. They mama and they papa people worked too hard, too hard to have that tractor just come in that graveyard and destroy all proof that they ever was. I’m the last one left. I had to see that the graves stayed for a little while longer. But I just didn’t do it for my own people. I did it for every last one back there under them trees. And I did it for every four-o’clock, every rosebush, every palm-of-Christian ever growed on this place.
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Ernest J. Gaines (A Gathering of Old Men)
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For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behavior and motives, they actively educate themselves about women’s reality by seeking out women’s culture and listening to women…. They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression…. When they err—and they do err—they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behavior. They intervene in other men’s misogynist behavior, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognize and challenge their own. Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it’s politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world…. They offer proof that men can change.
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bell hooks (The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love)
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Early in 1955 Flannery completed work on her second book, a collection of these stories which she entitled A Good Man Is Hard to Find. In January we sent it to press, having set publication for June. I remember our amusement at Evelyn Waugh’s reaction to the advance proofs we sent him: “If these stories are in fact the work of a young lady, they are indeed remarkable.
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Flannery O'Connor (The Complete Stories)
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If an employer urges men to do their best, and the men learn after a while that their best does not bring any reward, then they naturally drop back into "getting by." But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope—proof that harder work means higher pay—then also they begin to learn that they are a part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it.
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Henry Ford (My Life and Work)
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The fortress was fashioned by my hard work
and I paid dearly in constructing it.
It had to be hammered into a firm state
and I was glad when the blood came.
It was proof the walls were hardening.
- The Burrow
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Peter Kuper (Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories)
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You haven't seen my resume," Gary objected. "I'm not looking to charity."
The silver eyes glinted, a brief, hard humor. "I had your formula inside my body, Gary. That was all the proof of your genius I needed. The society had access to that blood for some time before you did, but none of them were able to come up with anything that worked on us."
"Great,I get that dubious pleasure. Someday you're going to introduce me to one of your friends and you can say, 'By the way,this is the one who invented the poision that is killing our people.'"
Gregori did laugh then,a low, husky sound so pure, it was beautiful to hear. It brought a lightness into gary's heart, dispelling the gloom that had been gathering. "I never thought of that. We might get a few interesting reactions."
Gary found himself grinning sheepishly. "Yeah,like a lynching party with me as the guest of honor.
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Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
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...recent research suggests that presenting people with proof that their beliefs are incorrect doesn't change their minds. Instead, it actually reinforces their erroneous beliefs, as they work hard to defend them against fact and logic.
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Garth Davis, M.D.
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While language is helpful to communicate memories, it is hardly what produces them. My preference would be to turn the burden of proof around, especially when it comes to species close to us. If other primates recall events with equal precision as humans do, the most economic assumption is that they do so in the same way. Those who insist that human memory rests on unique levels of awareness have their work cut out for them to substantiate such a claim. It may, literally, be all in our heads. The
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Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)
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On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.
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Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
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The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms designed to spec for the task at hand.
”
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Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1))
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Yet the people who cry, “What about the presumption of innocence?” often behave as though there is no objective answer to “Did he do it?” until the trial is over. As though they think people accused of crimes are literally “innocent until proven guilty.” I’m not sure how that would work, exactly—once the verdict comes in, would the accused and the victim travel back in time, so the rape in question could either happen or not happen, based on what the jury decided? If you can’t grasp that any person accused of a crime has already either done it or not done it, regardless of what a future jury has to say, you have a very interesting understanding not only of time and space but of the law. How are police supposed to investigate suspects and make arrests if no one is allowed to draw a reasonable inference that someone is guilty until a jury has officially said so? How are prosecutors supposed to meet their burden of proof, so a jury can officially say so? In reality, lots of people within the justice system—let alone outside it—start to presume guilt after a certain point, because that’s their job
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Kate Harding (Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do about It)
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Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either.
You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue.
If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy.
If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God.
A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness.
The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself.
Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor.
From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin.
The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners.
Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves.
If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior.
We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven.
“Would your city weep if your church did not exist?”
It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.
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Darrin Patrick (Church Planter: The Man, The Message, The Mission)
“
Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys. Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark,and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys – poor Jennifer was having a “real stressful week” and really needed him at home.’ Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed! Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest – as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: ‘Ohhh, that’s so sweet.’ I am happy not to be in that club. I don’t partake, I don’t get off on emotional coercion, on forcing Nick to play some happy-hubby role – the shrugging, cheerful, dutiful taking out the trash, honey! role. Every wife’s dream man, the counterpoint to every man’s fantasy of the sweet, hot, laid-back woman who loves sex and a stiff drink. I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself. I don’t know why women find that so hard.
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Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
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The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms designed to spec for the task at hand. The last robot I’d seen on the World was a gardening crab.
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Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1))
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Knowing the hard limits to our cognitive capacity and the huge cost of working long hours should not be an intractable problem to address. We have a century of data and a roll call of the disastrous consequences that follow those who insist that heroic hours are a proof of commitment to an employer. Companies that measure work by hours could make themselves smarter by the simple act of measuring contribution by output and rewarding those who go home.
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Margaret Heffernan (Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril)
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Don't bother unpacking the rest," she said, tearing the lease in half. "I'm kicking you out now."
She was almost as strong willed and stubborn as he was. But he had much better taste in furniture.
He snorted a laugh. "I'd like to see you try."
"I'm sure you would," she snapped. "It's probably the only way you can get a woman near you with that giant ego in the way."
"I am hardly lacking for female companionship."
Layla rolled her eyes in an overly dramatic fashion. "I'm not interested in hearing about your visits to the nail bar. I just want you gone."
"It's not going to happen, sweetheart. I have the document in digital form, and the law on my side."
"Family trumps the law." She folded her arms under her generous breasts. Sweat trickled down his back. Karen had nothing on this woman, even with her creative use of a toy blood pressure cuff.
"Not in the real world. My attorney works upstairs. If you need further proof, I can ask him to join us and confirm that the lease is valid.
”
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Sara Desai (The Marriage Game (Marriage Game, #1))
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Eventually that energy will flow out as either hostility or love. The energy must and will find a form, a shape, in our lives. It is now, as we wade into the secret distress of the feminine and encounter the largeness of the wound, that we need to be very conscious and keep the despair we might feel from becoming channeled into bitterness. We have to work very hard to keep it flowing toward compassion. The Tamper-Proof Bottle During those months when I was forming my feminist critique, I watched a friend struggle to open a tamper-proof bottle of medication.
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Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)
“
My huge generalities touched on millennials’ oversensitivity, their sense of entitlement, their insistence that they were always right despite sometimes overwhelming proof to the contrary, their failure to consider anything within its context, their joint tendencies of overreaction and passive-aggressive positivity—incidentally, all of these misdemeanors happening only sometimes, not always, and possibly exacerbated by the meds many this age had been fed since childhood by overprotective, helicopter moms and dads mapping their every move. These parents, whether tail-end baby boomers or Gen Xers, now seemed to be rebelling against their own rebelliousness because they felt they’d never really been loved by their own selfish narcissistic true-boomer parents, and who as a result were smothering their kids and not teaching them how to deal with life’s hardships about how things actually work: people might not like you, this person will not love you back, kids are really cruel, work sucks, it’s hard to be good at something, your days will be made up of failure and disappointment, you’re not talented, people suffer, people grow old, people die. And the response from Generation Wuss was to collapse into sentimentality and create victim narratives, instead of grappling with the cold realities by struggling and processing them and then moving on, better prepared to navigate an often hostile or indifferent world that doesn’t care if you exist.
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Bret Easton Ellis (White)
“
Foolish to write all this! As if any human being could know thoroughly what he was to me. It must seem so extravagant, and perhaps affected, even to you, who are large-hearted and make allowances. After these years! And, after all, I might have just said the other truth, that we are at the end of our purse, and can’t travel any more, not even to Taunton, where poor Henrietta, who is hindered from coming to me by a like pecuniary straitness, begs so hard that we should go. Also, we are bound to London by business engagements; a book in the press (Robert’s two volumes), and proofs coming in at all hours. We have been asked to two or three places at an hour’s distance from London, and can’t stir; to Knebworth, for instance, where Sir Edward Lytton wants us to go. It would be amusing in some ways; but we are tired. Also Robert’s sister is staying with us.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
“
We have become so trusting of technology that we have lost faith in ourselves and our born instincts. There are still parts of life that we do not need to “better” with technology. It’s important to understand that you are smarter than your smartphone. To paraphrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Google. Mistakes are a part of life and often the path to profound new insights—so why try to remove them completely? Getting lost while driving or visiting a new city used to be an adventure and a good story. Now we just follow the GPS. To “know thyself” is hard work. Harder still is to believe that you, with all your flaws, are enough—without checking in, tweeting an update, or sharing a photo as proof of your existence for the approval of your 719 followers. A healthy relationship with your devices is all about taking ownership of your time and making an investment in your life. I’m not calling for any radical, neo-Luddite movement here. Carving out time for yourself is as easy as doing one thing. Walk your dog. Stroll your baby. Go on a date—without your handheld holding your hand. Self-respect, priorities, manners, and good habits are not antiquated ideals to be traded for trends. Not everyone will be capable of shouldering this task of personal responsibility or of being a good example for their children. But the heroes of the next generation will be those who can calm the buzzing and jigging of outside distraction long enough to listen to the sound of their own hearts, those who will follow their own path until they learn to walk erect—not hunched over like a Neanderthal, palm-gazing. Into traffic. You have a choice in where to direct your attention. Choose wisely. The world will wait. And if it’s important, they’ll call back.
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Jocelyn K. Glei (Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind)
“
* When the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch.
* Mistakes, mistakes, it’s all I seem capable of at times
*No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.
*It’s much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it
*When death captures me,” the boy vowed, “he will feel my fist on his face.”.
*he’d turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then the guilt would not have been so heavy. No final goodbye.
No final grip of the eyes.
Nothing but goneness.
*Wrecked, but somehow not torn into pieces.
*Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.
*“If we gamble on a Jew,” said Papa soon after, “I would prefer to gamble on a live one,” and from that moment, a new routine was born.
*you should know it yourself—a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.”
*The fire was nothing now but a funeral of smoke, dead and dying, simultaneously.
*Even death has a heart..
* In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief’s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.
*There is death.
Making his way through all of it.
On the surface: unflappable, unwavering.
Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.
*That damn snowman,” she whispered. “I bet it started with the snowman—fooling around with ice and snow in the cold down there.”
Papa was more philosophical. “Rosa, it started with Adolf.”
*There were broken bodies and dead, sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas
*They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.
*Sometimes she sat against the wall, longing for the warm finger of paint to wander just once more down the side of her nose, or to watch the sandpaper texture of her papa’s hands. If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it.
*Himmel Street was a trail of people, and again, Papa left his accordion. Rosa reminded him to take it, but he refused. “I didn’t take it last time,” he explained, “and we lived.” War clearly blurred the distinction between logic and superstition.
*Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace.
*“I should have known not to give the man some bread. I just didn’t think.”
“Papa, you did nothing wrong.”
“I don’t believe you.
* I’m an idiot.”
No, Papa.
You’re just a man..
*What someone says and what happened are usually two different things
* despised by his homeland, even though he was born in it
*“Of course I told him about you,” Liesel said.
She was saying goodbye and she didn’t even know it.
*Say something enough times and you never forget it
*robbery of his life?
*Those kinds of souls always do—the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places
*One could not exist without the other, because for Liesel, both were home. Yes, that’s what Hans Hubermann was for Liesel Meminger
*DEATH AND LIESEL
It has been many years since all of that, but there is still plenty of work to do. I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.
”
”
Markus Zusak (THE BOOK THIEF)
“
I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.
”
”
Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
“
I don't have social media"
"Oh right." He rolls his eyes. "Too good for all that."
She shakes her head. "Not at all. On the contrary, I'm too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It's designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody's loneliness and promises us a community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that - weaponizing a person's isolation - it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody's like 'words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people,' blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody's influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they're lovable. And then, once you're nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people's triumphs, that's when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don't get m e started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that's just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don't need it. Any of it." Blandine cracks her neck. "I'm corrupt enough.
”
”
Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
“
See especially academia, which has effectively become a hope labor industrial complex. Within that system, tenured professors—ostensibly proof positive that you can, indeed, think about your subject of choice for the rest of your life, complete with job security, if you just work hard enough—encourage their most motivated students to apply for grad school. The grad schools depend on money from full-pay students and/or cheap labor from those students, so they accept far more master’s students than there are spots in PhD programs, and far more PhD students than there are tenure-track positions. Through it all, grad students are told that work will, in essence, save them: If they publish more, if they go to more conferences to present their work, if they get a book contract before graduating, their chances on the job market will go up. For a very limited few, this proves true. But it is no guarantee—and with ever-diminished funding for public universities, many students take on the costs of conference travel themselves (often through student loans), scrambling to make ends meet over the summer while they apply for the already-scarce number of academic jobs available, many of them in remote locations, with little promise of long-term stability. Some academics exhaust their hope labor supply during grad school. For others, it takes years on the market, often while adjuncting for little pay in demeaning and demanding work conditions, before the dream starts to splinter. But the system itself is set up to feed itself as long as possible. Most humanities PhD programs still offer little or nothing in terms of training for jobs outside of academia, creating a sort of mandatory tunnel from grad school to tenure-track aspirant. In the humanities, especially, to obtain a PhD—to become a doctor in your field of knowledge—is to adopt the refrain “I don’t have any marketable skills.” Many academics have no choice but to keep teaching—the only thing they feel equipped to do—even without fair pay or job security. Academic institutions are incentivized to keep adjuncts “doing what they love”—but there’s additional pressure from peers and mentors who’ve become deeply invested in the continued viability of the institution. Many senior academics with little experience of the realities of the contemporary market explicitly and implicitly advise their students that the only good job is a tenure-track academic job. When I failed to get an academic job in 2011, I felt soft but unsubtle dismay from various professors upon telling them that I had chosen to take a high school teaching job to make ends meet. It
”
”
Anne Helen Petersen (Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation)
“
It was soul-destroying work, apt to turn anyone cynical, for the sad, awful truth was that there was hardly any evidence at all of talent in the slush pile and plenty of proof, for those who needed it, that the country was full of crazy people armed with typewriters—far more of them even than of crazy people armed with guns.
”
”
Michael Korda (Another Life: A Memoir of Other People)
“
But what none of these girls realised was that their fate had already been decided by their new guardians, the Commissioners of the Native Affairs Department. Sadly, in only a couple of weeks from then, Nora and Eva would find that instead of returning north as they hoped, they would be sent further south to work as domestics on dairy farms. This would also be their introduction to exploitation and deception; a hard step along the path of life that would have so many twists and turns. As for returning home to their loved ones, well, that would not happen for many, many years.
”
”
Doris Pilkington (Rabbit-Proof Fence)
“
The life of the artist is a hard one. His work is unlike other men's work, which may be done mechanically, by rote and almost, as it were, in sleep. It demands from him a constant expense of spirit. He gives continually of his best life, and in return he receives much joy, it is true much fame, it may be—but of material blessings, very few. It is eighty years since first I devoted my life to the service of art; eighty years, and almost every one of those years has brought me fresh and painful proof of what I have been saying: the artist's life is a hard one.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Crome Yellow)
“
Taking quick looks behind him on the trail, Lew Basnight was apt to see things that weren’t necessarily there. Mounted figure in a black duster and hat, always still, turned sidewise in the hard, sunlit distance, horse bent to the barren ground. No real beam of attention, if anything a withdrawal into its own lopsided star-shaped silhouette, as if that were all it had ever aspired to. It did not take long to convince himself that the presence behind him now, always just out of eyeball range, belonged to one and the same subject, the notorious dynamiter of the San Juans known as the Kieselguhr Kid. The Kid happened to be of prime interest to White City Investigations. Just around the time Lew was stepping off the train at the Union Station in Denver, and the troubles up in the Coeur d’Alene were starting to bleed over everywhere in the mining country, where already hardly a day passed without an unscheduled dynamite blast in it someplace, the philosophy among larger, city-based detective agencies like Pinkerton’s and Thiel’s began to change, being as they now found themselves with far too much work on their hands. On the theory that they could look at their unsolved cases the way a banker might at instruments of debt, they began selling off to less-established and accordingly hungrier outfits like White City their higher-risk tickets, including that of the long-sought Kieselguhr Kid. It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite. The Kid’s family had supposedly come over as refugees from Germany shortly after the reaction of 1849, settling at first near San Antonio, which the Kid-to-be, having developed a restlessness for higher ground, soon left, and then after a spell in the Sangre de Cristos, so it went, heading west again, the San Juans his dream, though not for the silver-mine money, nor the trouble he could get into, both of those, he was old enough by then to appreciate, easy enough to come by. No, it was for something else. Different tellers of the tale had different thoughts on what. “Don’t carry pistols, don’t own a shotgun nor a rifle—no, his trade-mark, what you’ll find him packing in those tooled holsters, is always these twin sticks of dynamite, with a dozen more—” “Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest.” “Easy fellow to recognize, then.” “You’d think so, but no two eyewitnesses have ever agreed. It’s like all that blasting rattles it loose from everybody’s memory.” “But say, couldn’t even a slow hand just gun him before he could get a fuse lit?” “Wouldn’t bet on it. Got this clever wind-proof kind of striker rig on to each holster, like a safety match, so all’s he has to do’s draw, and the ‘sucker’s all lit and ready to throw.” “Fast fuses, too. Some boys down the Uncompahgre found out about that just last August, nothin left to bury but spurs and belt buckles. Even old Butch Cassidy and them’ll begin to coo like a barn full of pigeons whenever the Kid’s in the county.” Of course, nobody ever’d been sure about who was in Butch Cassidy’s gang either. No shortage of legendary deeds up here, but eyewitnesses could never swear beyond a doubt who in each case, exactly, had done which, and, more than fear of retaliation—it was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing not only aliases to be inconsistently assigned but identity itself to change. Did something, something essential, happen to human personality above a certain removal from sea level? Many quoted Dr. Lombroso’s observation about how lowland folks tended to be placid and law-abiding while mountain country bred revolutionaries and outlaws. That was over in Italy, of course. Theorizers about the recently discovered subconscious mind, reluctant to leave out any variable that might seem helpful, couldn’t avoid the altitude, and the barometric pressure that went with it. This was spirit, after all.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Against the Day)
“
Of all the times I think of at Loudcloud and Opsware, the Darwin Project was the most fun and the most hard. I worked seven days a week 8 a.m.–10 p.m. for six months straight. It was full on. Once a week I had a date night with my wife where I gave her my undivided attention from 6 p.m. until midnight. And the next day, even if it was Saturday, I’d be back in the office at 8 a.m. and stay through dinner. I would come home between 10–11 p.m. Every night. And it wasn’t just me. It was everybody in the office. The technical things asked of us were great. We had to brainstorm how to do things and translate those things into an actual product. It was hard, but fun. I don’t remember losing anyone during that time. It was like, “Hey, we gotta get this done, or we will not be here, we’ll have to get another job.” It was a tight-knit group of people. A lot of the really junior people really stepped up. It was a great growing experience for them to be thrown into the middle of the ocean and told, “Okay, swim.” Six months later we suddenly started winning proofs of concepts we hadn’t before. Ben did a great job, he’d give us feedback, and pat people on the back when we were done.
”
”
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
“
Hey, Call! You over here? Call! Is everything all right?”
She whimpered as he whipped his mouth away and softly cursed. With an unsteady hand, he jerked down her sweatshirt and stepped protectively in front of her, leaving her shielded behind his body and the trunk of the tree.
“Everything’s fine, Toby.” His voice sounded raspy. She wondered if his friend would notice.
“I thought I heard shots,” Toby said, “but I was cooking so I didn’t pay all that much attention. Then I went into the living room and found the front door open. When I saw your rifle gone from the rack, I was afraid something bad might have happened.”
“Our neighbor, Ms. Sinclair, came nose to nose with her first black bear.” Call looked her way, gave her a quick once-over, saw that she didn’t look too disheveled, and tugged her out from behind the tree. “Charity Sinclair, meet Toby Jenkins. Toby’s chief-cook-and-bottle-washer over at my place, and all-around handyman. At least he is till he leaves for college in the fall. Toby, this is Ms. Sinclair, our new neighbor.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am. I heard Mose sold the place. I’ve been meaning to come over and say hello.”
“Forget the ma’am,” Charity told him. “It makes me feel too old. Charity is enough.”
He nodded, smiled. He was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, with thick, dark red hair and a few scattered freckles, sort of a young John Kennedy, an attractive boy with what appeared to be a pleasant disposition. She wondered if he could tell by looking at her what had been going on when he arrived. Then she noticed Call’s shirt was open and missing a button and felt her face heating up again.
Call cleared his throat. “I’ll be home in a couple of minutes, Toby.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have your breakfast waiting.” With a wave good-bye, he set off down the path the way he had come.
When Charity turned, she saw Call watching her, his face dark, his expression closed up as it usually was. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Oh, God. He was obviously sorry it had and it made her even more embarrassed. “Neither did I. I don’t make a habit of…of…I don’t exactly know what happened.” She studied her feet, then stared off toward the creek. “It must have been the fear, you know? They say when your life is threatened you revert to your most basic instincts.”
She risked a glance at him, saw that his jaw looked iron-hard. “Yeah, that must be it.”
She glanced away, trying not to think of what they’d just done.
Trying not to wonder what would have happened if Toby hadn’t arrived when he did.
“You’d better go,” she said, making an effort to smile. “Your breakfast is waiting and I’ve got work to do.”
As she started to turn, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud, casting shadows beneath his cheekbones and the little indentation on his chin. He didn’t move when she grabbed the plastic bag of garbage and headed for one of the heavy iron trash cans that were supposed to be bear-proof.
She saw him walk over and pick up his rifle, his fingers wrapping around the stock with a casual ease that said he was comfortable with the weapon. He didn’t walk away as she expected. Instead, he stood there watching, waiting until she disappeared inside the house.
”
”
Kat Martin (Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters Trilogy, #1))
“
Here’s how that works. First, progressives develop their pitch. They take all the virtues of the wealth creators, such as creativity, frugality, hard work, self-discipline, self-reliance, innovation, and the aspiration to success, and redefine them as vices. Creativity and frugality, for instance, become greed. Hard work and self-discipline become materialism. Self-reliance becomes arrogance. Innovation and the aspiration to success become proof of a lack of compassion as well as engines of inequality. In sum, the capitalists are now the exploiters, the expropriators, the bad guys. In the progressive view, their wealth is not earned but rather stolen.
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party)
“
As if a woman working hard was proof that she had an incompetent husband. As if a woman didn't have to work if her husband was making a lot of money.
”
”
Seo Su-Jin (Korean Teachers)
“
Viewed in the light of its imminent decimation, not to mention the decimation of Europe, Hilbert’s program comes across as highly idealistic, even Platonic. At its heart, after all, is the assumption that even undiscovered proofs already exist “somewhere out there”; doubt is taken away, and the mathematician reassured that, with enough time and hard work, he or she can lasso any beast that lurks in the metaphysical wilderness. The program was the perfect expression of Hilbert’s determination to endow younger mathematicians with the will to discover, since it sought to remove from the mathematical endeavor any cause for despair or even uncertainty. Instead, it promised a way out of any maze. “Wir müssen wissen, Wir werden wissen”: though the unicorn itself might not exist, somewhere in the world there had to be evidence that unicorns either were or were not and, if they were, that their existence could be shown by some definite method. Still, Hilbert’s very language suggests at least a trace of anxiety. After all, in the Judeo-Christian universe, Edens are by nature temporary. What God gives, God can also take away. Through his reference to “paradise,” Hilbert seems to be bowing, albeit subconsciously, to the knowledge that though paradise may be infinite, our stay there is decidedly finite. For a serpent lurks in the trees—the paradox.
”
”
David Leavitt (The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (Great Discoveries))
“
Receptor neurons bundle together into cables called axons, feeding up through holes in a perforated bone just behind the eyeballs called the cribriform plate. (In a serious head injury, the skull can shift, and the lateral movement of the cribriform plate shears those axons like a knife through spaghetti. Snip! No more sense of smell.) Once through the plate, the axons connect to two projections from the brain called the olfactory bulbs. There, in blobs of neurons called glomeruli, is where the bulk of the computation gets done. Mice, known for their acute sense of smell, have just about 1,800 glomeruli—but 1,000 genes that code for olfactory receptors. That’s a lot of perceivable smells. Humans have a seemingly pathetic 370 genes for receptors, but we have 5,500 glomeruli per bulb. That’s a lot of processing power. It must be doing something. The part of the brain that integrates all this information, the olfactory cortex, also gets inputs from the limbic region and other areas that deal with emotion—the amygdala and hypothalamus, among others. Processing of smells in the brain, then, is tied to not only the chemical perception of a molecule but also how we feel about it, and how we feel in general. Every other sense in the body is, in a way, indirect. In vision, light impinges on the retina, a sheet of cells at the back of the eye that makes pigments and connects to the optic nerve. In hearing, sound (which is really just waves of changing air pressure) pushes the eardrum in and out at particular frequencies, which translate via a series of tiny bones to nerves. Touch and taste are the same. Some cell, built to do the hard work of reception, gets between the stimulus and the nerves that lead to the brain for processing. Some physical effect—air pressure, reflected photons, whatever—gets between the stimulus and the perception. It’s all a first-order derivative. Not smell, though. When we smell something, we are smelling tiny pieces of that thing that have broken off, wafted through the air, and then touched actual neurons wired to actual pieces of brain. Olfaction is direct, with nothing between the thing we’re smelling, the smell it has, and how we perceive that smell. It is our most intimate sense.
”
”
Adam Rogers (Proof: The Science of Booze)
“
But what of the pleasure faith?" said Crope. "Can a witch or a sorcerer take an animal and, though a spell, create an Animal?"
"Well, that's the thing I've been looking into," said Elphaba. "The pleasure faithers - the pfaithers - say that if anything - Lurline or the Unnamed God - could have done it once, magic could do it again. They even hint that the original distinction between Animals and animals was a Kumbric Witch spell, so strong and enduring it has never worn off. This is dangerous propaganda, malice incarnate. No one knows if there is such a thing as a Kumbric Witch, let alone if there ever was. Myself, I think it's a part of the Lurlinist cycle that's gotten detached and developed independently. Arrant nonsense. We have no proof that magic is so strong -"
"We have no proof that god is so strong," interrupted Tibbett.
"Which strikes me as being as good an argument against god as it is against magic," said Elphaba, "but never mind that. The point is, if it is an enduring Kumbric spell, centuries old, it may be reversible. Or it may be perceived to be reversible, which is just as bad. In the interim, while sorcerers are at work experimenting with charms and spells, the Animals lose their rights, one by one. Just slowly enough so that it's hard to see as a coherent political campaign. It's a dicey scenario, and one that Doctor Dillamond hasn't figured out -
”
”
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
“
You have to really believe in your journey,” he said, “and you have to really work hard for your luck.
”
”
Jason Feifer (Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career)
“
I don’t have social media.” “Oh, right.” He rolls his eyes. “Too good for all that.” She shakes her head. “Not at all. On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.
”
”
Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
“
HOW I BUSTED MY UNFAITHFUL WIFE WITH THE HELP OF GRAYHATHACKS CONTRACTOR
My wife had become increasingly distant, her behavior erratic, and she would often go out with friends and return home at odd hours. Her phone was her sanctuary, which she guarded fiercely. I had a gut-wrenching feeling that she was being unfaithful, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch her in the act. That's when I stumbled upon Grayhathacks Contractor, a team of professional hackers who specialize in investigating matters of infidelity.
The process was swift and straightforward. They requested some basic information about Rachel's phone and her daily routines, which I provided with a heavy heart. I had to be meticulous in my details, describing her habits such as her favorite coffee shop where she'd often go to 'work' on her laptop, the secret password she used for her phone among other details.
Their service was impeccable. Within a few hours, they had infiltrated Rachel's phone and installed an undetectable spyware that would allow me to monitor her messages, calls, location, and even her social media accounts. The software was so sophisticated that it didn't drain her battery or cause any glitches that would raise suspicion.
The first few days were agonizing as I waited for any signs of deceit, but the evidence I gathered was chilling. She had been meeting her ex-boyfriend, at a motel just outside of town. The spyware provided me with the exact dates, times, and even the exact location where they were staying. I could see their flirty texts, the lovey-dovey emojis, and the incriminating photos they exchanged.
But what was most disturbing was Rachel's level of deception. She had gone to great lengths to cover her tracks. She would delete messages and call logs, and even change her phone's settings to prevent any notifications from her ex from reaching her lock screen. It was like watching a masterclass in infidelity, and she had done it all right under my nose.
Grayhathacks Contractor also provided me with a detailed report of her whereabouts. I could see the exact moments she lied to me about her whereabouts, the hours she spent with Michael, and the clandestine meetings she arranged when she thought I was out of town. It was a crushing realization, but I needed to know the truth.
When I finally gathered the courage to confront her, I had irrefutable proof of her betrayal. The look on her face said it all. She had been caught red-handed, and she knew it. The truth was out, and it was disgusting. She had betrayed me in the worst possible way.
The service they provide is not for the faint of heart, but for those who suspect their partner of infidelity and need concrete evidence, I can't recommend Grayhathacks Contractor enough. They gave me the tools to uncover the harsh reality and, ultimately, make the right decision for my life.
Contact
Email grayhathacks@contractor.net
”
”
Renley Mellard
“
For proof of just how unique, consider the example of Toy Story 3 once again. As I said at the start of this chapter, this was the only Pixar production during which we didn’t have a major crisis, and after the film came out, I repeatedly said so in public, lauding its crew for racking up not a single disaster during the film’s gestation. You might imagine that the Toy Story 3 crew would have been happy when I said this, but you’d imagine wrong. So ingrained are the beliefs I’ve been describing about failure at Pixar that the people who worked on Toy Story 3 were actually offended by my remarks. They interpreted them to mean that they hadn’t tried as hard as their colleagues on other films—that they hadn’t pushed themselves enough. That isn’t at all what I meant, but I have to admit: I was thrilled by their reaction. I saw it as proof that our culture is healthy.
”
”
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
“
Among the famous sayings of the Church fathers none is better known than Augustine's, "Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him. For such a man I have no message. My appeal is addressed to those who have been previously taught in secret by the wisdom of God; I speak to thirsty hearts whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them, and such as they need no reasoned proof. Their restless hearts furnish all the proof they need. God formed us for Himself. The Shorter Catechism, "Agreed upon by the Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster," as the old New-England Primer has it, asks the ancient questions what and why and answers them in one short sentence hardly matched in any uninspired work. "Question: What is the chief End of Man? Answer: Man's chief End is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." With this agree the four and twenty elders who fall on their faces to worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
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A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
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It seems to me a proof of the small advance our race has made in true wisdom, that we find it so hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do.
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William Dean Howells (Complete Works of William Dean Howells)
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Here was my first lesson: This type of skill development is hard. When I got to the first tricky gap in the paper’s main proof argument, I faced immediate internal resistance. It was as if my mind realized the effort I was about to ask it to expend, and in response it unleashed a wave of neuronal protest, distant at first, but then as I persisted increasingly tremendous, crashing over my concentration with mounting intensity. To combat this resistance, I deployed two types of structure. The first type was time structure: “I am going to work on this for one hour,” I would tell myself. “I don’t care if I faint from the effort, or make no progress, for the next hour this is my whole world.” But of course I wouldn’t faint and eventually I would make progress. It took, on average, ten minutes for the waves of resistance to die down. Those ten minutes were always difficult, but knowing that my efforts had a time limit helped ensure that the difficulty was manageable. The second type of structure I deployed was information structure—a way of capturing the results of my hard focus in a useful form. I started by building a proof map that captured the dependencies between the different pieces of the proof. This was hard, but not too hard, and it got me warmed up in my efforts to understand the result. I then advanced from the maps to short self-administered quizzes that forced me to memorize the key definitions the proof used. Again, this was a relatively easy task, but it still took concentration, and the result was an understanding that was crucial for parsing the detailed math that came next. After these first two steps, emboldened by my initial successes in deploying hard focus, I moved on to the big guns: proof summaries. This is where I forced myself to take each lemma and walk through each step of its proofs—filling in missing steps. I would conclude by writing a detailed summary in my own words. This was staggeringly demanding, but the fact that I had already spent time on easier tasks in the paper built up enough momentum to help push me forward. I returned to this paper regularly over a period of two weeks. When I was done, I had probably experienced fifteen hours total of deliberate practice–style strain, but due to its intensity it felt like much more. Fortunately, this effort led to immediate benefits. Among other things, it allowed me to understand whole swaths of related work that had previously been mysterious. The researchers who wrote this paper had enjoyed a near monopoly on solving this style of problem—now I could join them.
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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Here was my first lesson: This type of skill development is hard. When I got to the first tricky gap in the paper’s main proof argument, I faced immediate internal resistance. It was as if my mind realized the effort I was about to ask it to expend, and in response it unleashed a wave of neuronal protest, distant at first, but then as I persisted increasingly tremendous, crashing over my concentration with mounting intensity. To combat this resistance, I deployed two types of structure. The first type was time structure: “I am going to work on this for one hour,” I would tell myself. “I don’t care if I faint from the effort, or make no progress, for the next hour this is my whole world.” But of course I wouldn’t faint and eventually I would make progress. It took, on average, ten minutes for the waves of resistance to die down. Those ten minutes were always difficult, but knowing that my efforts had a time limit helped ensure that the difficulty was manageable. The second type of structure I deployed was information structure—a way of capturing the results of my hard focus in a useful form. I started by building a proof map that captured the dependencies between the different pieces of the proof. This was hard, but not too hard, and it got me warmed up in my efforts to understand the result. I then advanced from the maps to short self-administered quizzes that forced me to memorize the key definitions the proof used. Again, this was a relatively easy task, but it still took concentration, and the result was an understanding that was crucial for parsing the detailed math that came next. After these first two steps, emboldened by my initial successes in deploying hard focus, I moved on to the big guns: proof summaries. This is where I forced myself to take each lemma and walk through each step of its proofs—filling in missing steps. I would conclude by writing a detailed summary in my own words. This was staggeringly demanding, but the fact that I had already spent time on easier tasks in the paper built up enough momentum to help push me forward.
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness.
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Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch)
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What Bitcoin does is run a computerised lottery, in a process called “mining.” Bitcoin miners guess a number. They take their guess, they combine it with a block of transactions that are waiting to be processed, and they do a simple calculation on them. If the calculation gives a small enough number, the miner wins six-and-a-quarter fresh new bitcoins! And their block of transactions is added to the public blockchain. The more guesses you make, the better your chances. In June 2020, Bitcoin miners were making 100 quintillion guesses every second. This used as much electricity as all of Austria.45 This is called “proof-of-work” — though it might better be termed “proof-of-waste.” Blocks come out approximately every ten minutes. If miners win coins too often, the difficulty goes up, to slow the system down — so the miners have to add more computers to compete. This results in spiraling electricity use — Bitcoin is, literally, anti-efficient. The point of all this waste is to secure the blockchain — the threat model is that nobody can change the blockchain without wasting at least as much electricity. The Bitcoin mining system is incredibly slow, and very hard to scale up. Bitcoin now consumes between 0.1% and 0.5% of all the electricity in the world — for the same seven transactions per second, worldwide, that it could do in 2009, when it was just running on Nakamoto’s desktop PC. Bitcoin is the most inefficient payment network in human history.
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David Gerard (Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried to Take Over the Money)
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Even if you work hard for the sake of this world at the end it will say where is your proof?" But for the sake of God, the deeds themselves are proof.
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Kamaran Ihsan Salih
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.. they assume that intelligence is a pre-ordained trait, [...], their perceived destiny, which flows from another belief, that the poor are to blame for their condition. Poverty is the proof of deficiencies, including an intellect that is "fixed". Dweck's research challenges this belief. She shows that when children think that their intellectual abilities can improve, they are more likely to work hard. And working hard allows the brain to "grow" by strengthening its neural connections. [...] This makes struggle a good thing. Not a sign of stupidity, but a path to intellect. At Hershey, the growth mindset can be reduced to one word. Yet. The school wants its children to go from saying, 'I'm not good at math." to saying, 'I'm not good at math yet." The 'Yet' puts them on a continuum where mistakes are embraced rather than shunned. Students are taught about the growth mindset, using it as a crutch when they stumble. In math class, they can be heard telling one another, 'Wait, don't get frustrated, we can feel our brains growing.
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Andrea Elliott (Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City)
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We pride ourselves on first class Water heater installation and replacement. The Techs are uniformed fully licensed Plumbers. Because we only do Water Heaters you can count on expert advice from your first call into our office. Because Our Techs take special care of your home when installing your new water heater, your floors are covered from door to door. Your old Water Heater out in a water proof bag. Take a minute to read some of our reviews. We work hard to make the installation of your new Water Heater a smooth experience. Houston Water Heaters are rated A+ with the BBB. We are also members of Angie’s List, NextDoor, and Yelp.
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Houston Water Heaters Katy TX
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How long does it take to Learn Freelancing?
How long it takes to learn freelancing depends on what you're learning, how you start freelancing, and how hard you try to learn it.
Learning something requires more willpower and concentration than any effort.
The sooner you continue to learn to work with focus, the sooner you will succeed. And the slower you go, the longer it will take you to learn the task.
So if you want to build a career online as a professional freelancer then you must spend extra time on it.
Freelancing for Beginners:
If you are new to the freelancing sector, there are a few things you need to know. For example: What is data entry? What is outsourcing? Web design key etc.
Having a basic understanding of these things will make it much easier for you to learn freelancing. Although freelancing has complex tasks as well as some simple ones. But it is very few and low incomes.
There are many new freelancers who want to earn freelancing with mobile. Their statement is, "I don't need so much money, only 4-5 thousand taka will do".
In their case, I would say that you learn data entry work. You can earn that amount of money in this work.
But if you choose freelancing just to do this job then I would say you are doing it wrong. Because this data entry work is very long, you need to work for 7-8 hours.
And if you dream of only 4-5 thousand rupees by working 7-8 hours, then my suggestion for you is that you should not do this work but get tutoring.
At least it will be best for you. Freelancing requires you to have big dreams and the passion to make them come true.
Misconceptions about Freelancing:
There is no substitute for a good quality computer or a good quality laptop to learn and master freelancing professionally. This way you can practice and learn very quickly without any hassle. Many people think that by looking at the monitor and pressing the keyboard, they become freelancing and can earn lakhs of rupees a month.
In fact, those who think so cannot be entirely blamed. Many of us get lured by such mouthwatering advertisements as "opportunity to earn lakhs per month with just one month course" and waste both our precious time and money by joining bad unprofessional coaching centers. Why is it not possible to learn freelancing in just one month even in one year?
It is clear proof that glittering does not make gold. There are thousands of jobs in freelancing, each job is different, and each job takes a different amount of time to learn. So it is very difficult to comment on how long it takes to learn freelancing.
Be aware in choosing the right Freelancing Training Center:
But whatever you do, don't go for an online course of Rs 400-600-1200. Because it will also lose the willpower you have to learn to freelance.
If you have to do this type of bad course today, then do a government freelancing course or you can take practical training from an organization called "Bhairab IT Zone" for a nominal fee.
Here hands-on training is provided by professional freelancers using tools in free, premium, and upgraded versions.
Although there are many ways or mediums to learn freelancing or outsourcing. E.g. Outsourcing Learning Books, Youtube Video Tutorials, Seminars etc.
Either way, some learn to swim in a day and some in a week. To become a good swimmer one must continue swimming for a long time.
Not everyone has the same brain capacity or stamina. Humans are naturally different from one another. The same goes for freelancing. You might learn the ins and outs of freelancing within 6-7 months, it might take another 1-2 years. No matter how long it takes to learn, you need to work twice as long to become proficient at it. But with hard work, willpower, and determination you can make any impossible possible.
Please visit Our Blogging Website to Read More Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing.
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Bhairab IT Zone
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How can you run Analytics “as one”? If you leave Analytics to IT, you will end up with a first-class race car without a driver: All the technology would be there, but hardly anybody could apply it to real-world questions. Where Analytics is left to Business, however, you’d probably see various functional silos develop, especially in larger organizations. I have never seen a self-organized, cross-functional Analytics approach take shape successfully in such an organization. Instead, you can expect each Analytics silo to develop independently. They will have experts familiar with their business area, which allows for the right questions to be asked. On the other hand, the technical solutions will probably be second class as the functional Analytics department will mostly lack the critical mass to mimic an organization’s entire IT intelligence. Furthermore, a lot of business topics will be addressed several times in parallel, as those Analytics silos may not talk to each other. You see this frequently in organizations that are too big for one central management team. They subdivide management either into functional groups or geographical groups. Federation is generally seen as an organizational necessity. It is well known that it does not make sense to regularly gather dozens of managers around the same table: You’d quickly see a small group discussing topics that are specific to a business function or a country organization, while the rest would get bored. A federated approach in Analytics, however, comes with risks. The list of disadvantages reaches from duplicate work to inconsistent interpretation of data. You can avoid these disadvantages by designing a central Data Analytics entity as part of your Data Office at an early stage, to create a common basis across all of these areas. As you can imagine, such a design requires authority, as it would ask functional silos to give up part of their autonomy. That is why it is worthwhile creating a story around this for your organization’s Management Board. You’d describe the current setup, the behavior it fosters, and the consequences including their financial impact. Then you’d present a governance structure that would address the situation and make the organization “future-proof.” Typical aspects of such a proposal would be The role of IT as the entity with a monopoly for technology and with the obligation to consider the Analytics teams of the business functions as their customers The necessity for common data standards across all of those silos, including their responsibility within the Data Office Central coordination of data knowledge management, including training, sharing of experience, joint cross-silo expert groups, and projects Organization-wide, business-driven priorities in Data Analytics Collaboration bodies to bring all silos together on all management levels
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Martin Treder (The Chief Data Officer Management Handbook: Set Up and Run an Organization’s Data Supply Chain)
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Success doesn't mean victory. If someone is successful, it is proof that he has struggled a lot, and worked very hard.
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Vishesh Panthi
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You do need to be visible. Your boss does need to like you. This is not proof of a heartless world; it’s just human nature. Hard work doesn’t pay off if your boss doesn’t know whom to reward for it. Would you expect a great product to sell with zero marketing? Probably not. So what’s a good balance? Every Friday send your boss an email summarizing your accomplishments for the week—nothing fancy, but quickly relating the good work you’re doing. You might think they know what you’re up to, but they’re busy. They have their own problems. They’ll appreciate it and begin to associate you with the good things they’re hearing (from you, of course). And when it’s time to negotiate for that raise (or to refresh your résumé), you can just review the emails for a reminder of why exactly you’re such a good employee.
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Eric Barker (Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong)
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This is the case even among those considered to be conservative and evangelical thinkers. Stanley Grenz once asserted, “In this manner the Christian vision of God as the social Trinity and our creation to be the imago Dei provides the transcendent basis for the human ethical ideal as life-in-community. Consequently the reciprocal, perichoretic dynamic of the Triune God is the cosmic reference point for the idea of society itself.”[5] But the obscurity and debate that continue to surround the imago Dei or “image of God” hardly serve as conclusive proof that God intends the divine reality and being somehow to be normative for humanity. Mercifully, not all theologians have adopted this misuse of the trinitarian reality. Richard Bauckham quite rightly observes that “true human community comes about not as an image of the Trinitarian fellowship, but as the Spirit makes us like Jesus in his community with the Father and with others.”[6] The hard fact is that neither Scripture nor the Lutheran Confessions ever offer the mystery of the trinitarian Godhead as the model or even a model for Christian living or the shape of Christian life. As the saying goes, “God is God, and you’re not.”[7] The Christian life is shaped not by God’s trinitarian nature as model, but by God’s revealed word and work in us.[8]
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Joel D. Biermann (A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics)
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MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES is a fad from the 1950s, now largely discredited. But it hasn’t gone away. Badly run companies everywhere are still plagued by this simplistic, easy-as-pie management technique that most often achieves ends that are the exact opposite of those intended and desired. Like most hard-to-shake diseases, this one seems to thrive on the same mix of factors that damages its host. And it is self-perpetuating: MBO companies respond to each failed quarter by instituting still more MBO. Bottom-line failures are excused as due to uncontrollable market factors, while successive improvements in selected quantitatively expressed objectives are loudly touted as proof that management really is succeeding in spite of the dismal results. MBO Primer Here’s how it works: Performance of each department or division of the company is characterized by one or a few quantitative measures, called objectives. Managers are now encouraged to manage to the objectives, to cause each indicator to move in the desired direction toward its selected target. A manager is declared to have succeeded completely if the objective meets or exceeds the target.
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Tom DeMarco (Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency)
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veracity. The frequent reference to such military men as Generals Sheridan, Carr, Merritt, Crook, Terry, Colonel Royal, and other officers under whom Mr. Cody served as scout and guide at different times and in various sections of the frontier, during the numerous Indian campaigns of the last ten or twelve years, affords ample proof of of his genuineness as a thoroughbred scout. There is no humbug or braggadocio about Buffalo Bill. He is known far and wide, and his reputation has been earned honestly and by hard work. By a combination of circumstances he was educated to the life
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William F. Cody (The Life of Honorable William F. Cody: Known as Buffalo Bill the Famous Hunter)
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The Beginning Sergeant Smelly was a normal man. He lived in a normal village, full of normal people and had a normal address. He lived at 1 Normall Street in the village of Normall Normall. The village was so normal they named it twice. His first name was eighty-three percent normal—Norman. Most people knew him as Normal Norman from Normall Normall; a rotund and jolly man who lived an exceedingly normal life. Well, normal, if appearing in court on exploding fart charges was normal. Normal, if producing fire from your butt was normal. All of his body parts were normal. Apart from one: his butt. His butt was abnormal. It used to be a normal butt, but everything changed in the blink of a fart. Sergeant Smelly's face glistened with sweat and his heartbeats quickened as the judge read out the charge. "Sergeant Smelly, you are here today because you could not control your soldiers, not to mention your bottom. You are hereby charged with the crime of producing exploding fire-farts. How do you plead?" asked Army Judge Mental. The stout sergeant considered the question and his thoughts transported him back to the day it all went smelly. One fateful morning, Sergeant Smelly lay in bed suffering from a horrible cold. Empty boxes lay scattered across the floor, and the bin overflowed with used tissues. He groaned as he pulled the last tissue from the box. A passer-by in the street below jumped as he heard the foghorn sound. He inspected the contents of the tissue (Sergeant Smelly, not the passer-by) and wished he had not. It was time for action. The suffering soldier dragged himself out of bed and got dressed. He wore a waterproof jacket on top of his uniform, as his army blazer was not snot-proof. Not that any of his other clothes were snot-proof. He trudged downstairs and made himself a hot lemon with honey, then switched on his laptop. After an extensive internet search, he found the best remedy to fix the cold was to feed it, so he plodded into town and searched for a place to eat. The first eatery he found had a ridiculous name, but the café was almost full. He watched the customers from the window as they tucked into their food. The plain wooden tables and basic white tablecloths oozed simplicity, but the gorgeous grub eclipsed the plain interior. Silence filled the air as customers tucked into delectable dishes and drifted off to food heaven. But an odorous pong emanated from the café, and it was not the food. Sergeant Smelly did not smell the malodorous stench due to his blocked nose and cold. The cold was so bad it came alive. Colin the Cold smelled the awful pong and begged his owner to reconsider. He tried in vain to turn his attention to the sandwich shop, but Sergeant Smelly did not hear him. Colin the Cold saw disaster around the corner. Major Disaster walked around the corner and greeted him in a bright and cheery fashion. "Morning, Smelly," said Major Disaster in a bright and cheery fashion. Colin the Cold was correct and sensed nothing good would come of Sergeant Smelly eating at Café McPoo. It had Disaster Area written all over it, but the police apprehended the graffiti artist, and he was hard at work wiping the words ‘Disaster Area’ from the front of the café. Colin the Cold frowned and prepared himself for the worst. And so it began.
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James Sharkey (Sergeant Smelly & Captain Chunder Save The Day)
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Indeed, recent research suggests that presenting people with proof that their beliefs are incorrect doesn’t change their minds. Instead, it actually reinforces their erroneous beliefs, as they work hard to defend them against fact and logic.
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Garth Davis (Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It)
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Putting it into orbit—making it work and keeping it working—is the hardest thing that human beings have ever done, and it stands as proof that when we set our minds to something hard, when we work together, we can do anything, including solving our problems here on Earth.
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Scott Kelly (Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery)
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First, Dweck gave every child a test that consisted of fairly easy puzzles. Afterward the researcher informed all the children of their scores, adding a single six-word sentence of praise. Half of the kids were praised for their intelligence (“You must be smart at this”), and half were praised for their effort (“You must have worked really hard”). The kids were tested a second time, but this time they were offered a choice between a harder test and an easier test. Ninety percent of the kids who'd been praised for their effort chose the harder test. A majority of the kids who'd been praised for their intelligence, on the other hand, chose the easy test. Why? “When we praise children for their intelligence,” Dweck wrote, “we tell them that's the name of the game: look smart, don't risk making mistakes.” The third level of tests was uniformly harder; none of the kids did well. However, the two groups of kids—the praised-for-effort group and the praised-for-intelligence group—responded very differently to the situation. “[The effort group] dug in and grew very involved with the test, trying solutions, testing strategies,” Dweck said. “They later said they liked it. But the group praised for its intelligence hated the harder test. They took it as proof they weren't smart.
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Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else)
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A man can only proof himself in his purposeful professional duty with diligently work.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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If all the black land-owners who had ever held land here had kept it or left it in the hands of black men, the Negroes would have owned nearer thirty thousand acres than the fifteen thousand they now hold. And yet these fifteen thousand acres are a creditable showing,—a proof of no little weight of the worth and ability of the Negro people. If they had been given an economic start at Emancipation, if they had been in an enlightened and rich community which really desired their best good, then we might perhaps call such a result small or even insignificant. But for a few thousand poor ignorant field-hands, in the face of poverty, a falling market, and social stress, to save and capitalize two hundred thousand dollars in a generation has meant a tremendous effort. The rise of a nation, the pressing forward of a social class, means a bitter struggle, a hard and soul-sickening battle with the world such as few of the more favored classes know or appreciate.
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W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
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I felt like I had no more stories, no more speeches, and no more “rah-rah” in me. I decided to level with the team and see what happened. I called an all engineering meeting and gave the following speech: “I have some bad news. We are getting our asses kicked by BladeLogic and it’s a product problem. If this continues, I am going to have to sell the company for cheap. There is no way for us to survive if we don’t have the winning product. So, I am going to need every one of you to do something. I need you to go home tonight and have a serious conversation with your wife, husband, significant other, or whoever cares most about you and tell them, ‘Ben needs me for the next six months.’ I need you to come in early and stay late. I will buy you dinner, and I will stay here with you. Make no mistake, we have one bullet left in the gun and we must hit the target.” At the time, I felt horrible asking the team to make yet another big sacrifice. Amazingly, I found out while writing this book that I probably should have felt good about it. Here’s what Ted Crossman, one of my best engineers, said about that time and the launch of the aptly named Darwin Project many years later: Of all the times I think of at Loudcloud and Opsware, the Darwin Project was the most fun and the most hard. I worked seven days a week 8 a.m.–10 p.m. for six months straight. It was full on. Once a week I had a date night with my wife where I gave her my undivided attention from 6 p.m. until midnight. And the next day, even if it was Saturday, I’d be back in the office at 8 a.m. and stay through dinner. I would come home between 10–11 p.m. Every night. And it wasn’t just me. It was everybody in the office. The technical things asked of us were great. We had to brainstorm how to do things and translate those things into an actual product. It was hard, but fun. I don’t remember losing anyone during that time. It was like, “Hey, we gotta get this done, or we will not be here, we’ll have to get another job.” It was a tight-knit group of people. A lot of the really junior people really stepped up. It was a great growing experience for them to be thrown into the middle of the ocean and told, “Okay, swim.” Six months later we suddenly started winning proofs of concepts we hadn’t before. Ben did a great job, he’d give us feedback, and pat people on the back when we were done.
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Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
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The white man—give him his due—has an extraordinary intelligence, an extraordinary cleverness. His world is full of proof of it. You can’t name a thing the white man can’t make. You can hardly name a scientific problem he can’t solve. Here he is now solving the problems of sending men exploring into outer space—and returning them safely to earth.
But in the arena of dealing with human beings, the white man’s working intelligence is hobbled. His intelligence will fail him altogether if the humans happen to be non-white. The white man’s emotions superseded his intelligence. He will commit against non-whites the most incredible spontaneous emotional acts, so psyche-deep is his “white superiority” complex.
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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Alethea Vaughn
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Millie and Sheila Widnall, some of the earliest women on the MIT faculty, were still the most celebrated on campus, famous and beloved for paving the way for others. But for some of the women, their example had become more of a burden. No one doubted they were extraordinarily accomplished and inspiring. But it was as if two female stars were enough. Men held them up as proof that women at MIT could be all they wanted to be if they just worked hard enough—“Millie did all this and had four children, what are you complaining about?” A colleague had told Penny that when they discussed her promotion to full professor, others compared her to Sheila and Millie, even though they worked in entirely different fields; the only thing they had in common was that they were women.
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Kate Zernike (The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science)
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RECLAIM YOUR STOLEN CRYPTO FUNDS FROM ONLINE SCAM WITH DIGITAL HACK RECOVERY
I’ve got to be very honest, guys. I never thought I would become a victim because I never believed something like this could happen to me. But unfortunately, two months ago, I fell into a trap that cost me over $200,000. It all started when I made an investment in binary options. I was promised generous returns on my capital, and at first, everything seemed to be going well. The platform looked legitimate, and the people behind it were convincing.However, as the days passed and I saw my balance grow, things started to take a strange turn. When I finally tried to withdraw my initial investment plus the profits I had accumulated, that’s when the issues began. The platform started offering one excuse after another: "Technical difficulties," "Maintenance," "Verifications needed," and so on. The more I asked, the more evasive their responses became. At that point, I realized something was seriously wrong.I couldn't believe it—my hard-earned savings, everything I had worked for, was locked up and unreachable. I was in complete disbelief, and at first, I blamed myself. How could I have fallen for such a scam? But then, I started to research, hoping there was a way to recover my funds. That’s when I stumbled upon a thread on Reddit where many people shared their own experiences with online scams, including similar binary options frauds. Some of the stories were heartbreaking, but amidst the posts, I found several mentions of a company called Digital Hack Recovery. Curious but skeptical, I decided to reach out. I was nervous, not knowing what to expect, but the team at Digital Hack Recovery was incredibly professional. They took the time to explain the recovery process in detail, from gathering all necessary documentation to filing a formal claim. They reassured me that they had successfully helped others in situations like mine, and I felt a sense of hope for the first time in weeks.To my surprise, Digital Hack Recovery delivered on their promise. After a few weeks of hard work and communication with the authorities, I was able to recover not only my capital but also the promised profits. I can’t begin to describe how relieved and thankful I felt. It was a long and stressful journey, but I’m so grateful I found Digital Hack Recovery. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don't hesitate to seek help. There are legitimate companies out there that specialize in recovering stolen funds. I’m living proof that it's possible to get your money back. Take the first step, reach out, and get your life back on track. Their contact details are⁚ WhatsApp; +19152151930
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Email address⁚ digital
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Sage Elara
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If you’ve fallen victim to online scammers who have deceived you into investing your hard-earned money through fraudulent Bitcoin schemes, know that you're not alone. Countless individuals have been misled by scammers using various tactics to swindle money through deceptive investment platforms or promises of high returns. These scams often come in the form of fake cryptocurrency investments, Ponzi schemes, or phishing scams designed to steal your Bitcoin and other assets. Unfortunately, many victims suffer not only financial loss but also the psychological toll of realizing they’ve been taken advantage of. In some cases, scammers go even further, threatening legal consequences or using intimidation to keep victims silent. However, all hope is not lost. There are ways to recover your funds and potentially even bring those responsible to justice. One promising resource that can assist in reclaiming lost funds is Lee Ultimate Hacker, a trusted platform designed to help victims of online fraud. This service specializes in helping individuals who have been scammed through cryptocurrency investments or similar schemes. The platform’s expertise can help you navigate the process of recovering your money, giving you a chance to fight back against those who’ve wronged you. To begin the recovery process, it’s important to gather any proof of payment or transaction history involving the scammers. This evidence is crucial in tracing the flow of funds and identifying the scam operation behind it. Once you have collected your documentation, you can reach out to Lee Ultimate Hacker via LEEULTIMATEHACKER @ AOL . COM or wh@tsapp +1 (715) 314 - 9248 for assistance. They offer professional services to investigate fraudulent schemes, track Bitcoin transactions, and work to reverse fraudulent transfers. The recovery process can be complex and requires expert knowledge of blockchain technology and financial investigations, but with the help of a dedicated team, you’ll have a better chance of seeing your funds returned. In addition to helping you recover your assets, Lee Ultimate Hacker also works towards identifying the scammers and reporting them to the appropriate authorities. They understand the urgency of halting these fraudsters before they can victimize others. With their assistance, you not only increase the chances of recovering your funds but also play a part in holding cybercriminals accountable. If you've been affected by Bitcoin scams or other fraudulent online activities, reaching out to a service like Lee Ultimate Hacker can provide hope and a clear path forward. Their team can guide you through the recovery process, offering expert support while you take steps to reclaim what you’ve lost. It’s time to take action and work toward reclaiming your hard-earned money.
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How I Recovered My Stolen Crypto With The Help Of Lee Ultimate Hacker
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PayPal is a trusted platform for online transactions. Having a verified PayPal account ensures secure and smooth payments.
In today's digital world, a verified PayPal account is essential. It offers secure transactions, making online shopping and business dealings easier. But many people find it hard to get their account verified. This challenge can be frustrating, especially when you need to make urgent transactions.
You might be wondering if there is a simpler way. Buying a verified PayPal account can be a solution. This can save you time and effort, letting you focus on what matters most. In this blog post, we will discuss how buying a verified PayPal account works and why it might be a good option for you.
Our PayPal Details and Offers-
Email verified
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Selfie verified
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Accessed in iPhone, Android phone and Computer
100% satisfaction guaranteed
Telegram :@usaithive1
WhatsApp : +1 (240) 622-5286
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Why Choose Verified Paypal Account
A verified Paypal account gives you peace of mind. It adds a layer of trust and security. Your transactions are more secure.
Buyers and sellers trust verified accounts more. This means easier and faster transactions. A verified account shows you are a real person or business. This builds confidence among users.
How Verification Works
The verification process ensures your PayPal account is safe. First, you provide your personal information. This includes name, address, and phone number. Then, you link your bank account or credit card. PayPal sends small deposits to your bank. You must enter these amounts in your PayPal account. This step confirms your bank details.
Next, you may need to provide photo ID. This can be a passport or driver's license. PayPal checks this to ensure you are who you say. Once all steps are complete, your account is verified. This means you can send and receive money without limits.
PayPal uses several measures to keep your account safe. These include two-factor authentication. You enter a code sent to your phone. This adds an extra layer of security. Strong passwords are also recommended. Avoid using common words or easy-to-guess numbers.
PayPal also monitors accounts for suspicious activities. If unusual activity is detected, they may lock the account. You will need to contact PayPal to resolve this. Keeping your account information up to date helps in such cases. Always check your account regularly for any changes.
Advantages Of Verified Accounts
Verified Paypal accounts offer enhanced security and trust for transactions. They reduce fraud risks, providing a safer online shopping experience. Buyers and sellers gain confidence, leading to smoother and faster transactions.
Enhanced Security
Verified accounts offer better protection. They reduce fraud risks. Your money stays safe. Fewer scams and issues. Peace of mind for every user.
Increased Trust
Verified accounts build trust. Sellers and buyers feel safer. More people will do business with you. Your reputation improves. Trust leads to more sales. Success is easier with trust.
Steps To Buy Verified Paypal Account
First, research different providers. Check their reviews and ratings. Look for trusted sellers. Make sure they have positive feedback. Avoid sellers with negative comments. Ask about their verification process. Compare prices and services. Choose one with a good reputation.
Understand the verification process. Providers will ask for personal details. Be ready to provide information. This may include name, address, and phone number. Some providers need proof of identity. This can be a passport or driver's license. Ensure your details are accurate. Fake details can cause problems. Follow all instructions carefully.
Telegram :@usaithive1
WhatsApp : +1 (240) 622-5286
Skype : usaithive
Gmail : usaithive1@gmail.com
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How to quickly buy verified personal PayPal accounts
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Buy Verified Payoneer Accounts
Payoneer is a financial services company that provides online money transfer and digital payment services. It gives individuals and businesses the ability to send and receive payments globally, including the ability to withdraw funds to local bank accounts or ATMs.
So, if you think you need a payoneer account! To receive your payments quickly and securely, you must purchase a Payoneer account. We provide fully verified Payoneer accounts in USA, UK, CA, and other countries at affordable prices.
Buy Payoneer Accounts Service Features 2024 :-
✅ Email verified
✅ USA number verified
✅ SSN verified
✅ Driver’s license verified
✅ Passport verified
✅ Bank verified
✅ Billing Papers Verified
✅ Login access guaranteed
✅ 100% satisfaction guaranteednt.
✅ We offer 7 days replacement guarantee.
✅ 24/7 customer support for any kind of help.
✅ Accounts Is Available (USA,UK,CAN,AUS, And Other Countries)
➤ 24/7 Hours Reply/Contact
➤ Skype: Top5StarShop
➤ Telegram: @Top5StarShop
➤ WhatsApp: +1 (470) 206-8684
➤ Email: top5starshop99@gmail.com
New Payoneer Verification System Sparks User Safety Concerns
Article Image
Payoneer verification serves as a vital gateway for freelancers and businesses that handle millions in international transactions each day. The platform's verified accounts give users everything they need to manage global operations. Users get multi-currency support, faster payments, and lower fees.
Many users now face unexpected obstacles in the verification process. The standard 2-5 business day timeline often stretches longer. Most concerning are the effects on eBay sellers and freelancers who depend on Fiverr and Upwork for their income. Strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations mean many users see their verification under review for weeks. This delays their payments and makes it hard to run their businesses well.
How Does Payoneer's New Verification System Work?
Payoneer asks users to submit several documents through their secure Verification Center platform. These documents prove identity, address, and business legitimacy. The company has made changes to its multi-step process, which now creates problems for account holders trying to get their funds.
Step-by-Step Breakdown of Requirements
Users start their verification experience right after registering their account. They get an email asking for identity verification documents. The process happens in the Verification Center, which users can find in their Payoneer dashboard under Settings > Verification Center.
People with individual accounts need to submit three main types of documents:
Government-issued ID verification - You'll need color copies of valid IDs like:
National ID card
Passport
Driver's license
Your ID submissions must meet specific technical requirements. The documents need high-resolution color scans or photos without any glare or fingers blocking the view. You also need to show both sides of your ID with all text clearly visible.
After proving your identity, you'll need to verify your address. These documents work as proof:
Utility bills (gas, water, electricity, internet) from the last three months
Bank statements that show your name and full address
Rental agreements with all signatures and dates
Business accounts need extra documents based on their type:
Certificate of Registration/Incorporation
Tax documents including EIN (for US businesses)
➤ 24/7 Hours Reply/Contact
➤ Skype: Top5StarShop
➤ Telegram: @Top5StarShop
➤ WhatsApp: +1 (470) 206-8684
➤ Email: top5starshop99@gmail.com
”
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A Advance Guide To Buy Verified Payoneer Accounts 2025/26
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Buy Verified Payoneer Accounts
Payoneer is a financial services company that provides online money transfer and digital payment services. It gives individuals and businesses the ability to send and receive payments globally, including the ability to withdraw funds to local bank accounts or ATMs.
So, if you think you need a payoneer account! To receive your payments quickly and securely, you must purchase a Payoneer account. We provide fully verified Payoneer accounts in USA, UK, CA, and other countries at affordable prices.
Buy Payoneer Accounts Service Features 2024 :-
✅ Email verified
✅ USA number verified
✅ SSN verified
✅ Driver’s license verified
✅ Passport verified
✅ Bank verified
✅ Billing Papers Verified
✅ Login access guaranteed
✅ 100% satisfaction guaranteednt.
✅ We offer 7 days replacement guarantee.
✅ 24/7 customer support for any kind of help.
✅ Accounts Is Available (USA,UK,CAN,AUS, And Other Countries)
➤ 24/7 Hours Reply/Contact
➤ Skype: Top5StarShop
➤ Telegram: @Top5StarShop
➤ WhatsApp: +1 (470) 206-8684
➤ Email: top5starshop99@gmail.com
New Payoneer Verification System Sparks User Safety Concerns
Article Image
Payoneer verification serves as a vital gateway for freelancers and businesses that handle millions in international transactions each day. The platform's verified accounts give users everything they need to manage global operations. Users get multi-currency support, faster payments, and lower fees.
Many users now face unexpected obstacles in the verification process. The standard 2-5 business day timeline often stretches longer. Most concerning are the effects on eBay sellers and freelancers who depend on Fiverr and Upwork for their income. Strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations mean many users see their verification under review for weeks. This delays their payments and makes it hard to run their businesses well.
How Does Payoneer's New Verification System Work?
Payoneer asks users to submit several documents through their secure Verification Center platform. These documents prove identity, address, and business legitimacy. The company has made changes to its multi-step process, which now creates problems for account holders trying to get their funds.
Step-by-Step Breakdown of Requirements
Users start their verification experience right after registering their account. They get an email asking for identity verification documents. The process happens in the Verification Center, which users can find in their Payoneer dashboard under Settings > Verification Center.
People with individual accounts need to submit three main types of documents:
Government-issued ID verification - You'll need color copies of valid IDs like:
National ID card
Passport
Driver's license
Your ID submissions must meet specific technical requirements. The documents need high-resolution color scans or photos without any glare or fingers blocking the view. You also need to show both sides of your ID with all text clearly visible.
After proving your identity, you'll need to verify your address. These documents work as proof:
Utility bills (gas, water, electricity, internet) from the last three months
Bank statements that show your name and full address
Rental agreements with all signatures and dates
Business accounts need extra documents based on their type:
Certificate of Registration/Incorporation
Tax documents including EIN (for US businesses)
➤ 24/7 Hours Reply/Contact
➤ Skype: Top5StarShop
➤ Telegram: @Top5StarShop
➤ WhatsApp: +1 (470) 206-8684
➤ Email: top5starshop99@gmail.com
”
”
A Advance Guide To Buy Verified Payoneer Accounts 2025/26
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5 Best Sites to Buy Gmail Accounts in Bulk (PVA & Aged)
Buying old Gmail accounts can be a smart strategy. It offers many benefits for businesses and marketers.
Old Gmail accounts come with a history that can boost your credibility. They are useful for email marketing, managing multiple projects, and bypassing initial restrictions. These accounts often have higher trust scores, making your communication more effective. They can help you reach out to clients, manage campaigns, and expand your online presence.
In this blog post, we'll explore why purchasing old Gmail accounts can be a valuable asset for your business. We'll also discuss the advantages these accounts offer and how they can enhance your marketing efforts. Stay with us to learn more about this practical solution for your digital needs.
➥ 24 Hours Reply/Contact
➤ Skype: Smmallservice
➤ Telegram:@Smmallservice
➤ WhatsApp: +1 (402) 249-1125
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Benefits Of Old Gmail Accounts
Old Gmail accounts can help build trust. They show history and activity. People see these accounts as more reliable. This can help in business.
Emails from old accounts have higher deliverability. They are less likely to go to spam. This means your emails reach the inbox. Important messages get read. This is good for communication.
Choosing The Right Accounts
Age of the account matters. Older accounts have more trust. Check the activity on the account. Active accounts are better. Look for accounts with a verified phone number. This adds security. Make sure the account is free from spam. Spam can ruin the account.
Always buy from trusted sellers. Read reviews before buying. Avoid deals that seem too good. They are often scams. Ask for proof of account age and activity. This ensures you get a quality account. Never share personal information with sellers. Keep safe and secure.
Where To Buy
Finding a trusted vendor to buy old Gmail accounts can be hard. Some sellers offer good quality accounts at fair prices. Look for vendors with positive reviews and long track records. A reliable vendor will provide customer support and guarantees.
Several online marketplaces sell old Gmail accounts. Sites like eBay and Craigslist have listings. Check the ratings and reviews of sellers first. Be aware of scams and fake accounts. Always use secure payment methods.
Legal Considerations
Buying old Gmail accounts may seem easy. But, it's important to follow Google's rules. Always check if the account follows Google's terms. Using accounts against their rules can lead to issues. Make sure the accounts are legitimate and not hacked.
Legal issues can arise if accounts are used for spam. Be careful and responsible. Ensure the accounts are not involved in illegal activities. It's safer to buy from trusted sellers. This reduces the risk of problems.
➥ 24 Hours Reply/Contact
➤ Skype: Smmallservice
➤ Telegram:@Smmallservice
➤ WhatsApp: +1 (402) 249-1125
➤ Email: Smmallservice0@gmail.com
Setting Up Purchased Accounts
Change the account name to match your identity. Update the recovery email and phone number. This ensures you can recover your account if needed. Always check the security settings. Set a strong password that you can remember. Use a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols. This makes it hard to guess. Save your changes and log out. Log back in to confirm the changes worked.
Turn on two-step verification. This adds an extra layer of security. Even if someone gets your password, they cannot log in without the second step. Regularly check for any unusual activity. Look at the recent activity section. If you see anything odd, change your password immediately. Keep your security questions updated. These help verify your identity. Do not share your account details with anyone. Always log out when using a shared computer.
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5 Best Sites to Buy Gmail Accounts in Bulk (PVA & Aged)