Ratchet Quotes

What are you imagining? Your expression is filthy.” “Strangling you. Bare hands.” I can barely get the words out. I’m huskier than a phone-sex operator after a double shift. “So that’s your kink.” His eyes are going dark. “Only where you’re concerned.” Both his eyebrows ratchet up, and he opens his mouth as his eyes go completely black, but he does not seem to be able to say a word. It is wonderful.

Akmon pulled a ratchet wrench from the tool belt and spun it like a noisemaker. “Oh, very nice! I’m definitely keeping this! Thanks, Blue Bottom!” Blue Bottom? Leo glanced down. His pants had slipped around his ankles again, revealing his blue undershorts. “That’s it!” he shouted. “My stuff. Now. Or I’ll show you how funny a flaming dwarf is.” His hands caught fire.

The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up.

Listen, street punk. You're a guy, and you're a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you're in a gang. But I've survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at your knees without a blink. Do you understand?

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

Shade for a man And shelter for animals, Planted in your name, May you be the same for those around you, Every year the same.

I'd never wanted to consume another body as rabidly as I did when he was inside me, but even like this, I could never seem to get close enough to the parts of him I wanted to feel. And it was with that thought in my mind that the delicious ratcheting tension along my skin and in my belly crystallized into an ache so heavy I slipped my legs off his shoulders, pulling all of his weight on top of me and pleading, "Please, please, please," over and over.

Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.

As darkness descended, fear continued hammering on the cracks of her rational mind. Even the critters had decided to ratchet up the volume. Great. A creepy nature soundtrack for my own personal nightmare. “How about some Tomb Raider music, people!

made to jump off the stone, but he gripped my chin, the movement too fast to detect. His words were a lethal caress as he said, “Did you enjoy the sight of me kneeling before you?” I knew he could hear my heart as it ratcheted into a thunderous beat. I gave him a hateful little smirk, anyway, yanking my chin out of his touch and leaping off the stone. I might have aimed for his feet. And he might have shifted out of the way just enough to avoid it. “Isn’t that all you males are good for, anyway?” But the words were tight, near-breathless.

You need to ratchet down the crazy town.

What spooked him was how the lack of a barrier ratcheted up not only the physical sensation but also the pound of his heart, the inability to get air into his lungs.

That is the physics that all fearless types discover at some point—an appropriate ratcheting up of self-belief and energy when facing negative or even impossible circumstances. Fearless

To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. I would not, of course, seek to deny that we gradually grow older, but while doing so, we pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard. To make that manageable, we just have to remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present. We know that because it’s happened before. The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will often come around again. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. We learn from the last time around, and we do a few things better this time; we develop tricks of the mind to see us through. This is how progress is made. In the meantime, we can deal only with what’s in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.

God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Year’s Day? No, they should set a man to watch the grasses across a million Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa lawns, and on that morning when it was long enough for cutting, instead of ratchets and horns and yelling, there should be a great swelling symphony of lawn mowers reaping fresh grass upon the prairie lands. Instead of confetti and serpentine, people should throw grass spray at each other on the one day each year that really represents Beginning!

A Friend Someone You're happy to see, Who's happy to see you. Someone You like for who they are Not just for what they can do for you.

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion.

Back to the present day…

There was a young girl named Ratchet. She had skill and no one could match it. She wanted to be More stylish and carefree, But she couldn't give up her Ratchet.

Just when you think humanity has found the limits of stupid, they go and ratchet up the standard by another notch.

We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.

most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context. We don't know what kind of racing bike we want—until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We don't know what kind of speaker system we like—until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one. We don't even know what we want to do with our lives—until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing.

At this moment in history the dominant force is clear: we live in an age of pathological short-termism. Politicians can barely see beyond the next election or the latest opinion poll or tweet. Businesses are slaves to the next quarterly report and the constant demand to ratchet up shareholder value.

The on-edge feeling ratcheted up to an inching-toward-the-end-of-the-liff level of on-edge as I watched her approach the car. Swear to God I heard Taylor Swift's voice say, "Are you ready for it?" Let the games begin.

Not only has volume been ratcheted up but expectations have, too. Quiet success--painting a picture, writing a poem, writing an algorithm--is all well and good, but if you haven't become famous doing it, then did it really matter?

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

Why are you so angry at me?” she asked. The question ratcheted him even closer to the boiling point. “Because for some insane reason, I adore you. For three solid years I have thought you were the closest thing to perfection on this earth, and I can’t watch you risk your life crossing that bridge!” Had she understood correctly? After all these years of cold decorum, Zack’s eyes glittered in a face streaked with soot and sweat as he stepped closer, shouting over the roar of wind and fire. “I’ve been insane about you since the moment you waltzed into my office three years ago in that ridiculous suit and your hair as prim as a schoolmarm,” he shouted. “Don’t you dare get yourself killed on me now!

Just like Black Bottom,” Passalos agreed. “Black Bottom?” Leo resisted the urge to jump at the dwarfs’ feet again. He was sure Passalos was going to ruin the Archimedes sphere any second now. “Yes, you know.” Akmon grinned. “Hercules. We called him Black Bottom because he used to go around without clothes. He got so tan that his backside, well—” “At least he had a sense of humor!” Passalos said. “He was going to kill us when we stole from him, but he let us go because he liked our jokes. Not like you two. Grumpy, grumpy!” “Hey, I’ve got a sense of humor,” Leo snarled. “Give me back our stuff, and I’ll tell you a joke with a good punch line.” “Nice try!” Akmon pulled a ratchet wrench from the tool belt and spun it like a noisemaker. “Oh, very nice! I’m definitely keeping this! Thanks, Blue Bottom!” Blue Bottom? Leo glanced down. His pants had slipped around his ankles again, revealing his blue undershorts. “That’s it!” he shouted. “My stuff. Now. Or I’ll show you how funny a flaming dwarf is.

There on the landing sits the typewriter. It is clogged with dust, the ribbon dried and flimsy. Looking at it gives Felix a feeling close to vertigo. He realises he can replicate in his head the exact sound it used to make. The clac-clac-a-clac of the metal letters hitting the paper, the ribbon raising itself each time to make the impression. The machine-gun fire of it, when the work was going well. The stops and pauses when it wasn't, to allow for a sigh, a draw on a cigarette. The ding every time the carriage reached its limit. The whirr as the page was snatched out, then the rolling ratcheting as a new one was wound in.

Yeah, it stings. But at least I feel something. Something besides hungry. Something besides afraid. Weird. I always thought cutters were sick. Sicker than me, even. But with a single swipe I understand why they do it. Why they like it, even though they hate it. I let the water run over the cut, ratchet it hotter, watch the blood slow, stutter, almost halt. I like the way the exposed flesh looks, all pinkish white. It looks new, although I know that isn't right. It's the same age as my skin, as my bones. Me. It's been there with me since the beginning. Been with me through thick. Thin. Daddy. Suddenly, I don't like how it looks at all.

You goin' down on me rocks my world but when you're smashed, you ratchet that shit up so it's so fuckin' good, I don't know whether to come in your mouth or fuck you then hold you until you pass out, before I slip out while you're asleep and buy you a trophy.

If I could nominate one candidate for “biggest obstacle to world peace and social harmony,” it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the individual to the group level: My group is right because we see things as they are. Those who disagree are obviously biased by their religion, their ideology, or their self-interest. Naive realism gives us a world full of good and evil, and this brings us to the most disturbing implication of the sages’ advice about hypocrisy: Good and evil do not exist outside of our beliefs about them.

Progress, The Progress Paradox, Infinite Progress, The Infinite Resource, The Rational Optimist, The Case for Rational Optimism, Utopia for Realists, Mass Flourishing, Abundance, The Improving State of the World, Getting Better, The End of Doom, The Moral Arc, The Big Ratchet, The Great Escape, The Great Surge, The Great Convergence.

His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet-drills—things I abominate, because I don't get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew—two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.' But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich. Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the truth. Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. The man who would not recant was not forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last pang, and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled damned. This was done in the name of love—in the name of mercy, in the name of Christ. I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he could not walk, nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured, by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell, and suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, 'I do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the children of men.' I saw another instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscles produced such agony that insanity would in pity end his pain. I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ankles, the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists of the victim were all dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony. And they had standing by a physician to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? No; simply that they might rack him once again. This was done, remember, in the name of civilization; in the name of law and order; in the name of mercy; in the name of religion; in the name of Christ.

They are not raising children so much as living résumés, and by the time high school arrives, the kids have learned to sign up for activities strictly to impress college admissions committees, ignoring (or, eventually, losing sight of) what they personally find interesting in the here-and-now. They have acquired the habit of asking teachers, “Do we need to know this?”—rather than, say, “What does this mean?”—as they grimly set about the business of trying to ratchet up their GPA or squeeze out another few points on the SAT.

Ten bleeding hells. He’s been holding back. He’s ratcheted up the pain little by little, weakening me, waiting for a way in, for me to give something up. Elias escaping. Elias free. Elias escaping. Elias free. “But now, Blood Shrike.” The Northman’s words, though quietly delivered, cut through the chant in my head. “Now, we’ll see what you’re made of.” •

A nanometer is so small, you would need to slice the width of a human hair one hundred thousand times to reach a nanometer.

Thought is a melody, Audrey thinks, while the body is an inert mechanism of cogs, springs, chains and ratchets...

We dont move through the days, Squire. They move through us. Until the last cruel crank of the ratchet.

The life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruit is quite interesting.

He sinks back. Easier not to strive, to feel only the ratchet of tiny, dry breaths. He reaches out his hand, grips only air.

seeding social chaos so the public would cry out for order. This would allow a steady ratcheting up of security measures and rights restrictions

Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness; perhaps from a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition, and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely and deeply painful.

If only seeing your own life The way you should Were easy, But it's not. I wouldn't have spent So much time Wishing Things were different. I wouldn't have spent So much time Worrying About not being normal. I wouldn't have spent So much time Writing About wanting something new. I wanted.... To somehow change "Something," But the only thing That really needed to change Was The way I thought About Me.....

Why shouldn't Mom trust me, Dad" Why are you so determined to make me out to be the bad guy all the time?" I stared at the side of his face, willing him to make eye contact. He didn't. "I've been doing really good late and you don't even care." "Yet you still managed to get into trouble tonight," he said. "You have no idea what happened tonight," I said, my voice ratcheting up a notch. "All you know is that, because I was involved, I'm somehow guilty of something. You could at least pretend to care, you know. You could at least try to understand." Dad gave a sardonic little laugh. "I'll tell you what I understand," he said. "I understand that when you're left to your own devices you get into trouble, that's what I understand. I understand I was trying to have a happy, restful evening with Briley and once again you screwed it up.

the founder embraced the button only when new data revealed it as a powerful source of behavioral surplus that helped to ratchet up the magnetism of the Facebook News Feed, as measured by the volume of comments.34

The evolution of a sophisticated machine like kinesin does not require that each part be invented from scratch or that all parts come into existence simultaneously. When it comes to evolution, almost anything goes.

Even as I regarded those two men, I became aware of the flying beams of the spotlights, to the north-east, painting ephemeral infinity symbols across the pregnant clouds that increasingly commanded the sky, of the distant roller-coaster chain clacking through the ratchet angles of the guideway as cars full of riders climbed an incline toward the next long drop, of the dusty smell of the campground, and of the scent of rain pending.

Bradley will be more than happy to tell you that I'm a commitment-phobe, but it isn't that." He went quiet, and with nothing else to notice, it was impossible to miss how his pulse had ratcheted higher. "I think the problem is that I'm not the kind of person to fall in and out of love." And now her pulse was pounding. The implication landed heavily. But she asked anyway: "What do you mean?" "I mean, I fell in love once and stayed there.

You do look beautiful on your knees,” he replies smoothly. My heart rate ratchets up under his gaze. Recounting last night has every nerve ending firing. “More beautiful when you struggle to take it all. I love watching you work so hard.

We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness. While

Summer comes, bringing rumors of a tiger. The air is close and sweat-sticky. Cicadas, crickets, sighs, a dark ratcheting. A time for lingering after lamps are lit, for windows swung wide—a languorous heat in ordinary times, a loosening. But this year the tiger presses its claw against the vein of the town, and all Sweetwater shivers. A few chickens went missing three days back, and a side of beef. A guard dog was found with its throat slashed. Yesterday a woman fainted while hanging laundry and woke gibbering about a creature behind her sheets. A print left in the mud. Fear is this summer’s excitement, as hoops were last summer’s, and syrup over crushed ice the summer before’s. Anna, of course, wants a taste.

The next evening she brought him the Royal. It was an office model from an era when such things as electric typewriters, color TVs, and touch-tone telephones were only science fiction. It was as black and as proper as a pair of high-button shoes. Glass panels were set into the sides, revealing the machine’s levers, springs, ratchets, and rods. A steel return lever, dull with disuse, jutted to one side like a hitchhiker’s thumb. The roller was dusty, its hard rubber scarred and pitted.

In each of these places, they took strikingly similar steps to consolidate their power: they ratcheted up tensions with perceived enemies at home and abroad; packed courts and electoral commissions with their cronies; and took control of the media.

The precision metallic ratcheting sound a Glock 9mm makes when a bullet is forced out of the gun's clip into the killing chamber is a universal sound that good guys and bad guys and wild animals alike understand on a primal level. - The Devil's Necktie

Not forgiving someone isn’t teaching the other person a lesson, nor is it protecting you in any way. It’s making the choice to stay in pain. It’s ratcheting the already too-tight belt tighter and tighter with each remembrance. Undealt-with pain and a mind at peace cannot coexist.

Both sanctions and bombing give the illusion of precision, calibration, and the capacity to ratchet up coercion in a gradual escalation. And both have the capacity to cause tremendous suffering among innocent third parties while having far less strategic effect than their advocates claim.

Hardly a cent has been allocated for compliance assistance in any of the red states that passed these new voter ID laws.  Hardly one red cent. You liberals out there. Don’t make this a matter of goody-goody preaching, or denying a long term need to ratchet up ID accountability. Make it about hypocrisy.

Rationals demand so much achievement from themselves that they often have trouble measuring up to their own standards. NTs typically believe that what they do is not good enough, and are frequently haunted by a sense of teetering on the edge of failure. This time their achievement will not be adequate. This time their skill will not be great enough. This time, in all probability, failure is at hand. Making matters worse, Rationals tend to ratchet up their standards of achievement, setting the bar at the level of their greatest success, so that anything less than their best is judged as mediocre. The hard-won triumph becomes the new standard of what is merely acceptable, and ordinary achievements are now viewed as falling short of the mark. NTs never give themselves a break from this escalating level of achievement, and so constant self-doubt and a niggling sense of impending failure are their lot.

Grabbing Jeremy's lapels, Nick pulled him closer, grasping him not with fingers but with claws. His face inches away from Jeremy's, his eyes burning red, his fangs sharp and gleaming, he screamed, "BECAUSE YOU'RE MINE! NO ONE THREATENS WHAT'S MINE AND WALKS AWAY!" His growl rumbled through the room, ratcheting down into the subsonic. "I WILL BURN DOWN WHOLE ARMIES BEFORE I LET THEM TAKE YOU FROM ME!"... "Jesus, big brother," said Toby. "I know vampires are territorial when it comes to their mates, but you're way out in front for the possessive macho bullshit award." Nick sighed. "I know. I've got to work on that.

Madame Ruelle, the baker’s wife—a pretty-voiced woman who smells mostly of yeast but also sometimes of face powder or the sweet perfume of sliced apples—straps a stepladder to the roof of her husband’s car and drives the Route de Carentan at dusk with Madame Guiboux and rearranges road signs with a ratchet set.

Darkness seems to have prevailed and has taken the forefront. This country as in the 'cooperation' of The United States of America has never been about the true higher-good of the people. Know and remember this. Cling to your faith. Roll your spiritual sleeves up and get to work. Use your energy wisely. Transmute all anger, panic and fear into light and empowerment. Don't use what fuels them; all lower-energy. Mourn as you need to. Console who you need to—and then go get into the spiritual and energetic arena. There's plenty work for us to do; within and without. Let's each focus on becoming 'The President of Our Own Life. Cultivate your mind. Pursue your purpose. Shine your light. Elevate past—and reject—any culture of low vibrational energy and ratchetness. Don't take fear, defeat or anger—on or in. The system is doing what they've been created to do. Are you? Am I? Are we—collectively? Let's get to work. No more drifting through life without your higher-self in complete control of your mind. Awaken—fully. Activate—now. Put your frustrations or concerns into your work. Don't lose sight. There is still—a higher plan. Let's ride this 4 year energetic-wave like the spiritual gangsters that we are. This will all be the past soon. Let's get to work and stay dedicated, consistent and diligent. Again, this will all be the past soon. We have preparing and work to do. Toxic energy is so not a game. Toxic energy and low vibrations are being collectively acted out on the world stage. Covertly operating through the unconscious weak spots and blind spots in the human psyche; making people oblivious to their own madness, causing and influencing them to act against–their–own–best–interests and higher-good, as if under a spell and unconsciously possessed. This means that they are actually nourishing the lower vibrational energy with their lifestyle, choices, energy and habits, which is unconsciously giving the lower-energy the very power and fuel it needs—for repeating and recreating endless drama, suffering and destruction, in more and more amplified forms on a national and world stage. So what do we do? We take away its autonomy and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. By recognizing how this energetic/spiritual virus or parasite of the mind—operates through our unawareness is the beginning of the cure. Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is—freedom. Our shared future will be decided primarily by the changes that take place in the psyche of humanity, starting with each of us— vibrationally. In closing and most importantly, the greatest protection against becoming affected or possessed by this lower-energy is to be in touch with our higher vibrational-self. We have to call our energy and power back. Being in touch with our higher-self and true nature acts as a sacred amulet, shielding and protecting us from the attempted effects. We defeat evil not by fighting against it (in which case, by playing its game, we’ve already lost) but by getting in touch with the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects— our higher vibrational-self. Will this defeat and destroy us? Or will it awaken us more and more? Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us and our stepping out of the unconscious influence of low vibrational/negative/toxic/evil/distraction energy (or whatever name you relate to it as) that is and has been seeking power over each of our lives energetically and/or spiritually, and step into our wholeness, our personal power, our higher self and vibrate higher and higher daily. Stay woke my friends—let's get to work.

When the genetic code was solved, in the early 1960s, it turned out to be full of redundancy. Much of the mapping from nucleotides to amino acids seemed arbitrary—not as neatly patterned as any of Gamow’s proposals. Some amino acids correspond to just one codon, others to two, four, or six. Particles called ribosomes ratchet along the RNA strand and translate it, three bases at a time. Some codons are redundant; some actually serve as start signals and stop signals. The redundancy serves exactly the purpose that an information theorist would expect. It provides tolerance for errors. Noise affects biological messages like any other. Errors in DNA—misprints—are mutations.

Did you not swap out your magazine for banishment rounds?” she scolded, hands on hips. The guard looked sheepish. “But you said they was expen—” “There is expensive and then there is needlessly paying for your funeral,” Eve snapped. An immediate ratchet and clatter of magazines being ejected and replaced signalled that the message had gotten across.

strategy involved disguising their operations as the work of terrorists and madmen, seeding social chaos so the public would cry out for order. This would allow a steady ratcheting up of security measures and rights restrictions until such a day that even those who had not been adjusted with brain implants would celebrate the firm but enlightened rule of their betters.

Boats are female for Walter, as are busted car engines and broken lamps and radios – items of any kind that can be fiddled with by men adroit with gadgetry, and restored to a condition as good as new. Why do I find this reassuring? Perhaps I believe, in some childish, faith-filled corner of myself, that Walter might yet take out his pliers and his ratchet set and do the same for me.

Marvin, you're here now," Vale said. He stood up, his knees popping. "The food sucks. They have severed animal heads in the bar. I don't know if you know that." His cigarette sparked against the gravel and he ratcheted open my walker in front of me. "But you're among friends, okay, and you're still walking upright and taking solids. You're winning. Anything beyond that is thinking too far ahead

in order that the lower edge of each stone should hitch like a pawl into a ratchet cut into the top of the walls; hence no stone can press on the one below it, so as to cause a cumulative pressure all down the roof; and each stone is separately upheld by the side walls which it lies across.27 And this was the work of a people whose civilization had only recently emerged from neolithic hunter-gathering?

Stevie had great hopes for the boarding school dining hall. She knew better than to hope for floating candlesticks and ghosts, but long wooden tables didn't seem out of the question. Long tables were also featured in so may murder mysteries, when all the guests of the house were arranged, eyeing each other over their wineglasses, wondering who Lord Dudley was going to put in his will or who might have killed Ratchets with the golf club.

It’s not just sight and sound that are ratcheted up, either. My skin is so sensitive that I can tell you whether my shirt is cotton or polyester just by its temperature against my back. I have to cut all the labels out of my clothes so they don’t rub because they feel like coarse sandpaper. If someone touches me when I am not expecting it, I scream – not out of fear but because it sometimes feels like my nerve endings are on the outside rather than the inside.

Withdrawing. If you do this, a lot of people will call you a ‘defeatist’ or a ‘doomer’, or claim you are ‘burned out’. They will tell you that you have an obligation to work for climate justice or world peace or the end of bad things everywhere, and that ‘fighting’ is always better than ‘quitting’. Ignore them, and take part in a very ancient practical and spiritual tradition: withdrawing from the fray. Withdraw not with cynicism, but with a questing mind. Withdraw so that you can allow yourself to sit back quietly and feel – intuit – work out what is right for you, and what nature might need from you. Withdraw because refusing to help the machine advance – refusing to tighten the ratchet further – is a deeply moral position. Withdraw because action is not always more effective than inaction. Withdraw to examine your worldview: the cosmology, the paradigm, the assumptions, the direction of travel. All real change starts with withdrawal.

These students inhabit a world in which status, income, and self-esteem depend more than ever on the ability to meet the demands of the Culture of Personality. The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up. The number of Americans who considered themselves shy increased from 40 percent in the 1970s to 50 percent in the 1990s, probably because we measured ourselves against ever higher standards of fearless self-presentation.

Green Capitalism", even if products are produced using the utmost environmental care and designed for easy reuse, offers not way out of a system that must expand exponentially and thus, continue to ratchet up its use of natural resources, its chemical pollution, its contaminated sewage sludge, its garbage, and its many other toxic substances. Some of these "fixes" will probably slow down the rate of environmental destruction, but the magnitude of the needed changes dwarfs these approaches.

Radical movements keep ratcheting up their demands, because nothing enervates a cause more than success. Crusaders resent having their purpose stolen out from under them by the fulfillment of their quest; reaching the promised land leaves seekers bereft. There's little to do in a utopian oasis but sip coconut water. So the journey must never be completed. The goal must remain out of reach. To preserve the perfect impossibility of getting there, the desired end point becomes ever more extreme.

Respectability politics have become de facto rules for marginalized people to follow in order to be respected in main stream culture but they reflect antiquated ideals set up by white supremacy. The depiction of the cultures that black Americans create in low-income areas like the hood as ghetto or ratchet has very little to do with any real interest in their success, and everything to do with creating a series of hoops and obstacles to arbitrarily impede the progress of those with the fewest resources.

hope any new mothers reading this who are having a hard time will get help early and will channel their feelings into something more healing than white marble floors. Because I now know that I was displaying just about every symptom of perinatal depression: sadness, anxiety, fatigue. Once the babies were born, I added on my confusion and obsession about the babies’ safety, which was ratcheting up the more media attention was on us. Being a new mom is challenging enough without trying to do everything under a microscope.

He drew his fingers down over her collarbones drifting closer to her breasts. “The muscles here on our women are often as developed as ours.” Judging by the heated look in his eyes, he didn’t mind at all that she had breasts instead of muscular pecs. “And here.” Her pulse picked up as he cupped her breasts. “You’re rounder here. Softer. Fuller.” He squeezed them gently and drew his thumbs across the hard, sensitive peaks. Ava sucked in a breath as sensation shot through her. “Do that again.” He brushed his thumbs across the tight buds again., toyed with them and gave an experimental pinch. Ava jerked and arched against him. “You’re sensitive here,” he murmured. “Yes.” His lips captured hers once more, tasting and tempting as he explored her breasts and ratcheted up her need. She and Jak’ri had been nearly bare with each other countless times in their dreams as they swam and cavorted in Rounaka Sea, but they had been out in the open and the dreams had felt so real that she would never have thought of doing her lustful inclinations there for fear of being discovered. Now, however, they were alone. They were free and the cave enclosing them might has well have been a Honeymoon suite at a secluded resort. So there was no reason for her to hold back. She moaned. Jak’ri certainly wasn’t holding back. The women of Purvel might not have breasts like hers, but he sure as hell knew what to do with them, teasing and tweaking and squeezing until she squirmed against him. Her breath shortening. “Jak’ri,” she whispered, tunneling the fingers of one hand through his thick hair while she slid the other down his back and rocked against the thick, hard ridge concealed by his pants. “I want you.” Nodding he trailed heated kisses down her neck. “I want you too.” One of his big hands left her breast and cupped her ass, grinding her against him. “Are you ready to release your eggs?” Sensation shot through her. “Hmmm?” “Are you ready to release your eggs so I can fertilize them?” he murmured, clutching her closer. Her eyes flew open. “Wait, what?” She leaned back. “I assume your reproduce the same way Purveli’s do,” he said, dragging his eyes up from her breasts to meet hers. “You release your eggs, then I fertilize them.” She stared at him, stunned. Release her eggs? Did he mean like a…like a fish? Her gaze shot to the barely discernable scales that coated his broad chest and handsome face. Did Purveli’s not have sex the way humans and Lasaran’s did? His lips twitched as his eyes danced with mirth. Relief filled her. “Oh my gosh,” laughing Ava shoved one of his shoulders. “You are so bad.” He laughed. “Apologies, I couldn’t resist. My scales seemed to fascinate you.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t the same conversation about mental health back then that there is now. I hope any new mothers reading this who are having a hard time will get help early and will channel their feelings into something more healing than white marble floors. Because I now know that I was displaying just about every symptom of perinatal depression: sadness, anxiety, fatigue. Once the babies were born, I added on my confusion and obsession about the babies’ safety, which was ratcheting up the more media attention was on us. Being a new mom is challenging enough without trying to do everything under a microscope.

We dont move through the days, Squire. They move through us. Until the last cruel crank of the ratchet. I’m not sure I see the distinction. It’s just that the passing of time is irrevocably the passing of you. And then nothing. I suppose it should be a comfort to understand that one cannot be dead forever where there’s no forever to be dead in. Well. I see your look. I know that you see me enfettered in some cognitive morass and I’m sure that you would contend it to be the ultimate solipsism to believe that the world ceases when you do. But I’ve no other way to look at it. It’s just that I’m not sure how it would change anything. I know. But I can hear the dice clattering as well as the next chap.

you can easily see a nanometer-size machine, like a little two-legged creature, wait, then suddenly do a quick step, then wait again, step again, and so on. Is this molecule alive? No, not in the full sense of the word. But watching it stride by, you can see how many such machines, interacting in some regulated way, can make a living being. This surely is where life begins.

Deputy Grayson?" He turned to stare down into those soft green eyes, his pulse ratcheting up. "Yes, Miss Smith?" "Thank you." She touched his arm. "And no matter what happens, I promise I'm not a bad person." She flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.... Warmth rushed through Nash and tingling spread from where Phoebe's lips had touched his cheek. He raised a hand to the spot and stared at the woman, a frown pulling his brows downward. He hadn't begun the day with the intent of finding a runaway bride stranded on the side of the road. Scenarios like that were only found in those unrealistic romance novels women liked reading.No. He hadn't asked for a kiss. But now that she'd done it, she couldn't undo it, and he couldn't unfeel it.

But guess what happened. Once salaries became public information, the media regularly ran special stories ranking CEOs by pay. Rather than suppressing the executive perks, the publicity had CEOs in America comparing their pay with that of everyone else. In response, executives’ salaries skyrocketed. The trend was further “helped” by compensation consulting firms (scathingly dubbed “Ratchet, Ratchet, and Bingo” by the investor Warren Buffett) that advised their CEO clients to demand outrageous raises. The result? Now the average CEO makes about 369 times as much as the average worker—about three times the salary before executive compensation went public. Keeping that in mind, I had a few questions for the executive I met with. “What would happen,” I ventured, “if the information in your salary database became known throughout the company?” The executive looked at me with alarm. “We could get over a lot of things here—insider trading, financial scandals, and the like—but if everyone knew everyone else’s salary, it would be a true catastrophe. All but the highest-paid individual would feel underpaid—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they went out and looked for another job.” Isn’t this odd? It has been shown repeatedly that the link between amount of salary and happiness is not as strong as one would expect it to be

Fast-forward nearly a hundred years, and Prufrock’s protest is enshrined in high school syllabi, where it’s dutifully memorized, then quickly forgotten, by teens increasingly skilled at shaping their own online and offline personae. These students inhabit a world in which status, income, and self-esteem depend more than ever on the ability to meet the demands of the Culture of Personality. The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up. The number of Americans who considered themselves shy increased from 40 percent in the 1970s to 50 percent in the 1990s, probably because we measured ourselves against ever higher standards of fearless self-presentation. “Social anxiety disorder”—which essentially means pathological shyness—is now thought to afflict nearly one in five of us. The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the psychiatrist’s bible of mental disorders, considers the fear of public speaking to be a pathology—not an annoyance, not a disadvantage, but a disease—if it interferes with the sufferer’s job performance. “It’s not enough,” one senior manager at Eastman Kodak told the author Daniel Goleman, “to be able to sit at your computer excited about a fantastic regression analysis if you’re squeamish about presenting those results to an executive group.” (Apparently it’s OK to be squeamish about doing a regression analysis if you’re excited about giving speeches.)

Nature shows that survival is a practice. Sometimes it flourishes---lays on flat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey---and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living. It doesn't do this once, resentfully, assuming that one day it will get things right and everything will smooth out. It winters in cycles, again and again, forever and ever. It attends to this work each and every day. For plants and animals, winter is part of the job. The same is true for humans. To get better at wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. I would not, of course, seek to deny that we gradually grow older, but while doing so, we pass through phases of good health and ill, of optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard. To make that manageable, we just have to remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present. We know that because it's happened before. The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will one day be past history. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. We learn from the last time around, and we do a few things better this time; we develop tricks of the mind to see us through. This is how progress is made. But one things is certain: we will simply have new things to worry about. We will have to clench our teeth and carry on surviving again. In the meantime, we can deal only with what's in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.

This linking of bullying to mental illness and the idea that it causes 'life-long damage' really concerns me. I fear it is the anti-bullying industry that is the real threat to young people's state of mind. Rather than reassure, it adamantly stresses, indeed exaggerates, the harmful effects of bullying. Such scaremongering is impacting on young people's coping mechanisms and possibly exacerbating the problem. As such, it actually contributes to the young feeling overly anxious, and ironically creates an atmosphere likely to encourage symptoms of mental ill health. The headline should be 'anti-bullying causes mental illness'. The anti-bullying industry has made a virtue of catastrophizing, always arguing things are getting worse. With the advent of social media, bullying experts are quick to point out there is now no escape: 'Bullying doesn't stop when school ends; it continues twenty-four hours a day'. Children's charities continually ratchet up the fear factor. Surely it is irresponsible when Sarah Brennan, CEO of YoungMinds, declares that 'if devastating and life-changing' bullying isn't dealt with 'it can lead to years of pain and suffering that go on long into adulthood'. Maybe I am being over-cynical about the anti-bullying bandwagon, and there is a danger that such a critique will cause me to be labelled callous and hardhearted. Certainly, when you read of some young people's heartbreaking experiences, there is no doubt that it can be a genuinely harrowing experience to go through. But when we hear these sad stories, surely our job as adults should be to help children and young people put these types of unpleasant experience[s] behind them, to at least put them in perspective, rather than stoking up their anxieties and telling them they may face 'years of pain and suffering'.

gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced. It is instructive to understand how this worked. Typically a firm under central planning had to meet an output target set under the plan, though such plans were often renegotiated and changed. From the 1930s, workers were paid bonuses if the output levels were attained. These could be quite high—for instance, as much as 37 percent of the wage for management or senior engineers. But paying such bonuses created all sorts of disincentives to technological change. For one thing, innovation, which took resources away from current production, risked the output targets not being met and the bonuses not being paid. For another, output targets were usually based on previous production levels. This created a huge incentive never to expand output, since this only meant having to produce more in the future, since future targets would be “ratcheted up.” Underachievement was always the best way to meet targets and get the bonus. The fact that bonuses were paid monthly also kept everyone focused on the present, while innovation is about making sacrifices today in order to have more tomorrow. Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. By the 1940s, the leaders of the Soviet Union, even if not their admirers in the West, were well aware of these perverse incentives. The Soviet leaders acted as if they were due to technical problems, which could be fixed. For example, they moved away from paying bonuses based on output targets to allowing firms to set aside portions of profits to pay bonuses. But a “profit motive” was no more encouraging to innovation than one based on output targets. The system of prices used to calculate profits was almost completely unconnected to the value of new innovations or technology. Unlike in a market economy, prices in the Soviet Union were set by the government, and thus bore little relation to value. To more specifically create incentives for innovation, the Soviet Union introduced explicit innovation bonuses in 1946. As early as 1918, the principle had been recognized that an innovator should receive monetary rewards for his innovation, but the rewards set were small and unrelated to the value of the new technology. This changed only in 1956, when it was stipulated that the bonus should be proportional to the productivity of the innovation. However, since productivity was calculated in terms of economic benefits measured using the existing system of prices, this was again not much of an incentive to innovate. One could fill many pages with examples of the perverse incentives these schemes generated. For example, because the size of the innovation bonus fund was limited by the wage bill of a firm, this immediately reduced the incentive to produce or adopt any innovation that might have economized on labor.

… The most important contribution you can make now is taking pride in your treasured home state. Because nobody else is. Study and cherish her history, even if you have to do it on your own time. I did. Don’t know what they’re teaching today, but when I was a kid, American history was the exact same every year: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Sons of Liberty, tea party. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we have to start somewhere— we’ll get to Florida soon enough.’…Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, the North Church, ‘Redcoats are coming,’ one if by land, two if by sea, three makes a crowd, and I’m sitting in a tiny desk, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. Hello! Did we order the wrong books? Were these supposed to go to Massachusetts?…Then things showed hope, moving south now: Washington crosses the Delaware, down through original colonies, Carolinas, Georgia. Finally! Here we go! Florida’s next! Wait. What’s this? No more pages in the book. School’s out? Then I had to wait all summer, and the first day back the next grade: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock…Know who the first modern Floridians were? Seminoles! Only unconquered group in the country! These are your peeps, the rugged stock you come from. Not genetically descended, but bound by geographical experience like a subtropical Ellis Island. Because who’s really from Florida? Not the flamingos, or even the Seminoles for that matter. They arrived when the government began rounding up tribes, but the Seminoles said, ‘Naw, we prefer waterfront,’ and the white man chased them but got freaked out in the Everglades and let ’em have slot machines…I see you glancing over at the cupcakes and ice cream, so I’ll limit my remaining remarks to distilled wisdom: “Respect your parents. And respect them even more after you find out they were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Their love and hard work got you to the point where you could realize this. “Don’t make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must. “If someone isn’t kind to animals, ignore anything they have to say. “Your best teachers are sacrificing their comfort to ensure yours; show gratitude. Your worst are jealous of your future; rub it in. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t play with matches, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t pull your uncle’s finger. “Skip down the street when you’re happy. It’s one of those carefree little things we lose as we get older. If you skip as an adult, people talk, but I don’t mind. “Don’t follow the leader. “Don’t try to be different—that will make you different. “Don’t try to be popular. If you’re already popular, you’ve peaked too soon. “Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush. “Read everything. Doubt everything. Appreciate everything. “When you’re feeling down, make a silly noise. “Go fly a kite—seriously. “Always say ‘thank you,’ don’t forget to floss, put the lime in the coconut. “Each new year of school, look for the kid nobody’s talking to— and talk to him. “Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. “Cherish freedom of religion: Protect it from religion. “Remember that a smile is your umbrella. It’s also your sixteen-in-one reversible ratchet set. “ ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ carries no weight in a knife fight. “Hang on to your dreams with everything you’ve got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don’t but you never stop chasing them. So never let the authority jade your youthful enthusiasm. Stay excited about dinosaurs, keep looking up at the stars, become an archaeologist, classical pianist, police officer or veterinarian. And, above all else, question everything I’ve just said. Now get out there, class of 2020, and take back our state!

It is the phenomenon made known by the marine biologist Daniel Pauly as the shifting-baseline syndrome. The world as first seen by the child becomes his lifelong standard of excellence, mindless of the fact he is admiring the ruins of his parents. Generation to generation, the natural world decays, the ratchet of perception tightens. Gradually, imperceptibly, big sharks give way to small sharks, small sharks to baitfish, baitfish to jellyfish to slime. On land, the big cats and wolves become feral house cats and coyotes. The wild standard sinks ever lower and becomes ever heavier to raise. Few notice, few care. Eventually, nobody remembers that wolves not long ago freely roamed the Adirondacks, and hence there is mad howling over the suggestion of returning them to their homeland. Southern Californians panic on learning that a cougar track has been discovered on the fringes of their gated neighborhood - mindless that cougars roamed these hills and canyons long before gated communities drew their lines in the chaparral.

There are many variable factors which help to determine just how much work a muscle is doing as it is contracting, and information coming only from the muscle spindles can be as confusing as it is helpful with regard to measuring this real work. For instance, a muscle cell is “weaker” when it is stretched out to its full length, because the myosin and actin chains do not overlap very much and therefore have fewer cross-bridges to ratchet; hence contractions at this end of the muscles range do not have as much force behind them as they do when the muscle shortens by about half and the myosin and actin filaments are overlapping deeply and creating many cross-bridges. Or, increasing fatigue can make a muscle feel as though it is working harder and harder, in spite of the fact that it is actually contracting with less and less force. Even changes in my mood can significantly alter my sense of ease or effort during any given contraction. So the Golgis add an indispensable quantum of information to the spindles’ measure of changing muscle lengths: The Golgis assess the exact amount of resistance which is overcome in order to contract a given distance in a given time.

was oxytocin and, especially in the male, vasopressin. These are two closely related biochemicals, technically neuropeptides (brain chemicals). This discovery alone ratchets up the relevance of the finding to the human condition: oxytocin is the most common gene-generated molecule in the human brain. In voles, it is the transformative switch. And not just in prairie voles, it turns

Survive! The word ratcheted through him, an echo that would not be stilled. Endure!

MY RECOMMENDATION Below is my advice about regarding selling SpaceX stock or options. No complicated analysis is required, as the rules of thumb are pretty simple. If you believe that SpaceX will execute better than the average public company, then our stock price will continue to appreciate at a rate greater than that of the stock market, which would be the next highest return place to invest money over the long term. Therefore, you should sell only the amount that you need to improve your standard of living in the short to medium term. I do actually recommend selling some amount of stock, even if you are certain it will appreciate, as life is short and a bit more cash can increase fun and reduce stress at home (so long as you don’t ratchet up your ongoing personal expenditures proportionately). To maximize your post tax return, you are probably best off exercising your options to convert them to stock (if you can afford to do this) and then holding the stock for a year before selling it at our roughly biannual liquidity events. This allows you to pay the capital gains tax rate, instead of the income tax rate.

is-a-rapist meme ratcheting up, I emailed Trump to ask if he was an imperfect messenger, given his own very public infidelities and his ex-wife, Ivana, recently denying rumors of assault charges against him. “I believe that I am the perfect messenger,” Trump replied, “because I fully understand life and all of its wrinkles.” I forwarded his response to my editors with the very professional subject line “OMG.

THE SECOND CITY MANAGES to accomplish three things to accelerate its performers’ growth: (1) it gives them rapid feedback; (2) it depersonalizes the feedback; and (3) it lowers the stakes and pressure, so students take risks that force them to improve. For the first year, Leonard explains, The Second City’s goal is to get students used to anticipating negative feedback and to get them out of their own heads. This is about building confidence and creating a “safe” environment in which it’s OK to screw up. Then, second-year classes ratchet up the feedback, putting actors in a succession of situations where they will fail small in front of live crowds. It’s one thing for your coactor or director to tell you a joke is funny, but it’s entirely another to hear the pins drop when a live audience disagrees. Or conversely to hear wild cackling from the crowd at something that may have seemed like a bad idea on paper. Every laugh or lack thereof becomes a data point that the actors can use to better themselves. By embracing all these tiny failures, there is no actual failure.* In contrast, a typical acting class might spend an entire semester building up to a single performance. Students practice together in class, but they don’t know if the audience will like their show until the final day. And if the audience hates it, there’s nothing students can do.

We believe that the human capacity to live in larger scale forms of tribal social organization evolved through a coevolutionary ratchet generated by the interaction of genes and culture. Rudimentary cooperative institutions favored genotypes that were better able to live in more cooperative groups. Those individuals best able to avoid punishment and acquire the locally-relevant norms were more likely to survive. At first, such populations would have been only slightly more cooperative than typical nonhuman primates. However, genetic changes, leading to moral emotions like shame, and a capacity to learn and internalize local practices, would allow the cultural evolution of more sophisticated institutions that in turn enlarged the scale of cooperation. These successive rounds of coevolutionary change continued until eventually people were equipped with capacities for cooperation with distantly related people, emotional attachments to symbolically marked groups, and a willingness to punish others for transgression of group rules.

Let me start with a fundamental observation: most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context. We don't know what kind of racing bike we want—until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We don't know what kind of speaker system we like—until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one. We don't even know what we want to do with our lives—until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative, and that's the point. Like an airplane pilot landing in the dark, we want runway lights on either side of us, guiding us to the place where we can touch down our wheels. In

Generics were not created to be a differential advantage against other retailers but to help the retailer control the manufacturer, and they became an important negotiating tool against national brands. By taking up shelfspace with generics, the retailer increased the competition for the remaining space between the national brands, which helped ratchet up listing fees. The

The recently ill display similar biases, possibly, Schaller theorizes, because their immune systems may still be run-down, so their minds compensate by ratcheting up behavioral defenses. In support of that contention, he points to a provocative study by evolutionary biologist Daniel Fessler and colleagues, who showed that pregnant women become more xenophobic in the first trimester, when their immune systems are suppressed to prevent rejection of the fetus, but not in later stages of gestation, when that danger has passed.

Zev’s heart thumped wildly, and he somehow managed to increase his speed, running faster than he’d ever previously managed. Jonah was a big kid, almost as big as Zev. And he was strong. But shifters were stronger than humans, even when wearing their human skins. And with three of them surrounding Jonah, he didn’t stand a chance. Hell, even very few shifters would manage to come out victorious against those odds. The sounds of fists hitting bodies intermingled with shouting ratcheted Zev’s anxiety even higher. Just as he was about to turn the corner, the noise stopped. That unexpected silence increased the fear that racked Zev’s body to such high proportions that he thought he might vomit. “Get away from….” Zev’s warning stuck in his throat as he finally managed to get around the edge of the building to survey the scene in front of him. Brian was lying on the ground, cradling his arm. A shifter who was two years older than Zev was flat on his back with his eyes closed. The third shifter who’d threatened Jonah was holding his nose, trying to block the blood that poured out from between his fingers. And in the center of the damage stood Jonah, his fists clenched, face sweaty, blond hair disheveled, and expression fierce.