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Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.
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Ludwig von Mises (Bureaucracy)
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Sprouts have come under intense scrutiny since they are grown in an environment that invites unwanted bacteria and are often consumed raw. In fact, many large grocery store chains do not carry sprouts of any kind to avoid liability concerns. If you are cooking for anyone with a compromised immune system, we recommend avoiding sprouts or cooking them before serving.
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Irma S. Rombauer (Joy of Cooking)
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During the meeting in Delhi with Dirac on 12 January 1955, Nehru asked him if he had any recommendations for the future of the new republic of India. After his usual reflective pause, Dirac replied: ‘A common language, preferably English. Peace with Pakistan. The metric system.
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Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius)
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Pin-Lee leaned over me and I said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.” It’s an automatic reaction triggered by catastrophic malfunction. Also, I really didn’t want them to try to move me because it hurt bad enough the way it was. “Your contract allows—” “Shut up,” Mensah snapped. “You shut the fuck up. We’re not leaving you.
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Martha Wells (All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1))
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Corrupt personalization is the process by which your attention is drawn to interests that are not your own,” Sandvig wrote. The recommendation system “serves a commercial interest that is often at odds with our interests.
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Kyle Chayka (Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture)
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Exercise is beneficial, and I strongly recommend it. But a lack of exercise is not the primary reason for weight problems, and exercise can never take the place of a healthful diet.
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Neal D. Barnard (Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes: The Scientifically Proven System for Reversing Diabetes without Drugs)
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The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.
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James Frey (Bright Shiny Morning)
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When, upon the closed system of normal preoccupations, a story of a sea serpent appears, it is inhospitably treated. To us of the wider cordialities, it has recommendations for kinder reception. I think that we shall be noted in recognitions of good works for our bizarre charities.
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Charles Fort (New Lands)
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prisoner was attacked by 87 Rank A criminals at xx Hours. The conclusion of the fight saw 86 dead and 1 mentally scarred for life, now submitted to the mental institution ward of the prison. Prisoner John is perfectly fine. Footage shows he acted out of self-defence. He was confined to his cell while awaiting the results of the investigation. No trouble since. Recommended Action: Don’t piss him off.
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Pegaz (The Idle System (The Idle System #1))
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Are you saying I should run after her?”
“Crawl, actually, if I were you,” recommended Aral. “Crawl fast. Slither under her door, go belly-up, let her stomp on you till she gets it out of her system. Then apologize some more. You may yet save the situation.” Aral’s eyes were openly alight with amusement now.
“What do you call that? Total surrender?” said Kou indignantly.
“No. I’d call it winning.” His voice grew a shade cooler. “I’ve seen the war between men and women descend to scorched-earth heroics. Pyres of pride. You don’t want to go down that road. I guarantee it.
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Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga, #7))
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The importance of insulin is becoming more well recognized. Unfortunately, some people are writing books that fail to distinguish between simple and complex carbohydrates. They recommend that people minimize intake of carbohydrates and increase intake of protein, even high-fat, high-cholesterol animal proteins, which is most unwise.
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Dean Ornish (Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery)
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It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer book is always employed, though there is never a member of that Church among officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.
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Arthur Conan Doyle
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I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow, and, when he took to fly-fishing, he determined never to exaggerate his hauls by more than twenty-five per cent.
“When I have caught forty fish,” said he, “then I will tell people that I have caught fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than that, because it is sinful to lie.”
But the twenty-five per cent. plan did not work well at all. He never was able to use it. The greatest number of fish he ever caught in one day was three, and you can’t add twenty-five per cent. to three – at least, not in fish.
So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third; but that, again, was awkward, when he had only caught one or two; so, to simplify matters, he made up his mind to just double the quantity.
He stuck to this arrangement for a couple of months, and then he grew dissatisfied with it. Nobody believed him when he told them that he only doubled, and he, therefore, gained no credit that way whatever, while his moderation put him at a disadvantage among the other anglers. When he had really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it used to make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had only caught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.
So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish – you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.
It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there has been some talk lately of its being made use of by the angling fraternity in general. Indeed, the Committee of the Thames Angler’s Association did recommend its adoption about two years ago, but some of the older members opposed it. They said they would consider the idea if the number were doubled, and each fish counted as twenty.
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Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat (Three Men, #1))
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His prescription to experience a deep sense of meaning, then, was remarkably pragmatic. He had three recommendations: 1. Have a project to work on, some reason to get out of bed in the morning and preferably something that serves other people. 2. Have a redemptive perspective on life’s challenges. That is, when something difficult happens, recognize the ways that difficulty also serves you. 3. Share your life with a person or people who love you unconditionally. Frankl called this treatment logotherapy, or a therapy of meaning. And surprisingly, it worked. He was put in charge of the mental-health division of the Viennese hospital system because they had lost far too many patients to suicide. When Frankl came aboard, he had more than thirty thousand suicidal patients under his care. The challenge was phenomenal. Frankl created community groups for the patients and taught counselors to identify projects the patients could contribute to, serious work the world needed that would give them a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Frankl also had the patients circle the difficult experiences they’d had and while allowing them to grieve, also asked them to list benefits that had come from their pain. The result of the program was transformational. Not one patient committed suicide on Frankl’s watch.
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Donald Miller (Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy)
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One of them started toward me. I said, “I assume you’re about to try to install another combat override module and send me back to kill them.” I opened my gun ports and expanded the weapons in my arms, then folded them back in. “I don’t recommend that course of action.
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Martha Wells (All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1))
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At a friend’s house in Greenwich Village I remember talking of the frustration of trying to find the precise word for one’s thoughts, saying that the ordinary dictionary was inadequate. ‘Surely a system could be devised,’ I said, ‘of lexicographically charting ideas, from abstract words to concrete ones, and by deductive and inductive processes arriving at the right word for one’s thought.’ ‘There is such a book,’ said a Negro truck-driver: ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’ A waiter working at the Alexandria Hotel used to quote his Karl Marx and William Blake with every course he served me. A comedy acrobat with a Brooklyn ‘dis’, ‘dem’ and ‘dose’ accent recommended Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, saying that Shakespeare was influenced by him and so was Sam Johnson. ‘But you can skip the Latin.’ With the rest of them I was intellectually a fellow-traveller.
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Charlie Chaplin (My Autobiography (Neversink))
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There are five degrees of initiative that the manager can exercise in relation to the boss and to the system: wait until told (lowest initiative); ask what to do; recommend, then take resulting action; act, but advise at once; and act on own, then routinely report (highest initiative).
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Harvard Business Review (HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done)
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Instead of proving all possible theorems in an axiomatic system (which Kurt Gödel showed is not possible), professional mathematicians continue to use a formal presentation of mathematics to specify and prove many theorems that are amenable to the formalist paradigm. This has generated a vast corpus of formal theory.
Controversies continue unresolved. Some mathematicians continue to insist on giving explicit constructions of mathematical entities, and do not allow proof by contradiction. This is a valid approach in its own right with much to recommend it. In the end, however, the choice that is likely to lead to the greater conquests is the one that offers the greater power and at the moment, it is David Hilbert's formalism that continues to predominate, while steadily being expanded as mathematics expands."
-David Tall (2013, p. 246) thinks though Formalism (mathematics) may have Lost the Battle it Still may Win the War.
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David Tall (How Humans Learn to Think Mathematically: Exploring The Three Worlds Of Mathematics (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives))
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In a way, this book is an attempt to recapture recommendations from recommender systems. We should talk even more about the things we like, experience them together, and build up our own careful collections of likes and dislikes. Not for the sake of fine-tuning an algorithm, but for our collective satisfaction.
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Kyle Chayka (Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture)
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I recommend the freedom that comes from asking: Compared to what? Hierarchical systems prevail by making us feel inadequate and imperfect. Whatever we do, we will internalize the blame. But once we realize there is no such thing as adequacy or perfection, it sets us free to say: We might as well be who we really are.
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Gloria Steinem (Doing Sixty & Seventy)
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the following supplements are recommended specifically for MS. They’ll help reduce pain and protect your myelin sheath as you heal from EBV: EPA & DHA (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid): omega-3 fats to help protect and fortify the myelin nerve sheath. Be sure to buy a plant-based (not fish-based) version. L-glutamine: amino acid that removes toxins such as MSG from the brain and protects neurons. Lion’s mane: medicinal mushroom that helps protect the myelin sheath and support neuron function. ALA (alpha lipoic acid): helps repair damaged neurons and neurotransmitters. Also helps mend the myelin nerve sheath. Monolaurin: fatty acid that kills virus cells, bacteria cells, and other bad microbes (e.g., mold) in the brain. Curcumin: component of turmeric that reduces inflammation of the central nervous system and relieves pain. Barley grass juice extract powder: contains micronutrients that feed the central nervous system. Also helps feed brain tissue, neurons, and the myelin nerve sheath.
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Anthony William (Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness and How to Finally Heal)
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Deep belly breathing is one of the most commonly recommended on-the-spot practices to calm your nervous system and, thus, anxiety. The reason for this is that when you breathe deeply, pushing your belly out all the way like a balloon, your vagus nerve is activated in such a way that it calms your amygdala, the emotional response center deep within your brain.
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Sheryl Paul (The Wisdom of Anxiety: How Worry and Intrusive Thoughts Are Gifts to Help You Heal)
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You are addicted to the dopamine reaction you feel when you get a hit of him. This is typical of a user who became hooked on a substance during a critical time of development, and now that addiction is woven into your nervous system. You’re well into your detox, and I am recommending no contact, which should be easy.” Dr. Judy laughed at that last comment, which stung.
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Annabel Monaghan (Same Time Next Summer)
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And the concept of an extraordinary means of preserving life, or a risky, optional treatment that doctors don't recommend, is one I studied in graduate school and fascinates me to this day. It's the idea that the patient ultimately controls their own fate, and that is the greatest freedom you can have within a system that sees patients as their diagnosis rather than as people
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Robyn Schneider (Extraordinary Means)
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Living on the Earth where there is so much negativity, it is essential to find tools, to constantly clear your fields. The best and easiest tool I have found to do this is to call forth Melchizedek, the Mahatma and Metatron, and ask for a Platinum Net. This Platinum Net will move through your 12-body system and cleanse it of impurities. I recommend doing this at least twice a day. The color platinum is the highest color frequency available to the Earth. The fact that the net is made of platinum insures that no imbalanced energy will escape its sphere of influence! To make this Platinum Key even more unbelievably profound, Melchizedek, the Mahatma and Metatron have told me that this Platinum Net upon request, can be placed in all the doors, windows and arch ways of your home and office.
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Joshua D. Stone (The Golden Book of Melchizedek: How to Become an Integrated Christ/Buddha in This Lifetime Volume 1)
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Mr. President
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect.
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administred.
On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.
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Benjamin Franklin
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a vast majority of us vandwellers are white. The reasons range from obvious to duh, but then there’s this.” Linked below the post was an article about the experience of “traveling while black.” That made me think: America makes it hard enough for people to live nomadically, regardless of race. Stealth camping in residential areas, in particular, is way outside the mainstream. Often it involves breaking local ordinances against sleeping in cars. Avoiding trouble—hassles with cops and suspicious passersby—can be challenging, even with the Get Out of Jail Free card of white privilege. And in an era when unarmed African Americans are getting shot by police during traffic stops, living in a vehicle seems like an especially dangerous gambit for anyone who might become a victim of racial profiling. All that made me think about the instances when I could have gotten in trouble and didn’t. One time I got pulled over at night while reporting in North Dakota. The cops asked where I was from and recommended some local tourist attractions before letting me off with a warning. In general, people didn’t give me grief when I was driving Halen. I wish I could chalk that up to good karma or some kind of cosmic benevolence, but the fact remains: I am white. Surely privilege played a role.
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Jessica Bruder (Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century)
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It is for such reasons that I always ask my clinical clients first about sleep. Do they wake up in the morning at approximately the time the typical person wakes up, and at the same time every day? If the answer is no, fixing that is the first thing I recommend. It doesn’t matter so much if they go to bed at the same time each evening, but waking up at a consistent hour is a necessity. Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer has unpredictable daily routines. The systems that mediate negative emotion are tightly tied to the properly cyclical circadian rhythms. The next thing I ask about is breakfast. I counsel my clients to eat a fat and protein-heavy breakfast as soon as possible after they awaken (no simple carbohydrates, no sugars, as they are digested too rapidly, and produce a blood-sugar spike and rapid dip). This is because anxious and depressed people are already stressed, particularly if their lives have not been under control for a good while. Their bodies are therefore primed to hypersecrete insulin, if they engage in any complex or demanding activity. If they do so after fasting all night and before eating, the excess insulin in their bloodstream will mop up all their blood sugar. Then they become hypoglycemic and psychophysiologically unstable.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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According to the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Missoula County Attorney’s Office, from January 2008 through April 2012 the Missoula Police Department referred 114 reports of sexual assault of adult women to the MCAO for prosecution. A “referral” indicated that the police department had completed its investigation of the case in question, determined that there was probable cause to charge the individual accused of sexual assault, and recommended that the case be prosecuted. Of the 114 sexual assaults referred for prosecution, however, the MCAO filed charges in only 14 of those cases. The reasons most often given for declining to prosecute were “insufficient evidence” or “insufficient corroboration”—that is, lack of probable cause. Kirsten Pabst was in charge of sexual assault cases for all but the final two months of the fifty-two-month period investigated by the DOJ.
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Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
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Surprisingly, once she started working with professional counselors and advocates, Natasha’s opinion about the desirability of reporting rapes to the police changed. Her colleagues pointed out that for some victims of sexual assault, engaging with the criminal justice system could traumatize them severely all over again, so the staff at SFTS didn’t necessarily recommend it. Her colleagues definitely urged every victim to get counseling, however.
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Jon Krakauer (Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town)
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The meaning of a 3-star review, for example, can be interpreted differently among two users based on their average rating history. Standards also vary among countries and types of users (i.e. e-book readers versus physical book readers). Readers of physical books, for example, rate negatively when then are delivery delays/complications or production quality (i.e. paper quality) which doesn’t affect e-book readers who receive a digital copy on-demand.
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Oliver Theobald (Machine Learning: Make Your Own Recommender System (Machine Learning with Python for Beginners Book Series 3))
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Holacracy obsoletes the habit of making commitments about when you will deliver a particular project or action. In tactical meetings, for example, we capture next-actions, but do not attach deadline commitments to them. Why? As much as the practice of setting deadlines is generally recommended in today’s business world, allow me to offer a contrary view: committing to deadlines has important downsides, and using them obscures a more dynamic, reality-based approach.
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Brian J. Robertson (Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World)
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However, rather than blindly following the computer’s recommendations, I would have the computer work in parallel with my own analysis and then compare the two. When the computer’s decision was different from mine, I would examine why. Most of the time, it was because I had overlooked something. In those cases, the computer taught me. But sometimes I would think about some new criteria my system would’ve missed, so I would then teach the computer. We helped each other.
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Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
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Perhaps the most visionary of emerging recommender systems is Google’s patented environment-based recommender system. The tech behemoth has patented "advertising based on environmental conditions," which draws on environmental factors such as temperature and humidity collected through device sensors. In addition to climatic factors, the technology is said to gather light, sound, and air composition and translates this information into criteria for what ads to serve users.
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Oliver Theobald (Machine Learning: Make Your Own Recommender System (Machine Learning with Python for Beginners Book Series 3))
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TRUST THE SYSTEM ON ACUTE ISSUES, IGNORE IT ON CHRONIC Most health care books give recommendations and end with a disclaimer to “consult your doctor.” I have a different conclusion: when it comes to preventing and managing chronic disease, you should not trust the medical system. This might sound pessimistic or even frightening, but understanding the incentives of our medical system and why it does not deserve our benefit of the doubt is the first step to becoming an empowered patient.
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Casey Means (Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health)
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And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude. Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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He [Karl Deutsch] recommended abandoning the old concept that power was sovereign, which had too long been the essence of politics. To govern would become a rational coordination of the flows of information and decisions that circulate through the social body. Three conditions would need to be met, he said: an ensemble of 'capturers' would have to be installed so that no information originating from the “subjects” would be lost; information handling by correlation and association; and a proximity to every living community. The cybernetic modernization of power and the expired forms of social authority thus can be seen as the visible production of what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand,” which until then had served as the mystical keystone of liberal experimentation. The communications system would be the nerve system of societies, the source and destination of all power. The cybernetic hypothesis thus expresses no more or less than the politics of the “end of politics.” It represents at the same time both a paradigm and a technique of government. Its study shows that the police is not just an organ of power, but also a way of thinking.
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Tiqqun (La Hipótesis Cibernética)
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The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for! — Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
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The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West
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And it is, after all, as good a way as any of solving the problem of existence to approach near enough to the things and the people that have appeared to us from a distance to be beautiful and mysterious to be able to satisfy ourselves that they have neither mystery nor beauty. It is one of the systems of hygiene among which we are at liberty to choose our own, a system that is perhaps not to be recommended too strongly, but it gives us a certain tranquility with which to spend what remains of life, and also—since it enables us to regret nothing, by assuring us that we have attained the best, and that the best did not amount to much—with which to resign ourselves to death.
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Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
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And it is, after all, as good a way as any of solving the problem of existence to approach near enough to the things that have appeared to us from a distance to be beautiful and mysterious, to be able to satisfy ourselves that they have neither mystery nor beauty. It is one of the systems of hygiene among which we are at liberty to choose our own, a system which is perhaps not to be recommended too strongly, but it gives us a certain tranquillity with which to spend what remains of life, and also — since it enables us to regref nothing, by assuring us that we have attained to the best, and that the best was nothing out of the common — with which to resign ourselves to death.
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Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7])
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CDC cited Merck’s and Gates’s cheery assessments of the grotesque Indian experiments to help justify its expanded recommendation for the Gardasil vaccine. Prior to COVID-19, Gardasil was the most dangerous vaccine ever licensed, accounting for some 22 percent of cumulative injuries from all adverse events reported to the US Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). During clinical trials, Merck was unable to show that Gardasil was effective against cervical cancers.173 Instead, the studies showed the vaccine actually increases cervical cancer by 46.3 percent in women exposed to HPV prior to vaccination—perhaps one-third of all women.174 According to Merck’s clinical trial reports, the
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
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The raw-foodist Dr. Norman Walker had two series of six colon cleanses done every year in the second half of his life—he lived to be at least 109 (some say older). I’ve found that one colonic every four to six months has been effective for me—although I am sure that more would do me good. I always recommend starting with a series of four to six sessions even if you think you do not need it. The primary goal of colon hydrotherapy is to empty the bowels completely in order for the lymph system to drain. The secondary goal is to remove encrusted mucus (which feeds unwanted parasites and poisons the system) from the inner intestinal lining. The third goal is to allow the liver to flush and release.
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David Wolfe (Longevity Now: A Comprehensive Approach to Healthy Hormones, Detoxification, Super Immunity, Reversing Calcification, and Total Rejuvenation)
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Students should not be recommended to attend the Church schools, colleges, or university unless they agree to support the Latter-day Saint standards on these campuses. All prospective students should be interviewed carefully for worthiness and willingness to observe the code of honor and the dress and grooming standards explained on the interview form. The code of honor and the dress and grooming standards have the full support of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve. In view of all that is expected of students in the Church Educational System, it is a mistake to recommend an individual for admission who would detract from the special environment that thousands of others create and rely upon.
[Ensign, Mar. 1980, 79]
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First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
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that? Masculinity is and was a broad category that encompassed many forms of behaviour; the manliness of these particular men was inflected by identities of class, ethnicity and profession. Yet it is striking how often the key protagonists appealed to pointedly masculine modes of comportment and how closely these were interwoven with their understanding of policy. ‘I sincerely trust we shall keep our backs very stiff in this matter,’ Arthur Nicolson wrote to his friend Charles Hardinge, recommending that London reject any appeals for rapprochement from Berlin.156 It was essential, the German ambassador in Paris, Wilhelm von Schoen wrote in March 1912, that the Berlin government maintain a posture of ‘completely cool calmness’ in its relations with France and approach ‘with cold blood’ the tasks of national defence imposed by the international situation.157 When Bertie spoke of the danger that the Germans would ‘push us into the water and steal our clothes’, he metaphorized the international system as a rural playground thronging with male adolescents. Sazonov praised the ‘uprightness’ of Poincaré’s character and ‘the unshakable firmness of his will’;158 Paul Cambon saw in him the ‘stiffness’ of the professional jurist, while the allure of the reserved and self-reliant ‘outdoorsman’ was central to Grey’s identity as a public man. To have shrunk from supporting Austria-Hungary during the crisis of 1914, Bethmann commented in his memoirs, would have been an act of ‘self-castration’.
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Christopher Clark (The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914)
“
The conditions that breed a disorganized attachment adaptation are not specific to CNM by any means, but I have seen a variation that is unique to CNM. There can be something very disorienting that happens for some new CNM couples who were first monogamous together and were accustomed to being each other’s main source of comfort, support and relief from distress. As the relationship opens, a partner’s actions with other people (even ethical ones that were agreed upon) can become a source of distress and pose an emotional threat. Everything that this person is doing with other people can become a source of intense fear and insecurity for their pre-existing partner, catapulting them into the paradoxical disorganized dilemma of wanting comfort and safety from the very same person who is triggering their threat response. Again, the partner may be doing exactly what the couple consented to and acting within their negotiated agreements, but for the pre-existing partner, their primary attachment figure being away, unavailable and potentially sharing levels of intimacy with another person registers as a debilitating threat in the nervous system. As someone in this situation simultaneously wants to move towards and away from one’s partner, the very foundation of their relationship and attachment system can begin to shudder, and people can begin acting out in ways that are destructive to each other and the relationship. When this happens, I recommend working with a professional to re-establish inner and outer safety.
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Jessica Fern (Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy)
“
The
historical mission and the justification of capitalism are, in his eyes, to prepare the conditions for a
superior mode of production. This mode of production is not in itself revolutionary; it will only be the
consummation of the revolution. Only the fundamental principles of bourgeois production are
revolutionary. When Marx affirms that humanity only sets itself problems it can solve, he is
simultaneously demonstrating that the germ of the solution of the revolutionary problem is to be found in
the capitalist system itself. Therefore he recommends tolerating the bourgeois State, and even helping to
build it, rather than returning to a less industrialized form of production. The proletariat "can and must
accept the bourgeois revolution as a condition of the working-class revolution.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
What are the health effects of the choice between austerity and stimulus? Today there is a vast natural experiment being conducted on the body economic. It is similar to the policy experiments that occurred in the Great Depression, the post-communist crisis in eastern Europe, and the East Asian Financial Crisis. As in those prior trials, health statistics from the Great Recession reveal the deadly price of austerity—a price that can be calculated not just in the ticks to economic growth rates, but in the number of years of life lost and avoidable deaths.
Had the austerity experiments been governed by the same rigorous standards as clinical trials, they would have been discontinued long ago by a board of medical ethics. The side effects of the austerity treatment have been severe and often deadly. The benefits of the treatment have failed to materialize. Instead of austerity, we should enact evidence-based policies to protect health during hard times. Social protection saves lives. If administered correctly, these programs don’t bust the budget, but—as we have shown throughout this book—they boost economic growth and improve public health.
Austerity’s advocates have ignored evidence of the health and economic consequences of their recommendations. They ignore it even though—as with the International Monetary Fund—the evidence often comes from their own data. Austerity’s proponents, such as British Prime Minister David Cameron, continue to write prescriptions of austerity for the body economic, in spite of evidence that it has failed.
Ultimately austerity has failed because it is unsupported by sound logic or data. It is an economic ideology. It stems from the belief that small government and free markets are always better than state intervention. It is a socially constructed myth—a convenient belief among politicians taken advantage of by those who have a vested interest in shrinking the role of the state, in privatizing social welfare systems for personal gain. It does great harm—punishing the most vulnerable, rather than those who caused this recession.
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David Stuckler (The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills)
“
The category of validity allows for ecclesiastical lines to be crossed, even if there is no communion between ecclesial bodies. It allows Rome to recognize “valid” sacraments even outside its own self-understanding of the Church (i.e., the Church is only the Roman Catholic Church): Eastern Christians who are in fact separated in good faith from the Catholic Church, if they ask of their own accord and have the right dispositions, may be admitted to the sacraments of Penance, the Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick. Further, Catholics may ask for these same sacraments from those non-Catholic ministers whose churches possess valid sacraments, as often as necessity or a genuine spiritual benefit recommends such a course and access to a Catholic priest is physically or morally impossible. (Vatican II, Orientalium Ecclesiarium, 1964) For the Orthodox, communion and all the sacraments exist only within one ecclesiastical communion. That is, Orthodox Christians may only receive the sacraments from Orthodox clergy. Likewise, Orthodox clergy may only give the sacraments to Orthodox Christians. (In cases of emergency, non-Orthodox are welcome to convert in order to receive the sacraments.)
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Andrew Stephen Damick (Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith)
“
Critics are also overwhelmingly male—one survey of film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes found only 22 percent of the critics afforded “top critic” status were female.14 More recently, of course, we have become accustomed to a second set of gatekeepers: our friends and family and even random strangers we’ve decided to follow on social media, as well as “peer” reviewers on sites like Goodreads and IMDb. But peer review sites are easily skewed by a motivated minority with a mission (see the Ghostbusters reboot and the handful of manbabies dedicated to its ruination) or by more stubborn and pervasive implicit biases, which most users aren’t even aware they have. (The data crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.com found that male peer reviewers regularly drag down aggregate review scores for TV shows aimed at women, but the reverse isn’t true.)15 As for the social networks we choose? They’re usually plagued by homophily, which is a fancy way to say that it’s human nature to want to hang out with people who make us feel comfortable, and usually those are people who remind us of us. Without active and careful intervention on our part, we can easily be left with an online life that tells us only things we already agree with and recommends media to us that doesn’t challenge our existing worldview.
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Jaclyn Friedman (Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All)
“
Ali major social entities such as nations, linguistic groups, rehgious communities, party organizations have been elevated to the dignity of the supreme collective that overshadows ali other collectives and claims the submission of the whole personality of ali rightthinking men. But an individual can renounce autonomous action and unconditionally surrender his self only in favor of one collective. Which collective this ought to be can be determined only by a quite arbitrary decision. The collective creed is by necessity exclusive and totalitarian. It craves the whole man and does not want to share him with any other collective. It seeks to establish the exclusive supreme validity of only one system of values.
There is, of course, but one way to make one's own judgments of value supreme. One must beat into submission ali those dissenting. This is what ali representatives of the various collectivist doctrines are striving for. They ultimately recommend the use of violence and pitiless annihilation of ali those whom they condemn as heretics. Collectivism is a doctrine of war, intolerance, and persecution. If any of the collectivist creeds should succeed in its endeavors, ali people but the great dictator would be deprived of their essential human quality. They would become mere soulless pawns in the hands of a monster.
”
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Ludwig von Mises (Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution)
“
If we analyze white supremacy from the philosophical lens of Star Wars, then it is all the Sith Lords, the Empire, and the First Order commanded by the Dark Side of the Force. It wants to dominate and impose its will on all galaxies, even those far, far away. Let’s just call this insidious force THE WHITENESS.
The Whiteness’s ability to inspire fear and anger is so strong that it corrupted many well-intentioned people, including people of color, to vote for an incompetent vulgarian in 2016 and 2020. It deludes many liberal and “moderate” whites into believing that they are the “good” ones who are committed to social justice as they talk about white privilege but never actually give up any of it. Still, they’ll have these discussions about racial equality with their white friends in establishments with white patrons from white neighborhoods—without including the rest of us.
The Whiteness has always played for all the marbles. It’s not interested in diplomacy, a representative government, free and fair elections, equitable pay, and a delicious buffet of meals from a multitude of countries. It needs a border wall, a Muslim Ban, and affirmative action for wealthy white students at Yale University. It’s a system, a structure, a paradigm, an ideology whose ultimate goal is domination and submission by any means necessary.
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Wajahat Ali (Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American)
“
In 1965, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that Black communities were caught in a tangle of pathology because our communities had a disproportionate number of female-led households, his conclusions had both affective and social dimensions. His 1965 report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” offered social and political recommendations focused on ways to help Black men become breadwinners again, so they could assume their “rightful” place at the head of Black families. But the affective goal of his infamous Moynihan Report was to shame Black women for the very mundane magic involved in our making a way out of no way. That shame persists well into the twenty-first century, when more than 70 percent of Black households are female-led. Black women have proportionally higher rates of abortion than any other group. There is no shame in having an abortion. I consider the right to choose the conditions under which one becomes a parent to be one of the most important social values. But I believe that decades of discourse about poor Black women and unwed Black mothers being “welfare queens,” who unfairly take more from the system than they put in, has shamed many Black women into not bearing children that they otherwise might consider having. The idea that only middle-class, straight, married women deserve to start families is both racist and patriarchal.
”
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Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower)
“
So how much sleep is enough? Generally, sleep specialists recommend that adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, though there is no perfect number for the amount of sleep you may need personally. Doctors and scientists agree on one thing overall, however: Getting too little sleep—five hours a night or less for most people—results in a wide range of cognitive and physical impairments. Neurons in the brain can’t consolidate the information you’ve taken in, so you don’t store memories and you lose the ability to use this information. Add to this the compromised motor control, lack of focus, and difficulty with decision making and problem solving that come with sleep deprivation, and you may think twice about catching The Tonight Show and choose to turn in earlier than usual. Stress When your brain is bombarded with stimuli that trigger anxiety, you experience stress—a series of biological and chemical processes throughout your body that initiates a fight-or-flight response. In a nutshell, here’s what happens: Your sympathetic nervous system, commanded by the hypothalamus—a small area at your brain’s base—releases stress hormones that ready you to deal with whatever threat has emerged. First, your adrenal glands (on top of your kidneys) release adrenaline, which causes increases in breathing rate, heart rate, and blood pressure. These glands also release cortisol, which increases
”
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Calistoga Press (Memory Tips & Tricks: The Book of Proven Techniques for Lasting Memory Improvement)
“
The Manifestation Manifesto Meditation” "Right now, I find a quiet and comfortable space where I can easily concentrate on these words as I gently read them aloud. "With the sound of my voice I soothe my nervous system … calm my entire body and relax my thoughts. I speak slowly … with a gentle but resonant tone. And as I do, I start to relax now. "I keep my eyes open and let them blink naturally when they want to … and they might start to feel slightly heavy and droopy … as they would feel when I read a book before going to sleep. “I use my imagination so that with every word I become more relaxed and drowsier. (Imagine feeling drowsy.). I keep my eyes open just enough to take in the following words. "I turn my attention to my breathing, and use this opportunity to relax my mind and body more deeply. "As I count my exhalations backwards from five to one, I let each number represent a gradually deeper level of relaxation and heightened focus. (Draw a breath before reading each number, and count as you exhale.) "Five … I double my relaxation and increase my concentration. "Four … With every number and every breath, I relax. "Three … I count slowly as I meditate deeper … deeper still. "Two … I use my imagination to double this meditative state. "One … My body is relaxed as my mind remains focused. (Pause for five seconds and breathe normally.) "At this level of meditation, people experience different things. Some notice interesting body sensations … such as a warmth or tingling in their fingers. I might also have that experience. (Pause five seconds.) "Some people feel a floating sensation … with a dreamy quality. I may experience that. (Pause five seconds.) "Whatever sensations I experience are exactly right for me at this moment. Whether I feel something unusual now or at some other time, I let that process happen on its own as I focus on the following manifesto. “I allow my subconscious to absorb the manifesto as I read each affirmation with purpose and conviction. (Pause for five seconds.) “The power to manifest is fully mine, here and now. “I acknowledge and embrace my power to manifest. “All human beings have this power, yet I choose to use it consciously and purposefully. “From the unlimited energy of the Universe, I attract all that I need to experience joy and abundance. “I recognize and consider the consequences of all that I manifest. I take full responsibility. “With awareness and intention, I apply my power for my highest good and for the welfare of others. “All of my manifestations reflect my inner state of being. Therefore, I ever seek to grow in wisdom and to become a better person. “With relaxed confidence, I employ the powers of Thought, Emotion and Vital Energy to manifest my desires. “I let go of beliefs and ideas that suppress or encumber me and I cultivate those which empower me. “I accept what I manifest with appreciation and satisfaction. I am thankful. “I go forth with great enthusiasm with the realization that I manifest my life and circumstances. “I am ready to take charge of my manifestations from this moment onward.” “Day by day, I grow in awareness of my power to manifest my desires with speed and accuracy.” RECOMMENDED READING * Mastering Manifestation: A Practical System for Rapidly Creating Your Dream Reality - Adam James * Banned Manifestation Secrets - Richard Dotts * Manifesting: The Secret behind the Law of Attraction - Alexander Janzer * The Secret Science Behind Miracles - Max Freedom Long * The Kybalion - Three Initiates
”
”
Forbes Robbins Blair (The Manifestation Manifesto: Amazing Techniques and Strategies to Attract the Life You Want - No Visualization Required (Amazing Manifestation Strategies Book 1))
“
They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair.
Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed?
Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with?
And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read.
And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period.
What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then?
Give them all board erasers to clean.
What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey?
And who the hell do you condemn, just who?
Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?
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”
Evan Hunter (The Blackboard Jungle)
“
All airplanes must carry two black boxes, one of which records instructions sent to all on-board electronic systems. The other is a cockpit voice recorder, enabling investigators to get into the minds of the pilots in the moments leading up to an accident. Instead of concealing failure, or skirting around it, aviation has a system where failure is data rich. In the event of an accident, investigators, who are independent of the airlines, the pilots’ union, and the regulators, are given full rein to explore the wreckage and to interrogate all other evidence. Mistakes are not stigmatized, but regarded as learning opportunities. The interested parties are given every reason to cooperate, since the evidence compiled by the accident investigation branch is inadmissible in court proceedings. This increases the likelihood of full disclosure. In the aftermath of the investigation the report is made available to everyone. Airlines have a legal responsibility to implement the recommendations. Every pilot in the world has free access to the data. This practice enables everyone—rather than just a single crew, or a single airline, or a single nation—to learn from the mistake. This turbocharges the power of learning. As Eleanor Roosevelt put it: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” And it is not just accidents that drive learning; so, too, do “small” errors. When pilots experience a near miss with another aircraft, or have been flying at the wrong altitude, they file a report. Providing that it is submitted within ten days, pilots enjoy immunity. Many planes are also fitted with data systems that automatically send reports when parameters have been exceeded. Once again, these reports are de-identified by the time they proceed through the report sequence.*
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Matthew Syed (Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do)
“
The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked, however, by the rise and rapid progress of the new Platonists. The school of Alexandria silenced those of Athens; and the ancient sects enrolled themselves under the banners of the more fashionable teachers, who recommended their system by the novelty of their method and the austerity of their manners. Several of these masters—Ammonius, Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry—were men of profound thought and intense application; but, by mistaking the true object of philosophy, their labors contributed much less to improve than to corrupt human understanding. The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both of these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in these deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from its corporeal prison, claimed a familiar intercourse withe dæmons and spirits; and, by a very singular revolution, converted the study of philosophy into that of magic. The ancient sages had derided the popular superstition; after disguising its extravagance by the this pretense of allegory, the disciples of Plotinus and Porphyry becomes its most zealous defenders. As they agreed with the Christians in a few mysterious points of faith, they attacked the remainder of their theological system with all the fury of civil war. The new Platonists would scarcely deserve a place in the history of science, but in that of the church the mention of them will very frequently occur.
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Edward Gibbon (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I)
“
If Jim was back at the imaginary dinner party, trying to explain what he did for a living, he'd have tried to keep it simple: clearing involved everything that took place between the moment someone started at trade — buying or selling a stock, for instance — and the moment that trade was settled — meaning the stock had officially and legally changed hands.
Most people who used online brokerages thought of that transaction as happening instantly; you wanted 10 shares of GME, you hit a button and bought 10 shares of GME, and suddenly 10 shares of GME were in your account. But that's not actually what happened. You hit the Buy button, and Robinhood might find you your shares immediately and put them into your account; but the actual trade took two days to complete, known, for that reason, in financial parlance as 'T+2 clearing.'
By this point in the dinner conversation, Jim would have fully expected the other diners' eyes to glaze over; but he would only be just beginning. Once the trade was initiated — once you hit that Buy button on your phone — it was Jim's job to handle everything that happened in that in-between world. First, he had to facilitate finding the opposite partner for the trade — which was where payment for order flow came in, as Robinhood bundled its trades and 'sold' them to a market maker like Citadel. And next, it was the clearing brokerage's job to make sure that transaction was safe and secure. In practice, the way this worked was by 10:00 a.m. each market day, Robinhood had to insure its trade, by making a cash deposit to a federally regulated clearinghouse — something called the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, or DTCC. That deposit was based on the volume, type, risk profile, and value of the equities being traded. The riskier the equities — the more likely something might go wrong between the buy and the sell — the higher that deposit might be.
Of course, most all of this took place via computers — in 2021, and especially at a place like Robinhood, it was an almost entirely automated system; when customers bought and sold stocks, Jim's computers gave him a recommendation of the sort of deposits he could expect to need to make based on the requirements set down by the SEC and the banking regulators — all simple and tidy, and at the push of a button.
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Ben Mezrich (The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees)
“
Conservatism" in America's politics means "Let's keep the niggers in their place." And "liberalism" means "Let's keep the knee-grows in their place-but tell them we'll treat them a little better; let's fool them more, with more promises." With these choices, I felt that the American black man only needed to choose which one to be eaten by, the "liberal" fox or the "conservative" wolf-because both of them would eat him.
I didn't go for Goldwater any more than for Johnson-except that in a wolf's den, I'd always known exactly where I stood; I'd watch the dangerous wolf closer than I would the smooth, sly fox. The wolf's very growling would keep me alert and fighting him to survive, whereas I might be lulled and fooled by the tricky fox. I'll give you an illustration of the fox. When the assassination in Dallas made Johnson President, who was the first person he called for? It was for his best friend, "Dicky"-Richard Russell of Georgia. Civil rights was "a moral issue," Johnson was declaring to everybody-while his best friend was the Southern racist who led the civil rights opposition. How would some sheriff sound, declaring himself so against bank robbery-and Jesse James his best friend? How would some sheriff sound, declaring himself so against bank robbery-and Jesse James his best friend?
Goldwater as a man, I respected for speaking out his true convictions-something rarely done in politics today. He wasn't whispering to racists and smiling at integrationists. I felt Goldwater wouldn't have risked his unpopular stand without conviction. He flatly told black men he wasn't for them-and there is this to consider: always, the black people have advanced further when they have seen they had to rise up against a system that they clearly saw was outright against them. Under the steady lullabies sung by foxy liberals, the Northern Negro became a beggar. But the
Southern Negro, facing the honestly snarling white man, rose up to battle that white man for his freedom-long before it happened in the North.
Anyway, I didn't feel that Goldwater was any better for black men than Johnson, or vice-versa. I wasn't in the United States at election time, but if I had been, I wouldn't have put myself in the position of voting for either candidate for the Presidency, or of recommending to any black man to do so. It has turned out that it's Johnson in the White House-and black votes were a major factor in his winning as decisively as he wanted to. If it had been Goldwater, all I am saying is that the black people would at least have known they were dealing with an honestly growling wolf, rather than a fox who could have them half-digested before they even knew what was happening.
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
“
... we find a complete contradiction in our wishing to live without suffering, a contradiction that is therefore implied by the frequently used phrase “blessed life.” This will certainly be clear to the person who has fully grasped my discussion that follows. This contradiction is revealed in this ethic of pure reason itself by the fact that the Stoic is compelled to insert a recommendation of suicide in his guide to the blissful life (for this is what his ethics always remains). This is like the costly phial of poison to be found among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of oriental despots, and is for the case where the sufferings of the body, incapable of being philosophized away by any principles and syllogisms, are paramount and incurable. Thus its sole purpose, namely blessedness, is frustrated, and nothing remains as a means of escape from pain except death. But then death must be taken with unconcern, just as is any other medicine. Here a marked contrast is evident between the Stoic ethics and all those other ethical systems mentioned above. These ethical systems make virtue directly and in itself the aim and object, even with the most grievous sufferings, and will not allow a man to end his life in order to escape from suffering. But not one of them knew how to express the true reason for rejecting suicide, but they laboriously collected fictitious arguments of every kind. This true reason will appear in the fourth book in connexion with our discussion. But the above-mentioned contrast reveals and confirms just that essential difference to be found in the fundamental principle between the Stoa, really only a special form of eudaemonism, and the doctrines just mentioned, although both often agree in their results, and are apparently related. But the above-mentioned inner contradiction, with which the Stoic ethics is affected even in its fundamental idea, further shows itself in the fact that its ideal, the Stoic sage as represented by this ethical system, could never obtain life or inner poetical truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure with whom one can do nothing. He himself does not know where to go with his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of mankind, and do not enable us to arrive at any perceptive representation thereof. Compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world and voluntary penitents, who are revealed to us, and are actually produced, by the wisdom of India; how different even the Saviour of Christianity, that excellent form full of the depth of life, of the greatest poetical truth and highest significance, who stands before us with perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
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ESTABLISH STABLE ANCHORS OF ATTENTION Mindfulness meditation typically involves something known as an anchor of attention—a neutral reference point that helps support mental stability. An anchor might be the sensation of our breath coming in and out of the nostrils, or the rising and falling of our abdomen. When we become lost in thought during practice, we can return to our anchor, fixing our attention on the stimuli we’ve chosen. But anchors can also intensify trauma. The breath, for instance, is far from neutral for many survivors. It’s an area of the body that can hold tension related to a trauma and connect to overwhelming, life-threatening events. When Dylan paid attention to the rising and falling of his abdomen, he would be swamped with memories of mocking faces while walking down the hallway. Other times, feeling a constriction of his breath in the chest echoed a feeling of immobility, which was a traumatic reminder. For Dylan, the breath simply wasn’t a neutral anchor. As a remedy, we can encourage survivors to establish stabilizing anchors of attention. This means finding a focus of attention that supports one’s window of tolerance—creating stability in the nervous system as opposed to dysregulation. Each person’s anchor will vary: for some, it could be the sensations of their hands resting on their thighs, or their buttocks on the cushion. Other stabilizing anchors might include another sense altogether, such as hearing or sight. When Dylan and I worked together, it took a while until he could find a part of his body that didn’t make him more agitated. He eventually found that the sense of hearing was a neutral anchor of attention. At my office, he’d listen for the sound of the birds or the traffic outside, which he found to be stabilizing. “It’s subtle,” he said to me, opening his eyes and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “But it is a lot less charged. I’m not getting riled up the same way, which is a huge relief.” In sessions together, Dylan’s anchor was a spot he’d rest his attention on at the beginning of a session or a place to return to if he felt overwhelmed. If he practiced meditation at home—I’d recommended short periods if he could stay in his window of tolerance—he used hearing as an anchor, or “home base” as he called it. “I finally feel like I can access a kind of refuge,” he said quietly, placing his hand on his belly. “My body hasn’t felt safe in so long. It’s a relief to finally feel like I’m learning how to be in here.” Anchors of attention you can offer students and clients practicing mindfulness—besides the sensation of the breath in the abdomen or nostrils—include different physical sensations (feet, buttocks, back, hands) and other senses (seeing, smelling, hearing). One client of mine had a soft blanket that she would touch slowly as an anchor. Another used a candle. For some, walking meditation is a great way to develop more stable anchors of attention, such as the feeling of one’s feet on the ground—whatever supports stability and one’s window of tolerance. Experimentation is key. Using subtler anchors does come with benefits and drawbacks. One advantage to working with the breath is that it is dynamic and tends to hold our attention more easily. When we work with a sense that’s less tactile—hearing, for instance—we may be more prone to drifting off into distraction. The more tangible the anchor, the easier it is to return to it when attention wanders.
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David A. Treleaven (Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing)
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The Seventh Central Pay Commission was appointed in February 2014 by the Government of India (Ministry of Finance) under the Chairmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur. The Commission has been given 18 months to make its recommendations. The terms of reference of the Commission are as follows: 1. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure including pay, allowances and other facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, having regard to rationalisation and simplification therein as well as the specialised needs of various departments, agencies and services, in respect of the following categories of employees:- (i) Central Government employees—industrial and non-industrial; (ii) Personnel belonging to the All India Services; (iii) Personnel of the Union Territories; (iv) Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; (v) Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under the Acts of Parliament; and (vi) Officers and employees of the Supreme Court. 2. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure, concessions and facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, as well as the retirement benefits of the personnel belonging to the Defence Forces, having regard to the historical and traditional parties, with due emphasis on the aspects unique to these personnel. 3. To work out the framework for an emoluments structure linked with the need to attract the most suitable talent to government service, promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in the work culture, and foster excellence in the public governance system to respond to the complex challenges of modern administration and the rapid political, social, economic and technological changes, with due regard to expectations of stakeholders, and to recommend appropriate training and capacity building through a competency based framework. 4. To examine the existing schemes of payment of bonus, keeping in view, inter-alia, its bearing upon performance and productivity and make recommendations on the general principles, financial parameters and conditions for an appropriate incentive scheme to reward excellence in productivity, performance and integrity. 5. To review the variety of existing allowances presently available to employees in addition to pay and suggest their rationalisation and simplification with a view to ensuring that the pay structure is so designed as to take these into account. 6. To examine the principles which should govern the structure of pension and other retirement benefits, including revision of pension in the case of employees who have retired prior to the date of effect of these recommendations, keeping in view that retirement benefits of all Central Government employees appointed on and after 01.01.2004 are covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS). 7. To make recommendations on the above, keeping in view: (i) the economic conditions in the country and the need for fiscal prudence; (ii) the need to ensure that adequate resources are available for developmental expenditures and welfare measures; (iii) the likely impact of the recommendations on the finances of the state governments, which usually adopt the recommendations with some modifications; (iv) the prevailing emolument structure and retirement benefits available to employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings; and (v) the best global practices and their adaptability and relevance in Indian conditions. 8. To recommend the date of effect of its recommendations on all the above.
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M. Laxmikanth (Governance in India)
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Today a third of all of Amazon’s sales are said to result from its recommendation and personalization systems.
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Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think)
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in Part III. Here you’ll find helpful trackers, templates, and other tools to support you through the process. I highly recommend you use these to keep you motivated and help you stay on track during the program. A Holistic Approach A happy, healthy lifestyle requires more than eating a healthy diet or being active. It requires that you address several aspects of life. To illustrate, let’s take a look at Diane. A few years ago, Diane was suffering from tension headaches and migraines, and frequently resorted to a dark bedroom to alleviate the pain. Her immune system was weak, causing her to frequently get colds and sinus infections. And she felt sluggish or too tired to engage in any kind of activity. She was desperate
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Brett Blumenthal (52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You)
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The McGovern–Fraser Commission issued a set of recommendations that the two parties adopted before the 1972 election. What emerged was a system of binding presidential primaries. Beginning in 1972, the vast majority of the delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions would be elected in state-level primaries and caucuses. Delegates would be preselected by the candidates themselves to ensure their loyalty. This meant that for the first time, the people who chose the parties’ presidential candidates would be neither beholden to party leaders nor free to make backroom deals at the convention; rather, they would faithfully reflect the will of their state’s primary voters. There were differences between the parties, such as the Democrats’ adoption of proportional rules in many states and mechanisms to enhance the representation of women and minorities. But in adopting binding primaries, both parties substantially loosened their leaders’ grip over the candidate selection process—opening it up to voters instead.
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Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die)
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The Implementation of GDPR into law is a sensible and proactive approach to help protect data, systems and remove neglect and possible misuse or data breach of data. It is unlikely that all EU and UK business will be ready on time, but we do recommend that serious consideration is given to the topic and your approach going forward.
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Alistair Dickinson (The Essential Business Guide to GDPR: A business owner’s perspective to understanding & implementing GDPR)
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We recommend evaluating business systems and your approach to data security and how data is managed across your organisation. We consider data access and IT policy with regards to data storage devices fixed and external. We also give consideration to data backups and data retention within your organisation, and any external 3rd party services that store data from your organisation. In detailing all these vital topics, we relate to the individual Articles and Recitals of the GDPR Regulation.
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Alistair Dickinson (The Essential Business Guide to GDPR: A business owner’s perspective to understanding & implementing GDPR)
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need to download and install Python, get the recent most stable version from python.org and install it on your computer. If you already have Python installed on your Linux computer, do not uninstall the older 2.x as this may break your operating system. Instead, install the latest version alongside it. You may be required to use the command python3 and not python to initialize the interpreter though. All the information you need is provided on the documentation page of the Python.org website. We recommend you take the time to read the ‘Beginners Guide’ if you are still new to Python. Practical hacking: Free online hacking practice servers There is a saying in the world of information security that the best defense is a good offense. This is what has inspired many cyber security companies to make available deliberately vulnerable websites and servers to encourage developers, auditors, pentesters, system admins, and security professionals to practice their hacking skills online.
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Code Addicts (THE HACKING STARTER KIT: An In-depth and Practical course for beginners to Ethical Hacking. Including detailed step-by-step guides and practical demonstrations.)
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Kali Linux: The hacker’s toolbox Frankly speaking, learning and practicing to become a proficient hacker is not as easy as becoming a software developer. This course takes you through the initial steps of discovering hidden vulnerabilities and beating sophisticated security systems. It demands sophistication and creativity among other skills. It goes without saying that Linux is the most preferred operating system for daily use by programmers, hackers, and other computer professionals. This is because of the incredible control the operating system accords the user. If you are new to Linux and are looking to learn all the basics and how to make it work for you, then Kali Linux may not be the ideal starting point for you. It is recommended that you learn the basics with a Ubuntu or Debian-based operating system instead. Having said that, you will find it practical to follow the instructions on how to use Kali for specific hacking purposes in this book whether this will be your first interaction with the OS or you have experience with Linux.
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Code Addicts (THE HACKING STARTER KIT: An In-depth and Practical course for beginners to Ethical Hacking. Including detailed step-by-step guides and practical demonstrations.)
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What you want to be, you’ll surely be. You only need to swallow pills of faith and inject into your system, a recommended dose of hard work.
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Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
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I highly recommend books that contain ideas that go against your belief systems. This causes you to actually have to think about something.
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Rom Wills (Nice Guys And Players: Becoming The Man Women Want)
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If you are looking for a job that may make you sick, I can recommend working at a high powered solar photovoltaic (PV) utility power plant.
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Steven Magee
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trans fat is a form of unsaturated fat not commonly found in nature. Trans fat is created artificially and added to food primarily to increase shelf life, and it’s bad news. Research has associated trans fat intake with a variety of health problems: heart disease, insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, female infertility, diabetes, and more.88 There’s a reason why the Institute of Medicine recommends that our trans fat intake be “as low as possible.” 89 Many
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Michael Matthews (Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body)
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To return to the linguistic analogy, those who are fluent in Scripture are both able and desirous to preach on every nook and cranny of the Old Testament (or New Testament, for that matter) precisely because they are fluent, and because of that fluency, every bit of the Old Testament (and New) is part of their language and broader linguistic system. It
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Brent A. Strawn (The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment)
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Hunter Cichy does an excellent job detailing exactly how to win at poker. His system is difficult to exploit. I highly recommend this book for the right audience.
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Jon Sofen
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Hawaii DUI attorney
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Jon Royals
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How long is it before those new memories are finally safe? We actually do not yet know, though we have studies under way that span many weeks. What we do know is that sleep has not finished tending to those newly planted memories by night 3. I elicit audible groans when I present these findings to my undergraduates in lectures. The politically incorrect advice I would (of course never) give is this: go to the pub for a drink in the morning. That way, the alcohol will be out of your system before sleep. Glib advice aside, what is the recommendation when it comes to sleep and alcohol? It is hard not to sound puritanical, but the evidence is so strong regarding alcohol’s harmful effects on sleep that to do otherwise would be doing you, and the science, a disservice. Many people enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. But it takes your liver and kidneys many hours to degrade and excrete that alcohol, even if you are an individual with fast-acting enzymes for ethanol decomposition. Nightly alcohol will likely disrupt your sleep, and the annoying advice of abstinence is the best, and most honest, I can offer.
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Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
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By now, though, it had been a steep learning curve, he was fairly well versed on the basics of how clearing worked: When a customer bought shares in a stock on Robinhood — say, GameStop — at a specific price, the order was first sent to Robinhood's in-house clearing brokerage, who in turn bundled the trade to a market maker for execution. The trade was then brought to a clearinghouse, who oversaw the trade all the way to the settlement.
During this time period, the trade itself needed to be 'insured' against anything that might go wrong, such as some sort of systemic collapse or a default by either party — although in reality, in regulated markets, this seemed extremely unlikely. While the customer's money was temporarily put aside, essentially in an untouchable safe, for the two days it took for the clearing agency to verify that both parties were able to provide what they had agreed upon — the brokerage house, Robinhood — had to insure the deal with a deposit; money of its own, separate from the money that the customer had provided, that could be used to guarantee the value of the trade. In financial parlance, this 'collateral' was known as VAR — or value at risk.
For a single trade of a simple asset, it would have been relatively easy to know how much the brokerage would need to deposit to insure the situation; the risk of something going wrong would be small, and the total value would be simple to calculate. If GME was trading at $400 a share and a customer wanted ten shares, there was $4000 at risk, plus or minus some nominal amount due to minute vagaries in market fluctuations during the two-day period before settlement. In such a simple situation, Robinhood might be asked to put up $4000 and change — in addition to the $4000 of the customer's buy order, which remained locked in the safe.
The deposit requirement calculation grew more complicated as layers were added onto the trading situation. A single trade had low inherent risk; multiplied to millions of trades, the risk profile began to change. The more volatile the stock — in price and/or volume — the riskier a buy or sell became.
Of course, the NSCC did not make these calculations by hand; they used sophisticated algorithms to digest the numerous inputs coming in from the trade — type of equity, volume, current volatility, where it fit into a brokerage's portfolio as a whole — and spit out a 'recommendation' of what sort of deposit would protect the trade. And this process was entirely automated; the brokerage house would continually run its trading activity through the federal clearing system and would receive its updated deposit requirements as often as every fifteen minutes while the market was open. Premarket during a trading week, that number would come in at 5:11 a.m. East Coast time, usually right as Jim, in Orlando, was finishing his morning coffee. Robinhood would then have until 10:00 a.m. to satisfy the deposit requirement for the upcoming day of trading — or risk being in default, which could lead to an immediate shutdown of all operations.
Usually, the deposit requirement was tied closely to the actual dollars being 'spent' on the trades; a near equal number of buys and sells in a brokerage house's trading profile lowered its overall risk, and though volatility was common, especially in the past half-decade, even a two-day settlement period came with an acceptable level of confidence that nobody would fail to deliver on their trades.
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Ben Mezrich (The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees)
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Once you have improved your immune system health, if you have an iodine deficiency and you choose to start taking iodine, I would recommend that you start with small doses while continuing to supplement with antioxidants such as selenium and vitamin C. As I mentioned earlier, you also want to eat a healthy diet consisting of plenty of vegetables.
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Eric Osansky (Hashimoto's Triggers: Eliminate Your Thyroid Symptoms By Finding And Removing Your Specific Autoimmune Triggers)
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A Monthly Review Template: Reflect for Clarity and Control While the Weekly Review is grounded and practical, I recommend doing a Monthly Review that is a bit more reflective and holistic. It’s a chance to evaluate the big picture and consider more fundamental changes to your goals, priorities, and systems that you might not have the chance to think about in the busyness of the day-to-day. Here’s mine: Review and update my goals. Review and update my project list. Review my areas of responsibility. Review someday/maybe tasks. Reprioritize tasks.
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Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
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Once the boundaries have been established, the next step is to make the operations and workflow visible with the assistance of a board or other aids. While identifying the individual steps of the process through which the workflow passes, Kanban groups should not let themselves be tempted to make the mistake of simply illustrating the official process as stipulated in project handbooks. Of course, there are organizations (such as military or infrastructure) that are required to adhere to strict processes. However, apart from these exceptions, official processes usually exhibit the weakness that they only exist on paper and barely correspond to actual reality. Such nonexistent processes are the wrong starting point for change. To orient ourselves around them would unnecessarily delay the change and/or improvement. In a technical kanban system, it is always the process currently being used in real life that should be visualized. The visualization is therefore also a task for the Kanban team—only the team knows how it actually functions. The identified steps in the process are listed in columns according to their operational sequence. Figure 3.1 shows a sample workflow of analysis, development, and testing represented using a visual board. As with most things in Kanban, there is no recommended layout for the board. We have seen boards visualizing the workflow in spiral form and boards using a motorway as a metaphor—anything that expresses the process as sensibly and clearly as possible is permissible. Many teams explicitly take note of the completion criteria (“definition of done”) for each step so that all team members share the same understanding of when the work has been finished.
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Klaus Leopold (Kanban Change Leadership: Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement)
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By current estimates, at least 50 per cent of North Americans do not consume the daily recommended amounts of magnesium.
Changes in farming practices over the years are partly to blame. The magnesium content of vegetables, a rich source of the mineral, has declined by 80 to 90 per cent over the last hundred years. As far back as the 1930s, the alarm was being raised about the growing scarcity of magnesium and other minerals in food.
The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains) now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain minerals are starving us - no matter how much of them we eat. No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires for perfect health because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them.
The processing of food further depletes already scare magnesium, and ultra-processed foods that make up such a high proportion of modern diets in North America are seriously lacking in magnesium. To add to the problem, the mineral is depleted by many widely used prescription medications.
But a major factor impacting magnesium status is the significant and rapid loss of the mineral from the body due to stress. All types of stress - workplace stress, exam stress, emotional stress, exposure to excessive noise, the stress of extreme physical activity or chronic pain, the stress of fighting infections - are known to be a serious drain on magnesium resources.
The interaction of magnesium with stress works in two ways: while stress depletes magnesium, the deficiency itself increases anxiety and enhances uncontrolled hormonal response to stress. This creates a vicious feedback loop whereby stress depletes magnesium, but the ensuing magnesium deficiency further exacerbates stress.
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Aileen Burford-Mason (The War Against Viruses: How the Science of Optimal Nutrition Can Help You Win)
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The berries and flowers of elderberry are packed with antioxidants and vitamins that may boost your immune system. They could help tame inflammation, lessen stress, and help protect your heart, too. Some experts recommend elderberry to help prevent and ease cold and flu symptoms.
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Elderberry fruit plants of Kashmir
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No king or respectable gentleman would continue family life till the end, because that was considered suicidal and against the interest of the perfection of human life. In order to be free from all family encumbrances and devote oneself cent percent in the devotional service of Lord Kṛṣṇa, this system is always recommended for everyone because it is the path of authority.
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A.C. Prabhupāda (Srimad Bhagavatam: First Canto)
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The argument is nothing but a naked assertion, one that can recommend itself favorably only to a mind that has already been indoctrinated in obedience to a much larger and more pernicious set of assumptions, and that has been prepared by a long psychological and dogmatic formation to accept ludicrous propositions without complaint if it must, as it gropes about for justifications for a much more ludicrous system of belief it feels it cannot reject.
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David Bentley Hart (That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation)
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One of the most expensive projects underwritten in the era was a computing system known as SAGE, which stood for Semi-Autonomous Ground Environment. Once a radar station picked up an enemy aircraft entering American airspace, SAGE would calculate the incoming flight path based on speed, altitude, and direction and determine which fighter jets should be dispatched to intercept the threat. Other times SAGE might advise that a surface-to-air missile be fired instead. The computers, which were the size of buildings, needed to make recommendations that generals would follow. SAGE went beyond harnessing computing power; it also introduced networking. Through telephone connections, SAGE divided the country into geographic sectors, with a facility in each sector pulling in information from ground radar, naval vessels, and surveillance aircraft. Each facility’s computer was networked with the other facilities’ computers to transmit and receive data as to which combat facilities should be deployed in the event of an attack. Getting the contract to build computing centers for SAGE accounted for fully half of IBM’s computing revenues until the late fifties, subsidizing the transition from the days of punch cards to the new era of computing.
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Bhu Srinivasan (Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism)
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In a recommender system, the hidden information represents users’ unknown interests and the observed data consist of products they have purchased thus far. If a user recently bought a bike, she is interested in biking/outdoors, and is more likely to buy biking accessories in the near future. We can model her interest as a hidden variable and infer it from her buying pattern. To discover such relationships, however, we need to observe a whole lot of buying patterns from lots of users—making this problem a big data one. (Anima Anandkumar)
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David Beyer (The Future of Machine Intelligence)
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I recently recommended to Lea Endres, CEO of NationBuilder, which builds software for community leaders, that she follow Senghor’s lead. NationBuilder was operating close to the red and Endres was frustrated because, despite her reminding everyone that cash collection was a priority, she couldn’t get her team to care enough about it. Our conversation went like this: Lea: I’m really worried about cash collections. We use this outsourced finance firm and they don’t care. We have a low cash balance and we got surprised last month. A couple more surprises and we’re in deep trouble. Ben: Is there a team on it? How much do you need to collect this month? Lea: Yes. And $1.1 million at least. Ben: If you have a crisis situation and you need the team to execute, meet with them every day and even twice a day if necessary. That will show them this is a top priority. At the beginning of each meeting you say, “Where’s my money?” They will start making excuses like “Boo Boo was supposed to call me and didn’t,” or “The system didn’t tell me the right thing.” Those excuses are the key, because that’s the knowledge you’re missing. Once you know that the excuse is that “Fred didn’t answer my email,” you can tell Fred to answer the damned email and also tell the person making the excuse that you expect way more persistence. The meetings will start out running long, but two weeks later they’ll be short, because when you say, “Where’s my money?” they are going to want to say, “Right here, Lea!” Two weeks later: Lea: You wouldn’t believe some of the excuses. One was that we have an auto email that is one sentence long that tells customers they are late—but it doesn’t tell them what to do! I’m like, “Well, then, let’s fix the damned email!” We’re making progress and they know I want my money. End of quarter: Lea: We collected $1.6 million in September! And the team loves hearing me say “Where’s my money?!?!” To change a culture, you can’t just give lip service to what you want. Your people must feel the urgency of it.
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Ben Horowitz (What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture)
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As a person of color in America, you need to fly to reach the hallowed gates of wealth and mainstream success while others can just walk. "Good" is not good enough. You have to be exceptional, especially when you don't have the legacy admissions, the generational wealth, the mentors who look like you and come from your communities, and an entire system that benefits one skin color and gender at the detriment of others.
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Wajahat Ali (Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American)
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He set up a simple program, which he called Algo Transparency, to find out. The program entered a term, like the name of a politician, in YouTube’s search bar. Then it opened the top results. Then each recommendation for what to watch next. He ran huge batches of anonymized searches, one after another, over late 2015 and much of 2016, looking for trends. What he found alarmed him. When he searched YouTube for Pope Francis, for instance, 10 percent of the videos it displayed were conspiracies. On global warming, it was 15 percent. But the real shock came when Chaslot followed algorithmic recommendations for what to watch next, which YouTube has said accounts for most of its watch time. A staggering 85 percent of recommended videos on Pope Francis were conspiracies, asserting Francis’s “true” identity or purporting to expose Satanic plots at the Vatican. On global warming, the figure was 70 percent, usually calling it a hoax. On topics with few established conspiracies, the system seemed to conjure them up. When Chaslot searched Who is Michelle Obama, for instance, just under half of the top results and almost two thirds of watch-next recommendations claimed the First Lady was secretly a man. Surely, he thought, whatever his disagreement with his former colleagues, they would want to know about this. But when he raised concerns privately with people he knew at YouTube, the response was always the same: “If people click on this harmful content, who are we to judge?
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Max Fisher (The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World)
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After studying all the hidden data - the stuff that Facebook doesn't release to the public - the company's scientists reached a definite conclusion. They wrote: 'Our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness,' and 'if left unchecked,' the site would continue to pump its users with 'more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.' A separate internal Facebook team ...independently reached the same conclusions. They found that 64 percent of all the people joining extremist groups were finding their way to them because Facebook's algorithms were directly recommending them. This meant that across the world, people were seeing in their Facebook feeds racist, fascist and even Nazi groups next to the words: 'Groups You Should Join.' They warned that in Germany one-third of all the political groups on the site were extremist. Facebook's own team was blunt, concluding: 'Our recommendation systems grow the problem.'
After carefully analysing all the options, Facebook's scientists concluded there was one solution: they said Facebook would have to abandon its current business model. Because their growth was so tied up with toxic outcomes, the company should abandon attempts at growth. The only way out was for the company to adopt a strategy that was 'anti-growth' - deliberately shrink, and choose to be a less wealthy company that wasn't wrecking the world.
Once Facebook was shown - in plain language, by their own people - what they were doing, how did the company's executives respond? According to the Journal's in-depth reporting, they mocked the research, calling it an 'Eat Your Veggies' approach. They introduced some minor tweaks, but dismissed most of the recommendations.
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Johann Hari (Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again)
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We can see this with technologies like the Kalman filter, which was used for steering the spaceship used in the moon landing. You can see the full technical details here, but roughly speaking the Kalman filter uses past measurements x[t−1],x[t−2],x[t−3] to inform the estimate of a system’s current state x[t], the action that should be taken u[t], and the corresponding prediction of the future state x[t+1] should that action be taken. For example, it uses past velocity, direction headings, fuel levels, and the like to recommend how a space shuttle should be steered at the current timestep. Crucially, if the microhistory is not accurate enough, if the confidence intervals around each measurement are too wide, or if (say) the velocity estimate is wrong altogether, then the Kalman Filter does not work and Apollo doesn’t happen.
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Balaji S. Srinivasan (The Network State: How To Start a New Country)
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Facebook’s ranking work was sloppy—there was no other way to put it. The company altered its recommendation systems on the basis of A/B tests that ran for just a few weeks, months less than the period Netflix considered necessary to observe longer-term shifts in user behavior. Facebook was more cavalier in shaping a global communications and broadcasting platform than Netflix was about deciding to steer users toward The Great British Bake Off. (A company spokeswoman disputed Gomez-Uribe’s recollection of hasty and inadequate testing of ranking changes, calling the company’s experiments rigorous and focused on improving user experience.)
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Jeff Horwitz (Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets)
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I wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.
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Martha Wells (System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7))
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Children’s bodies and brains are still in an early developmental stage of growth until at least the age of three. To inject infants with a variety of vaccines, which contain toxins and materials the body will recognize as foreign contaminants seems an ill-conceived “health” policy. Before the age of one, it is not recommended by our healthcare organizations to allow a child to eat honey, because a child’s system is not developed enough to handle “natures perfect food.” Currently, we are not only injecting infants with a plethora of vaccines in their first year but are starting them out with a vaccine on their first day on the planet. Is it any wonder why we have such rampant illness in the infant and adolescent population today? A little common sense appears to be needed here.
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Stephen Heartland (LOUIS PASTEUR CONDEMNS BIG PHARMA: Vaccines, Drugs, and Healthcare in the United States)
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When beginning a new routine of vitamins and minerals for the body's health, it is important to read the recommended daily allowance (RDA) on each package, then consider multiplying the dosage by two, three, or four, depending on the product and what you’d like to achieve. The RDA is often for healthy maintenance guidelines and is oftentimes insufficient to achieve a noticeable difference. After taking the increased dose for three to four weeks, see if you feel a difference. If you feel a difference, lower the dose by one for another two to three weeks, after which you can either lower it again or follow the recommended amount. You get to choose. Note: If you’re familiar with muscle testing, that may be a good guide to help select dosage. Instead of taking all of your supplements in the morning, consider incorporating them into shakes and titrating them into your system throughout your day. Some supplements will tell you if they are more effective when taken on an empty stomach. Getting maximum benefit from your supplements is key. Immune System and Fighting the Common Cold
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Ron Baron (Confronting Radiation Fibrosis: A Cancer Survivor's Handbook (A Basic Understanding))
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As a rule of thumb, if a verb or phrase is about wishes, emotions, doubt, denial, recommendations, knowledge and understanding, then there's a strong possibility the Subjunctive will follow.
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Linda Plummer (Conquer 918 Spanish Verbs: Your Simple 7 Step System To Learning Spanish Verb Tenses (learn Spanish, Spanish flash cards))
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If you’ve never been on a chartered flight full of people who are afraid to fly who have also been traumatized in the past twelve hours, I recommend it more than a cruise. It’s pretty funny. Everyone is jittery, and when the pilot makes the unfortunate choice of testing the PA system by saying, “Bravo, bravo,” you can almost hear people’s b-holes tighten. A collective cartoon-mouse squeak of b-hole.
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Tina Fey (Bossypants)
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Friedrich Bischinger, has gained notoriety by recommending that kids eat their boogers to help strengthen their immune systems.
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Cary McNeal (Are You Sh*tting Me?: 1,004 Facts That Will Scare the Crap Out of You)