Shock News Quotes

People who love horror films are people with boring lives... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.

In the modern media landscape, soft news is not captivating, but hard news, breaking news, is. It does not only want to be in the news—it wants to be the news. It does not mean being a vehicle to supply the news but becoming integral to the news narrative itself while craving news with a shock value and essentially scoops.( "News of the World",)

I just gave up one day. Around the time the news about toxic shock came out. I thought, Fuck me, man, I give up. Come and get me.

Sometimes the newly Marked go into shock. The good news is, if this happens to you, you are unlikely to notice, because you will be in shock.

Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.

Ensuring the company's sustainable success requires building resilience into the business model to withstand external shocks.

I've got a huge, terrible problem." Oh no! Not that horrible toenail fungus that takes six months to cure?" No, no, no. Much worse. This is shocking news. Are you sure I should tell you while you're driving?" I've got my headset on. Both hands on the wheel. Windows rolled up. Go for it." Okay, here goes...Principal Abernethy called me this morning to let me know I'm in the running for valedictorian." There is silence. A rather loudish snort. And guffaws. Congratulations," she finally says, laughing. "What ever are you going to do?" Fail ever assignment from today onward." You won't be able to." Watch me.

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

I find that the only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality. I often imagine how people would react to my death. Mr Dunthorne's quavering voice as he makes the announcement. The shocked faces of my classmates. A playground bedecked with flowers. The empty stillness of a school corridor. Local news analysis. . . . The steady stoicism of my parents. . . . Candlelit vigils. . . . And finally, my glorious resurrection.

Some say "The end is near," as if that is shocking news. The truth is, the end is always near. What is actually shocking is that we, ourselves, can help to choose which end.

Go out with me tomorow night," Perry went on. "Let me prove to you that I'm the guy you want." "I...I guess I coul go out tomorrow night," Miranda sounded shocked and a little swept off her feet. Then, from the corner of her eyes. Kylie saw something move at the office window. When she looked back, she spotted Burnett and Holiday standing there high-fiving each other. No doubt Burnett was listening to the coversation and sharing the details with Holiday. Perry nodded, stepped closer, and then pressed a quick kiss on Miranda's cheek. It had to be the most romantic thing Kylie had ever seen. ..."What?" Miranda asked. "You're happy my date [with Todd] wasn't exciting?" "No," Kylie said. "Let's just say we're more excited about tomorrow night's date." A bright smile lit up Miranda's face. "Me too. Can you believ Perry did that? I mean, he was so..." "Romantic," Kylie said. "Hot," Della added. "Sweet," Miranda whispered. "I couldn't stop thinkibng about him all night." And that was the best news Kylie had gotten all day.

... we banked around until we found a rainbow in the dark. It was on this occasion that I discovered that Granuaile had never heard of Ronnie James Dio. My shock at this news was such that I almost completely missed the fact that we were traveling on Bifrost, the rainbow bridge to Asgard.

Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.

It is in our nature to enjoy atrocity so long as it continues to shock and remains comfortably removed from our own lives.

And some more shocking news: your ship’s not coming—it’s already here. Docked and waiting. You already have the money. You already have the time. You already have the skill, the confidence. You already have everything you need to achieve everything you want.

Our job now, those of us simply observing today, shocked by this awful news, our job is to love people. When it hurts. When it's awkward. When it's uncool and embarrassing. Our job is to stand together, to carry the burdens of one another, and to meet one another in our questions.

Just ten years ago, probably the most prominent atheist of the twentieth century, Antony Flew, concluded that a God must have designed the universe. It was shocking news and made international headlines. Flew came to believe that the extraordinarily complex genetic code in DNA simply could not be accounted for naturalistically. It didn’t make logical sense to him that it had happened merely by chance, via random mutations. It is a remarkable thing that Flew had the humility and intellectual honesty to do a public about-face on all he had stood for and taught for five decades.

I remember understanding what a brutal thing it is to be the bearer of truly bad news - to break off a piece of that misery and hand it to other people, one by one, and then have to comfort them; to put their grief on your shoulders on top of all your own; to be the calm one in the face of their shock and tears. And then learning that relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can't breathe.

But then Job was a man. Invisibility was intolerable to men. What complaint would a female Job dare to put forth? And if, having done so, and He deigned to remind her of how weak and ignorant she was, where was the news in that? What shocked Job into humility and renewed fidelity was the message a female Job would have known and heard every minute of her life.

So I heard on the news that the Tard died and your house burnt down. I bet secretly you're relieved you don't have to live with him anymore in that dump." The whole commotion in the hallway immediately stopped, as if her words had been spoken over the intercom. It became so quiet that you could hear Mina's and Nan's sharp intakes of breath. Mina wasn't prone to violence and was about to think of something mean to say back to Savannah, but she didn't have the chance to, because Nan Taylor, perky, happy-go-lucky Nan Taylor, pulled back her fist and punched Savannah in the face. Savannah wasn't prepared, and fell to the floor. Nan stood over her shocked face and yelled, "No way was he handicapped, or different. He was the most special, coolest and smartest kid ever. And the world is a much sadder place because he's not here. And don't you ever, EVER, insult him again!" Nan shook with anger. The hall was full of students and teachers, and one by one they started to clap.

News flash, Mr Grey: This isn’t 1950 or whatever. Your sexual tastes aren’t as shocking or as deviant as you think.

You're going to be okay," Winter said reassuringly. You don't understand," Leven snapped. What don't I understand?" Winters voice was stern. "Sorry you feel bad, but its not like you just met a person so beautiful that now you feel completely worthless." What?" Leven said. "What are you talking about?" Isaw the way you fell over yourselves to stare at her." That was Geth." Don't argue, you two," Geth said. Were not arguing." Leven felt light-headed. No," Winter confirmed. "We're just...." Winter looked at Leven. Leven looked right back at her. Winters cheeks burned red and her green eyes outshone Leven's. The two of them stared at one other. Leven closed his eyes. What are you doing?" Geth asked, concerned. Winter closed her eyes too and leaned closer. Both of them looked panicked and out of control, but it didn't stop them from moving closer and kissing each other. Clovers jaw dropped and he pulled something out of his void just so he could let go of it in shock. Even Geth looked caught off guard, as if he'd been given news that he never thought he'd hear in his lifetime. Leven stumbled back and looked at Winter. His face was almost as red as hers. He looked at Geth and Clover and then back to Winter. Well that was interesting," Clover said happily. I don't know what....." Leven tried to say. No, I......" Winter said. "Its not you.... it's just that my... I think I left something down below.

Well, my dear sisters, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt. We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism. Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief. You know that people who live above a certain latitude and experience very long winter nights can become depressed and even suicidal, because something in our bodies requires whole spectrum light for a certain number of hours a day. Our spiritual requirement for light is just as desperate and as deep as our physical need for light. Jesus is the light of the world. We know that this world is a dark place sometimes, but we need not walk in darkness. The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the people who walk in darkness can have a bright companion. We need him, and He is ready to come to us, if we'll open the door and let him.

Sometimes the news so shocks the mind that the brain suffers an electrical short. This phenomenon is known as a “psychogenic” syndrome, a severe version of the swoon some experience after hearing bad news.

THE WASHINGTON POST headline across page one in its editions of Wednesday, January 21, 1998, was shocking: “Clinton Accused of Urging Aide to Lie.” Bill had spent a tense night and early morning on the phone with Vernon Jordan, Bob Bennett, Bruce Lindsey, David Kendall, and Betty Currie, talking about the story and trying to keep his legal ducks aligned. Hillary said later he nudged her awake just after 7 A.M. and sat on the edge of their bed. “You’re not going to believe this,” she quoted him telling her, but there were “news reports” blanketing the Internet and airwaves as well, that he had had an affair with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky and had asked her to lie about it to Paula Jones’s lawyers.

By listening to the “unspoken voice” of my body and allowing it to do what it needed to do; by not stopping the shaking, by “tracking” my inner sensations, while also allowing the completion of the defensive and orienting responses; and by feeling the “survival emotions” of rage and terror without becoming overwhelmed, I came through mercifully unscathed, both physically and emotionally. I was not only thankful; I was humbled and grateful to find that I could use my method for my own salvation. While some people are able to recover from such trauma on their own, many individuals do not. Tens of thousands of soldiers are experiencing the extreme stress and horror of war. Then too, there are the devastating occurrences of rape, sexual abuse and assault. Many of us, however, have been overwhelmed by much more “ordinary” events such as surgeries or invasive medical procedures. Orthopedic patients in a recent study, for example, showed a 52% occurrence of being diagnosed with full-on PTSD following surgery. Other traumas include falls, serious illnesses, abandonment, receiving shocking or tragic news, witnessing violence and getting into an auto accident; all can lead to PTSD. These and many other fairly common experiences are all potentially traumatizing. The inability to rebound from such events, or to be helped adequately to recover by professionals, can subject us to PTSD—along with a myriad of physical and emotional symptoms.

The vast majority of the inmates, however, heard the news, pretended to be shocked and sad, but actually felt relieved because once more the exterminating angel had passed over Villete, and they had been spared.

In April of 2006, the Church-owned Desert Morning News, in a remarkable week-long series on suicide in Utah, reported: "A former surgeon general who recently spoke in Utah about suicide prevention said he was impressed with the state's warm and friendly people...But, he added, 'In New York, we kill each other. In Utah, you kill yourselves.'" The newspaper gave the shocking statistic that Utah leads the entire nation in suicides among men aged 15 to 24. Utah also has the 11th highest suicide rate over all age groups. (36)

Where are you going? Won’t you come downstairs and—be with me? There was the most shocking news on TV; Buster Friendly claims that Mercer is a fake. What do you think about that, Rick? Do you think it could be true?” “Everything is true,” he said. “Everything anybody has ever thought.

Few readers will be shocked by the news that extrinsic motivators are a poor substitute for genuine interest in what one is doing. What is likely to be far more surprising and disturbing is the further point that rewards, like punishments, actually undermine the intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance.

New Rule: If the guy who makes up the poll questions at CNN doesn't want to do it anymore more, he should just quit. This is an actual recent poll question: "Would you like to live on the moon?" And the shocking results: No, as it turns out, we would not like to live on the moon. This is the cable news equivalent of being in a dead-end relationship with an idiot. "What are you thinking?" "I dunno, honey, I guess I was just wondering how many Americans would like to live on the moon.

Basically people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves, because when a really scary movie is over, you’re reassured to see that you’re still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That’s the real reason we have horror films—they act as shock absorbers—and if they disappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination. And I bet you’d see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murderers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news, right?

There is no path set for this kind of shock, and for the grief that attends such terrible news.

Grief, shock, it affects people in strange ways. I’ve seen people react to bad news with laughter, with seeming indifference, with anger, with fear.

The end occurred mostly in her whispers and his silence - because he couldn't whisper and they didn't want to wake Colin's parents. They succeeded in staying quiet, in part because it felt like the air had been shocked out of him. Paradoxically, he felt as if his getting dumped was the only thing happening on the entire dark and silent planet, and also as if it weren't happening at all. He felt himself drifting away from the one-sided whispered conversation, wondering if maybe everything big and heartbreaking and incomprehensible is a paradox.

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information.

The root of disaster means a star coming apart, and no image expresses better the look in a patient’s eyes when hearing a neurosurgeon’s diagnosis. Sometimes the news so shocks the mind that the brain suffers an electrical short. This phenomenon is known as a “psychogenic” syndrome, a severe version of the swoon some experience after hearing bad news. When my mother, alone at college, heard that her father, who had championed her right to an education in rural 1960s India, had finally died after a long hospitalization, she had a psychogenic seizure—which continued until she returned home to attend the funeral.

Tsunami spotted Snail and Herring among the guards. Their eyes darted anxiously from side to side, as if they were wondering how they were still alive. Because Mother wants to make a spectacle of them, Tsunami guessed. Coral was probably waiting for the right moment to punish them in public, the way she’d punished Tortoise. Well, two can play the spectacle game, Your Majesty. “MOTHER!” Tsunami declared dramatically as the waitstaff set bowls of soup in front of each dragon. Beside her, Whirlpool jumped and nearly tipped his bowl onto himself. Even Queen Coral looked startled. “I have something DREADFULLY SHOCKING to tell you!” Tsunami announced. She wanted this to be loud, so every dragon could witness it. “Oh?” said Coral. “Could we discuss it after breakfast? In a civilized fashion?” “NO,” Tsunami said, louder than before. “This is TOO SHOCKING.” Even SeaWings not invited to the feast were starting to peer out of their caves and poke their heads out of the lake to hear what was going on. “Well, perhaps —” Coral started. “WOULD YOU BELIEVE,” Tsunami said, “that my friends — the DRAGONETS OF DESTINY, remember — were CHAINED UP? And STARVED? In YOUR CAVES? By YOUR DRAGONS?” “What?” Coral said, flapping her wings. She looked thoroughly alarmed, but Tsunami couldn’t tell whether that was because the news actually surprised her or because she was being confronted openly with what she’d done. “I KNOW!” Tsunami practically bellowed. “It’s UNBELIEVABLE. I’m sure you didn’t know anything about it, of course.” “Of course,” Coral said in a hurry. “I would never treat any dragonets that way! Especially my dearest daughter’s dearest friends. Who are part of the prophecy and everything.” “And I’m sure you’ll want to punish the dragons who disobeyed you by treating my friends so terribly,” Tsunami said. “Right? Like, for instance, the one who lied to you about keeping them well fed?” She shot a glare at Lagoon, who froze with a sea snail halfway to her mouth, suddenly realizing what was going on. “Absolutely,” said the queen. “Guards! Throw Lagoon in one of the underwater dungeons!” “But —” Lagoon said. “But I was only —” “Next time you’ll obey my orders,” said the queen. A stripe quickly flashed under her wings, but Tsunami spotted it, and it was one Riptide had taught her. Silence. Oh, Mother, Tsunami thought sadly. “Can’t I even —” Lagoon said, reaching wistfully for her cauldron of soup as the guards pulled her away. “No breakfast for you,” the queen ordered. “Think about how that feels as you sit in my dungeon.” Tsunami was fairly sure Lagoon wouldn’t actually suffer very much. Queen Coral would have her back at Council meetings before long. But Tsunami wasn’t done. “And

Our lives were absolutely monotonous and uneventful. Nothing nice ever happened, except ice-cream on Sundays, and even that was regular. In all the eighteen years I was there I only had one adventure — when the woodshed burned. We had to get up in the night and dress so as to be ready in case the house should catch. But it didn't catch and we went back to bed. Everybody likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human craving. But I never had one until Mrs. Lippett called me to the office to tell me that Mr. John Smith was going to send me to college. And then she broke the news so gradually that it just barely shocked me.

Lincoln has become so addicted to the telegraph’s instant news from the front that he still can’t let go of the need for just one more bit of information, even though the prospect of another great battle is slim.

The essence of Christian faith has come to us in story form, the story of a God who will go to any lengths to get his family back. The Bible tells of flawed people -- people just like me -- who make shockingly bad choices and yet still find themselves pursued by God. As they receive grace and forgiveness, naturally they want to give it to others, and a thread of hope and transformation weaves its way throughout the Bible's accounts.

…them telly lads give me the sick all the same. Going on about climate change as if it’s news, big shocked faces on them. They coulda asked any farmer, any time these last twenty year: the summers aren’t the same as what they were. They turned tricky on us, and they’ve only got trickier. And meanwhile all them fools are lying on the beaches, burning the pasty arses off themselves, like it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

There are old pilots and there are bold pilots', goes the saying, 'there are no old bold pilots'. Hal never qualified as old. He'd survived his fuel tank blunder; his next mistake killed him. In the years that followed, other pilot friends and acquaintances were killed in flying accidents. We were never ready; the news always shocked. Whether we learned from these shocks is doubtful; every pilot is certain that Death will never find him.

News trickles out into the world about the inexplicable disaster. There is widespread shock and puzzlement, and for a while, every new cloud in the sky causes mass panic. Fear reigns supreme as the world fears rain supreme.

I had loads of sex. Loads and loads of sex. With a guy and a girl. I double dicked and double dipped and all the doubles and had my dick in all the holes, Orion. All of them.” Orion looked to me in shock as did the rest of our group who were standing around him, but none of them smiled and Darius carved a hand down his face, shaking his head. “Someone just died, Xavier,” Max hissed and Orion stepped aside, revealing a bloody body behind him on the floor, also unveiling my mother and Hamish standing beyond the corpse. Mom was pale as she looked to me. “That’s wonderful news, sweetie, well done you. It sounds like you did a great job too, but we’ll have to discuss it later, okay?

In the wake of the 2016 American election, the New York Times writers David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg reflected on the media’s role in its shocking outcome: Trump was the beneficiary of a belief—near universal in American journalism—that “serious news” can essentially be defined as “what’s going wrong.” . . . For decades, journalism’s steady focus on problems and seemingly incurable pathologies was preparing the soil that allowed Trump’s seeds of discontent and despair to take root. . . . One consequence is that many Americans today have difficulty imagining, valuing or even believing in the promise of incremental system change, which leads to a greater appetite for revolutionary, smash-the-machine change.30

Those of us who live with peace in our hearts can barely face the shock of this existence, as the pain of our collective experience exceeds the scope of our comprehension. We watch news reports and conclude that the world is tragically insane.

The morning one of the twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened with his own effort.

The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, and neckline darkened with his own effort.

Don’t look so shocked. And please, please don’t scream. You and I both knew that this was coming… Yes, yes, it’s a mess… but the nails were having trouble penetrating so they had to go. Speaking of which… Could you get that last nail? Vince Liberato “Because I was Bored

{Letter from Debbs to Eva Ingersoll, husband of Robert Ingersoll, just after the news of Robert's death} We were inexpressibly shocked to hear of the sudden death of your dear husband and our best loved friend. Most tenderly do we sympathize with you, and all of yours in your great bereavement... Gifted with the rarest genius, in beautiful alliance with his heroism, his kindness and boundless love, he made the name of Ingersoll immortal. To me, he was an older brother and as I loved him living, so will I cherish his sweet memory forever.

As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone

I resigned as CEO, effective one month ago.” That shocked me out of my reverie. “What?” He was the most ambitious person I knew, and he’d been CEO for less than a year. Why hadn’t I heard about this? Then again, I didn’t follow financial news, and I’d avoided any news about Alex himself. Alex shrugged. “I couldn’t stay on as CEO while spending all my time in London with you, so I resigned,” he said matter-of-factly, like he hadn’t given up his life’s work on a whim. Except Alex did nothing on a whim. He thought through every move, and his latest one made no sense. Not unless…

One should not grow attached to other people, Doctor,” said Margarete, when he came to the door, and he didn’t know if she was speaking for him or for herself. Her eyes were red, and he wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t think of what to say. He had thought he was inured to death by then, even prided himself on the calmness with which he absorbed the news of the most recent passing. He who had once stared in shock at the frozen soldier without a jaw. But the great Rzedzian’s body seemed horribly small, the stiffening fingers too familiar, and the way his lip drew back over his teeth reminded him of the corpse of an animal.

He put a hand flat on the counter, as though to steady himself. “I have—bad news.” “I can see that,” I said, a little tartly. “Sit down, for God’s sake, before you fall down.” He shook his head like a horse shaking off flies and looked at me. His face was ghastly, shocked and white, and the rims of his eyes showed red.

Newspapers printed stories of variable accuracy, beginning with a twenty-six-line account in the loyalist Boston News-Letter on April 20, deploring “this shocking introduction to all the miseries of a civil war.” The New-Hampshire Gazette’s headline read, “Bloody News.” In barely three weeks, the first reports of the day’s action would reach Charleston and Savannah. Lurid rumors spread quickly: of grandfathers shot in their beds, of families burned alive, of pregnant women bayoneted. Americans in thirteen colonies were alarmed, aroused, angry. “The times are very affecting,” Reverend Ezra Stiles told his diary in Rhode Island on April 23.

It pleased him to shock her with the news he had another friend. Sometimes it irritated him that they expected him to be so pleased to see them, as if they were the only people he knew. Though they were, they should not have been so confident of it, as if it were impossible a wreck such as he might have made other friends.

Local news has some favorite phrases,. . .the satellite age has increased the library of available shocking footage. . .if there wasn't something grisly in your town, you might hear, "Police made a shocking discovery today in Reno," or Chicago, or Miami, or even Caracus. It may not be local, but it is gruesome, so what the hell.

I could never feel like that about any public issue. Sometimes I wish I could. For me, if I'm honest, politics is background, news, almost entertainment. Something you switch on and off, like the TV. What I really worry about, what I can't switch off at will is, oh, sex, or dying or losing my hair. Private things. We're private people, aren't we, our generation? We make a clear distinction between private and public life; and the important things, the things that make us happy or unhappy are private. Live is private. Property is private. Parts are private. That's why the young radicals call for fucking in the streets. It's not just a cheap shock-tactic. It's a serious revolutionary proposition.

Well, it was nice to know absolute hell awaited them and that the information about Maeve’s armada was correct. But then Rowan added, “And I missed you like hell.” She smiled despite what he’d told her, pulling back to look at him. Untouched, unharmed. It was more than she could have hoped for. Even with the news he’d delivered. Aelin decided she didn’t particularly give a shit who was watching and rose up on her toes to brush her mouth against his. It had taken all her wits and abilities to avoid leaving traces of her scent today for him to detect—and the shocked delight on his face had been utterly worth it. Rowan’s hand on her arm tightened as she pulled away. “The feeling, Prince,” she murmured, “is mutual.

Garrett said, “Dude, here’s the killer—Dana told ’em he was you!” “Oh, nice.” “What a butthead, huh?” “And they probably believed him,” Roy said. “Not even for a minute.” “Was he alone?” Roy asked. “Anybody else get arrested?” Anybody like Beatrice Leep’s stepbrother? he wanted to say. “Nope. Just him,” Garrett said, “and guess what—he’s got a record!” “A record?” “A rap sheet, dude. Dana’s been busted before, is what the cops told my mom.” Again, Roy wasn’t exactly shocked by the news. “Busted for what?” “Shoplifting, breakin’ into Coke machines—stuff like that,” Garrett said. “One time he even knocked down a lady and swiped her purse. Mom made me promise not to tell. It’s supposed to be a secret, since Dana’s still a minor.

~~You are not alone~~ No, really. Literally. Maybe you have always known (or suspected) this. Maybe this news is shocking, baffling, dismaying, even unbelievable to you. Despite what you might believe or may have been told about yourself, you are not just 'moody'. Nor are you crazy or defective or possessed. You have what is commonly called 'multiple personalities'.

proceeded to pitch their camp. Aslan’s mood affected everyone that evening. Peter was feeling uncomfortable too at the idea of fighting the battle on his own; the news that Aslan might not be there had come as a great shock to him. Supper that evening was a quiet meal. Everyone felt how different it had been last night or even that morning. It was as if the good times, having just begun, were already

The only news story that hit home was a report on a seventy-three-year-old man in Hokkaido who’d gone mushroom gathering in the mountains and been attacked and killed by a bear. When bears wake from hibernation, the announcer said, they’re hungry and irritable and very dangerous. I slept in my tent sometimes, and when the mood struck me I took walks in the woods, so it wouldn’t have been strange if I were the one who’d been attacked. It just happened to be that old man who got attacked, and not me. But even hearing that news I felt no sympathy for the old man who’d been so cruelly butchered by a bear. No empathy came to me for the pain and fear and shock he must have experienced. I felt more sympathy for the bear. No, “sympathy” isn’t the right word, I thought. It’s more like a feeling of complicity. Something’s wrong with me, I thought

Shot by a desperate fan. On the news, fans were always desperate. Got his signature and then shot him down. The saddest thing about it was that she wasn't more shocked. To Josie, it just seemed part of the way things were heading, Ronald Reagan, greedheads running everything. Killing John Lennon seemed like just mopping up. Thirty thousand people missing in El Salvador, those nuns, and everybody in America was worried about who shot JR.

Of course they had heard that the buffalo were being wiped out, but with the memory of the southern herd so vivid, they had hardly credited the news. Discussing it in Lonesome Dove they had decided that the reports must be exaggerated — thinned out, maybe, but not wiped out. Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching out over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel. With those millions of animals gone, and the Indians mostly gone in their wake, the great plains were truly empty, unpeopled and ungrazed. Soon the whites would come, of course, but what he was seeing was a moment between, not the plains as they had been, or as they would be, but a moment of true emptiness, with thousands of miles of grass resting unused, occupied only by remnants – of the buffalo, the Indians, the hunters.

I got some news anyway." She dropped her hands. "Mavis is knocked up." "Oh my God. Mavis was attacked?" "No, it was Leonardo." Mira clutched a hand to her breast. Shock radiated onto her face. "Leonardo? Leonardo beat Mavis?" "Beat her? No, he banged her. You know, knocked her up." Confused, Eve shook her head, then began to laugh as the light dawned. "Sperm meets egg," she managed as she had her first genuine laugh of the day. "She's pregnant.

In airplane crashes and chemical industry accidents, in the infrequent but serious nuclear plant accidents, in the NASA Challenger and Columbia disasters, and in the British Petroleum gulf spill, a common finding is that lower-ranking employees had information that would have prevented or lessened the consequences of the accident, but either it was not passed up to higher levels, or it was ignored, or it was overridden. When I talk to senior managers, they always assure me that they are open, that they want to hear from their subordinates, and that they take the information seriously. However, when I talk to the subordinates in those same organizations, they tell me either they do not feel safe bringing bad news to their bosses or they’ve tried but never got any response or even acknowledgment, so they concluded that their input wasn’t welcome and gave up. Shockingly often, they settled for risky alternatives rather than upset their bosses with potentially bad news. When I look at what goes on in hospitals, in operating rooms, and in the health care system generally, I find the same problems of communication exist and that patients frequently pay the price. Nurses and technicians do not feel safe bringing negative information to doctors or correcting a doctor who is about to make a mistake. Doctors will argue that if the others were “professionals” they would speak up, but in many a hospital the nurses will tell you that doctors feel free to yell at nurses in a punishing way, which creates a climate where nurses will certainly not speak up. Doctors engage patients in one-way conversations in which they ask only enough questions to make a diagnosis and sometimes make misdiagnoses because they don’t ask enough questions before they begin to tell patients what they should do.

remained for more than forty years, until it was disinterred and returned to England to be buried with military honors at Westminster Abbey. BACK IN MANHATTAN News of Arnold’s betrayal, as well as André’s capture and execution, sent shock waves through all of the colonies, but nowhere was the impact more keenly felt than in New York City. Even Robert Townsend found himself deeply moved by the death of one of the very men on whom he had spied. “I never felt more sensibly for

An empath has a great tendency to pick up others’ emotions and project them back without recognizing its source in the first place. For a learning empath, it is vital to talk things out in order to release emotions. Empaths ultimately develop a stronger, higher level of understanding, enabling themselves to find peace in any situation. The consequence to this is that they tend to bottle up their emotions and build sky-high barriers so as to not let other people know their deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings. This suppression of emotional expression can be one of the direct results of an expressionless upbringing, a traumatic experience, or perceiving the notion that “Children are only meant to be seen, not heard” early in their lives. Most empaths are sensitive to news, TV, movies, broadcasts and videos. Violence and dramas portraying shocking scenes of emotional or physical pain inflicted on children, women, animals and adults can easily bring empaths to tears, although they try to hold back the tears at times.

Violence,’ someone had once told Marnie, ‘isn’t what you think it is. It isn’t someone bursting into your home in the middle of the night. It’s a soft knock on the door in daylight. A knock that tells you the person outside has brought the worst possible news. News that’s going to change your life forever. Violence is waiting for a knock on the door, and realising your whole life is that knock.’ Violence isn’t what you think it is. And punishment isn’t prison. It’s waiting for that soft knock on the door. It’s never being free.

News trickles out into the world about the inexplicable disaster. There is widespread shock and puzzlement, and for a while, every new cloud in the sky causes mass panic. Fear reigns supreme as the world fears rain supreme, but years pass without any signs of the disaster repeating. Atmospheric scientists try for years to piece together what happened, but no explanation is forthcoming. Eventually, they give up, and the unexplained meteorological phenomenon is simply called a “dubstep storm,” because—in the words of one researcher—“It had one hell of a drop.

Meanwhile, people are busy using fractals to explain any system that has defied other, more reductionist approaches. Since they were successfully applied by IBM's Benoit Mandlebrot to the problem of seemingly random, intermittent interference on the phone lines, fractals have been used to identify underlying patterns in weather systems, computer files, and bacteria cultures. Sometimes fractal enthusiasts go a bit too far, however, using these nonlinear equations to mine for patterns in systems where none exist. Applied to the stock market to consumer behavior, fractals may tell less about those systems than about the people searching for patterns within them. There is a dual nature to fractals: They orient us while at the same time challenging our sense of scale and appropriateness. They offer us access to the underlying patterns of complex systems while at the same time tempting us to look for patterns where none exist. This makes them a terrific icon for the sort of pattern recognition associated with present shock—a syndrome we'll call factalnoia. Like the robots on Mystery Science Theater 3000, we engage by relating one thing to another, even when the relationship is forced or imagined. The tsunami makes sense once it is connected to chemtrails, which make sense when they are connected to HAARP. It's not just conspiracy theorists drawing fractalnoid connections between things. In a world without time, any and all sense making must occur on the fly. Simultaneity often seems like all we have. That's why anyone contending with present shock will have a propensity to make connections between things happening in the same moment—as if there had to be an underlying logic.

You knew she was sick,” her mother said. She was trying to comfort her or maybe just alleviate her shock. “I know,” Jude said. “Still.” “It wasn’t painful. She was smilin and talkin to me, right up until the end.” “Are you all right, Mama?” “Oh, you know me.” “That’s why I’m asking.” Her mother laughed a little. “I’m fine,” she said. “Anyway, the service is Friday. I just wanted to let you know. I know you’re busy with school—” “Friday?” Jude said. “I’ll fly down—” “Hold on. No use in you comin all the way down here—” “My grandmother is dead,” Jude said. “I’m coming home.” Her mother didn’t try to dissuade her further. Jude was grateful for that. She’d already acted as if notifying her of her grandmother’s passing had been some inconvenience. What type of life did her mother think she was living that she couldn’t interrupt with that type of news? They hung up and Jude stepped out into the hallway. Students buzzed past. A friend from the biology department waved his coffee at her as he ducked into the lounge. A weedy orange-haired girl tacked a green poster for a protest onto the announcement board. That was the thing about death. Only the specifics of it hurt. Death, in a general sense, was background noise. She stood in the silence of it.

. . . in Ukraine, the Association Agreement was more than just a few hundred pieces of paper slowly making their way through the inscrutable EU bureaucracy. Alina Frolova, a public relations professional who joined the group of Ukrainians Kuleba rallied in his pro-Ukraine public relations campaign, tells me it was the first step on a pathway to Europe and a dream for which many Ukrainians were willing to risk their lives. The cold practicality with which Ukrainians are willing to endanger themselves in the face of a threat to their budding democracy is still something that shocks me, even after having lived and worked there.

Boris Flores was three years older than my son and he crossed the city by bus, probably at night, hurting and broken after a month of being locked up. I can’t imagine what his mother felt when she saw the men come for him. I can’t even approach what went through her mind when she had to watch him being beaten and taken away. I don’t know how she was able to bear that entire month with no news, searching for him and imagining him. I don’t know how she must have reacted when she heard that he was back, when she saw him walk through the door and she was able to hug that seventeen-year-old body, battered by electric shocks and torture.

And what about your brother, Agus? Will he be entertaining us with his pipes?” “Agg,” Shanks rasped, wrinkling his nose. “I didn’t tell you? He ain’t with us no more.” A heavy fist slammed on the arm of the Viidun’s chair as he growled, “The idiot went off and got himself killed!” “What?” Derian and Eena replied in unison, both horrified by the news. “You heard me!” Shanks bellowed. “The crazy fool should’ve known when to duck. He died in a bloody challenge with some brainless Deramptium! A downright disgraceful way to die! I’m ashamed to say he was my brother!” “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” Eena muttered, mostly speaking to Derian. “What was that?” the Viidun demanded. Derian whispered a hush to Eena. Addressing Shanks, he expressed their condolences. “We are truly sorry for your loss. Your brother will be sorely missed. On the other hand, we look forward to welcoming you and your crew aboard the Kemeniroc.” Derian held up his right hand, extending his thumb and two adjoining fingers. “Strength, truth, and honor, friend,” he said, ending their conversation. “Strength, truth, and honor,” Shanks repeated. The screen went black. The captain turned to Eena who was still in shock. “You have to understand,” he explained, “the Viiduns are a fiercely competitive people with proud, warring ways. Their culture doesn’t call for much sympathy, especially when it appears one of their own has failed to live up to expectations.” Eena was still disturbed by the lack of compassion. “But that was his brother.” “I know. I can hardly believe it myself. Shanks and Agus were very close. They traveled everywhere together. All I can figure is it’s easier for Shanks to express his anger than his anguish.” “After all that, I’m not sure I want to meet him in person. He scares me,” she admitted. Derian laughed. “He scares everyone. That’s why you want to keep him as an ally and not make him an enemy.

So, all on a sudden, against all odds, when that piece of news quite hit him, when his thoughts were surprisingly cast onto a long-neglected land of long-withhold fertility, even the voices of his dead ancestors got stranded in the sands of the deserts, howled rather a sparking response of shocking discomfort back in his brains, as if, with his swirling waves of shock, they were taken out from the stale sands of the desert to the freezing waters of the Ganges without they themselves know of it, quite jarring, quite pandering; such a sudden and subtle transitioning from the hot to cold, from the scorching thorns of cacti to the soothing beds of scums.

I had brought my schoolbooks along with me and I’d fully intended to start my weekend homework, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was Emily and how she’d been adopted. Emily was lucky. Sure, she was having a few problems, but every day, her mother and father told her about her adoption, even though she was too little to understand. I knew this because Kristy had told me. Every day, Watson or Mrs. Brewer would say to Emily that she wasn’t just adopted, she was chosen. And she was very, very special. I wished Mom and Dad had told me that so I wouldn’t have had to find out on my own when I was 13 and completely shocked by the news.

it was the sudden, shocking exposure of actual conspiracies starting in the 1970s that made Americans overcorrect, to assume that anything bad is the intentional result of some conspiracy. Which may make it harder, ironically, to expose and dismantle the rare real ones. Our news and Internet-enabled media discourse are clogged more than ever with conspiracy theories. All the fantastical noise obscures the occasional signals. I’m thinking, for instance, of the Russian government’s interference in the last U.S. presidential election, to which too little attention was paid as it was happening. In the middle of 2016, it sounded like just one more wild speculation.

Jay came over as soon as Violet called him; she didn’t even have to give him a reason. He was there in less than ten minutes. Of course, he’d heard about what had happened to Hailey. Everyone had. Buckley was a small town, and news traveled fast . . . especially bad news. When he got there she told him what she was thinking about doing. It was nothing dangerous, at least as far as she was concerned, and she hadn’t expected Jay to disagree with her about it. So when he did, she was more than a little bit surprised by his stubborn reaction. “No way,” he insisted, and his voice left little room for argument. “There is no way you’re going to go around looking for this guy.” Violet was shocked by the tone of his voice, and by the harsh look he shot at her. She thought maybe he misunderstood her plan, so she tried to explain it to him again. “Jay, I’m only going to public places, like malls and parks, to see if I can get a feeling for who this guy is. Who knows, maybe he goes to places like that to find them, maybe he hands out there waiting to pick out a girl to . . . you know, kidnap.” She tried to make her argument sound logical, but there was a desperate edge to her voice. “I’m not going out alone . . . you can go with me. We’ll just hang out at different places to see if we can find him. And if we do, we’ll call my uncle. It’s not like we’d do anything stupid.” “’Anything stupid’ would be going out to look for a killer. I won’t let you go looking for trouble, Violet. This guy is dangerous, and you need to leave it to the cops. They know what they’re doing. And they’re armed.” He sounded like he thought she’d lost her mind, and maybe she had, but she had already made her decision. “Look, I’m doing this. I was just asking you to come along with me.” “You’re not,” he insisted. “Even if I have to tell your uncle and your parents what you’re planning. I promise you, you’re not doing it.” She could feel her temper flaring. “You can’t stop me, Jay. If you tell on me, then I’ll lie. I’ll bat my eyes innocently and promise not to go looking for this guy. But I swear to you that every chance I get, even if I have to sneak out of the house to do it, I will be trying to find him.” She stood up, meaning to glare back at him, but instead found herself craning her neck just so she could see his face. The awkward position didn’t steal nay of her thunder. She refused to back down. “I mean it, Jay. You can’t stop me.” Jay glared incredulously back at her. Emotions ranging from disbelief to frustration and back to disbelief again flashed darkly across his face. He seemed to be fighting with himself now. But when she heard him sigh, and then saw him raking his hand restlessly through his hair, she knew she’d won. His icy determination seemed to melt right before her eyes. “Damn it, Violet.” He sighed brusquely, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “What choice do I have?” he asked as he practically squeezed the life out of her. She wasn’t sure how to react to him now. It definitely wasn’t a tender hug, but the close contact made her undisclosed desires stir all the same. She couldn’t help wondering if he felt even a fraction of what she did. His arms were strong, and she felt safe in the circle of them. She’d never imaged that she could feel so comfortable and so uncomfortable at the same time. She waited within the space of his embrace to see where this was going. “So, how is this going to work?” he demanded roughly against the top of her head.

Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination. It stirs our emotions, churning in self-destructive ways, closes us in upon the mighty citadel of self, leads to depression and despair, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God. The language of unhealthy guilt is harsh. It is demanding, abusing, criticizing, rejecting, accusing, blaming, condemning, reproaching, and scolding. It is one of impatience and chastisement. Christians are shocked and horrified because they have failed. Unhealthy guilt becomes bigger than life. The image of the childhood story of Chicken Little comes to mind. Guilt becomes the experience in which people feel the sky is falling.

LOCKED ROOM" MYSTERY HONORED: The entire crime-writing fraternity yesterday bade a tearful farewell to the last "locked room" mystery at a large banquet held in its honor. The much-loved conceptual chestnut of mystery fiction for over a century had been unwell for many years and was finally discovered dead at 3:15 A.M. last Tuesday. In a glowing tribute, the editor of Amazing Crime declared, "From humble beginnings to towering preeminence in the world of mystery, the 'locked room' plot contrivance will always remain in our hearts." DCI Chymes then gave a glowing eulogy before being interrupted by the shocking news that the 'locked room' concept had been murdered - and in a locked room. The banquet was canceled, and police are investigating.

While I ate a peanut butter sandwich later, I switched on the news. A microphone was shoved in Hank's face and I blinked at him in shock. He was angry—extremely so—and not just with the reporter—I could tell by his words. "Yes, my assistant manager didn't show up for work last night. I called the police because John is always on time and never misses a shift. I am only discovering now, through you, that his body was found near the wharf an hour ago." "The police didn't call you?" The reporter—a young woman—feigned surprise. "No. I assume they notified John's family first. How did you learn of the murder?" "Through ah, well, the usual channels," she stuttered. I figured she'd gotten information through a source or listened in on police communications. "You probably shouldn't mess with Hank right now," I spoke to the television screen. Too bad the reporter couldn't hear me. "Are you involved in your assistant manager's disappearance?" Her question proved (to me, at least) that she had very little common sense. "My whereabouts have already been disclosed to the police, who are in charge of this investigation, no matter how much you'd prefer to believe otherwise," Hank growled. "Where were you when my assistant manager disappeared?" "What?" she squeaked. "I can account for my time last night. Can you?" I almost laughed as she turned a bright pink. Yes, I dropped my shield and read her. She'd been in bed with her (married) producer. The station quickly cut to commercial while I snickered.

My, my,” Chloe murmured, studying the chocolate she held. “I do believe this one’s gone off. It stinks like a cesspit.” Her eyes lifted. “Oh, wait. It’s only the guttersnipe.” “Or perhaps it’s your perfume,” I said cordially. “You always smell like a whore.” “It’s French,” retorted Runny-Nose, before Chloe could speak. “Then she smells like a French whore.” “Aren’t you the eloquent young miss.” Chloe’s gaze cut to Sophia, standing close behind me. “Slumming, little sister? I can’t confess I’m surprised.” “I’m merely here for the show,” Sophia said breezily. “Something tells me it’s going to be good.” I took the brooch from my pocket and let it slide down my index finger, giving it a playful twirl. “A fine try. But, alas, no winner’s prize for you, Chloe. I’m sure you’ve been waiting here for Westcliffe to raise the alarm about her missing ring, ready with some well-rehearsed story about how you saw me sneaking into her office and sneaking out again, and oh, look isn’t that Eleanore’s brooch there on the floor? But I’ve news for you, dearie. You’re sloppy. You’re stupid. And the next time you go into my room and steal from me, I’ll make certain you regret it for the rest of your days.” “How dare you threaten me, you little tart!” “I’m not threatening. You have no idea how easy it would be to, say, pour glue on your hair while you sleep. Cut up all your pretty dresses into ribbons.” Chloe dropped her half-eaten chocolate back into its box, turning to her toadies. “You heard her! You all head her! When Westcliffe finds out about this-“ “I didn’t hear a thing,” piped up Sophia. “In fact, I do believe that Eleanore and I aren’t even here right now. We’re both off in my room, diligently studying.” She sauntered to my side, smiling. “And I’ll swear to that, sister. Without hesitation. I have no misgivings about calling you all liars right to Westcliffe’s face.” “What fun,” I said softly, into the hush. “Shall we give it a go? What d’you say, girls? Up for a bit of blood sport?” Chloe pushed to her feet, kicking the chocolates out of her way. All the toadies cringed. “You,” she sneered, her gaze scouring me. “You with your ridiculous clothing and that preposterous bracelet, acting as if you actually belong here! Really, Eleanore, I wonder that you’ve learned nothing of real use yet. Allow me to explain matters to you. You may have duped Sophia into vouching for you, but your word means nothing. You’re no one. No matter what you do here or who you may somehow manage to impress, you’ll always be no one. How perfectly sad that you’re allowed to pretend otherwise.” “I’m the one he wants,” I said evenly. “No one’s pretending that.” I didn’t have to say who. She stared at me, silent, her color high. I saw with interest that real tears began to well in her eyes. “That’s right.” I gave the barest smile. “Me, not you. Think about that tomorrow, when I’m with him on the yacht. Think about how he watches me. How he listens to me. Another stunt like this”-I held up the circlet-“and you’ll be shocked at what I’m able to convince him about you.” “As if you could,” she scoffed, but there was apprehension behind those tears. “Try me.” I brought my foot down on one of the chocolates, grinding it into a deep, greasy smear along the rug. “Cheerio,” I said to them all, and turned around and left.

He once told me the story of a visit he made to a local Catholic elementary school. After sharing with a group of the students, a young girl—probably third or fourth grade—approached him and struck up a conversation. A few moments into their discussion, a look of pure astonishment flashed in the student’s eyes. Suddenly, she blurted out, “You’re blind!” Which is true. Due to a sickness, he lost his sight when he was just a small child. With genuine tenderness, Father Gillick responded, “That’s not news to me.” But before he could say anything else, she quickly moved from shock to sadness, replying, “You don’t know what you look like.” That profound statement from such a young person caught Father Gillick off guard, and before he could comment she softly said, “You’re beautiful.” I’m deeply moved every time I think about that

But relentless negativity can itself have unintended consequences, and recently a few journalists have begun to point them out. In the wake of the 2016 American election, the New York Times writers David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg reflected on the media’s role in its shocking outcome: Trump was the beneficiary of a belief—near universal in American journalism—that “serious news” can essentially be defined as “what’s going wrong.” . . . For decades, journalism’s steady focus on problems and seemingly incurable pathologies was preparing the soil that allowed Trump’s seeds of discontent and despair to take root. . . . One consequence is that many Americans today have difficulty imagining, valuing or even believing in the promise of incremental system change, which leads to a greater appetite for revolutionary, smash-the-machine change.30

So much of the most important personal news I'd received in the last several years had come to me by smartphone while I was abroad in the city that I could plot on a map, could represent spatially the events, such as they were, of my early thirties. Place a thumbtack on the wall or drop a flag on Google Maps at Lincoln Center, where, beside the fountain, I took a call from Jon informing me that, for whatever complex of reasons, a friend had shot himself; mark the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, where I read the message ("Apologies for the mass e-mail...") a close cousin sent out describing the dire condition of her newborn; waiting in line at the post office on Atlantic, the adhan issuing from the adjacent mosque, I received your wedding announcement and was shocked to be shocked, crushed, and started a frightening multi week descent, worse for being so embarrassingly cliched; while in the bathroom at the SoHo Crate and Barrel--the finest semipublic restroom in lower Manhattan--I learned I'd been awarded a grant that would take me overseas for a summer, and so came to associate the corner of Broadway and Houston with all that transpired in Morocco; at Zucotti Park I heard my then-girlfriend was not--as she'd been convinced--pregnant; while buying discounted dress socks at the Century 21 department store across from Ground Zero, I was informed by text that a friend in Oakland had been hospitalized after the police had broken his ribs. And so on: each of these experiences of reception remained, as it were, in situ, so that whenever I returned to a zone where significant news had been received, I discovered that the news and an echo of its attendant affect still awaited me like a curtain of beads.

What I cannot understand is how your uncle could consider these two men suitable when they aren’t. Not one whit!” “We know that,” Elizabeth said wryly, bending down to pull a blade of grass from between the flagstones beneath the bench, “but evidently my ‘suitors’ do not, and that’s the problem.” As she said the words a thought began to form in her mind; her fingers touched the blade, and she went perfectly still. Beside her on the bench Alex drew a breath as if to speak, then stopped short, and in that pulsebeat of still silence the same idea was born in both their fertile minds. “Alex,” Elizabeth breathed, “all I have to-“ “Elizabeth,” Alex whispered, “it’s not as bad as it seems. All you have to-“ Elizabeth straightened slowly and turned. In that prolonged moment of silence two longtime friends sat in a rose garden, looking raptly at each other while time rolled back and they were girls again-lying awake in the dark, confiding their dreams and troubles and inventing schemes to solve them that always began with “If only…” “If only,” Elizabeth said as a smile dawned across her face and was matched by the one on Alex’s, “I could convince them that we don’t suit-“ “Which shouldn’t be hard to do,” Alex cried enthusiastically, “because it’s true!” The joyous relief of having a plan, of being able to take control of a situation that minutes before had threatened her entire life, sent Elizabeth to her feet, her face aglow with laughter. “Poor Sir Francis,” she chuckled, looking delightedly from Bentner to Alex as both grinned at her. “I greatly fear he’s in for the most disagreeable surprise when he realizes what a-a” she hesitated, thinking of everything an old roué would most dislike in his future wife-“a complete prude I am!” “And,” Alex added, “what a shocking spendthrift you are!” “Exactly!” Elizabeth agreed, almost twirling around in her glee. Sunlight danced off her gilded hair and lit her green eyes as she looked delightedly at her friends. “I shall make perfectly certain to give him glaring evidence I am both. Now then, as to the Earl of Canford…” “What a pity,” Alex said in a voice of exaggerated gloom, “you won’t be able to show him what a capital hand you are with a fishing pole. “Fish?” Elizabeth returned with a mock shudder. “Why, the mere thought of those scaly creatures positively makes me swoon!” “Except for that prime one you caught yesterday,” Bentner put in wryly. “You’re right,” she returned with an affectionate grin at the man who’d taught her to fish. “Will you find Berta and break the news to her about going with me? By the time we come back to the house she ought to be over her hysterics, and I’ll reason with her.” Bentner trotted off, his threadbare black coattails flapping behind him.

When Bill died, I was for the first time faced with the loss of a friend, and what I initially felt when I read the news of his death in the New York Times—he had died suddenly of a heart attack—was numbness and shock. I kept thinking I should have felt more pain or sadness or grief or something. I kept trying to figure out how to grieve properly. While I was trying to sort out my response to Bill’s death, I had a conversation over lunch with my ex-boyfriend Keith, who had remained a good friend after we’d split up. He’d always been a great sounding board and an uncommonly clearheaded source of wisdom and advice. “I don’t know what to do about all this,” I told him. “I don’t know how to process it.” “Well,” he said, leaning forward intensely, as he always did when he talked, his right hand chopping the air, his boyish face bobbing up and down, “the thing is, the thing is, when you have someone you know who’s died, you have to grieve, of course, but really, there are different things you have to grieve.” “What do you mean?” “Well, you know, you have to grieve the loss of the person, you know, the fact that the actual person won’t be there anymore to talk to, to laugh with, to share memories with, that sort of thing.” “Right.” “And then you have to, you have to mourn the loss of who that person held you to be. Because that dies with them. Their vision of you no longer exists. And a whole world of who you are is gone. So you have to mourn that, too.” I sat there and took that in, an electric current of recognition coursing through my body. “That…makes sense,” I said. Keith nodded vigorously. “Yeah, it does. It does.” I shook my head. “How do you know all this stuff?” It was a question I often asked Keith; he and I were the same age, but his insight into profound human matters often outshined my own. He laughed a high-pitched giggle. “I don’t know.” That was always his answer.

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still 'un-analysed' and crying aloud for treatment. The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which 'verified' the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation--which revealed the class bias of the paper--and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their 'clinical observations'. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. 'Because of my thousandfold experience,' he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: 'And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.

I’ve never been around a child so sweet natured. I’m afraid the other shoe’s going to drop and she’s going to start screaming her head off. Since I first met her this morning, she’s done nothing but smile and coo.” “Isn’t that nice? How’s Vanni doing with the news?” Mel asked. “I kind of dumped this on her. I was afraid to call her, so I just brought Hannah home. Vanni’s in shock. We just barely started trying for one of our own.” “Oh, boy,” Cam said. “Speaking as one who hasn’t slept through the night since Julia and Justin were born in June, I can imagine her hesitancy.” “Yeah, she pretty much wants me dead right now.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “But what was I gonna do? Do you say no thank-you to a living, breathing, beautiful human being who needs a home? Do you say, shove her in a foster home while I think it over?” He shook his head. “This might not be the most convenient thing, but I couldn’t do that.” “Thank God it was you and not me,” Cameron said. “If I brought another child home to Abby and newborn twins, I would be dead.

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential. Insufficient levels of two of the most important omega-3s—eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)—have been linked to depression and bipolar disorder, suicidal behavior, inflammation, heart disease, ADD/ADHD, cognitive impairment and dementia, and obesity.[1] Ninety-five percent of Americans do not get enough dietary omega-3 fatty acids.[2] The human body doesn’t produce omega-3s on its own, so you have to get it from outside sources, such as fatty fish. If you aren’t getting enough of this essential nutrient from your diet, it’s bad news for your brain. That’s because omega-3s contribute to about 8 percent of your brain’s weight. At Amen Clinics, we tested omega-3 levels of 50 consecutive patients who were not taking fish oil supplements. A shocking 49 out of 50—that’s 98 percent!—had suboptimal levels. In a subsequent study, we analyzed the scans of 130 patients with their omega-3 levels. Patients with the lowest levels had lower blood flow in the areas of the brain associated with depression and dementia.

Elspeth had the joyous task of breaking the news to the rest of the Council. There was no such accord among the political leaders of Valdemar as there was among her military leaders. Lord Gartheser was speechless with outrage and shock; Bard Hyron was dazed. Lady Kester and Lady Cathan, still seething over Orthallen's accusations of complicity with the slavers, were surprised, but not altogether unhappy. Father Aldon had closeted himself in the tiny chapel of the Keep; Lord Gildas was with him. Healer Myrim made no attempt to conceal the fact that Orthallen's treachery had not surprised her. Nor did she conceal that his demise gave her a certain grim satisfaction. But then, she might well be forgiven such uncharitable thoughts; she was one of the four Healers who were tending Talia's wounds. Once the bare bones had been told to the Councillors as a group, Elspeth went to each of these Councillors in turn, privately. She gave a simple explanation of what had occurred, but would answer no questions. Questions, she told them, must wait until Talia had recovered enough to tell them all more.

Then Obama walked into frame and I, along with the rest of the world, heard him say the words we’d all been waiting ten years to hear. “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.” I couldn’t believe it. I felt joy, shock, excitement, and an overwhelming pride about being an American. The news cut to scenes of other Americans cheering in the streets. This was an awesome, fist-pump, proud-to-be-an-American moment. My phone pinged with a text message from an old friend, Mandy Goff. She thanked me for my sacrifice, for all that I and all of the other veterans and soldiers had done that led to this moment. She told me that she loved and appreciated me. That text hit me hard. I think up to this point I still had a pretty high wall up around my emotions toward the war, including the reasons I was there and the reasons why I came home less whole than when I left. But Mandy’s text tore a hole in that wall, and I completely broke down. I was sitting alone on the couch, nothing but the light of the television illuminating the room, and I was sobbing. Every emotion I felt that day and every day since just washed over me.

The more the State of Israel relied on force to manage the occupation, the more compelled it was to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encountered hasbara, the more likely they became to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation, and repression that defined its relationship with the Palestinians. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a professional explainer who spent the early years of his political career as a frequent guest on prime time American news programs perfecting the slickness of the Beltway pundit class, the Israeli government invested unprecedented resources into hasbara. Once the sole responsibility of the Israeli foreign ministry, the task of disseminating hasbara fell to a special Ministry of Public Diplomacy led by Yuli Edelstein, a rightist settler and government minister who called Arabs a “despicable nation.” Edelstein’s ministry boasted an advanced “situation room,” a paid media team, and coordination of a volunteer force that claimed to include thousands of volunteer bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook commenters fed with talking points and who flood social media with hasbara in five languages. The exploits of the propaganda soldiers conscripted into Israel’s online army have helped give rise to the phenomenon of the “hasbara troll,” an often faceless, shrill and relentless nuisance deployed on Twitter and Facebook to harass public figures who expressed skepticism of official Israeli policy or sympathy for the Palestinians.

He’s a murdering chud,” Zil was yelling. “What do you want to do? Lynch him?” Astrid demanded. That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what “lynch” meant. But Zil quickly recovered. “I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry.” “I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!” Hunter shouted. “You’re a lying mutant freak!” “They think they can do anything they want,” another voice shouted. Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, “We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals.” “They already did it!” Zil cried. “It’s the freaks acting all special and like their farts don’t stink.” That earned a laugh. “And now they’re starting to kill us,” Zil cried. Angry cheers. Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Give me that thing.” “No way,” Hank said. But he didn’t seem too certain. “You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone’s face off?” Edilio held his hand out. “Give it to me, man.” Zil rounded on Edilio. “You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He’s got powers, man, and that’s okay, but the normals can’t have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?” “Man, give it a rest, huh?” Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary than angry or scared. Things were already bad enough. “Zil, you want to be responsible if that gauge goes off and kills Astrid? You want to maybe give that some thought?” Zil blinked. But he said, “Dude, I’m not scared of Sam.” “Sam won’t be your problem, I will be,” Edilio snapped, losing patience. “Anything happens to her, I’ll take you down before Sam ever gets the chance.” Zil snorted derisively. “Ah, good little boy, Edilio, kissing up to the chuds. I got news for you, dilly dilly, you’re a lowly normal, just like me and the rest of us." “I’m going to let that go,” Edilio said evenly, striving to regain his cool, trying to sound calm and in control, even though he could hardly take his eyes off the twin barrels of the shotgun. “But now I’m taking that shotgun.” “No way!” Hank cried, and the next thing was an explosion so loud, Edilio thought a bomb had gone off. The muzzle flash blinded him, like camera flash going off in his face. Someone yelled in pain. Edilio staggered back, squeezed his eyes shut, trying to adjust. When he opened them again the shotgun was on the ground and the boy who’d accidentally fired it was holding his bruised hand, obviously shocked. Zil bent to grab the gun. Edilio took two steps forward and kicked Zil in the face. As Zil fell back Edilio made a grab for the shotgun. He never saw the blow that turned his knees to water and filled his head with stars. He fell like a sack of bricks, but even as he fell he lurched forward to cover the shotgun. Astrid screamed and launched herself down the stairs to protect Edilio. Antoine, the one who had hit Edilio, was raising his bat to hit Edilio again, but on the back swing he caught Astrid in the face. Antoine cursed, suddenly fearful. Zil yelled, “No, no, no!” There was a sudden rush of running feet. Down the walkway, into the street, echoing down the block.

When I first started to run the Jingu Gaien course, Toshihiko Seko was still an active runner and he used this course too. The S&B team used this course every day for training, and over time we naturally grew to know each other by sight. Back then I used to jog there before seven a.m. — when the traffic wasn’t bad, there weren’t as many pedestrians, and the air was relatively clean—and the S&B team members and I would often pass each other and nod a greeting. On rainy days we’d exchange a smile, a guess-we’re-both-havingit-tough kind of smile. I remember two young runners in particular, Taniguchi and Kanei. They were both in their late twenties, both former members of the Waseda University track team, where they’d been standouts in the Hakone relay race. After Seko was named manager of the S&B team, they were expected to be the two young stars of the team. They were the caliber of runner expected to win medals at the Olympics someday, and hard training didn’t faze them. Sadly, though, they were killed in a car accident when the team was training together in Hokkaido in the summer. I’d seen with my own eyes the tough regimen they’d put themselves through, and it was a real shock when I heard the news of their deaths. It hurt me to hear this, and I felt it was a terrible waste. Even now, when I run along Jingu Gaien or Asakasa Gosho, sometimes I remember these other runners. I’ll round a corner and feel like I should see them coming toward me, silently running, their breath white in the morning air. And I always think this: They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

Chapter 17   I was on my way from Rambam Hospital to Tiberias, when the news first came across the radio about a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Maggie was still at the Hematology  Ward. I tried to imagine how she felt listening to the news. Surely she was as shocked as everyone else. There in the ward, patients were fighting for their lives, and now in another place in the country, people had perished in seconds. The entire country was horrified by the horrible scenes that aired on all the media. Gradually, the magnitude of the disaster started to be known. A suicide bomber detonated a charge inside a bus, while travelers were going up and down the bus at the heart of the city. It was a few minutes before nine in the morning. There were over twenty dead and dozens wounded. At home, sitting in front of the TV, I watched the extensive coverage. This transition from the sick atmosphere of the hospital in the morning, to the atmosphere of the evening suicide bombing, was depressing. The TV coverage was painful and brought an atmosphere of sadness. I had a feeling that the broadcast intended to clarify to all the people who were still healthy  that their health would not help them. That their end could come just as it did to those victims of the terrorism act on the bus. People did not stop thinking about the event, and the harsh images which were shown repeatedly on the television. Reporters broadcasted from the scene in heightened excitement and everything was filmed live. It seemed that someone was afraid, lest, God forbid, there would be a single person in the country who did not watch this horror. It was appalling. It was one of the first suicide bombings in Israel, and perhaps one of the largest ones.

Of course, historical scholarship on the New Testament is open to all, whether Jewish or Christian, atheist or agnostic. But the present debate about Paul and justification is taking place between people most of whom declare their allegiance to Scripture in general, and perhaps to Paul in particular, as the place where and the means by which the living God has spoken, and still speaks, with life-changing authority. This ought to mean, but does not always mean, that exegesis-close attention to the actual flow of the text, to the questions that it raises in itself and the answers it gives in and of itself-should remain the beginning and the end of the process. Systematize all you want in between-we all do it; there is nothing wrong with it and much to be said for it, particularly when it involves careful comparing of different treatments of similar topics in different contexts. But start with exegesis, and remind yourself that the end in view is not a tidy system, sitting in hard covers on a shelf where one may look up "correct answers," but the sermon, or the shared pastoral reading, or the scriptural word to a Synod or other formal church gathering, or indeed the life of witness to the love of God, through all of which the church is built up and energized for mission, the Christian is challenged, transformed and nurtured in the faith, and the unbeliever is confronted with the shocking but joyful news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. That is letting Scripture be Scripture. Scripture, in other words, does not exist to give authoritative answers to questions other than those it addresses-not even to the questions which emerged from especially turbulent years such as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That is not to say that one cannot deduce from Scripture appropriate answers to such later questions, only that you have to be careful and recognize that that is indeed what you are doing.

Once unbound from the shackles of truth, Fox’s power came from what it decided to cover—its chosen narratives—and what it decided to ignore. Trump’s immature, erratic, and immoral behavior? His sucking up to Putin? His mingling of presidential business and personal profit? Fox talk shows played dumb and targeted the “deep state” instead. Conservative media types were like spiders, spinning webs and trying to catch prey. They insisted the real story was an Obama-led plot against Trump to stop him from winning the election. One night Hannity irrationally exclaimed, “This makes Watergate look like stealing a Snickers bar from a drugstore!” Another night he upped the hysteria, insisting this scandal “will make Watergate look like a parking ticket.” The following night he screeched, “This is Watergate times a thousand.” He strung viewers along, invoking mysterious “sources” who were “telling us” that “this is just the tip of the iceberg.” There was always another “iceberg” ahead, always another twist coming, always another Democrat villain to attack after the commercial break. Hannity and Trump were so aligned that, on one weird night in 2018, Hannity had to deny that he was giving Trump a sneak peek at his monologues after the president tweeted out, twelve minutes before air, “Big show tonight on @SeanHannity! 9: 00 P.M. on @FoxNews.” Political reporters fumbled for their remotes and flipped over to Fox en masse. Hannity raved about the “Mueller crime family” and said the Russia investigation was “corrupt” and promoted a guest who said Mueller “surrounded himself with literally a bunch of legal terrorists,” whatever that meant. Some reporters who did not watch Fox regularly were shocked at how unhinged and extreme the content was. But this was just an ordinary night in the pro-Trump alternative universe. Night after night, Hannity said the Mueller probe needed to be stopped immediately, for the good of the country. Trump’s attempts at obstruction flowed directly from his “Executive Time.

The flight to Reykjavik was proceeding uneventfully and the patient was stable and doing well, so I thought this was a good opportunity to have a little fun with the flight crew. I called the pilot on intercom. “Go ahead PJ.” the pilot responded. “I’ve been talking to this doctor back here and he seems to think it’s not looking good for this arm.” I explained. “What do you mean?” asked the pilot. “Well,” I said, “he says the arm was unattached for a long time, probably too long to sew it back on.” “That’s too bad.” The pilot sounded understandably disappointed. I waited a few minutes before giving the pilot further fictitious updates. “The doctor says he’s a hundred percent certain they won’t be able to sew on the arm now. It’s been detached too long. The patient also realizes they can’t sew his arm back on and has accepted the bad news. He’s a pretty tough character. Anyway, I talked to the doctor and patient about this whole situation. Since they can’t sew the arm back on, they said I could have it.” There was shocked silence on the intercom. “What?” asked the pilot. “They won’t be able to sew the arm back on because it’s been separated from his body for too long. The muscles and nerves have been without blood and oxygen for so long that cell death is irreversible. The hospital will just throw the arm away, so I asked them if I could have it, and they said yes.” Once again, there was an uncomfortable silence on the intercom. I could almost hear the gears whirring inside the pilots head. “Wha … what will you do with it?” stammered the pilot. I answered, “I’m not really sure. At first I’ll just keep it in my freezer. I just think it would be a waste to just throw a good arm away.” “Are you serious?” asked the pilot. “No.” I said, “I’m just messing with you.” But, the doctor told me that, ironically, right before the accident the man was heard to say, “I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.” Another crewmember chimed in, “That guys pretty tough. I think we should give him a hand!” I heard laughter over the intercom.

It did not take long for the entire town of Beldingsville to learn that the great New York doctor had said Pollyanna Whittier would never walk again; and certainly never before had the town been so stirred. Everybody knew by sight now the piquant little freckled face that had always a smile of greeting; and almost everybody knew of the "game" that Pollyanna was playing. To think that now never again would that smiling face be seen on their streets—never again would that cheery little voice proclaim the gladness of some everyday experience! It seemed unbelievable, impossible, cruel. In kitchens and sitting rooms, and over back-yard fences women talked of it, and wept openly. On street corners and in store lounging-places the men talked, too, and wept—though not so openly. And neither the talking nor the weeping grew less when fast on the heels of the news itself, came Nancy's pitiful story that Pollyanna, face to face with what had come to her, was bemoaning most of all the fact that she could not play the game; that she could not now be glad over—anything. It was then that the same thought must have, in some way, come to Pollyanna's friends. At all events, almost at once, the mistress of the Harrington homestead, greatly to her surprise, began to receive calls: calls from people she knew, and people she did not know; calls from men, women, and children—many of whom Miss Polly had not supposed that her niece knew at all. Some came in and sat down for a stiff five or ten minutes. Some stood awkwardly on the porch steps, fumbling with hats or hand-bags, according to their sex. Some brought a book, a bunch of flowers, or a dainty to tempt the palate. Some cried frankly. Some turned their backs and blew their noses furiously. But all inquired very anxiously for the little injured girl; and all sent to her some message—and it was these messages which, after a time, stirred Miss Polly to action. First came Mr. John Pendleton. He came without his crutches to-day. "I don't need to tell you how shocked I am," he began almost harshly. "But can—nothing be done?" Miss Polly gave a gesture of despair. "Oh, we're 'doing,' of course, all the time. Dr. Mead prescribed certain treatments and medicines that might help, and Dr. Warren is carrying them out to the letter, of course. But—Dr. Mead held out almost no hope.

But before you do that, inform your master that we have arrived.” “His master,” said a biting voice from a rear doorway, “is aware of that.” Elizabeth swung around at the scathing tone of Ian’s voice, and her fantasy of seeing him fall to his knees in remorse the moment he set eyes on her collapsed the instant she saw his face; it was as hard and forbidding as a granite sculpture. He did not bother to come forward but instead remained where he was, his shoulder propped negligently against the door frame, his arms folded across his chest, watching her through narrowed eyes. Until then Elizabeth had thought she remembered exactly what he looked like, but she hadn’t. Not really. His suede jacket clung to wide shoulders that were broader and more muscular than she’d remembered, and his thick hair was almost black. His face was one of leashed sensuality and arrogant handsomeness with its sculpted mouth and striking eyes, but now she noticed the cynicism in those golden eyes and the ruthless set of his jaw-things she’d obviously been too young and naïve to see before. Everything about him exuded brute strength, and that in turn made her feel even more helpless as she searched his features for some sign that this aloof, forbidding man had actually held and kissed her with seductive tenderness. “Have you had an edifying look at me, Countess?” he snapped, and before she could recover from the shock of that rude greeting his next words rendered her nearly speechless. “You are a remarkable young woman, Lady Cameron-you must possess the instincts of a bloodhound to track me here. Now that you’ve succeeded, there is the door. Use it.” Elizabeth’s momentary shock gave way to a sudden, almost uncontrollable burst of wrath. “I beg your pardon?” she said tightly. “You heard me.” “I was invited here.” “Of course you were,” Ian mocked, realizing in a flash of surprise that the letter he’d had from her uncle must not have been a prank, and that Julius Cameron had obviously decided to regard Ian’s lack of reply as willingness, which was nothing less than absurd and obnoxious. In the last months, since news of his wealth and his possible connection to the Duke of Stanhope had been made public, he’d become accustomed to being pursued by the same socialites who had once cut him. Normally he found it annoying; from Elizabeth Cameron he found it revolting.

cap to scratch his bald head. ‘Well, you won’t miss the veg because I’ll be bringing you some every week now. I’ve always got plenty left over and I’d rather give it to you than see it waste.’ He gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I caught that young Tommy Barton digging potatoes from Percy’s plot this mornin’. Give ’im a cuff round ’is ear but I let him take what he’d dug. Poor little bugger’s only tryin’ to keep his ma from starvin’; ain’t ’is fault ’is old man got banged up for robbin’, is it?’ Tilly Barton, her two sons Tommy and Sam and her husband, lived almost opposite the Pig & Whistle. Mulberry Lane cut across from Bell Lane and ran adjacent to Spitalfields Market, and the folk of the surrounding lanes were like a small community, almost a village in the heart of London’s busy East End. Tilly and her husband had been good customers for Peggy until he lost his job on the Docks. It had come as a shock when he’d been arrested for trying to rob a little corner post office and Peggy hadn’t seen Tilly to talk to since; she’d assumed it was because the woman was feeling ashamed of what her husband had done. ‘No, of course not.’ Peggy smiled at him. A wisp of her honey-blonde hair had fallen across her face, despite all her efforts to sweep it up under a little white cap she wore for cooking. ‘I didn’t realise Tilly Barton was in such trouble. I’ll take her a pie over later – she won’t be offended, will she?’ ‘No one in their right mind would be offended by you, Peggy love.’ ‘Thank you, Jim. Would you like a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie?’ ‘Don’t mind a slice of that pie, but I’ll take it for my docky down the allotment if that’s all right?’ Peggy assured him it was and wrapped a generous slice of her freshly cooked pie in greaseproof paper. He took it and left with a smile and a promise to see her next week just as her husband entered the kitchen. ‘Who was that?’ Laurence asked as he saw the back of Jim walking away. ‘Jim Stillman, he brought the last of the stuff from Percy’s allotment.’ Peggy’s eyes brimmed and Laurence frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re upset for, Peggy. Percy was well over eighty. He’d had a good life – and it wasn’t even as if he was your father…’ ‘I know. He was a lot older than Mum but…Percy was a good stepfather to me, and wonderful to Mum when she was so ill after we lost Walter.’ Peggy’s voice faltered, because it still hurt her that her younger brother had died in the Great War at the tender age of seventeen. The news had almost destroyed their mother and Peggy thought of those dark days as the worst of her

In the shock of the moment, I gave some thought to renting a convertible and driving the twenty-seven hundred miles back alone. But then I realized I was neither single nor crazy. The acting director decided that, given the FBI’s continuing responsibility for my safety, the best course was to take me back on the plane I came on, with a security detail and a flight crew who had to return to Washington anyway. We got in the vehicle to head for the airport. News helicopters tracked our journey from the L.A. FBI office to the airport. As we rolled slowly in L.A. traffic, I looked to my right. In the car next to us, a man was driving while watching an aerial news feed of us on his mobile device. He turned, smiled at me through his open window, and gave me a thumbs-up. I’m not sure how he was holding the wheel. As we always did, we pulled onto the airport tarmac with a police escort and stopped at the stairs of the FBI plane. My usual practice was to go thank the officers who had escorted us, but I was so numb and distracted that I almost forgot to do it. My special assistant, Josh Campbell, as he often did, saw what I couldn’t. He nudged me and told me to go thank the cops. I did, shaking each hand, and then bounded up the airplane stairs. I couldn’t look at the pilots or my security team for fear that I might get emotional. They were quiet. The helicopters then broadcast our plane’s taxi and takeoff. Those images were all over the news. President Trump, who apparently watches quite a bit of TV at the White House, saw those images of me thanking the cops and flying away. They infuriated him. Early the next morning, he called McCabe and told him he wanted an investigation into how I had been allowed to use the FBI plane to return from California. McCabe replied that he could look into how I had been allowed to fly back to Washington, but that he didn’t need to. He had authorized it, McCabe told the president. The plane had to come back, the security detail had to come back, and the FBI was obligated to return me safely. The president exploded. He ordered that I was not to be allowed back on FBI property again, ever. My former staff boxed up my belongings as if I had died and delivered them to my home. The order kept me from seeing and offering some measure of closure to the people of the FBI, with whom I had become very close. Trump had done a lot of yelling during the campaign about McCabe and his former candidate wife. He had been fixated on it ever since. Still in a fury at McCabe, Trump then asked him, “Your wife lost her election in Virginia, didn’t she?” “Yes, she did,” Andy replied. The president of the United States then said to the acting director of the FBI, “Ask her how it feels to be a loser” and hung up the phone.

During the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, when northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. News rapidly spread about this remarkable young girl. With each victory, her reputation began to grow, until she became a folk heroine, rallying the French around her. French troops, once on the verge of total collapse, scored decisive victories that paved the way for the coronation of the new king. However, she was betrayed and captured by the English. They realized what a threat she posed to them, since she was a potent symbol for the French and claimed guidance directly from God Himself, so they subjected her to a show trial. After an elaborate interrogation, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen in 1431. In the centuries that followed, hundreds of attempts have been made to understand this remarkable teenager. Was she a prophet, a saint, or a madwoman? More recently, scientists have tried to use modern psychiatry and neuroscience to explain the lives of historical figures such as Joan of Arc. Few question her sincerity about claims of divine inspiration. But many scientists have written that she might have suffered from schizophrenia, since she heard voices. Others have disputed this fact, since the surviving records of her trial reveal a person of rational thought and speech. The English laid several theological traps for her. They asked, for example, if she was in God’s grace. If she answered yes, then she would be a heretic, since no one can know for certain if they are in God’s grace. If she said no, then she was confessing her guilt, and that she was a fraud. Either way, she would lose. In a response that stunned the audience, she answered, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” The court notary, in the records, wrote, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.” In fact, the transcripts of her interrogation are so remarkable that George Bernard Shaw put literal translations of the court record in his play Saint Joan. More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can’t help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. Some psychologists have speculated that a number of history’s prophets suffered from these temporal lobe epileptic lesions, since they were convinced they talked to God.

Two other points came through in almost every interview. One was the Greg Smart Memorial Fund, which was in truth a fund-raiser for her own course. “Every kid who comes through this course will share a piece of Greg,” she told the Derry News.

The 1991-92 trial of Hulon Mitchell, leader of the black, Miami-based Yahweh sect, brought to light what may be some of the most shocking antiwhite murders ever committed in the United States—but they remained mainly local news. Mr. Mitchell’s cult was based on a theory of the white man as devil, which he spread in various ways. One was to show cult members—men, women, and children alike—the vilest possible pornographic videos of white women having sex with animals or black men. He would call the woman “Miss Ann” and claim that her degradation proved she was a she-devil. He also gave a regular course in hatred of whites, which came to be known as the Killing Class. “How many of you would bring back a white head?” he would ask, and everyone would raise his hand. He would then shout, “One day, Yahweh is going to kill the white devil off the planet. We’re going to catch him and we’re going to kill him wherever we find him. All over America, white heads are going to roll!”311 A number of Yahweh sect members were ordered by Mr. Mitchell to seek out and kill white devils—and they did as they were told. Robert Rozier, a former Yahweh sect member and onetime professional football player, testified in January 1992 that he killed three “white devils” on instructions from Mr. Mitchell. It made no difference whom he killed as long as his victims were white. The first two “white devils” were Mr. Rozier’s roommates. However, Mr. Mitchell would not acknowledge these killings because Mr. Rozier failed to bring back the heads as proof. When it was pointed out that it was awkward to be seen walking about Miami with a human head, Mr. Mitchell relaxed the requirements and said he would be satisfied with an ear. Mr. Rozier took to riding the subways with a twelve-inch sword, looking for “white devils” to kill. When he finally got his man, he brought back an ear as a trophy. All told, members of the sect appear to have killed at least seven different “white devils,” beginning in 1986, and ears or fingers were usually brought in as proof of a mission accomplished. Sect members also killed several blacks, but they were apostates and other sworn enemies. The sect killed white people out of pure racial hatred.

Kate had been preoccupied since Detective Duncan Ross had left her that evening; she was still deep in shock. The news came through a week later that she was definitely needed in England for questioning. Kate immediately called her lawyer. “Mr. Collins, hello, it is Kate Walker.” “Kate, how are you? What can I do for you?” “How did you know that I want something from you?” “Kate, I do read the papers. I am sorry for you, Kate, your home burning down and then the police finding the body of a woman inside.” “Mr. Collins, the police want me to come to England. I am terrified, I do not know anything about it.” “Kate, come home. I will help you. There is no need for you to be nervous, you had nothing to do with this tragedy.” “There you see, you think I know something about it.

What he had not foreseen about Miami, though, was the plethora of stories like his. He had also not realized that there would be homeless families sleeping under a bridge a few feet from the luxury hotel that he was helping to erect. The poor dead children he heard about in the news were also a shock to him, the the ones who were randomly gunned down by the police or by one another, in schools, in their homes, while walking in the street, or playing in city parks.

What he had not foreseen about Miami, though, was the plethora of stories like his. He had also not realized that there would be homeless families sleeping under a bridge a few feet from the luxury hotel that he was helping to erect. The poor dead children he heard about in the news were also a shock to him, the ones who were randomly gunned down by the police or by one another, in schools, in their homes, while walking in the street, or playing in city parks.

What news!” Catherine wrote back. “Unbelievable, fantastic and slightly shocking. I’m so excited.” (Catherine soon wrote a letter to our grandmother, asking why our mother was having another baby, given that she hadn’t stayed with her first two children, to which our grandmother wrote back, “What a smart girl you are.”)

It’s as if I am not telling her something that she doesn’t already know. Looking her up and down, I realize that this is not news to her. She clumsily tries to cover it up with a head shake and a look of shock on her face but I can feel it in my gut that I’m right. I didn’t realize how right I was until this very moment.

A special session of the legislature of the People’s State of Chile had been called for ten o’clock this morning, to pass an act of utmost importance to the people of Chile, Argentina and other South American People’s States. In line with the enlightened policy of Señor Ramirez, the new Head of the Chilean State—who came to power on the moral slogan that man is his brother’s keeper—the legislature was to nationalize the Chilean properties of d’Anconia Copper, thus opening the way for the People’s State of Argentina to nationalize the rest of the d’Anconia properties the world over. This, however, was known only to a very few of the top-level leaders of both nations. The measure had been kept secret in order to avoid debate and reactionary opposition. The seizure of the multibillion dollar d’Anconia Copper was to come as a munificent surprise to the country. “On the stroke of ten, in the exact moment when the chairman’s gavel struck the rostrum, opening the session—almost as if the gavel’s blow had set it off—the sound of a tremendous explosion rocked the hall, shattering the glass of its windows. It came from the harbor, a few streets away—and when the legislators rushed to the windows, they saw a long column of flame where once there had risen the familiar silhouette of the ore docks of d’Anconia Copper. The ore docks had been blown to bits. “The chairman averted panic and called the session to order. The act of nationalization was read to the assembly, to the sound of fire-alarm sirens and distant cries. It was a gray morning, dark with rain clouds, the explosion had broken an electric transmitter—so that the assembly voted on the measure by the light of candles, while the red glow of the fire kept sweeping over the great vaulted ceiling above their heads. “But more terrible a shock came later, when the legislators called a hasty recess to announce to the nation the good news that the people now owned d’Anconia Copper. While they were voting, word had come from the closest and farthest points of the globe that there was no d’Anconia Copper left on earth. Ladies and gentlemen, not anywhere. In that same instant, on the stroke of ten, by an infernal marvel of synchronization, every property of d’Anconia Copper on the face of the globe, from Chile to Siam to Spain to Pottsville, Montana, had been blown up and swept away.

A mix of local news, world news, and shocking headlines coupled with experience and real life scenarios coated with imagination and intimate thoughts... the ones you can't say aloud = BOOKS

Daily news reports of various crimes actually affirm and support the humanistic insistence that humans are essentially good. It is, paradoxically, the fact that we read of horrific things in the news on a daily basis that bolsters an abiding faith in humanity. Indeed, there is no greater evidence for the veracity of humanism than the daily news. How so? Simple: it is because the news reports on what is rare, what is unusual, what is out of the ordinary. That’s why murder and rape are headlines: because they are notable exceptions to otherwise decent, everyday human behavior. If humanity were naturally, intrinsically evil—if people’s default position were bad, immoral, unethical—then the newspaper would look very different. It would be replete with shocking, unbelievable headlines such as: ...“Couple Takes Morning Walk Every Day Around Their Neighborhood Without Incident!” … But we don’t see such headlines, because they are the mundane, all-too-expected stuff of cooperative, communal, daily human life.

In the elation of the news and without thinking, he swept Hannah into his arms and planted his lips on hers. Shock registered in her brain at the kiss before she let it go.

Meanwhile, I was kind of detached, despite the terrible pain. I was watching all the drama unfold. Later they told me I was in shock, but I remember enjoying the ride to the hospital because I never thought I’d ride in an ambulance with the sirens wailing. It was one of those things I had always wanted to do when I was growing up. When we got there, they told me there were news crews outside, so I asked for my glove. There’s a famous shot of me waving from the stretcher with my glove on.

Of course, it didn’t burst. It kept right on beating. It beat away happily as a new engagement was announced to the kingdom. The news was greeted almost universally with pleasure. Lady Marissa never quite recovered from the shock, but she was in the minority. It beat on as my family arrived from the forest to grace our wedding with their presence. And it beat particularly fast as I walked down the white carpet one last time, my eyes fixed on two spots of blue shining above a tall, white and gold figure. It beat with joy as I snuggled inside my husband’s arms as we honeymooned in his hunting lodge, deep in the woods. And it beat on as news trickled in from all over the kingdom about the spectacular early harvest. Queen Eleanor was gracious enough to credit us with the change in the kingdom’s fortunes, but I suspected her own, newly-restored, true love had a little something to do with it as well.

As far as real life goes, however, serial homicide no longer commands the kind of attention it once did. In the fall of 2018, a seventy-eight-year-old convict named Samuel Little, serving three life sentences for the murders of three Los Angeles women in the 1980s, admitted to police that he had committed more than ninety murders over a five-decade span, picking up “vulnerable women from bars, nightclubs and along streets and strangl[ing] them to death in the back seat of his car.”7 The claim—which authorities believed to be true—would make him the most prolific serial sex-killer in the annals of US crime. Though Little’s shocking revelation was certainly noted in the national press, it disappeared from the news within days and, from all available evidence, barely made a dent in public awareness—a radical difference from the days when, for example, the confessions of Henry Lee Lucas rocketed him to instant (and lasting) nationwide notoriety.

People are shopping these days. The stores are crowded. Buyers are intent but not gay. The news of the atomic bomb came as a terrible shock to everybody, and the easiest way to take your mind off it is to buy things.

It might not sound like it, but the theme of this chapter is optimism. We are amid a modern health crisis. The good news is that our system can be fixed, and the crisis can end. Just 120 years ago, starvation, malnutrition, and early death were the norm. Tuberculosis and pneumonia were leading causes of death. Life expectancy in the United States was around age forty-seven. Back then, 30 percent of all U.S. deaths occurred in children under five years of age, compared to just 1.4 percent in 1999. If you transported someone living in those times to the present day, they’d be in utter shock as they tried to process society’s advancements. There is no

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The final stage of Cee’s healing had been, for her, the worst. She was to be sun-smacked, which meant spending at least one hour a day with her legs spread open to the blazing sun. Each woman agreed that that embrace would rid her of any remaining womb sickness. Cee, shocked and embarrassed, refused. Suppose someone, a child, a man, saw her all splayed out like that? “Nobody going to be looking at you,” they said. “And if they do? So what?” “You think your twat is news?

Public surveys showed that, just as Fox News audiences were shockingly misinformed following the 9/11 bombings, CNN viewers and New York Times readers were catastrophically misinformed about the facts of COVID-19 during 2020. Successive Gallup polling showed that the average Democrat believed that 50 percent of COVID infections resulted in hospitalizations. The real number was less than one percent.30 Trust

This is how we know that Anthony Fauci was well aware of remdesivir’s toxicity when he orchestrated its approval for COVID patients. NIAID sponsored that project. Dr. Fauci had another NIAID-incubated drug, ZMapp, in the same clinical trial, testing efficacy against Ebola alongside two experimental monoclonal antibody drugs. Researchers planned to administer all four drugs to Ebola patients across Africa over a period of four to eight months.10,11 However, six months into the Ebola study, the trial’s Safety Review Board suddenly pulled both remdesivir and ZMapp from the trial.12 Remdesivir, it turned out, was hideously dangerous. Within 28 days, subjects taking remdesivir had lethal side effects including multiple organ failure, acute kidney failure, septic shock, and hypotension, and 54 percent of the remdesivir group died—the highest mortality rate among the four experimental drugs.13 Anthony Fauci’s drug, ZMapp, ran up the second-highest body count at 44 percent. NIAID was the primary funder of this study, and its researchers published the bad news about remdesivir in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2019.

Thursday, John was arrested. His mug shot was plastered all over the news and social media. Our house was in shambles, ransacked by police, and left in utter disarray, with my files thrown around like confetti by the officers executing the search warrant. I searched for comforting words for my young daughters, while trying to reconcile what I knew and didn’t know about my husband and his secret life. All this under the spotlight of the public watching our family catastrophe unfold in real time. My husband of ten years went to jail, guilty as charged of something no one wants to talk about: sexual assault of a minor he had met online. And there I was, at the base of Mount Crisis.

In May 1985 the historic paper was published that announced an “ozone hole” in the Southern Hemisphere.11 The news shocked the scientific world. If true, the results proved that humankind had already exceeded a global limit. CFC use had grown above sustainable limits. Humans were already in the process of destroying their ozone shield. Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States (NASA) scrambled to check readings on atmospheric ozone made by the Nimbus 7 satellite, measurements that had been taken routinely since 1978. Nimbus 7 had never indicated an ozone hole. Checking back, NASA scientists found that their computers had been programmed to reject very low ozone readings on the assumption that such low readings must indicate instrument error.12 Fortunately the measurements thrown out by the computer were recoverable. They confirmed the Halley Bay observations, showing that ozone levels had been dropping over the South Pole for a decade. Furthermore, they provided a detailed map of the hole in the ozone layer. It was enormous, about the size of the continental United States, and it had been getting larger and deeper every year.

One piece of AI, called the generator, is instructed to create a deepfake showing, for example, Hillary Clinton endorsing Ron DeSantis. The generator is provided with sufficient raw data, including video footage and voice recordings of Clinton. It then uses the data to create an initial video. That video is passed to a different piece of AI, called the discriminator. The discriminator’s job is to sniff out counterfeits. When it looks at the generator’s first draft of the video, it can tell it’s a fake. So, the discriminator passes it back to the generator and basically says, “Fake news!” The generator looks at what tipped the discriminator off that the video was counterfeit, makes some changes to address those issues, and then sends it back to the discriminator for another evaluation. It fails the “sniff test” again, and the clip goes back to the generator for a third iteration. Rinse and repeat a million times or more. Finally, maybe on version 1,438,847, the discriminator looks at the video and says, in effect, “Holy cow! Hillary Clinton endorsed Ron DeSantis!

In January 2017, doctors diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer; for a while, I was shocked to hear that since I went to the urologist in 2016 for the entire year, the doctor did not consider it seriously that I had bleeding in my urine and burning. Consequently, I became a victim of chronic cancer, and doctors cannot cure it; treatment only can prolong life. However, I am a true believer that miracles can cure every disease with the grace of Allah. In that situation, I started to write my autobiography and completed it in a few months. Waseem Malik, the editor-in-chief of Daily Dharti, published that in its online news portal. The characters that caused me distress, harassment, and criminal attempts to gain their immoral and ugly motives are still busy practicing such activities. I cannot believe such mindless criminals and scoundrels, with fake female names on their profiles, try to victimize sincere people.

In 1952, a year after becoming Chabad’s leader, the Rebbe undertook to send a newly married couple to serve as shluchim in Brazil. Unlike the Lipskers, in this case the bride and her parents, all three Lubavitchers, were very unhappy with the Rebbe’s request. The father, who held a key position for the movement in Israel, couldn’t comprehend the idea of his daughter and son-in-law moving to a country with little Jewish infrastructure in place, and he wrote to the Rebbe to express his unhappiness. We possess no copy of the father’s letter, but the basic content of what he said is clear from the Rebbe’s response (when the letter was published, the Rebbe, as was his custom, omitted all names). The father, clearly pleased about the marriage, wrote that the family’s “happy event was [now] disturbed” by the news that the couple were to be sent abroad. It seems apparent from the Rebbe’s response that the father made no effort to disguise his displeasure at what the Rebbe had done. The Rebbe was in no way apologetic. He wrote in his capacity as a leader, in a sense as a military general who understood the need to deploy his troops where they were most needed, to “a place where your son-in-law and your daughter can fully utilize their potential.” The Rebbe acknowledged that moving to a foreign and largely nonobservant Jewish community requires a certain measure of self-sacrifice (mesirut nefesh), but he then posed a rhetorical question intended to overwhelm any further opposition. To paraphrase: “If one can’t expect such self-sacrifice from a graduate of our yeshiva, one who is a child as well of such a graduate and who is married to the daughter of such a graduate, if even from such people one can’t ask for a measure of self-sacrifice, then upon whom can one rely?” The Rebbe proceeded to offer both a carrot and a stick. Thus, he assured the father—knowing that the letter would be read by his daughter as well—that the couple would flourish in every meaningful manner by undertaking such a mission: “The vastness of the good fortune that will result if they accept this offer, including good fortune in a physical sense, is obvious to me.” On the other hand—and the Rebbe stated this as a fact, not a threat—refusing such a mission would cut the couple off from the work of the Previous Rebbe (who had died just two years earlier), and, by implication, from the Rebbe himself. Although he expressed “shock” that an offer to spread “the light of Torah and Chasidus” to unknowledgeable Jews could lead to the parents feeling that their happiness had been “disturbed,” he also set down, near the letter’s end, his trademark conclusion: “As stated above, I am not giving an order, Heaven forbid. This is only a suggestion.

The churches are all closed. She was surprised how shocked she'd been to hear this news. Judy might be a lapsed Catholic, but she'd always assumed that, all her life, mass would be carrying on somewhere. Thinking of the silent churches, the unconsumed communion wafers, the empty chalices, makes her feel strangely panicky.

Darren McGrady Darren McGrady was personal chef to Princess Diana until her tragic accident. He is now a private chef in Dallas, Texas, and a board member of the Pink Ribbons Crusade: A Date with Diana. His cookbook, titled Eating Royally: Recipes and Remembrances from a Palace Kitchen, will be released in August 2007 by Rutledge Hill Press. His website is located at theroyalchef. I knew Princess Diana for fifteen years, but it was those last four years after I became a part of her everyday life that I really got to know her. For me, one of the benefits of being a Buckingham Palace chef was the chance to speak to “Lady Di.” I had seen her in the newspapers; who hadn’t? She was beautiful. The whole world was in love with her and fascinated by this “breath of fresh air” member of the Royal Family. The first time I met her, I just stood and stared. As she chatted away with the pastry chef in the Balmoral kitchen, I thought she was even more beautiful in real life than her pictures in the daily news. Over the years, I’ve read account after account of how the Princess could light up a room, how people would become mesmerized by her natural beauty, her charm, and her poise. I couldn’t agree more. In time, I became a friendly face to the Princess and was someone she would seek out when she headed to the kitchens. At the beginning, she would pop in “just for a glass of orange juice.” Slowly, her visits became more frequent and lasted longer. We would talk about the theater, hunting, or television; she loved Phantom of the Opera and played the CD in her car. After she and Prince Charles separated, I became her private chef at Kensington Palace, and our relationship deepened as her trust in me grew. It was one of the Princess’s key traits; if she trusted you, then you were privy to everything on her mind. If she had been watching Brookside--a UK television soap opera--then we chatted about that. If the Duchess of York had just called her with some gossip about “the family,” she wanted to share that, too. “You’ll never believe what Fergie has just told me,” she would announce, bursting into the kitchen with excitement. She loved to tell jokes, even crude ones, and would laugh at the shock on my face--not so much because of the joke, but because it was the Princess telling it. Her laughter was infectious.

news arrived several days later of the appalling defeat of Elizabeth’s army by the Irish rebels at Blackwater Fort—a defeat now infamously known as the Battle of the Yellow Ford. The Earl of Tyrone—indeed he had taken the title of The O’Neill—was being hailed as the King of Ireland, and he had quickly and with frightening ease begun bringing all of that blighted country under his control. His armies—unbelievable that they could be called armies at all—had streamed south into Leinster and Munster, overrunning the Pale and the plantations till there was hardly an English settler left in Ireland who was not dead or running for his life. All over the country the Crown’s armies, foolishly packed with Irish recruits, soon found those soldiers turning coat and defecting to the other side, most of them carrying with them their English weapons. The shock and horror of The Yellow Ford had, in one afternoon, seen Henry Bagenal and two thousand of his men slaughtered, and brought England to its knees. ’Twas unthinkable, but Ireland was on the brink of being lost to a pack of ragged rebels! Elizabeth, humiliated and furious, had raged at her council to do something.

Well before Trump, we had wars fought as televised entertainment. The 1990 Gulf War was dubbed the first video-game war, complete with its own logo and theme music on CNN. But that was nothing compared with the show put on during the 2003 Iraq invasion, based on a military strategy called “Shock and Awe.” The attacks were designed as a spectacle for cable news consumers, but also for Iraqis, to maximize their sense of helplessness, to “teach them a lesson.” Now, that fearsome technology is in the hands of the first reality TV president.

Ben realised that shock was setting in. He smiled reassuringly and said that he would leave her with the WPC for a few minutes while he went to get news of Barney. To his relief, as soon as he mentioned her dog she began to calm down.

There are two distinct types of complaints that you will receive: 1. Complaints about an executive’s behavior 2. Complaints about an executive’s competency or performance Generally, the best way to handle the first type of complaint is to get the complaining executive and the targeted executive in the room together and have them explain themselves. Usually, simply having this meeting will resolve the conflict and correct the behavior and improve the relationship (if it was actually broken). Do not attempt to address behavioral issues without both executives in the room. Doing so will invite manipulation and politics. Complaints of the second type are both more rare and more complex. If one of your executives summons the courage to complain about the competency of one of their peers, then there is a good chance that either the complainer or the targeted executive has a major problem. If you receive this type of complaint, you will generally have one of two reactions: they will be telling you something that you already know, or they’ll be telling you shocking news.

In 1985, an ABC News poll showed that 60 percent of parents worried that their children might be victimized. To this day, many parents warn their children not to eat any snacks that aren’t prepackaged. This is a sad story: a family holiday sullied by bad people who, inexplicably, wish to harm children. But in 1985 the story took a strange twist. Researchers discovered something shocking about the candy-tampering epidemic: It was a myth. The researchers, sociologists Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, studied every reported Halloween incident since 1958. They found no instances where strangers caused children life-threatening harm on Halloween by tampering with their candy. Two children did die on Halloween, but their deaths weren’t caused by strangers. A five-year-old boy found his uncle’s heroin stash and overdosed. His relatives initially tried to cover their tracks by sprinkling heroin on his candy. In another case, a father, hoping to collect on an insurance settlement, caused the death of his own son by contaminating his candy with cyanide. In other words, the best social science evidence reveals that taking candy from strangers is perfectly okay. It’s your family you should worry about.

A young woman doctor had broken the news to her that she had cancer. She had been very gentle, very sympathetic. ‘Sit down, Mrs Bowman,’ she had said. ‘Don’t hold in your feelings. Cry if you want to. It’s bound to be a shock.’ But Mrs Bowman had not felt like crying. The first sensation had been of exhilaration. This is it then, she had thought. It’s all over but I’ve had a good life. She had one son, but for years he had lived in New Zealand. No one would miss her. She had never been one for taking risks and this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. There was something dramatic about being incurably ill and she had expected a sudden change in her condition, then the final adventure of death. She

Hi, Dale, it’s Gabby...Clay’s girlfriend.”  It felt weird giving myself that title, but I pushed it aside.  Bigger issues to deal with.  “If he’s there, can I talk to him?” Dale chuckled.  “Sure, but I don’t imagine it’d be much of a conversation.” I heard him call out to Clay.  A moment later, a husky voice said, “Hello?” After not talking to me for so long, hearing his voice startled and annoyed me slightly.  He would talk to a perfect stranger, but not me?  I opened my mouth to say something about it, but the pain in my head insistently prodded me to get on with the important news. “Clay, I did it again.  I’m at the diner where we had breakfast.  I need you to come get me before it gets worse.” He didn’t say anything for so long that I looked at the phone to see if I still had a signal.  The screen said disconnected.  Would it have killed him to say “Okay” or maybe even “Bye” before hanging up?  His hello had been too shocking to recall the sound of his voice. I sighed and put my cell away.  With Sam’s frequent calls and Rachel’s occasional texts, my remaining minutes dipped into the double digits.  I needed to adjust my budget to buy more airtime.  Did life really need to throw me this many curveballs?  And all at once? I forced myself to eat more of my mostly untouched meal so the waitress wouldn’t bother me as I waited. The last of the waves hit me.  Only determination and a hand over my mouth kept me from whimpering.  After about ten minutes, I settled the bill and watched out the window for Clay, barely checking the need to curl into a ball and lie down on the padded bench.  The waitress kept a close eye on me, probably thinking she would need to clean up barf soon.  She might. Dale’s huge tow truck pulled into the parking lot.  Clay opened his door and leapt out while it still rolled to a stop.  Through the window, he spotted me.  His eyes never left me as he strode in and Dale pulled away. Clay still wore his greasy coveralls, and with his hair pulled back, he looked like an angel—a grimy one—coming to save me.  Again. “Hi,

Kahnawake August 1704 Temperature 75 degrees “It’s me! Mercy Carter! Oh, Mr. Williams! Do you have news?” She flung herself on top of him. Oh, his beautiful beard! The beard of a real father, not a pretend Indian father or a French church father. “My brothers,” she begged. “John and Sam and Benny. Have you seen them? Have you heard anything about them? Do you know what happened to the little ones? Daniel? Have you found Daniel?” Mercy had forgotten that she had taken off her tunic to go swimming. That Joseph did not even have on his breechclout. That Mercy wore earrings and Joseph had been tattooed on his upper arms. That they stank of bear. Mr. Williams did not recognize Joseph, and Mercy he knew only by the color of her hair. He was stupefied by the two naked slimy children trying to hug him. In ore horror than even Ruth would have mustered, he whispered, “Your parents would be weeping. What have the savages done to you? You are animals.” Despair and shock mottled Mr. Williams’s face. Mercy stumbled back from him. Her bear grease stained his clothing. “Mercy,” he said, turning away from her, “go cover yourself.” Shame covered her first. Red patches flamed on her cheeks. She ran back to the swimmers, fighting sobs. She was aware of her bare feet, hard as leather from no shoes. Savage feet. Dear Lord in Heaven, thought Mercy, Ruth is right. I have committed terrible sins. My parents would be weeping. She did not look at Snow Walker but yanked on the deerskin tunic. She had tanned the hide herself, and she and Nistenha had painted the rows of turtles around the neckline and Nistenha had tied tiny tinkling French bells into the fringe. But it was still just animal skin. To be wearing hides in front of Mr. Williams was not much better than being naked. Snow Walker burst out of the water. “The white man? Was he cruel? I will call Tannhahorens.” No! Tannhahorens would not let her speak to Mr. Williams. She would never find out about her brothers; never redeem herself in the minister’s eyes. Mercy calmed down with the discipline of living among Indians. Running had shown weakness. “Thank you, Snow Walker,” she said, striving to be gracious, “but he merely wanted me to be clothed like an English girl. There is no need to call Tannhahorens.” She walked back. On the jetty, Joseph stood with his eyes fixed on the river instead of on his minister. He had not fled like Mercy to cover himself. He was standing his ground. “They aren’t savages, Mr. Williams. And they aren’t just Indians. Those children over there are Abenaki, the boy fishing by the rocks is Pennacook, and my own family is Kahnawake Mohawk.” Tears sprang into Mr. Williams’s eyes. “What do you mean--your family?” he said. “Joseph, you do not have a family in this terrible place. You have a master. Do not confuse savages who happen to give you food with family.” Joseph’s face hardened. “They are my family. My father is Great Sky. My mother--” The minister lost his temper. “Your father is Martin Kellogg,” he shouted, “with whom I just dined in Montreal. You refer to some savage as your father? I am ashamed of you.” Under his tan, Joseph paled and his Indian calm left him. He was trembling. “My--my father? Alive? You saw him?” “Your father is a field hand for a French family in Montreal. He works hard, Joseph. He has no choice. But you have choices. Have you chosen to abandon your father?” Joseph swallowed and wet his lips. “No.” He could barely get the syllable out. Don’t cry, prayed Mercy. Be an eagle. She fixed her eyes upon him, giving him all her strength, but Mr. Williams continued to destroy whatever strength the thirteen-year-old possessed. “Your father prays for the day you and he will be ransomed, Joseph. All he thinks of is the moment he can gather his beloved family back under his own roof. Is that not also your prayer, Joseph?

Jill’s story is typical of those of so many other suffering individuals: My lupus story began in 1992, when I was thirty-two years old. I had experienced severe joint pains, fatigue, and a red facial rash. The blood tests came back specific for lupus. At first I thought this was good news—a diagnosis, now we can do something about it. Well, I was then told there is no cure and I would have to live with it and take medication for the rest of my life. I was even told by the rheumatologist that I might die from it. Even with the medications, I had a constant low-grade fever, low energy, a bright red face, stiffness, and joint pain. I could not accept this death sentence and a life dependent on toxic drugs. I researched everything I could find about this disease and tried changing to a vegetarian diet and alternative medicine with some degree of success. I lived in Virginia and took a train trip up to New Jersey to visit Dr. Fuhrman. I was convinced to take the next step to regain my health and decided to adopt a healthier, “whole foods diet” and do some fasting. Soon I felt like a teenager again; my face was cool and white for the first time in years, my joints felt great, and I had lots of energy. I lost a little weight and looked great. I went back to visit my rheumatologist, who was on staff at a teaching hospital. I just knew he was going to be interested in my story and recovery from lupus. When I started to tell him of my experience and my newfound good health, he wrote “spontaneous recovery” in the chart. I was shocked. He was not the least bit interested in hearing the details of my recovery, and practically walked out of the room when I started to explain what happened. Now, nine years later, I remain free from the symptoms of lupus. Lupus is no longer part of my life. I play tennis and compete on a local team. No one who knows me today would ever guess that I used to be in so much pain that I couldn’t even shake someone’s hand.

All right, Kitten. Tell me what’s going on.” I kissed her shoulder because it was the only place my lips could reach without wrenching her arms away. I felt her chest rise and fall beneath mine, and her grip tighten before she said, “We’re going to have a baby.” Wait… what? “Wait… what?” “I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant and we’re going to have a baby.” I think, though I can’t be certain, time stopped. I know I stopped breathing. This news felt suspiciously like getting into a fist fight, having the shit beaten out of me, all the while knowing I would reign victorious… except without the pain. It was the opposite of pain. It was adrenaline, euphoria, violence, and apocalyptic shock and awe. These sensations paired with a Neanderthal-like surge of fierce protectiveness for this woman. My woman. My child. My family. All of it combined into an uncontainable screaming between my ears, an uncontrollable FUCK YEAH!

Kincaid wondered what universal formula required that a person should sit down to receive bad news. Was it merely a precaution against fainting or falling, or had it become a kind of foreshadowing, effective in easing the shock?

Tracy Bridges, one of the Appalachian Law School heroes.13 Tracy related how “shocked” he had been by the news coverage. While Tracy had carefully described to over fifty reporters what had happened, discussing how he had to point his gun at Peter and yell at Peter to drop his gun, the media had consistently reported that the incident had ended by the students tackling the killer. When I relayed what the Washington Post had reported, Tracy quickly mentioned that he had spent a considerable amount of time talking about what actually happened, face-to-face, with Maria Glod of the Post. He sounded stunned that the Post would report the events the way it did.14

Suddenly, she blurted out, “You’re blind!” Which is true. Due to a sickness, he lost his sight when he was just a small child. With genuine tenderness, Father Gillick responded, “That’s not news to me.” But before he could say anything else, she quickly moved from shock to sadness, replying, “You don’t know what you look like.” That profound statement from such a young person caught Father Gillick off guard, and before he could comment she softly said, “You’re beautiful.” I’m deeply moved every time I think about that little exchange. It’s a very human story in which many of us can find our own story tucked inside. When it comes to recognizing the truth of our own identities, most of us experience a symbolic version of blindness that keeps us from seeing ourselves for who we really are.

I GOT A PHONE CALL ONE DAY FROM A FRIEND WHO HAD RECENTLY opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was giddy with a curious piece of news. Something fascinating had just happened, and she thought that, as a psychologist, I might be able to explain it to her. The story involved a certain allotment of turquoise jewelry she had been having trouble selling. It was the peak of the tourist season, the store was unusually full of customers, the turquoise pieces were of good quality for the prices she was asking; yet they had not sold. My friend had attempted a couple of standard sales tricks to get them moving. She tried calling attention to them by shifting their location to a more central display area; no luck. She even told her sales staff to "push" the items hard, again without success. Finally, the night before leaving on an out-of-town buying trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman, "Everything in this display case, price x %," hoping just to be rid of the offending pieces, even if at a loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised to find that every article had been sold. She was shocked, though, to discover that, because the employee had read the "%" in her scrawled message as a "2," the entire allotment had sold out at twice the original price! That's

Despite the perma-shock in which many of us have lived our entire lives, with alarms in our ears made only more shrill by 24 hour news cycles, and unrelenting internet death row photos of dogs and cats at animal shelters, we inexplicably expect our shocking truths--that ours is a society built on oppression, rape and murder--to get heard the first time through. When the truths aren't heard, we end up beyond frustrated. We butt up against other people's moral hypocrisies and shut down as we hear the same stories about people who are compassionate but still eat animals. We grow weary of taking people's hands and walking them down the road to see the more than 23 million chickens killed for food every day in the U.S. And we forget that people can't see the animals hiding in their words and signifiers; we forget that we can't see them either. Beyond beef and bacon, there are other words that hide animals: deforestation, road construction, housing development, war. We must learn to be attuned to those words. And we have to learn how to speak kindly to people who are thinking about them, even if they don't recognize the absent referents in their speech. When we are thinking about how oppressors have guns, prisons, and slaughterhouses, we remember that words are weapons. When we turn them on each other and our potential allies, we forget. Out of frustration over all the things that haven't gotten better, we resort to name calling, dismiss the possibility of bridge building with other movements and within our own, and retreat back to internet cliques to discuss cupcake recipes or bash something read in the Huffington Post.

Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.

The president and Colson were in the middle of their conversation about Henry Kissinger when assistant Steve Bull entered the Oval Office to report that Coach Allen of the Redskins had finally arrived. Bull also informed the president of the news, just filtering in, that baseball star Roberto Clemente was on a plane that had crashed after taking off from the San Juan International Airport late the night before. “Was he killed?” Nixon asked. “They don’t have confirmation yet,” Bull replied.1 Clemente, the popular outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, had boarded a rickety four-engine DC-7 plane that was overloaded with relief supplies for the victims of a massive earthquake in Nicaragua. The earthquake was believed to have resulted in the deaths of more than seven thousand people. Most of the deaths had occurred in the capital city of Managua, which had taken the brunt of the 6.2 magnitude shock at midday on Saturday, December 23.2 The city was leveled. The lumbering plane that Clemente was on nose-dived into heavy seas shortly after takeoff from San Juan. Clemente was thirty-eight years old and had been a perennial All-Star, four-time winner of the National League batting championship, defensive genius, and MVP in 1966. He led the Pirates to two world championships, one in 1960 and the other a decade later in 1971. “Mr. Clemente was the leader of Puerto Rican efforts to aid the Nicaraguan victims and was aboard the plane because he suspected that relief supplies were falling into the hands of profiteers,” the New York Times reported after his death was presumed.3 Clemente was scheduled to meet Anastasio Somoza, the military dictator of Nicaragua, at the airport, one of the very grafters he was attempting to circumvent with his personal mission. Clemente’s body was never recovered. It was a bad omen for the start of 1973.

As Lee recovered from the shock of news of their upcoming marriage, he vowed he would never understand relationships, nor question them again. “Congratulations,

One wonders, then, why God allowed literally tons and mountains of evidence to remain in verification of the Bible. Church leaders have become very concerned by the questions being raised due to the absence of evidence, and the fact that descriptions of cities, rivers, mountains, and journeys in the Book of Mormon cannot be correlated at all with topography and geography. To quiet these questions, for which The Brethren have no answers, an article was published in the Church Section of the Deseret News cautioning Church members about putting too much importance upon facts and evidence: The geography of the Book of Mormon has intrigued some readers of that volume ever since its publication. But why worry about it? Efforts to pinpoint certain places from what is written in the book are fruitless.... Attempts to designate certain areas as the Land Bountiful or the site of Zarahemla or the place where the Nephite city of Jerusalem sank into the sea "and waters have I caused to come up in the stead thereof" can bring no definitive results. So why speculate? To guess where Zarahemla stood can in no wise add to anyone's faith. But to raise doubts in people's minds about the location of the Hill Cumorah, and thus challenge the words of the prophets concerning the place where Moroni buried the records, is most certainly harmful. And who has the right to raise doubts in anyone's mind? Our position is to build faith, not to weaken it, and theories concerning the geography of the Book of Mormon can most certainly undermine faith if allowed to run rampant. Why not leave hidden the things that the Lord has hidden? If He wants the geography of the Book of Mormon revealed, He will do so through His prophet....

A news event in 1995 shocked both sides in the culture war controversy. Norma Leah McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” in the famous Supreme Court case of 1973, converted to Christ, got baptized, and joined the pro-life campaign.

Comic books have more truth than people know. Movies too. We’re trying to get people used to certain concepts, so that if news of the Associates and what they’re doing becomes public, it won’t be a complete shock. We’re seeing progress too, now that comic books and graphic novels are becoming more mainstream.

The moment Jace Calder saw his sister's face, he feared the worst. His heart sank. Emily, his troubled little sister, had been doing so well since she'd gotten the job at the Sarah Hamilton Foundation in Big Timber, Montana. "What's wrong?" he asked as he removed his Stetson, pulled up a chair at the Big Timber Java coffee shop and sat down across from her. Tossing his hat on the seat of an adjacent chair, he braced himself for bad news. Emily blinked her big blue eyes. Even though she was closing in on twenty-five, he often caught glimpses of the girl she'd been. Her pixie cut, once a dark brown like his own hair, was dyed black. From thirteen on, she'd been piercing anything she could. At sixteen she'd begun getting tattoos and drinking. It wasn't until she'd turned seventeen that she'd run away, taken up with a thirty-year-old biker drug-dealer thief and ended up in jail for the first time. But while Emily still had the tattoos and the piercings, she'd changed after the birth of her daughter, and after snagging this job with Bo Hamilton. "What's wrong is Bo," his sister said. Bo had insisted her employees at the foundation call her by her first name. "Pretty cool for a boss, huh?" his sister had said at the time. He'd been surprised. That didn't sound like the woman he knew. But who knew what was in Bo's head lately. Four months ago her mother, Sarah, who everyone believed dead the past twenty-two years, had suddenly shown up out of nowhere. According to what he'd read in the papers, Sarah had no memory of the past twenty-two years. He'd been worried it would hurt the foundation named for her. Not to mention what a shock it must have been for Bo. Emily leaned toward him and whispered, "Bo's… She's gone.

In 2014, when Oxfam arrived in Davos, it came bearing the (then) shocking news that just 85 individuals controlled as much wealth as half of the world’s population combined. This January, that number went down to 80 individuals.

discuss all this here as much more than a pet peeve. Understanding how the television news works and what it does to you is directly relevant to your safety and well-being. First, the fear of crime is itself a form of victimization. But there is a much more practical issue involved: Being exposed to constant alarm and urgency shell-shocks us to the point that it becomes impossible to separate the survival signal from the sound bite. Because it’s sensationalism and not informationalism, we get a distorted view of what actually poses a hazard to us.

Your aunt Rose is dying,” Petranilla said as soon as he was close. “May God bless her soul. Mother Cecilia told me.” “You look shocked—but you know how ill she is.” “It’s not Aunt Rose. I’ve had other bad news.” He swallowed. “I can’t go to Oxford.

So they went to a place that only they knew-- the mixed-nut forest where the mixed-nut trees grew. As the cubs picked almonds and walnuts, pistachios, too, which Papa Bear claimed as his Thanksgiving due, the entire forest started to lurch. The cubs fell like stones from their top-lofty perch. But they landed not with a bone-jarring bump. They landed instead with a comfortable “whump.” For you see, the cubs had been caught in mid-air in the dumpster-sized paw of a monster-sized bear. It was Bigpaw, of course. The monster HAD come. Talk about scared! The normally talkative cubs were struck dumb. Suffice it to say, Something surprising Happened that day. With a bit of a smile and nary a sound, he gently placed them down on the ground. What a shock! What a surprise! For despite his manner and imposing size, Bigpaw was nice, gentle, and shy-- a friendly, helpful sort of a guy. Those cubs knew what they had to do-- tell that only part of the legend was true. Though he was powerful, fearsome, and tall, the monster called Bigpaw was no monster at all. It was important news, so off they hurried, leaving Bigpaw looking a little worried. “Little cubs! Little cubs! You forgot your mixed nuts!” This certainly was true, no ifs, ands, or buts.

As they ate, they would listen to the latest news from Paris, as well as from the BBC in London. None of it was good. Not ever. On the night of May 15, they listened in shock to details of Holland surrendering to the Nazis. By May 28, Belgium had formally surrendered too, though they had long since been overrun. They listened in silent horror to report after report of German forces blazing and murdering their way through northern France and moving steadily toward their beloved Paris. They couldn’t imagine the Germans actually seizing the capital, but on the night of June 10, the BBC reported that the French government had begun evacuating Paris. Four days later, they wept upon hearing reports of the Nazis entering and occupying the capital. Soon the French were signing an armistice with Hitler. Prime Minister Reynaud was stepping down.

It was an embarrassing failure of words—we were all very happy. Shell-shocked by elation would have been a better description of how they’d all felt when they heard Søren had a son. The news was like a bomb going off, and the blast of joy had felled them all.

That’s what starts to happen, when you know it is possible for you to feel pain you have no control over. You become vulnerable. Because the possibility of pain is where love stems from. And that, for me, was very bad news indeed. Sloping roofs (and other ways to deal with the rain) and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, – William Shakespeare, Hamlet   I couldn’t sleep.

When someone hands you shocking news, there is never enough time or space available to accommodate it.

And might I add, sir, I have been an integral part of your journeys and alongside you since Tatooine. I was shocked to hear the news of your nuptials secondhand.

Queen Victoria had written to Spencer saying how “most painfully interested” she was in the Dublin examinations. They are quite thrilling. Will the not finding of the knives (which she fears is likely) cause any difficulty in condemning these monsters? She trusts not. What has struck & shocked her, she must say, is the evidence of that gentleman who described (in May) having seen people wrestling—but no more—proving now that he actually saw all & yet never gave the details before. Surely it is very wrong that he did not do so sooner. A few days later, she impatiently quizzed Harcourt, “Is there any further news? The Queen sees that Mrs. Byrne (who must be a worthy mate of such a Husband), was taken on Sunday.

Customers flooded back to stores dissatisfied with their touch-screen BlackBerrys. Balsillie knew returns were high. What he didn’t realize was how severe the problem was. As their meeting got under way, Verizon’s chief marketing officer, John Stratton, laid out the shocking news to his guests from Waterloo. Virtually every one of the first batch of about 1 million Storms shipped needed replacing. Many of the replacements were being returned as well. The Storm was a complete failure, and he wanted RIM to pay.

Things never changed. The first thing after a shock or bad news was always a cup of tea. Hot and strong and sweet.

I was so lonely,” he heard her say, and he felt her body shaking. “There seemed no point in saying yes, no point in saying no. So, I simply did as he wanted.” “Your father?” Henry said, with understanding, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hair gently. He held her close, in the dark of the foyer, letting his hands and his arms speak for him. She was safe, they said. She was loved, they said. He would never let her feel that way again. He felt her nodding. She lifted her head. “You did not let me finish before,” she said, her eyes widening with some unspoken news. “In the alcove. You distracted me.” She hit him playfully on the chest as he grinned at the memory of how he had indeed distracted them both. “But I had been trying to tell you…” She began. “Wait,” Henry said, with a frown. “Did you hear that?” “What?” She said, looking ever so slightly annoyed. “Let me finish this time, please, Henry.” “A baby,” he said, looking around the foyer wildly. “I thought I heard a baby.” He looked back and was shocked to see her looking unconcerned.

I know guys named after Mussolini and Napoleon. And, of course, Hitler. Westerners are shocked and confused by that, but really it’s a case of the West reaping what it has sown. The colonial powers carved up Africa, put the black man to work, and did not properly educate him. White people don’t talk to black people. So why would black people know what’s going on in the white man’s world? Because of that, many black people in South Africa don’t really know who Hitler was. My own grandfather thought “a hitler” was a kind of army tank that was helping the Germans win the war. Because that’s what he took from what he heard on the news. For many black South Africans, the story of the war was that there was someone called Hitler and he was the reason the Allies were losing the war. This Hitler was so powerful that at some point black people had to go help white people fight against him—and if the white man has to stoop to ask the black man for help fighting someone, that someone must be the toughest guy of all time. So if you want your dog to be tough, you name your dog Hitler. If you want your kid to be tough, you name your kid Hitler. There’s a good chance you’ve got an uncle named Hitler. It’s just a thing.

The orange wave was real. Layton and the NDP won 103 seats on May 2, 2011, and for the first and only time in its history, the party formed the official opposition with Layton at the helm. It was a huge accomplishment for the NDP, but for Jack Layton there was very little time to celebrate. The cancer had returned. It was about to race through his body. Just one hundred and twelve days after election night, the battle against it ended. On August 22, just before five in the morning, my phone rang. I've been around long enough to know that when the phone rings in the middle of the night the odds are it's not good news. It wasn't. "Jack just passed away. We will be announcing it publicly in a few hours. Perhaps you could make it known before then." I got up, showered, and dressed. I drove into Toronto from our home in Stratford thinking about those last conversations we'd had during the campaign. In St. John's after that interview had ended, I'd thanked him for being so frank about his health and his hopes in the few days we'd just spent together. Standing on the dock I'd told him that while he and I had done many interviews in the years before, all my questions in those past years had been so predictable. Before I could say anything, he smiled and looked at me. "And all my answers were so predictable too." We both laughed. It was so true. But 2011 had been different. I parked my car and walked into the studio where Heather Hiscox was hosting her morning show and, to her surprise, I sat down, unannounced, beside her. She could tell something wasn't right and, on air, she asked me what was up. "Jack Layton has just died." Heather's face said it all. She was shocked and saddened, just like so many Canadians of all political stripes were, as they found out in that same moment. A person's life have been stolen from them at the pinnacle of their professional career. The country was instantly in mourning. Two weeks later, Layton's widow, Olivia Chow, returned with me to the spot on Toronto Island where they had been married twenty-three years before and talked about what the final moments had been like. "It was very difficult, but he had no fear. He had no fear. He was ready, so I thought, okay. So we held him.

Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?’ ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters … Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls … shooting stars … and there were a lot of funny-looking people in town today …’ ‘So?’ snapped Mrs Dursley.

In December 1882, “Old Chris” Baker had his cover blown. He was arrested, along with several white medical students, for attempted grave robbery at two African American cemeteries—Oakwood and Sycamore. The arrests were cheered by the Virginia Star, a black-owned publication with Republican ties. The news account focused more on the role of Baker as a traitor to his people than to the mendacity of the white MCV students.

His mom bailed him out last night,” I said. Mom’s face contorted into the same shocked expression as Dad’s face had last night when they’d told him the news. She jerked her head back and forth. “What? No. That’s not possible. His mom died when he was sixteen.” “His mom is alive and well. Always has been. A mighty rich lady too. So was Ray. Turns out that’s where he got all his money. Still has it. He’s worth millions. He never actually worked a day in his life.

It's interesting that I should recall so precisely what I was watching on TV at the time. I'm not sure whether it was the shock of my first bereavement that imprinted the moment so vividly in my memory or the sharp contrast between the fantasy of the show and the reality of my mother's tears. I certainly didn't understand the concept of death, and as such, I didn't truly experience a great sense of loss, I just remember feeling guilty that I had complained about missing my show, as I witnessed Mum struggling to give me the news, a sight far scarier than the Abominable Snowman or the Fiji Mermaid.

Love is what I had (I was ten) Holy, mother of god, we are in the shower together he bubbled up yet not covered up, and back down will it around until I would come, I got some just call me, he was just enjoying me being cute, he washed my hair and played with my body, like my boobs feeling the and rubbing, suck, and kissing them, flicking with his fingers and others, HOT steamy water pouring on our head, as we were hugging it out, and do it all. Rubbing my legs and crap- I say freak, yeah, but I don’t swear like that! I fasten the garter around his hip's legs side to side around his hips, and as I am arching my back to slip the silk stocking off my toes, I unclasped my bar for him to see them fall, as we go to bed for the night, we were body unstop of body, and we even had our toes laced, together on one foot, like our hands. I have to bite my lip to stop my impatient moan from escaping, yet it all comes out of me. Scorching flush rivalries over my skin, my face hot and red that down there pink feeling has a handprint on my body. My figure is shaking with shock at the news of us doing this tonight at this age. A baby they say I show them? No freaking way, no way should I be doing this yet they will never- ever no, NO WAY!!! Unserviceable my awareness is tiresome to grasp this staggering bit of data. Of why… Like a small child gets out and the woman is here to say, I’m downhearted, helplessly trying to fit everything together in my mind, like I should some time you have to say what the hell and go with it and piss on them. My inner goddess is quickly losing my virginity, the light in the room fading recklessly as I see it all there looking at it deeply, but I can’t settle on that now. I am not sure we're ready for all of this just yet. Gritty again I feel as I work my way in, I scan the room for anything I might have elapsed to say when my eyes fall on my ribbons on the wall. I would say anything to make him think about not going in so fast, yet I want it all. The blinking to every downward moment, seeing it all so fast, what to do, it was hard, not slow and good, I don’t remember it all.

Are you going to play for Tipp?’ one of them asked Eoin. He laughed, and thought about his answer. ‘That would be great I suppose,’ he replied. ‘But my pal here is going to be the next manager of Dublin, so I might play for them instead.’ The youngsters looked shocked and ran off to spread the hot news.

In January 2017, doctors diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer; for a while, I was shocked to hear that since I went to the urologist in 2016 for the entire year, the doctor did not consider it seriously that I had bleeding in my urine and burning. Consequently, I became a victim of chronic cancer, and doctors cannot cure it; treatment only can prolong life. However, I am a true believer that miracles can cure every disease with the grace of Allah. In that situation, I started to write my autobiography and completed it in a few months. Waseem Malik, the editor-in-chief of Daily Dharti, published that in its online news portal. The characters that caused me distress, harassment, and criminal attempts to gain their immoral and ugly motives are still busy practicing such activities. I cannot believe such mindless criminals and scoundrels, with fake female names on their profiles, try to victimize sincere people.

My wife and I are that other kind of rich: the misers among you, in our quaint three-bedroom house in the suburbs, unrenovated since the 1990s, one modest hatchback car between us, our big-box store generic clothes, our outdated phones and computers. Lucky in our birthright privileges, in our inheritance, in our jobs, in the stock market, hoarding cash for reasons that stopped being clear to us long ago, that make less and less sense the older we get. We have no children. Our parents are dead. We keep working, we clean our own toilets, rake our own yard. We use our vacations to go camping in-state. We’ll give it all away upon our deaths, and there will be one of those shocked news stories about people like us and our secret millions, the sudden windfall upon our pet causes and distant nieces and nephews. Why don’t we help anyone while we’re alive? Our once-reasonable anxieties grown distorted, outsized, habitual. There will never be enough money to make us feel safe.

By the following year, the rumor had been confirmed. Jefferson then spent much of 1802 contemplating the implications of neighboring a large French holding. His immediate concern was access to New Orleans, where the Mississippi River emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—small streams and rivers as far north as Pennsylvania and New York merged and flowed into the vital Mississippi. Jefferson decided to dispatch James Monroe as a special envoy to negotiate with France. Once in Paris, Monroe was to join the American minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and territories near it. Jefferson authorized up to $10 million. Monroe and Livingston, however, were shocked at the French willingness to cede the entirety of the French holding in North America. As transoceanic communication was only as fast as that of a sailing vessel, and relaying the message back to Washington raised the risk of Napoleon changing his mind, the American negotiators went beyond their mandate and agreed in principle to pay $15 million for the territory ranging from New Orleans up to Canada, with a natural western border ending at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The news of the agreement took well over a month to reach the president. With the details finalized through the remainder of 1803, the United States more than doubled in size.

Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do... I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (9: 12-13). Surely this is shockingly good news – that considering oneself righteous disqualifies one from being called by Jesus!

No matter how hard I tried, whether it was to help Anthony, to threaten him, to sympathize with him, to ignore him, to throw him out of my house, it was impossible to move on. This man was going to ruin me, and now he was going to jeopardize HRC's chances of winning the presidency, which would leave our country in the hands of someone dangerously unfit for the office. On the plane after the event, Jen came over to update HRC. The letter Comey had sent to Congress was out. It confirmed what the reporters had heard. The Comey investigation was officially reopened. It turned out that the Southern District, which was prosecuting Anthony's case involving the teenager, had found emails of mine on his laptop and to this day I do not know where or how because I never knew they were there. They called the FBI's New York office, who then called the DC office, which meant the laptop had ended up with Comey. They didn't alert Anthony's attorneys or mine. I watched HRC's face as she processed it. The moment she made eye contact with me, I just broke down. I had held it together for months—through the night of the shocking photo, all the meetings with Children's Services, the paparazzi on the street, becoming a single parent overnight, the daily hate messages, and even, until just a few minutes ago, the news about Comey's announcement to Congress. But now that I knew the investigation somehow involved my own email, tears flowed out of me. HRC stood up from her seat, came over to hug me, and then walked with me to the bathroom so I could compose myself. On a plane full of colleagues, Secret Service agents, reporters, photographers—everyone with eyes simultaneously averted and questioning—she did that.

Then in my skim of the news broadcast I hit an image. It was me. I didn’t stop in my tracks because I have a lot of practice in not physically reacting to things no matter how much they shock or horrify me. I may have lost control of my expression for a second; I was used to always wearing a helmet and keeping it opaqued whenever possible.

Every time it was in the news, she had it again: the dream where her rapist was being nice to her. He was next to her on the bed and speaking quietly, and she understood that it had all been a misunderstanding, which wiped, with an unbearably fine cloth, something in the body away from the mind. And once that was gone, they moved together through the dream as the two closest people on earth, though no one she encountered understood, though mouths of friends and family fell open with soft shock when they saw her.

The hunt for more dramatic (as they’re often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value. “Beauty will be convulsive, or it will not be,” proclaimed André Breton. He called this aesthetic ideal “surrealist,” but in a culture radically revamped by the ascendancy of mercantile values, to ask the images be jarring, clamorous, eye-opening seems like elementary realism as well as good business sense. How else to get attention for one’s product or one’s art? How else to make a dent when there is incessant exposure to images, and overexposure to a handful of images seen again and again? The image as shock and the image as cliché are two aspects of the same presence.

It began in Jerusalem with the broadcast by the Arab Higher Committee of the news of Deir Yassin in gruesome detail. The Arab Higher Committee had hoped to shock the surrounding Arab nations to join the fight, but the tactic backfired. Instead the broadcasts terrified the remaining Palestinians.

Tom Fox’s announcement came as a shock, even to congregants who complained about him. The most grief-stricken and rattled were those members who had come to the AUUCC during his reign and stayed because of him. Some of them loved Tom as some of us loved Sparlo, ardently and unconditionally. “It’s good news hiding bad,” muttered Charlotte as we shuffled toward the exit. “He’s leaving, but we still have another whole year of him.

This lack of daily human interaction causes your body to slack off and fail to produce as many white blood cells and cytokines (those are good). While keeping your distance from a bunch of filthy human bacteria might seem like a good thing, your immune system actually needs the activity. After months spent sitting alone, surfing porn, your body’s natural defense system begins to atrophy.

Maurice, a man whose life mission is to achieve global peace, has checked around the world and found the one power that threatens international peace: Israel. Just a few days ago, according to news reports, Muslim extremists entered a shopping mall and slaughtered the shoppers while cutting off their limbs one by one, in an attack that shocked the world in its gruesome brutality. This happened in Kenya, Maurice’s homeland, and you’d assume that if Maurice wants to apply his Conflict Resolution techniques in a troubled spot, he would be doing so in Kenya. But no, he is here.

I was once an optimistic investor, eager to grow my wealth in the cryptocurrency market. But I made the grave mistake of trusting a fraudulent broker who promised me high returns and exclusive bonuses. They were convincing everything seemed professional at first. However, once I transferred my entire savings of $150,000 USDT, things took a turn for the worse.When I tried to transfer the cryptocurrency to my main crypto wallet, that's when I noticed a problem. The broker kept making excuses. “System issues,” “delays in processing” every time I tried to take my funds out, they had a reason for it. But the real shock came when they completely blocked my account without warning. My money, my life savings, was gone. The panic and disbelief I felt were unbearable. I had no way of contacting them, no way of retrieving my funds. I was left feeling helpless and defeated.But just when I thought all hope was lost, I stumbled upon SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL, a trusted crypto recovery team with a proven track record. They work alongside law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, and specialize in recovering stolen funds. I reached out to them, unsure if anything could be done, but they assured me that they could help.To my amazement, they kept their promise. After a brief consultation, I paid a small fee to upgrade my account security as part of the recovery process. Within 48 hours, I received the incredible news: 100% of my stolen $150,000 USDT was back in my wallet. Seeing that balance restored was overwhelming. I broke down in tears of relief and gratitude. SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL didn’t just recover a portion of my funds they managed to get it all back. In a world where scams and fraud are all too common, they gave me a glimmer of hope that justice could be served. If you’ve ever been scammed in the crypto space, don’t give up. SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL proved that recovery is possible, no matter how dire the situation seems. They’ve not only earned my trust they’ve also earned my deep appreciation.Thank you, SPARTAN TECH GROUP RETRIEVAL, for giving me my life back. If you're a victim of crypto fraud, reach out to them. They can help you too. Email: spartan tech @ cyber services . c o m   WhatsApp : + 1  9 7 1   4  8  7   3  5  3  8 Telegram : + 1  5 8  1  2  8  6   8  0  9  2

Though I am shocked by Brother Gregor’s news, I am not surprised.

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of emotions and challenges for my husband and me. We found ourselves facing a catastrophe when the wildfires in California destroyed our home. The fire spread so rapidly that we barely had time to grab anything. All we managed to take with us were our phones, laptops, and the car. Everything else was lost in the flames. The devastation was hard to process. We were left with nothing, feeling completely overwhelmed by the loss.Luckily, my sister opened her doors to us, offering a place to stay while we figured out what to do next. Still, the reality of the situation was hard to swallow. We had no idea where we would go, how we would start over, or what the future held. Tomorrow, we will be moving to a hotel, and from there, we will begin searching for a new apartment. It's a small step, but one that feels important in our journey to rebuild.Amid all the chaos, there has been an unexpected glimmer of hope. Last year, my husband and I made a costly mistake in the cryptocurrency market, losing $50,000 in a bad investment. We tried everything to recover it, but it felt like we were hitting dead ends at every turn. Just when we thought there was no way to get our funds back, I decided to reach out to a company called BOTNET CRYPTO RECOVERY.I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was desperate to recover some of the money we had lost. To my surprise, they responded quickly and got to work right away. Within hours of sharing the details of our situation, they began investigating. And then, just a few days later, I received the best news I could have hoped for. BOTNET CRYPTO RECOVERY had already managed to recover over 70 percent of the stolen USDT. I was shocked, relieved, and deeply grateful. It’s a feeling I can’t quite describe, knowing that something we thought was gone for good is coming back to us.While there’s still work to be done, I’m confident that the rest of the funds will be recovered soon. This unexpected success has given me hope during a time when it was hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a reminder that even in the most difficult times, there are people who can help, and there is always a chance to rebuild. Though we’ve lost so much, I know we’re not alone in this journey, and with a little help, we will come through this stronger. CONTACT INFO BELOW. Email them at: support (@) botnetcryptorecovery (.) c o m Whatsapp Web +1 (431) 801-8951

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In a spiritually abusive system, these verses become weapons in the hands of performance-based people to get people to act differently, or to get rid of them if they do not. Context, once again, is very helpful in understanding the heart of these two passages. In Matthew 18, the verses immediately preceding describe a sheep that has gone astray. So the shepherd leaves the rest of his sheep to go look for the one that has wandered off. In 1 Corinthians 5, the issue is a person who is in an incestuous relationship with his father’s wife, perhaps a step-mother. The shocking news is out, since it has been commonly reported (v. 1), and the problem is having a negative effect on the entire church (v. 6). The brother that has sinned against you is like the sheep who wandered off. Consequently, “go and reprove him.” In other words, go get him and bring him back. If he doesn’t listen, get some others and go again. If he still does not listen, tell the church. “Church” does not mean the group of people that meet together under the same roof a couple of times a week; it is the group of people who have a genuine spiritual connection with the wandering person. If he still does not listen, let him go. (We will talk more in the next chapter about the phrase “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.”)

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He leaned over and pulled from the bunch a bright red ribbon that had a key attached to it. "This one in particular said that I was to make sure you received her gift or else she would poison me while I eat. So in lieu of hiring a taster for my meals, I wanted to make sure it reached you." Stryder rolled his eyes as Kit took it and broke the seal on the note that was also attached to the ribbon. His brother read aloud. "Milord, 'tis with great honor I give you the key to my chastity belt. Meet me tonight in the rose courtyard. Ever your lady, Charity of York" "A key to a chastity belt?" Christian asked in an amused tone. "Aye," Stryder said, his voice thick with ill humor. "And an invitation to a forced wedding if ever I saw one." Christian laughed again at that. "And you wonder why I prefer to wear the garb of a monk. It's the best shield I have found against conniving would-be brides, and even it isn't foolproof, as you have seen." Stryder handed the key back to Kit. "Tell the lady I am previously engaged." Kit arched a brow at that, then headed for one of Stryder's plate codpieces. He frowned as he watched his brother place the codpiece inside his hose. "What is it you do?" "The last time I told one of your would-be paramours nay on your behalf, she damn near unmanned me. This time I wish protection when I deliver the news." Stryder joined Christian's laughter. "'Tis not amusing," Kit said, his tone offended. "You think what you do is dangerous? I defy you to be in my boots for one moment when I face the great Ovarian Horde in your stead." "And that is why I send you, my brother. I haven't the courage to face them." "What?" Christian said in feigned shock. "Stryder of Blackmoor afraid? I never thought I would live to see the day a mere maid could send you craven." "The day you doff your cleric's robes and don your crown, Your Highness, you may taunt me on that front. Until then, I know you for the coward you are as well." Christian's eyes danced with mischief. "Women do make cowards of us all." Kit opened his mouth to say something, then must have rethought it. Grabbing a shield, he headed for the door. "If I don't return by night's fall, please make sure I am buried on home soil." -Kit, Christian, & Stryder

Cambodians resent outsiders’ implications that they are a nation of shell-shocked survivors, but in 2004 news from police stations around the country made it impossible not to notice how many seemingly pedestrian conflicts escalated into stunning violence: the farmer who beheaded his neighbor with a machete in a dispute over a fence; the disgruntled relative who stormed away from an argument at a wedding and returned to douse the guests with battery acid.

I remember understanding what a brutal thing it is to be the bearer of truly bad news—to break off a piece of that misery and hand it to other people, one by one, and then have to comfort them; to put their grief on your shoulders on top of all your own; to be the calm one in the face of their shock and tears. And then learning that relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can’t breathe.