Tube Feeding Quotes

The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute. There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.

If anything happened to you, I'd be so destroyed they'd have to strap me to a bed and feed me through a tube. After five or six years, I might be capable of taking care of Rex. In the interim, you should assign a guardian.

In the cage is the lion. She paces with her memories. Her body is a record of her past. As she moves back and forth, one may see it all: the lean frame, the muscular legs, the paw enclosing long sharp claws, the astonishing speed of her response. She was born in this garden. She has never in her life stretched those legs. Never darted farther than twenty yards at a time. Only once did she use her claws. Only once did she feel them sink into flesh. And it was her keeper's flesh. Her keeper whom she loves, who feeds her, who would never dream of harming her, who protects her. Who in his mercy forgave her mad attack, saying this was in her nature, to be cruel at a whim, to try to kill what she loves. He had come into her cage as he usually did early in the morning to change her water, always at the same time of day, in the same manner, speaking softly to her, careful to make no sudden movement, keeping his distance, when suddenly she sank down, deep down into herself, the way wild animals do before they spring, and then she had risen on all her strong legs, and swiped him in one long, powerful, graceful movement across the arm. How lucky for her he survived the blow. The keeper and his friends shot her with a gun to make her sleep. Through her half-open lids she knew they made movements around her. They fed her with tubes. They observed her. They wrote comments in notebooks. And finally they rendered a judgment. She was normal. She was a normal wild beast, whose power is dangerous, whose anger can kill, they had said. Be more careful of her, they advised. Allow her less excitement. Perhaps let her exercise more. She understood none of this. She understood only the look of fear in her keeper's eyes. And now she paces. Paces as if she were angry, as if she were on the edge of frenzy. The spectators imagine she is going through the movements of the hunt, or that she is readying her body for survival. But she knows no life outside the garden. She has no notion of anger over what she could have been, or might be. No idea of rebellion. It is only her body that knows of these things, moving her, daily, hourly, back and forth, back and forth, before the bars of her cage.

For half an hour, the machine that regulates my feeding tube has been beeping out into the void. I cannot imagine anything so inane or nerve-racking as this piercing beep beep beep pecking away at my brain. As a bonus, my sweat has unglued the tape that keeps my right eyelid closed, and the stuck-together lashes are tickling my pupil unbearably. And to crown it all, the end of my urinary catheter has become detached and I am drenched. Awaiting rescue, I hum an old song by Henri Salvador: "Don't you fret baby, it'll be all right.

It smelled like the country. It was a filet mignon farm, all of it, and the tissue spread for miles around the paths where we were walking. It was like these huge hedges of red all around us, with these beautiful marble patterns running through them. They had these tubes, they were bringing the tissue blood, and we would see all the blood running around, up and down. It was really interesting. I like to see how things are made, and to understand where they come from.

I’m sure most people who see me feel sorry for me at first. I think their first thought is probably something about how terrible it must be to not have arms. Maybe they imagine me helplessly being carried around by my mom everywhere in a giant baby backpack and my poor parents having to brush my teeth and feed me through a tube and change my diapers and whatever. What a lot of people don’t realize, though, is there are a lot of fantastic things about not having arms.

God, how I hate the future. It’s a cult. A tyranny of progress. And anyone who speaks against it is shunned. But all tyrannies must efficiently erase the past if they’re to work. I like the past. The past was solid, simple, and real. The rooms were large, the food was good, and we knew who our enemies were. I feel misty for old tyrannies. The ones which beat you, enslaved you, tried to break your spirit, and in doing so gave your life the only enhancement it really needs: a sense of purpose. The tyranny of the future doesn’t take away our choices; it swamps us in them. It doesn’t curb our freedoms; it tube-feeds us with them until we rupture like neglected factory geese.

In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.

How to explain to him that her mother is a womb and a grave; a cage and a pair of wings; a feeding tube and a noose.

He uncoiled a length of fine leather tubing from his waist and tossed it down to Hessler, leaving the end attached to his waist. “Remember, one sharp tug means that you must feed me more tubing and shake the line, as it may have gotten caught, while two tugs means that I am stuck and need you to pull me back.” “How many tugs means that we should trigger the explosion?” Tern asked. Icy raised an eyebrow. “Me standing next to you, having extricated myself from the tunnel safely, and explicitly telling you to trigger the explosion is the only agreed-upon signal for you to trigger the explosion.

She just wouldn’t stop reimplementing operating system features for her programming class. The only thing keeping her alive was a feeding tube the docs had managed to force up her nose while she was in restraints.

The famous sea squirt, beloved of popular neuroscience lectures, in its larval stage is motile and has a primitive nervous system (called a notochord) so it can navigate the sea – at least, its own very small corner of it. In its adult stage it fastens limpet-like to a rock and feeds passively, simply depending on the influx of seawater through its tubes. It then reabsorbs its nervous system – it is no longer needed since the creature no longer needs to move.

This is the period when hard decisions are faced by families, having to do with the insertion of feeding tubes and the vigor with which medical measures should be taken to fend off those natural processes that descend like jackals—or perhaps like friends—on debilitated people.

Ben Young is out on the deck with his team, having breakfast through his tube. I wonder how that feels. He seems to be content with it, although I am having some trouble reconciling the fact that Ben does not get all the big tastes anymore. He used to love Milanos and milk after every evening dinner. It was a tradition. Sometimes we still give him a tiny taste just for old times' sake. He is so accepting. It's a marvel. He is the most accepting human being I have ever met, and he is very happy. Not all the time, mind you; he has a flair for impatience if he is going somewhere and there is a delay. He just yells! You know he is pissed. There is no stopping him. More power to you, Ben Young! We had to stop feeding Ben Young by mouth because his lungs have become compromised by all the aspirating he does. It's a complex thing, eating. The body does a lot of work to protect itself and keep food out of the lungs. Ben's body is not working like a normal body does. Ben and Dustin and Uncle Tony are out on the deck listening to tunes on the computer and grooving. Ben's next support team is incoming for a shift. Uncle Marian and Ben Bourdon arrive in Hawaii today from the mainland, and the switch takes place around twelve-thirty. Time marches on. Because of the support, Ben has a very full life and keeps moving around, doing things, seeing people and going to events. I reflect on this. Life is good.

eyeballs drifting at the surface and all sorts of cables and tubes feeding what remains. But I don’t want to be kept alive. Because I know what’s next. I’ve seen it on TV. A documentary I saw about Mongolia, of all places. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen on television, other than the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, of course, the greatest automobile race of all time in which Ayrton Senna proved himself to be a genius in the rain. After the 1993 Grand Prix, the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV is a documentary that explained everything to me, made it all clear, told the whole truth: when a dog

The model stripped down naked and stood with her arms out to her sides while genderless cohorts sprayed her body with large silver canisters of foundation. They wore masks over there faces and sprayed her from head to toe like they were putting out a fire. They airbrushed her into a mono-toned six-foot-two column of a human being with no visible veins, nipples, nails, lips, or eyelashes. When every single thing that was real about the model was gone, the make up artist fug through a suite case of brushes and plowed through hundreds of tubes of flesh colored colors and began to draw human features onto her face. At the same time, the hair stylist meticulously sewed with a needle and thread strand after strand of long blond hairs onto her thin light brown locks, creating a thick full mane of shimmering gold. The model had brought her own chef, who cooked her spinach soup from scratch. The soup was fed to her by one of her lackeys, who existed solely for this purpose. The blond boy stood in front of her, blowing on the soup and then feeding it to her from a small silver child's spoon, just big enough to fit between her lips. the model's mouth was barely open, maybe a quarter of an inch wide, so that she would not crack the flesh colored paint.

We imagine that we can wait until the doctors tell us that there is nothing more they can do. But rarely is there nothing more that doctors can do. They can give toxic drugs of unknown efficacy, operate to try to remove part of the tumor, put in a feeding tube if a person can’t eat: there’s always something. We want these choices. But that doesn’t mean we are eager to make the choices ourselves. Instead, most often, we make no choice at all. We fall back on the default, and the default is: Do Something. Fix Something. Is there any way out of this?

Theirs was one of the first cases with a real operational connection to the internet. The internet pervades human existence so thoroughly now that it can be hard to remember how recently life was mainly analog. When was the point of no return? Maybe around 2006. In July of that year, a microblogging platform called Twitter debuted for the public. In September, Facebook launched a new feature called “News Feed” and opened membership to all comers, where before you had to be part of a college or school network to join. In 2006, YouTube was barely a year old. The first iPhones didn’t go on sale until 2007.

I ask her about feeding tubes, ventilators, defibrillators—all life-sustaining measures—confirming that she doesn’t want any of those. I talk about medical power of attorney, and financial power of attorney, about sedation, about antibiotics for comfort during UTIs or other infections. I talk about cultural traditions and funeral planning, whether she wants music as she’s dying, or religion, or neither. Who she’d like to be with her at the end, and who she doesn’t want to see. Just because someone is dying doesn’t mean that they can’t call the shots. As I tick off the items, Felix seems to draw further and further into himself, until finally I turn a bright smile toward him.

But there was one occasion when we went down to a village to set up our feeding kitchens and I noticed there was another relief operation there that had the same American supplies that we had who were doing something quite different. They were organizing food-for-work programs so that the people in the village would actually work and be paid in food. And the work they were doing were things that would help the whole village…..building a road or a school…..building a dam to catch the water when the rains came again…..building tube wells to tap deep into the aquifer. So the villagers were given the dignity of work at the same time they were providing something for the infrastructure of the village. I said: “That’s really smart. Who are these people?” Gandhians. They were members of the Sarvodaya Movement….the Gandhian Movement. And I said: “That’s what I want to do.

When there is no way of knowing exactly how long our skeins will run--and when we imagine ourselves to have much more time than we do--our every impulse is to fight, to die with chemo in our veins or a tube in our throats or fresh sutures in our flesh. The fact that we may be shortening or worsening the time we have left hardly seems to register. We imagine that we can wait until the doctors tell us that there is nothing more they can do. But rarely is there nothing more that doctors can do. They can give toxic drugs of unknown efficacy, operate to try to remove part of the tumor, put in a feeding tube if a person can't eat: there's always something. We want these choices. But that doesn't mean we are eager to make the choices ourselves. Instead, most often, we make no choice at all. We fall back on the default, and the default is: Do Something. Fix Something. Is there any way out of this?

As usual in such matters, there were as many opinions about why the mackerel had scarcely appeared this year as there were people to ask. A local fishmonger told me with great authority that a monstrous new ship was operating in the Irish Sea, fishing not with a net but with a vacuum tube that sucked up the mackerel and everything else that came its way, which it turned into fishmeal for use as fertilizer and animal feed. It had been licensed by the Environment Agency to catch 500 tonnes of mackerel a day, and had received a £13 million subsidy from the European Commission. I checked this story and soon discovered that the Environment Agency has no jurisdiction at sea, that vacuum tubes are used not for fishing but for sucking the catch out of the nets, that there is no such fishmeal operation in the Irish Sea and that no boat is licensed to take such a tonnage. Otherwise the explanation was impeccable.

Of course, women are capable of all sorts of major unpleasantness, and there are violent crimes by women, but the so-called war of the sexes is extraordinarily lopsided when it comes to actual violence. Unlike the last (male) head of the International Monetary Fund, the current (female) head is not going to assault an employee at a luxury hotel; top-ranking female officers in the US military, unlike their male counterparts, are not accused of any sexual assaults; and young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren’t likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds.   No female bus riders in India have ganged up to sexually assault a man so badly he dies of his injuries, nor are marauding packs of women terrorizing men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and there’s just no maternal equivalent to the 11 percent of rapes that are by fathers or stepfathers.

Her most favored dish—the one the three families requested most for fifth-Sunday meals—was the cream-cheese crescent squares, known affectionately as Sugar Dump, for obvious reasons. The few times she bought expensive name brands were when she fixed this dish. A layer of Pillsbury crescent rolls popped from the tube and rolled out onto a casserole dish. Then a layer of Philadelphia cream cheese mixed with a cup of sugar, followed by another layer of crescent rolls. She baked it at 350 for thirty minutes, and while it cooled, she drizzled the top with a thin glaze of powdered sugar and milk. A simple recipe with store-bought ingredients, but people loved it. I suspect my mother took great pleasure in feeding her husband’s congregation. Perhaps a kind of communion: The more they ate her food, the less she felt like that old Debra Rose, the bona fide wild woman I wanted to meet, and more like the woman she had willed herself to be: Dr. Dillard’s wife.

The very last thing a terminally ill patient wants is to be fussed over with antibiotics and feeding tubes in order to prolong his pain, but this is often what families insist on. They panic and press red buttons and jam oxygen masks over their loved ones’ faces, despite their clear DNR stickers, because they are the ones afraid of death.

Block said. “I mean, he’s a professor emeritus. He’s never watched a football game in my conscious memory. The whole picture—it wasn’t the guy I thought I knew.” But the conversation proved critical, because after surgery he developed bleeding in the spinal cord. The surgeons told her that in order to save his life they would need to go back in. But the bleeding had already made him nearly quadriplegic, and he would remain severely disabled for many months and likely forever. What did she want to do? “I had three minutes to make this decision, and I realized, he had already made the decision.” She asked the surgeons whether, if her father survived, he would still be able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV. Yes, they said. She gave the okay to take him back to the operating room. “If I had not had that conversation with him,” she told me, “my instinct would have been to let him go at that moment because it just seemed so awful. And I would have beaten myself up. Did I let him go too soon?” Or she might have gone ahead and sent him to surgery, only to find—as occurred—that he was faced with a year of “very horrible rehab” and disability. “I would have felt so guilty that I condemned him to that,” she said. “But there was no decision for me to make.” He had decided. During the next two years, he regained the ability to walk short distances. He required caregivers to bathe and dress him. He had difficulty swallowing and eating. But his mind was intact and he had partial use of his hands—enough to write two books and more than a dozen scientific articles. He lived for ten years after the operation. Eventually, however, his difficulties with swallowing advanced to the point where he could not eat without aspirating food particles, and he cycled between hospital and rehabilitation facilities with the pneumonias that resulted. He didn’t want a feeding tube. And it became evident that the battle for the dwindling chance of a miraculous recovery was going to leave him unable ever to go home again. So, just a few months before I’d spoken with Block, her father decided to stop the battle and go home. “We started him on hospice care,” Block said. “We treated his choking and kept him comfortable. Eventually, he stopped eating and drinking. He died about five days later.

¿Por qué no creó Rupert Murdoch The Huffington Post? ¿Por qué no lanzó AT&T Skype, ni Visa creó PayPal? La CNN podría haber creado Twitter, visto que de frases cortas e impactantes como titulares se trata, ¿no? General Motors o Hertz podrían haber lanzado Uber, y Marriott, Airbnb. Gannett podría haber creado Craigslist o Kijiji. Yellow Pages podría haber fundado perfectamente eBay. Microsoft tenía la posibilidad de crear Google o cualquier modelo de negocio basado en internet más que en el ordenador personal. ¿Por qué no inventó la NBC YouTube? Sony podría haberse adelantado al iTunes de Apple. ¿Dónde estaba Kodak cuando se inventaron Instagram o Pinterest? ¿Y si People o Newsweek hubieran creado BuzzFeed o Mashable?

If you had an Internet connection and lived in North America at the time, you may have seen it. Vasquez is the man behind the “Double Rainbow” video, which at last check had 38 million views. In the clip, Vasquez pans his camera back and forth to show twin rainbows he’d discovered outside his house, first whispering in awe, then escalating in volume and emotion as he’s swept away in the moment. He hoots with delight, monologues about the rainbows’ beauty, sobs, and eventually waxes existential. “What does it mean?” Vasquez crows into the camera toward the end of the clip, voice filled with tears of sheer joy, marveling at rainbows like no man ever has or probably ever will again. It’s hard to watch without cracking up. That same month, the viral blog BuzzFeed boosted a different YouTuber’s visibility. Michelle Phan, a 23-year-old Vietnamese American makeup artist, posted a home video tutorial about how to apply makeup to re-create music star Lady Gaga’s look from the recently popular music video “Bad Romance.” BuzzFeed gushed, its followers shared, and Lady Gaga’s massive fanbase caught wind of the young Asian girl who taught you how to transform into Gaga. Once again, the Internet took the video and ran with it. Phan’s clip eventually clocked in at roughly the same number of views as “Double Rainbow.” These two YouTube sensations shared a spotlight in the same summer. Tens of millions of people watched them, because of a couple of superconnectors. So where are Vasquez and Phan now? Bear Vasquez has posted more than 1,300 videos now, inspired by the runaway success of “Double Rainbow.” But most of them have been completely ignored. After Kimmel and the subsequent media flurry, Vasquez spent the next few years trying to recapture the magic—and inadvertent comedy—of that moment. But his monologues about wild turkeys or clips of himself swimming in lakes just don’t seem to find their way to the chuckling masses like “Double Rainbow” did. He sells “Double Rainbow” T-shirts. And wears them. Today, Michelle Phan is widely considered the cosmetic queen of the Internet, and is the second-most-watched female YouTuber in the world. Her videos have a collective 800 million views. She amassed 5 million YouTube subscribers, and became the official video makeup artist for Lancôme, one of the largest cosmetics brands in the world. Phan has since founded the beauty-sample delivery company Ipsy.com, which has more than 150,000 paying subscribers, and created her own line of Sephora cosmetics. She continues to run her video business—now a full-blown production company—which has brought in millions of dollars from advertising. She’s shot to the top of a hypercompetitive industry at an improbably young age. And she’s still climbing. Bear Vasquez is still cheerful. But he’s not been able to capitalize on his one-time success. Michelle Phan could be the next Estée Lauder. This chapter is about what she did differently.

Armorers wheeled bombs out to the Tu-4 on carts made of steel tubing with rubber tires. Watching them, Boris Gribkov remembered that the groundcrew men at airstrips during the Great Patriotic War hadn’t had such elegant transportation for their high explosives and incendiaries. They’d used whatever they could, sometimes panje wagons, sometimes raw muscle, to get bombs to the bombers. Anton Presnyakov was thinking along with him. “I’ve seen pictures of carts like that at American airstrips in England,” the copilot said. “Now that you mention it, so have I,” Boris replied. “Well, if we can borrow the design for the bomber, no reason we can’t borrow the design for the cart that feeds it, eh?” “We didn’t borrow. We invented,” Lev Vaksman said. “Comrade Reguspatoff is a very clever fellow.” “Reguspatoff?” Boris echoed, puzzled. It sounded as if it ought to be a Russian name, but it wasn’t one he’d ever heard before. “Of course.” The flight engineer’s eyes twinkled. “It’s the abbreviation the Americans put on things they make. It stands for Registered—U.S. Patent Office.

Okay. Bring it on.” His wife attaches the syringe to the plastic outlet on the tube that dangles from just above his belly button—her first time feeding him, and pours in the Ensure. He holds her hand as the liquid goes in. “Good,” I say. “You’ll both have to learn how to do the feedings and look after the equipment. It’s not hard. You’ll get the hang of it. Small amounts six times a day and slow feeds overnight by the pump. That’s it.

Yet the manner of death he fears does not sound bad to me; to me it seems like a decent, clean way of taking off, surely better than the slow rot in a hospital oxygen tent with rubber tubes stuck up your nose, prick, asshole, with blood transfusions and intravenous feeding, bedsores and bedpans and bad-tempered nurses’ aides—the whole nasty routine to which most dying men, in our time, are condemned.

Food is supposed to sustain and nurture us. Eating well, any doctor will tell you, is the most important thing you can do to take care of yourself. Feeding well, any human will tell you, is the most important job a mother has, especially in the first months of her child’s life. But right now, in America, we no longer think of food as sustenance or nourishment. For many of us, food feels dangerous. We fear it. We regret it. And we categorize everything we eat as good or bad, with the “bad” list always growing longer. No meat, no dairy, no gluten—and, goodness, no sugar. Everything has too much sugar, salt, fat; too many calories, processed ingredients, toxins. As a result, we are all too much, our bodies taking up too much space in our clothes and in the world. Food has become a heavy issue, loaded with metaphorical meaning and the physical weight of our obesity crisis. And for parents, food is a double burden, because we must feed our children even while most of us are still struggling with how to feed ourselves. When the feeding tube first went in, I thought the hardest part of teaching Violet to eat again would be persuading her to open her mouth. Actually, the hardest part was letting go of my own expectations and judgments about what food should look like—so I could just let her eat.

39 SYLVIA Victoria is dressed in a billowy flower-printed dress that I found in her closet. Something tight is out of the question because of her feeding tube and it would not have been flattering with the way she often slumps in the chair. I have a feeling the dress used to be more snug on her, but now it hangs loose on her bony frame. I also spent some time on her hair. I combed it out and put in the oil treatment again, and it looks lush and shiny. I thought about trying to tie it back, but I think it’s most flattering when it’s loose. Now I’m working on her makeup. I put a layer of pink lipstick on her crooked lips, and now I’m doing my best to cover the scar on her left cheek. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to conceal it entirely, but it looks a lot better than when I started. Victoria is allowing me to put on the makeup, but she looks utterly unenthusiastic. I can’t entirely blame her. As much as I chatter about how much fun this will be, I’m not looking forward to it either. Part of me wants to duck out and leave Victoria and Adam to have Thanksgiving alone as a married couple. But the more I read of her diary, I feel like that is not what Victoria wants. She doesn’t want to be alone with him. And I don’t want her to be alone with him either. “There.” I dab on the last of the concealer—I’ve used half the container and the scar is still very visible. “All done.” Victoria just stares at me. “You look beautiful.” I grab the mirror I found in the bathroom and hold it up to her face. “Take a look.” Victoria glances briefly at the mirror, then turns away. She never seems very happy when I show her a mirror. She either looks away or frowns at herself. Sometimes she touches the scar. I wish Adam had shelled out for her to get plastic surgery. I know he thinks she doesn’t notice, but he’s wrong. “I just…” I chew on my lip. “I want you to know that I’m not going to… I mean, Adam is your husband, not mine. I’m going to tell him tonight that I’m not going to…” For the first time since I came in here, Victoria’s eyes show a spark of interest. “It’s not right,” I say. “It was a mistake and I’m sorry. I’ll tell him tonight.” “Be…” She’s focusing so hard on what she wants to say that some drool comes out of the right side of her mouth, smearing her lipstick. “Be… care…” For once, I know exactly what she’s trying to say. Be careful. I leave Victoria to find some nail polish in the bathroom. That’s the last thing I need to complete her look for the evening. I want Victoria to look really beautiful tonight. Like her old self, as much as possible. It’s important to me. Maggie must have moved the nail polish when she was cleaning. I look in the usual place in the closet within the bathroom, but it’s not there anymore. I search through the other shelves, trying to find the bag of multicolor nail polish tubes. I find more makeup, but not polish. But one thing I do find surprises me. It’s a black bag of medications. I never was sure where Adam kept Victoria’s medications. He always just seems to have them ready to administer. I pick up a bottle from the black plastic bag and see the date of the most recent refill. It was less than a month ago.

The AR-57, also known as the AR Five Seven, is available as either an upper receiver for the AR-15/M16 rifle or a complete rifle, firing 5.7×28mm rounds from standard FN P90 magazines. It was designed by AR57 LLC and[3] was produced by AR57 of Kent, Washington, United States. The AR-57 PDW upper is a new design on AR-15/M16 rifles, blending the AR-15/M16 lower with a lightweight, monolithic upper receiver system chambered in FN 5.7×28mm. This model is also sold as a complete rifle, supplied with two 50-round P90 magazines.[1] The magazines mount horizontally on top of the front handguard, with brass ejecting through the magazine well. Hollow AR-15 magazines can be used to catch spent casings. Unlike the standard AR-15 configuration which uses a gas-tube system , the AR-57 cycles via straight blowback.[6] A fully automatic version exists and was marketed as a competitor to the P90 and other personal defense weapons.[7] Manufactured by the eponymous AR57 LLC, and chambered in 5.7x28mm, this upper is less powerful than the standard 5.56mm version, but it has certain tangible advantages, including reduced muzzle blast, a high practical rate of fire, nonexistent recoil, and the ability to use folding stocks. Since the buffer is located within the receiver, folding stocks may also be used for compact storage or carry. To load, place the base plate of a standard FN P90 magazine into the recess on the front of the upper, then press the feed lip side down on the catch located above and slightly back of the bolt. To charge, pull on the right-side nonreciprocating handle and release. The right-side charging hand placement makes it accessible for operation by the strong hand. Since it only has to be operated once every 50 shots, the time penalty for moving the hand off the pistol grip isn’t too great. Empties will eject downward through the nominal magazine well. Some people use a 20-round magazine body with the feed lips, spring and follower removed to act as a brass catcher. The magazine has no provision for activating the bolt lock when empty, but the bolt can be locked open using the catch on the lower. The upper runs very cleanly and reliably, requiring no maintenance after the first 500 shots. The AR57 comes with a medium fluted barrel, reasonable for a varmint rifle but excessive for a defensive carbine. Burning around six grains per shot, 5.7x28mm runs much cooler than 5.56mm, which burns four or more times as much. That yields much reduced muzzle blast and far greater heat endurance, of course at the cost of a roughly 40 percent slower bullet.

that, instead of being fused to the skull, hangs loosely beneath the brain case. This enables the upper jaw to push forward and hyperextend open—wide enough to engulf, and crush, an adult bull elephant. As if the size and voraciousness of its feeding orifice were not enough, nature has endowed this monster with a predatory intelligence, honed by 400 million years of evolution. Six distinct senses expose every geological feature, every current, every temperature gradient … and every creature occupying its domain. The predator’s eyes contain a reflective layer of tissue situated behind the retina. When moving through the darkness of the depths, light is reflected off this layer, allowing the creature to see. In sunlight, the reflective plate is covered by a layer of pigment, which functions like a built-in pair of sunglasses. While black in normally pigmented members of the species, this particular male’s eyes are a cataract-blue—a trait found in albinos. As large as basketballs, the sight organs reflexively roll back into the skull as the creature launches its attack on its prey, protecting the eyeball from being damaged. Forward of the eyes, just beneath the snout, are a pair of directional nostrils so sensitive that they can detect one drop of blood or urine in a million gallons of water. The tongue and snout provide a sense of taste and touch, while two labyrinths within the skull function as ears. But it is two other receptor organs that make this predator the master of its liquid domain. The first of these mid-to-long-range detection systems is the lateral line, a hollow tube that runs along either flank just beneath the skin. Microscopic pores open these tubes to the sea. When another animal creates a vibration or turbulence in the water, the reverberations stimulate tiny hairs within these sensory cells that alert the predator to the source of the disturbance—miles away! Even more sensitive are the hunter’s long-range receptor cells, located along the top and underside

Every single person I’ve cared for who did not have a feeding tube and became dehydrated has died more comfortably than every single person I’ve cared for with a feeding tube that remained in use until their death.

Messerschmitt Me 264 with steam turbine In August 1944, the firm of Osermaschinen G.m.b.H. founded by Professor Losel was commissioned to carry out the design and development of a steam turbine power unit for aircraft. The design called for 6000hp at 6000rpm with a weight/power ratio of 0.7kg/hp and a consumption of 190 grams/hp/hour. A Me 264 airframe was to have been placed at the disposal of the firm, but it was destroyed in an air raid. Two forms of propeller were envisaged, one of 17.5ft diameter and revolving at 400-500rpm and the other 6.5ft in diameter revolving at 600rpm. The whole system consisted of four boilers (capillary tube boilers of special design) boiler feed water pump and auxiliary turbine, main turbine, combustion air draught fan, condenser, controls and auxiliaries. At the time of the German collapse many components of the system had been produced, including the turbine blades, and auxiliaries such as the combustion air draught fan and condenser pump were ready for use. A start had been made with the assembly of the auxiliary and main turbine and one boiler had been manufactured in its entirety. The first system was designed to use 65% solid fuel (pulverised coal) and 35% liquid fuel (petrol) but it was intended to use liquid fuel only when it became available in quantity. The advantages claimed for the steam-turbine system are: 1)       Constant power at varying heights. 2)     Capacity for 100% overloading, even for long periods. 3)      Full steam output attained in 5-10 seconds. 4)     The system is not sensitive to low temperatures. 5)     Long life and simple servicing. 6)      Simple and rapid control. 7)      The system lends itself to incorporation in an airframe, since it can be broken down into separate components. The four main boilers are 3ft in diameter and 4ft high. The main turbine is 2ft in diameter and 6ft in length.     Messerschmitt Me 265     Messerschmitt Me 309 fighter A single-seat

The whole world was weakening. He wondered if in two hundred years, humans would be reduced to gelatinous blobs hooked up to feeding tubes.

Studies have shown that patients on hospice who become dehydrated in their final weeks, days, or hours, die much more comfortably than patients who are kept artificially hydrated with intravenous fluids or supplemental tube feedings.

Because no one dies without a feeding tube, they die with them. The elderly will stop eating when it’s their time; forcing them to eat is a desperate attempt to salvage our time.

To hear Camrose tell of it, as he often does and in excruciating detail, his early years were tantamount to a parallel Dickensian universe inasmuch as every meal was boiled down to gruel. (Please sir, I don’t want any more.) Whatever vegetables the commune were able to come by through barter, theft or scavenging – though oddly not from a community garden which no one had ever thought to plant – were tossed into a pot with a few heaping scoops of lentils and a handful of curry powder, then boiled down until thick and grayish brown. The resulting semi-solid porridge landed in the bowl with a wet thump reminiscent of raw liver smacking the floor and forced its way to the stomach with an angry lurch. Invalids fed through feeding tubes found more satisfaction in their daily bread than young Camrose.

I tried to dig myself into the Bible on my good days, and bury myself in Spurgeon on the bad ones. Because on the bad days, I simply couldn't understand a God who was okay with shunts and feeding tubes, so I read the words of those who had Him more figured out than I did.

Before all this started, I was happier than I had been in years. I was engaged to the woman of my dreams, fulfilled in my career and friendships. I smiled at people on the Tube, and woke up excited at life. By the time of the final court hearing, I was on anti-schizophrenic medication, with a shot immune system and an adrenal system on its knees. My Twitter and Facebook feeds were being monitored round the clock and anything the opposing lawyers felt was inappropriate (a generic tweet about free speech after the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, for example) led to instant threatening letters demanding their deletion.

Sophie Bushwick/Popular Science 7/16-inch inner diameter ribbed hose 5/16-inch wood dowel 1/4-inch outer diameter vinyl tubing Small hose clamps Five 1/4-inch hose barbs x 1/4-inch male threaded adapters Five 1/4-inch hose barbs x 1/4-inch female threaded adapters Electrical tape Yellow Teflon thread tape Several long balloons (type 350Q) 1-inch x 6-inch board or other support Fluidic control board Robot Hand Instructions 1. Insert the 5/16-inch dowel into the ribbed hose to hold it straight. Use the center punch to carefully punch holes between each rib in a line along the seam of the hose. Flip the hose over and repeat along other seam. (Photo ) 2. Use the drill press to drill a hole at each center-punched location between the hose ribs, leaving the dowel in place to provide support. It is best to drill the holes on each side of the hose separately, rather than drill straight through. When you are done you should have a neat line of holes on each side of the ribbed hose. These holes will act as a stress relief and prevent the hose from splitting when it is flexed. (Photo ) 3. Remove the dowel and cut the hose into five 3-inch fingers with the utility knife. For each finger, use the utility knife to very carefully cut between each rib from the hole on one side to the hole on the other. Leave the first two ribs on each end uncut. Cut through one side of the hose only. It is critical that you do not nick the far side of the stress relief holes or you will reduce the reliability of the finger dramatically. Now the hose can flex in one direction more than in the opposite direction. (Photo ) 4. Insert another piece of dowel into one of the long balloons. Use it to gently feed the balloon into one of the fingers until the end of the balloon sticks out enough to grab it. Remove the dowel, and fold about 1/4-inch of the balloon tip over the rim of the hose. Secure it by wrapping a piece of electrical tape all the way around the tip of the finger. (Photo ) 5. Now feed the dowel back inside the finger from the non-taped end, but on the outside of the balloon. Insert it until it is just within two ribs of the tip of the finger. Fill the tip of the finger with hot glue, allow to cool, and then carefully remove the dowel. 6. Use electrical tape over the end of the finger, covering the hot-glued end. Another wrap of electrical tape over this will seal the end of the finger. (Photo ) 7. Cut the open end of the balloon away, leaving about an inch beyond the end of the finger. Stretch the open end of the balloon out and over the end of the finger. (Photo ) 8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each finger. (Photo ) 9. Use the yellow Teflon tape to wrap the threads on each of the male hose barbs. Thread each male hose barb onto each female hose barb and tighten firmly with the crescent wrenches. Then use more yellow Teflon tape and wrap each female hose barb several times around. The ends of these hose barbs should fit snugly into the open ends of each finger. (Photo ) 10. Use the small hose clamps to affix each finger onto the Teflon wrapped ends of the five hose barbs. (Photo ) 11. Now use hot glue to firmly attach each finger to the end of the 1x6-inch board (or other support) to form a hand. Finally, attach a length of 1/4-inch O.D. vinyl hose to the open hose barb on each finger. (Photo ) 12. Now the hand is complete--but it still needs a control system. Check out Harvard’s Soft Robotics Toolkit for inspiration, or just follow the instructions below. Building The

Judd sat alone in the chapel. They’d let him in for a handful of minutes to look down on Christabel’s white, drawn little face. If he’d been able to get to a bar, he could have gone through a fifth of whisky afterward. It was shocking to see her like that. She was hooked up to half a dozen monitoring machines with a needle in her arm feeding her nutrients and apparently a narcotic for pain. There was a tube coming out of her side to drain her chest. Perhaps it was the same tube they’d used to reinflate the lung as well. Not since she was sixteen had she been so badly hurt, and even then it wasn’t this serious. There hadn’t been the risk that she could die from her father’s brutal beating. This was different. She looked fragile and helpless and so alone. Her big dark eyes were closed. There were dark circles under them. When she breathed, he heard the slow rasp of fluid in her chest. Her lips were blue. She looked as if she’d already died. He’d touched her small hand with his big one and remembered the last thing she’d said to him before Clark showed up. Tippy had told her that he’d been disgusted with her, that he hadn’t wanted her hanging on him, running after him with her heart on her sleeve. His eyes had closed with a shudder. If she didn’t make it, her last memory of him would be one of pain and betrayal. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t disgusted. He lay awake nights remembering the passion they’d shared. He missed her. It was like being without an arm or a leg. He’d told her he didn’t want anything permanent. Now the choice might not be his anymore. He might be left alone, as he’d thought he wanted to be when he told her he was getting the divorce. Somewhere he remembered an old adage. Be careful what you want; you might get it. He looked at Christabel’s still body and saw the end of everything he loved.

I raise my grease gun and I aim it at Cowboy's face. Cowboy looks pitiful and he's terrified. Cowboy is paralyzed by the shock that is setting in and by the helplessness. I hardly know him. I remember the first time I saw Cowboy, on Parris Island, laughing, beating his Stetson on his thigh. I look at him. He looks at the grease gun. He calls out: "I NEVER LIKED YOU, JOKER. I NEVER THOUGHT YOU WERE FUNNY--" Bang. I sight down the short metal tube and I watch my bullet enter Cowboy's left eye. My bullet passes through his eye socket, punches through fluid-filled sinus cavities, through membranes, nerves, arteries, muscle tissue, through the tiny blood vessels that feed three pounds of gray butter-soft high protein meat where brain cells arranged like jewels in a clock hold every thought and memory and dream of one adult maleHomo sapiens. My bullet exits through the occipital bone, knocks out hairy, brain-wet clods of jagged meat, then buries itself in the roots of a tree. Silence. Animal Mother lowers his M-60. Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Harris, and the other guys in the squad do not speak. Everyone relaxes, glad to be alive. Everyone hates my guts, but they know I'm right. I am their sergeant; they are my men. Cowboy was killed by sniper fire, they'll say, but they'll never see me again; I'll be invisible.

1. Do you want to be resuscitated if your heart stops? 2. Do you want aggressive treatments such as intubation and mechanical ventilation? 3. Do you want antibiotics? 4. Do you want tube or intravenous feeding if you can’t eat on your own?

He had too much fun teasing “the boy” over the real meaning of the words in The Song of Solomon or Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. “Read that verse to me again,” Ty said, smiling. “You ran over it so fast I missed most of the words.” Janna tilted her head down to the worn pages of the Bible and muttered, “ ‘ Vanity of vanities . . . all is vanity.’” “That’s Ecclesiastes,” Ty drawled. “You were reading The Song of Solomon and a woman was talking about her sweetheart. ‘My beloved is gone down into his garden, to tubes of spices, to feed in the gardens . . .’ Now what do you suppose that really means, boy?” “He was hungry,” Janna said succinctly. “Ah, but for what?” Ty asked, stretching. “When you know the answer, you’ll be a man no matter what your size or age.

Do you think I care if you starve?” he asks conversationally. “I want you to suffer, little ballerina. On my terms, not yours. If you continue to refuse your meals, I’ll tie you to your bed and shove a feeding tube down your throat. You won’t die until I allow it. At the perfect moment, orchestrated by me.

The iPhone untethered the internet from the desktop. The energy of the blogosphere was redirected toward faster, mobile mediums. Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram facilitated the transition to mobile. These sites had learned from Facebook’s streamlined profiles and easy feeds. But they diverged from Facebook’s friend-focused model, favoring an open network that allowed users to “follow” anyone they found interesting. This mirrored the subscriber-based model of YouTube as well as the open architecture of the blogosphere. Instead of trying to re-create real-world friend networks online, this new generation of social apps sought to build an audience of friends and strangers alike. At the same time, they took the lessons of the blog era—chiefly, that anyone could build a following online—and expanded upon them.

Were the women of Trinity Avenue control freaks? Is that a serious question? Because we pulled together as a community to prevent crime? No, no, I know you didn’t mean to offend. Let me answer your question this way: if a control freak gets up every morning to dress and feed her children (herself too, if she’s really on form), take them to school and head straight to the station to cram onto a commuter train to Victoria and then a tube to the West End; if, after working a full-on day, she then comes home and gets on with the kids’ reading, bath-and-bedtime routine (sometimes still with her coat on for the first part), segueing seamlessly into making dinner while unloading and reloading the dishwasher, her email open on the iPad on the counter or, every now and then, a friend propped nearby with a glass of wine because it’s so hard to catch up any other time, even though she gamely signs up for book groups and residents’ association and, yes, meetings with community police officers; if she finishes the evening by making the kids’ packed lunches for the next day and sorting out the recycling and putting the laundry on and ordering groceries online or birthday presents or whatever else needs finding or replacing that day; if she climbs into bed thinking her greatest achievement of the day has been not to scream at her children, not argue with her colleagues, not divorce her husband… If that’s what a control freak does, then yes, I was one.

must mention as well that Dr. Steenbarger’s TraderFeed blog, as well as his YouTube channel, are definitely two of my favorite trading resources.

Imagine two Facebook feeds. One is full of updates, news, and videos that make you feel calm and happy. The other is full of updates, news, and videos that make you feel angry and outraged. Which one does the algorithm select? The algorithm is neutral about the question of whether it wants you to be calm or angry. That’s not its concern. It only cares about one thing: Will you keep scrolling? Unfortunately, there’s a quirk of human behavior. On average, we will stare at something negative and outrageous for a lot longer than we will stare at something positive and calm. You will stare at a car crash longer than you will stare at a person handing out flowers by the side of the road, even though the flowers will give you a lot more pleasure than the mangled bodies in a crash. Scientists have been proving this effect in different contexts for a long time—if they showed you a photo of a crowd, and some of the people in it were happy, and some angry, you would instinctively pick out the angry faces first. Even ten-week-old babies respond differently to angry faces. This has been known about in psychology for years and is based on a broad body of evidence. It’s called “negativity bias.” There is growing evidence that this natural human quirk has a huge effect online. On YouTube, what are the words that you should put into the title of your video, if you want to get picked up by the algorithm? They are—according to the best site monitoring YouTube trends—words such as “hates,” “obliterates,” “slams,” “destroys.” A major study at New York University found that for every word of moral outrage you add to a tweet, your retweet rate will go up by 20 percent on average, and the words that will increase your retweet rate most are “attack,” “bad,” and “blame.” A study by the Pew Research Center found that if you fill your Facebook posts with “indignant disagreement,” you’ll double your likes and shares. So an algorithm that prioritizes keeping you glued to the screen will—unintentionally but inevitably—prioritize outraging and angering you. If it’s more enraging, it’s more engaging.

We hear all the time about how important it is to be physically fit. Our society has become ultra-focused on fitness and health. Our Facebook feeds are filled with seven-minute workouts. There are YouTube videos galore on seven days to rock-hard abs. The radio plays ads to lose ten pounds in ten days, but only if you call in the next ten minutes. Even the president told us to be physically fit. Remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in elementary school? A quick shuttle run, the dreaded flexed arm hang. It tested strength, endurance, flexibility, and agility. All different ways to prove we were physically fit. Or not. As a matter of fact, Americans now spend more on fitness than on college tuition.1 Over a lifetime, the average American spends more than $100,000 on things like gym memberships, supplements, exercise equipment, and personal training.2 Seems shocking, right? But where are the training programs for the thoughts in your head? Those thoughts that tell you that you have no choices when bad things happen. Those thoughts that try to convince you everything is out of your control in difficult situations. Where do you go if you want to be Thoughtfully Fit? Right here in this book.

Apparently, it was all Ithan needed to see by as he launched himself over the rail and aimed for the male’s iced-over tub. He landed gracefully, balancing his feet on either side. A pound of his fist had the ice cracking. The male was convulsing, no doubt drowning without a functioning respirator. Ithan hauled him up, ripping the mask from his face. A long feeding tube followed. The male gagged and spasmed, but Ithan propped him over the rim, lest he slide back under. Leaping with that athletic grace, Ithan reached the tub in the middle, freeing the mystic within. Then on to the female in the third. The Astronomer was shrieking, but it seemed Ithan barely heard the words. The three mystics shook, soft cries trembling from their blue mouths. Bryce shook with them, and Tharion put a hand on her back. Something groaned below, and the lights sputtered back on. Metal whined. The floor began to rise, pulling toward the tubs again. The sun fixture descended from the ceiling as the Astronomer hobbled down the walkway, cursing. “You had no right to pull them out, no right—” “They would have drowned!” Bryce launched into motion, storming after the male. Tharion stalked a step behind her. The female stirred as the slate floor locked into place around the tubs. On reed-thin arms, she raised up her chest, blinking blearily at Ithan, then the room. “Back,” the mystic wheezed, her voice broken and raspy. Unused for years. Her dark eyes filled with pleading. “Send me back.” “The Prince of the Ravine was about to rip apart your friend’s soul,” Ithan said, kneeling before her. “Send me back!” she screamed, the words barely more than a hoarse screech. “Back!” Not to Hel, Bryce knew—not to the Prince of the Ravine. But into the watery, weightless existence. Ithan got to his feet, inching away.

a marked change occurred between 2019 and 2020. The dual crises of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests ran slam into the twin dangers of Q-Anon and the consolidation of the Trump paramilitary. In 2019, there were sixty-five incidents of domestic terrorism or attempted violence, but in the run-up to the election in 2020, that number nearly doubled, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Twenty-one plots were disrupted by law enforcement.5 Violent extremists in the United States and terrorists in the Middle East have remarkably similar pathways to radicalization. Both are motivated by devotion to a charismatic leader, are successful at smashing political norms, and are promised a future racially homogeneous paradise. Modern American terrorists are much more akin to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) than they are to the old Ku Klux Klan. Though they take offense at that comparison, the similarities are quite remarkable. Most American extremists are not professional terrorists on par with their international counterparts. They lack operational proficiency and weapons. But they do not lack in ruthlessness, targets, or ideology. However, the overwhelming number of white nationalist extremists operate as lone wolves. Like McVeigh in the 1990s and others from the 1980s, they hope their acts will motivate the masses to follow in their footsteps. ISIS radicals who abandon their homes and immigrate to the Syria-Iraq border “caliphate” almost exclusively self-radicalize by watching terrorist videos. The Trump insurgents are radicalizing in the exact same way. Hundreds of tactical training videos easily accessible on social media show how to shoot, patrol, and fight like special forces soldiers. These video interviews and lessons explaining how to assemble body armor or make IEDs and extolling the virtues of being part of the armed resistance supporting Donald Trump fill Facebook and Instagram feeds. Some even call themselves the “Boojahideen,” an English take on the Arabic “mujahideen,” or holy warrior. U.S. insurgents in the making often watch YouTube and Facebook videos of tactical military operations, gear reviews, and shooting how-tos. They then go out to buy rifles, magazines, ammunition, combat helmets, and camouflage clothing and seek out other “patriots” to prepare for armed action. This is pure ISIS-like self-radicalization. One could call them Vanilla ISIS.

YouTube gained traction among producers, the focus of the platform moved from improving video hosting infrastructure (as a value proposition to producers) to improving matchmaking of videos with consumers (focusing on video search, and a video feed).

What am I going to do without my hands? What happens when I can't speak? Swallowing, I don't care so much about so they feed me through a tube, so what? But my voice? My hands? They're such an essential part of me. I talk with my voice. I gesture with my hands. This is how I give to people.

Normalcy?” I ask, louder than is probably necessary, surprising myself with the unusual amount of animated expression in my voice. “A regular human being? Jesus, what the fuck is there in that? What does that even mean? Credit card debt, a mortgage, a nagging spouse and bratty kids and a minivan and a fucking family pet? A nine-to-five job that you hate, and that’ll kill you before you ever see your fabled 401k? Cocktail parties and parent-teacher conferences and suburban cul-de-sacs? Monogamous sex, and the obligatory midlife crisis? Potpourri? Wall fixtures? Christmas cards? A welcome mat and a mailbox with your name stenciled on it in fancy lettering? Shitty diapers and foreign nannies and Goodnight Moon? Cramming your face with potato chips while watching primetime television? Antidepressants and crash diets, Coach purses and Italian sunglasses? Boxed wine and light beer and mentholated cigarettes? Pediatrician visits and orthodontist bills and college funds? Book clubs, PTA meetings, labor unions, special interest groups, yoga class, the fucking neighborhood watch? Dinner table gossip and conspiracy theories? How about old age, menopause, saggy tits, and rocking chairs on the porch? Or better yet, leukemia, dementia, emphysema, adult Depends, feeding tubes, oxygen tanks, false teeth, cirrhosis, kidney failure, heart disease, osteoporosis, and dying days spent having your ass wiped by STNAs in a stuffy nursing home reeking of death and disinfectant? Is that the kind of normalcy you lust for so much? All of that—is that worth the title of regular human being? Is it, Helen? Is it?

He told her he was tired and didn't want any mechanical intervention. "No breathing tubes! No shocks, and no pushing on my chest. Just let me go." He was willing to try treatments that would make him feel better (comfort care), Rebecca says, such as wound care and pain management, as well as the treatments he was already getting. But, he said, "If they are giving it to me just to give it to me, then forget about it." At that point, Rebecca turned to her grandmother, who would be the ultimate decision maker should her grandfather become unable to make his own choices. "Well, darling," she said, "of course I would tell the doctors to do everything possible to keep my husband alive." Rebecca was stunned. She'd just had a lovely, candid, and specific discussion with her grandfather about his wishes. Hadn't her grandmother heard what he'd said? She then asked her grandmother to tell her what she had heard her grandfather say, and her grandmother repeated his wishes but said she loved her husband too much to let him go. "If he is with me just one more day, it would be worth it to me," she told her granddaughter. It would be worth it to her even if he were "hooked up to machines and not able to talk to me." Rebecca then turned back to her grandfather and asked, "Did you just hear what Grandma said?" He said he did. She asked how he felt about her going against his wishes and requesting a feeding tube, ventilator, shocks, and other treatments he had said he did not want. "Is that okay with you?" she asked in disbelief. Her grandfather said it was. "I am ready to go, but if it helps your grandmother to feel that she did everything possible for me, even if it is because she doesn't want me to go, that is okay. She is the one who has to go on living with her decision. If this is what she wants, then this is what I want because I love her." Rebecca realized in that moment that her grandfather's wishes were being honored; above all else, he wanted a death that his wife could live with.

There was so much to think about and so much to do with all this activity and responsibility that he hardly had time to really consider how he missed London, the hum of it, the Brixton roar and the beloved river, the West Indian take aways, the glittering of the tower blocks at night, the mobile phone shacks, the Africans in Peckham, the common proximity of plantain, the stern beauty of church women on Sunday mornings, the West End, the art in the air, the music in the air, the sense of possibility. He missed the tube, the telephone boxes. He even missed, deep down, the wicked parking inspectors and the heartless bus drivers who flew past queues of freezing pedestrians out of spite. He missed riding from Loughborough to Surrey Quays on his bike with the plane trees whizzing by, the sight of some long-weaved woman walking along in tight jeans and a studded belt and look-at-me boots and maybe a little boy holding her hand. The skylines, the alleyways, and yes, the sirens and helicopters and the hit of life, all these things he knew so well. And the fact, most of all, that he belonged there in a way that he would never, could never, belong in Dorking. He was outside, displaced. He was off the A-Z. He felt, in a very fundamental way, that he was living outside of his life, outside of himself. And the problem was, if indeed it was a problem – how could you call something like this a problem when there were bills to pay and children to feed and a house to maintain? – the problem was that he did not know what to do about it, how to get rid of this feeling, how to get to a place where he felt that he was in the right place. And this not being such a serious problem, not really a problem at all, he had suppressed it and accepted things as they were.

A platform is a raised, level surface on which people or things can stand. A platform business works in just that way: it allows users—producers and consumers of goods, services, and content— to create, communicate, and consume value through the platform. Amazon, Apple’s App Store, eBay, Airbnb, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pay- Pal, YouTube, Uber, Wikipedia, Instagram, etsy, Twitter, Snapchat, Hotel Tonight, Salesforce, Kickstarter, and Alibaba are all platform businesses. While these businesses have done many impressive things, the most relevant to us is that they have created an oppor- tunity for anyone, even those with limited means, to share their thoughts, ideas, creativity, and creations with millions of people at a low cost. Today, if you create a product or have an idea, you can sell that product or share that idea with a substantial audience quickly and cost-effectively through these platforms. Not only that, but the platforms arguably give more power to individuals than corporations since they’re so efficient at identifying ulterior motives or lack of authenticity. The communities on these platforms, many of whom are millennials, know when they’re being sold to rather than shared with, and quickly eliminate those users from their con- sciousness (a/k/a their social media feeds). Now, smaller organizations and less prosperous individuals are able to sell to or share their products, services, or content with more targeted demographics of people. That’s exactly what the modern consumer desires: a more personalized, connected experience. For example, a Brooklyn handbag designer can sell her handbags to a select group of customers through one of the multitude of fashion or shopping platforms and create an ongoing dialogue with her audience through a communication platform such as Instagram. Or an independent filmmaker from Los Angeles can create a short film using a GoPro and the editing software on their Mac and then instantly share it with countless people through one of a dozen video platforms and get direct feedback. Or an author can write a book and sell it directly from his or her website and social channels to anyone who’s excited about it. The reaction to standardization and globalization has been enabled by these platforms. Customers can get what they want, from whomever they want, whenever they want it. It’s a revised and personalized version of globalization that allows us to maintain and enhance the cultural connections that create the meaning we crave in our lives.

I feel misty for old tyrannies. The ones which beat you, enslaved you, tried to break your spirit, and in doing so gave your life the only enhancement it really needs: a sense of purpose. The tyranny of the future doesn’t take away our choices; it swamps us in them. It doesn’t curb our freedoms; it tube-feeds us with them until we rupture like neglected factory geese.

During the Blitz of 1940–1941, for example, as German bombs rained down on London, isolated populations of Culex mosquitoes were confined to the air-raid tunnel shelters of the Underground Tube along with the city’s resilient citizens. These trapped mosquitoes quickly adapted to feed on mice, rats, and humans instead of birds and are now a species of mosquito distinct from their aboveground parental counterparts.* What should have taken thousands of years of evolution was accomplished by these mining sapper mosquitoes in less than one hundred years. “In another 100 years time,” jokes Richard Jones, former president of the British Entomological and Natural History Society, “there may be separate Circle Line, Metropolitan Line and Jubilee Line mosquito species in the tunnels below London.

Do you want to be resuscitated if your heart stops? 2. Do you want aggressive treatments such as intubation and mechanical ventilation? 3. Do you want antibiotics? 4. Do you want tube or intravenous feeding if you can’t eat on your own?

But what is legality, if it is legal to torture a goose or a duck by putting it in a cage where it can’t move, shoving a tube down its throat, and force-feeding it to make its liver fatty in order to make foie gras for people to spread on crackers? The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 applies to crows because some of their populations migrate. But the treaty provides that a species under its auspices may be hunted under regulations preventing detrimental effects on the overall population if there is good cause. Crows are exempted from the act’s protection when they “harm livestock” by eating corn. So American crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos, are considered great for target shooting. There is no bag limit. There used to be a specific crow-hunting season, beginning in September in some states. But in my state of Maine you can now shoot crows in any number at any time, except on Sundays. Migratory woodpeckers, such as the northern flicker, in contrast, are as far as I know not fair game even when they are damaging a home. And I think that is fair and reasonable.

goose or a duck by putting it in a cage where it can’t move, shoving a tube down its throat, and force-feeding it to make its liver fatty in order to make foie gras for people to spread on crackers? The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 applies to crows because some of their populations migrate. But the treaty provides that a species under its auspices may be hunted under regulations preventing detrimental effects on the overall population if there is good cause. Crows are exempted from the act’s protection when they “harm livestock” by eating corn. So American crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos, are considered great for target shooting. There is no bag limit. There used to be a specific crow-hunting season, beginning in September in some states. But in my state of Maine you can now shoot crows in any number at any time, except on Sundays. Migratory woodpeckers, such as the northern flicker, in contrast, are as far as I know not fair game even when they are damaging a home. And I think that is fair and reasonable.

tube-feeding systems

Every soul has a lock on it and there is only one key which fits the lock. There is a key and there is a lock. Jesus is the key that is the feeding tube, and he only fits into one particular soul lock.

A mosquito head with huge bug eyes and an oily feeding tube was affixed to a monstrous, batlike body the color of liver. The wings were webbed with engorged blood vessels, and from its belly hung two rows of hairy, withered dugs.