Vulnerability Management Quotes

Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.

Fortifying the company involves assessing the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and implementing safeguards.

If your business doesn't have money set aside in a business savings account, then your business is extremely vulnerable to crisis. Your business has gotta put money aside as a safety precaution.

In the building of walls to protect ourselves— we have managed to keep ourselves from the best in this life. And so the line is drawn whether to live and to be broken and unbroken or to breathe but not live at all. Perhaps there is no such thing as brokenness, afterall. Perhaps it is all just called "living.

Group A defined the challenge of anxiety as finding ways to manage and soothe the anxiety, while Group B clearly defined the problem as changing the behaviors that led to anxiety.

The secret killer of innovation is shame. You can’t measure it, but it is there. Every time someone holds back on a new idea, fails to give their manager much needed feedback, and is afraid to speak up in front of a client you can be sure shame played a part. That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is what stops us taking the very risks required to move our companies forward. If you want a culture of creativity and innovation, where sensible risks are embraced on both a market and individual level, start by developing the ability of managers to cultivate an openness to vulnerability in their teams. And this, paradoxically perhaps, requires first that they are vulnerable themselves. This notion that the leader needs to be “in charge” and to “know all the answers” is both dated and destructive. Its impact on others is the sense that they know less, and that they are less than. A recipe for risk aversion if ever I have heard it. Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation.

Shame is paralyzing and debilitating. It invites us not to be heard, at least not in an authentic way. Acting courageously when shame enters the picture requires extraordinary courage because people will do anything to escape from shame or from the possibility that shame will be evoked. It is just too difficult to go there. Even for people who will walk in to the fires of transformation to face fear. Men and women tend to manage shame differently. Generally, men have less tolerance for shame, perhaps because they are shamed almost from birth for half their humanity. The so called feminine part of themselves including anything vulnerable or seen as weak. Men often sit with shame for only a nanosecond before flipping it into something more masculine or therefore tolerable like anger or rage or a need to dominate devalue or control.

When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation .

There is a surprising amount of overlap between the storytelling and burlesque communities, maybe because they both, in a way, involve getting naked. People who choose to be vulnerable are rare. People who manage to do it well are even more so.

We each joked to close friends that the secret to saving a relationship is for one person to become terminally ill. Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love—to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful.

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It’s been protected by the efficient armour, it’s never participated in life, it’s never been exposed to living and to managing the person’s affairs, it’s never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it’s never properly lived. That’s how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced... And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It’s their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can’t understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That’s the carrier of all the living qualities. It’s the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn’t come out of that creature isn’t worth having, or it’s worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful... And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears. And yet that’s the moment it wants. That’s where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that’s where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy. That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.

Day has mixed her urban fantasy with biblical references, tight plotting, exciting action, and a hero...or two...you won't soon forget. Eve manages to be a kick-ass--and yet human and vulnerable--heroine. I would highly recommend this book and I can't wait for the next in the series. [on Eve of Darkness ]

But there is virtually no relationship between being an expert and being seen as someone people can trust with their secrets, doubts, and vulnerabilities. A petty office tyrant or micromanager may be high on expertise, but will be so low on trust that it will undermine their ability to manage, and effectively exclude them from informal networks.

I learned to ambush the fear and I managed to turn vulnerability to ruthlessness.

Empathy seems to have been replaced with judgement in today's world. NO ONE has arrived. I repeat, NO ONE has arrived. We all experience joy, happiness, sadness, anger, disappointment, fear, etc... Some of the most successful people have said things in interviews that give you a peek into their vulnerable areas. The differences are found in how we manage our own issues so if you are beating yourself up, comparing yourself or on the other end of the spectrum looking down on others...please stop! We are all searching for significance in one way or another...some have found it within while it takes others a little more time searching the outside. Be true to yourself and allow others to do the same. Remember, no one has it all together all the time. NO ONE HAS ARRIVED...WE ARE ALL BE-COMING. HUMANS BE-ING. So let folks BE.

If we want to reignite innovation and passion, we have to rehumanize work. When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation.

Yet when we do manage to create ourselves anew, isn’t there always a suspicion that the new identity fits over the old like a second skin, at times itchy or uncomfortably tight, not quite covering the most vulnerable patches?

At the heart of vulnerability lies the willingness of people to abandon their pride and their fear, to sacrifice their egos for the collective good of the team. While this can be a little threatening and uncomfortable at first, ultimately it becomes liberating for people who are tired of spending time and energy overthinking their actions and managing interpersonal politics at work.

Love is not the answer, peace is. Throughout my whole life I have experienced and seen others use love as a reason to treat people with unkindness by being controlling, jealous, shouting in anger, and projecting guilt and shame. If you love someone but there is not peace in your heart when you think of that person then your work is not done. Do not stop at love, continue all the way towards the freedom of inner peace. Love starts when peace begins. Without peace love is simply a mask for our insecurity, judgment, and egoic attachments.

It seems this is what comes of being vulnerable. When we relax the clinging to our treasured beliefs and ideas, soften our resistance to the blows of life, stop trying to manage the uncertainty and hold ourselves more lightly, then we become a less solid thing. Less of a fixed identity.

The Freedman’s Savings Bank serves as a cautionary tale for government support of banking for the poor when that support is just a façade. Draping a flag over a building and then installing private profit-motivated management inside is the most dangerous sort of government support. It induces trust in a vulnerable customer base that not only suffers from financial loss, but also loses all faith in public institutions. It poisons true government efforts to help. A similar phenomenon was at the heart of the failure of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the recent financial

When we experience a sad event it is natural to react to it with pain. The first arrow is the event. Our prolonged reactions to the event are the second arrows. It is natural to need time to recover. But we made it harder for ourselves when we second guess ourselves and feel guilty or ashamed. Instead we can work with and modify these emotions from the second arrow. We can have both the courage to accept our suffering and the skills to move beyond it. We can pardon ourselves and all those around us. This may be the most important thing - that we learn to grant ourselves mercy. That we forgive ourselves, that we accept our pain, mistakes, and vulnerability, and somehow manage to love ourselves and our own lives. ...And it is only when we grant ourselves mercy that we can extend this mercy to others.

We recoil from the notion that this is it—that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we’ll get a shot at. Instead, we mentally fight against the way things are—so that, in the words of the psychotherapist Bruce Tift, “we don’t have to consciously participate in what it’s like to feel claustrophobic, imprisoned, powerless, and constrained by reality.” This struggle against the distressing constraints of reality is what some old-school psychoanalysts call “neurosis,” and it takes countless forms, from workaholism and commitment-phobia to codependency and chronic shyness.

Bad temper and anger management can be significant problems for Aquarians, especially the individuals who have to face a lot of pressure and stress. These individuals hate being emotionally vulnerable, so if something really grinds their nuts, they can lash out severely. This outburst may compensate for and include a lot of pent-up emotions.

Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love -- to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful.

People are not all wounded in the same spot. It behooves you to know what part of you is vulnerable so you can protect it most of all.

But all too often, we manage our time like we manage our money—more goes out than what comes in. We don’t realize how our busyness makes us less stable and more vulnerable.

we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love—to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful.

I’m warning you because you’re young and vulnerable. He’s a dirty, lying, conniving piece of shit and he’s dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.

Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love—to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful.

The status-quo habits for 'grandfathered' vulnerabilities do not legitimize them.

Negative thinking and negative emotions have their importance: they sharpen your focus on dangers, threats, and vulnerabilities. This is critical for our survival.

When we are stuck in fight/flight/freeze mode, we devote our resources to managing stress, and, to put it simply, our child brain suffers. Childhood is a time of great vulnerability. Unable to survive on our own, a parent-figure’s withholding of anything perceived to hinder our survival sends stress signals flooding through our bodies. The resulting ‘survival brain’, as I call it, is hyperfocused on perceived threats, sees the world in black and white, and is often obsessive, panic driven, and prone to circular reasoning. We can break down or shut down when faced with stress.

If the global supply chains are too fragmented, they're more vulnerable to shock. And that presents a threat to businesses everywhere. And when businesses everywhere suffer, people everywhere suffer.

If you can manage to see yourself from the outside and accept yourself as a vulnerable organism within the biosphere, rather than focusing on the narrowness of your own needs and considering yourself the center of reality, you will be amazed at how the world positively overflows with suffering beings, each with needs and appetites of their own. Something odd occurs when one has that experience: Suddenly, the soul is filled with deep compasion for the world. This is the only attitude adequate to the task of scaling the dark mountain of the ecological catastrophe we face: without any illusion that it is possible to change human beings based on the strenght of better insights. But with full-fledged empathy for this creation, among which things are so hard precisely because it is creation. And with equally strong gratitude for this creation beneath a graciously warm sun and its affirmative light: where we have already been given everyhing we need to live, before we ever thought to desire it.

Fewer than one in twenty security professionals has the core competence and the foundation knowledge to take a system all the way from a completely unknown state of security through mapping, vulnerability testing, password cracking, modem testing, vulnerability patching, firewall tuning, instrumentation, virus detection at multiple entry points, and even through back-ups and configuration management.

I asked the stage managers to bring up the houselights so I could see people. I needed to feel connected. Simply seeing people as people rather than “the audience” reminded me that the challenges that scare me—like being naked—scare everyone else. I think that’s why empathy can be conveyed without speaking a word—it just takes looking into someone’s eyes and seeing yourself reflected back in an engaged way.

The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.

If we want to reignite innovation and passion, we have to rehumanize work. When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation. When

An antidemocratic party tries to prevent the formation of an active, participatory demos—it distrusts popular demonstrations—and is deeply antiegalitarian. An illiberal party, it considers “rules” less as restraints than as annoyances to be circumvented. It exploits the vulnerabilities of a two-party system with the aim of reshaping it into a more or less permanent undemocratic and illiberal system. The Republican Party is not, as advertised, conservative but radically oligarchical.

Control is an illusion—a fact you will learn very fast if you become ill, or have things fall apart in some other way. When we understand vulnerability and suffering as an essential part of being human, our individual fate can be easier to manage.

I did believe that I could opt out of feeling vulnerable, so when it happened- when the phone rang with unimaginable news; or when I was scared; or when I loved so fiercely that rather than feeling gratitude and joy I could only prepare for loss- I controlled things. I managed situations and micromanaged the people around me. I performed until there was no energy left to feel. I made what was uncertain certain, no matter what the cost. I stayed so busy that the truth of my hurting and my fear could never catch up. I looked brave on the outside and felt scared on the inside.

. I thought that was why, as I stood before a painting of a young girl in half-light, there was something that was both guarded and vulnerable in her gaze. It was not the contradiction of a single instant, but rather it was as if the painter had caught her in two separate states of emotion, two different moods, and managed to contain them within the single image. There would have been a multitude of such instants captured in the canvas, between the time she first sat down before the painter and the time she rose, neck and upper body stiff, from the final sitting. That layering—in effect a kind of temporal blurring, or simultaneity—was perhaps ultimately what distinguished painting from photography. I wondered if that was the reason why contemporary painting seemed to me so much flatter, to lack the mysterious depth of these works, because so many painters now worked from photographs.

Shame enters for those of us who experience anxiety because not only are we feeling fearful, out of control, and incapable of managing our increasingly demanding lives, but eventually our anxiety is compounded and made unbearable by our belief that if we were just smarter, stronger, or better, we’d be able to handle everything

By tracing the early history of USCYBERCOM it is possible to understand some of the reasons why the military has focused almost completely on network defense and cyber attack while being unaware of the need to address the vulnerabilities in systems that could be exploited in future conflicts against technologically capable adversaries. It is a problem mirrored in most organizations. The network security staff are separate from the endpoint security staff who manage desktops through patch and vulnerability management tools and ensure that software and anti-virus signatures are up to date. Meanwhile, the development teams that create new applications, web services, and digital business ventures, work completely on their own with little concern for security. The analogous behavior observed in the military is the creation of new weapons systems, ISR platforms, precision targeting, and C2 capabilities without ensuring that they are resistant to the types of attacks that USCYBERCOM and the NSA have been researching and deploying. USCYBERCOM had its genesis in NCW thinking. First the military worked to participate in the information revolution by joining their networks together. Then it recognized the need for protecting those networks, now deemed cyberspace. The concept that a strong defense requires a strong offense, carried over from missile defense and Cold War strategies, led to a focus on network attack and less emphasis on improving resiliency of computing platforms and weapons systems.

Alone Together I want us to be together, but I want to stay connected. I want your attention, but I want to manage mine, opting in and opting out, sponging up what's relevant, discarding the expendable. I can't get enough of you, not too close, not too far, at a manageable distance, at a convenient time. Let me tell you how much I loveyou, let me count the ways, by text, by email, by post, by Tweet. If I've said too much I can edit. If I've show myself too vulnerable I can delete. If I'm at a loss for words I can Google. Come to think of it, I'd much rather text than talk. Come to think of it you're dispensable too. I just need the illusion of love, without all its messy demands, without its unpredictability, without the risk. I just need Facebook because nothing beats being alone together.

In Yellowstone National Park, human-imposed stability thwarted for many years the natural process of small fires, which regularly clean out brush and dead trees. The result was a fragile equilibrium completely vulnerable to the cataclysm of fire that destroyed large areas of the park. The attempt to manage for stability and to enforce an unnatural equilibrium always leads to far-reaching destruction. The

Show vulnerability when assessing a difficult situation, but present a clear path forward. Become a student of the people you manage: avoid telling people what to feel, listen carefully, and manage individually. Prioritize yourself and seek support from other leaders to avoid emotional leaks that negatively affect your reports. Understand the challenges you and others may face in leadership positions and take steps to reduce them.

I’m done being polite about this bullshit. My list of professional insecurities entirely stems from being a young woman. Big plot twist there! As much as I like to execute equality instead of discussing the blaring inequality, the latter is still necessary. Everything, everywhere, is still necessary. The more women who take on leadership positions, the more representation of women in power will affect and shift the deep-rooted misogyny of our culture—perhaps erasing a lot of these inherent and inward concerns. But whether a woman is a boss or not isn’t even what I’m talking about—I’m talking about when she is, because even when she manages to climb up to the top, there’s much more to do, much more to change. When a woman is in charge, there are still unspoken ideas, presumptions, and judgments being thrown up into the invisible, terribly lit air in any office or workplace. And I’m a white woman in a leadership position—I can only speak from my point of view. The challenges that women of color face in the workforce are even greater, the hurdles even higher, the pay gap even wider. The ingrained, unconscious bias is even stronger against them. It’s overwhelming to think about the amount of restructuring and realigning we have to do, mentally and physically, to create equality, but it starts with acknowledging the difference, the problem, over and over.

Notice in Acts 4 that there were “no needy persons among them.” Why? Because they shared with “anyone one who had need.” The expression of neediness in the community allowed the economy of love to flow. But in churches in America and other places where affluence poses special problems, the situation is very different. These cultures are enslaved to the fear of death and death avoidance holds serious sway. In these cultures the expression of need is taboo and pornographic. What results is neurotic image-management, the pressure to be “fine.” The perversity here is that on the surface American churches do look like the church in Acts 4 - there are “no needy persons” among us. We all appear to be doing just fine, thank you very much. But we know this to be a sham, a collective delusion driven by the fear of death. I’m really not fine and neither are you. But you are afraid of me and I’m afraid of you. We are neurotic about being vulnerable with each other. We fear exposing our need and failure to each other. And because of this fear - the fear of being needy within a community of neediness - the witness of the church is compromised. A collection of self-sustaining and self-reliant people - people who are all pretending to be fine - is not the Kingdom of God. It’s a church built upon the delusional anthropology we described earlier. Specifically, a church where everyone is “fine” is a group of humans refusing to be human beings and pretending to be gods. Such a “church” is comprised of fearful people working hard to keep up appearances and unable to trust each other to the point of loving self-sacrifice. In such a “church” each member is expected to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining, thus making no demands upon others. Unfortunately, where there is no need and no vulnerability, there can be no love.

Wanting to be perceived as cool isn’t about wanting to be “The Fonz”—it’s about minimizing vulnerability in order to reduce the risk of being ridiculed or made fun of. We hustle for our worthiness by slipping on the emotional and behavioral straitjacket of cool and posturing as the tragically hip and the terminally “better than.” Being “in control” isn’t always about the desire to manipulate situations, but often it’s about the need to manage perception.

High-quality and transparent data, clearly documented, timely rendered, and publicly available are the sine qua non of competent public health management. During a pandemic, reliable and comprehensive data are critical for determining the behavior of the pathogen, identifying vulnerable populations, rapidly measuring the effectiveness of interventions, mobilizing the medical community around cutting-edge disease management, and inspiring cooperation from the public. The shockingly low quality of virtually all relevant data pertinent to COVID-19, and the quackery, the obfuscation, the cherrypicking and blatant perversion would have scandalized, offended, and humiliated every prior generation of American public health officials. Too often, Dr. Fauci was at the center of these systemic deceptions. The “mistakes” were always in the same direction—inflating the risks of coronavirus and the safety and efficacy of vaccines in

When assigning responsibilities to employees in a startup, you could start by treating it as a simple optimization problem to efficiently match talents with tasks. But even if you could somehow get this perfectly right, any given solution would quickly break down. Partly that’s because startups have to move fast, so individual roles can’t remain static for long. But it’s also because job assignments aren’t just about the relationships between workers and tasks; they’re also about relationships between employees. The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.

Psychologists call this the “need-fear” dilemma. We fear the vulnerability that it takes to embrace our needs, so they go unmet. The more we need things from people, the scarier it gets to ask for what we need. We try to manage this need in other ways, hanging out in the first three corners, which bring no good outcomes and just reinforce limits. Try as we may to hold our breath longer, eventually we will be gasping for relational air. The need does not go away. It only grows, and as it does, so does the fear of being even more vulnerable.

In an organizational culture where respect and the dignity of individuals are held as the highest values, shame and blame don’t work as management styles. There is no leading by fear. Empathy is a valued asset, accountability is an expectation rather than an exception, and the primal human need for belonging is not used as leverage and social control. We can’t control the behavior of individuals; however, we can cultivate organizational cultures where behaviors are not tolerated and people are held accountable for protecting what matters most: human beings. We

Humans are fickle, faith can be fragile, and the church—that rambunctious collection of the fickle and the fragile—is a broken and complicated institution. Wholehearted faith means putting yourself at risk of being hurt by that institution and its people. Yet I have not managed to find a corner of it where grace cannot break through and where there is not enough spiritual oxygen for that grace to grow. If we make ourselves vulnerable to the possibility of hurt, we also open ourselves to the hope of healing, to the hope of being touched by that ridiculous grace.

I did believe that I could opt out of feeling vulnerable, so when it happened - when the phone rang with unimaginable news; or when I was scared; or when I loved so fiercely that rather than feeling gratitude and joy I could only prepare for loss - I controlled things. I managed situations and micromanaged the people around me. I performed until there was no energy left to feel. I made what was uncertain certain, no matter what the cost. I stayed so busy that the truth of my hurting and my fear could never catch up. I looked brave on the outside and felt scared on the inside.

The great danger to an empire is permanent war. Given global interests, something is always on fire. If the primary response is war, the empire will always be at war. And if it is always at war somewhere, it will always be vulnerable to someone taking advantage of the empire’s preoccupation. Even more important, if the empire doesn’t benefit its citizens, but instead exhausts them and disrupts their lives by war, the political support for the empire will quickly evaporate. Both Rome and Britain survived by using minimal direct force, in favor of other means of managing their empires.

Instead of asking them to seek feedback, we had randomly assigned those managers to share their past experiences with receiving feedback and their future development goals. We advised them to tell their teams about a time when they benefited from constructive criticism and to identify the areas that they were working to improve now. By admitting some of their imperfections out loud, managers demonstrated that they could take it—and made a public commitment to remain open to feedback. They normalized vulnerability, making their teams more comfortable opening up about their own struggles.

Is there some amazing rational thing you do when your mind's running in all different directions?" she managed. "My own approach is usually to identify the different desires, give them names, conceive of them as separate individuals, and let them argue it out inside my head. So far the main persistent ones are my Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Slytherin sides, my Inner Critic, and my simulated copies of you, Neville, Draco, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Quirrell, Dad, Mum, Richard Feynman, and Douglas Hofstadter." Hermione considered trying this before her Common Sense warned that it might be a dangerous sort of thing to pretend. "There's a copy of me inside your head?" "Of course there is!" Harry said. The boy suddenly looked a bit more vulnerable. "You mean there isn't a copy of me living in your head?" There was, she realized; and not only that, it talked in Harry's exact voice. "It's rather unnerving now that I think about it," said Hermione. "I do have a copy of you living in my head. It's talking to me right now using your voice, arguing how this is perfectly normal." "Good," Harry said seriously. "I mean, I don't see how people could be friends without that.

Childhood adversity increases depression risk via "second hit" scenarios - lowering thresholds so that adult stressors that people typically manage instead trigger depressive episodes. This vulnerability makes sense. Depression is fundamentally a pathological sense of loss of control (explaining the classic description of depression as "learned helplessness"). If a child experiences severe, uncontrollable adversity, the most fortunate conclusion in adulthood is "Those were terrible circumstances over which I had no control." But when childhood traumas produce depression, there is cognitively distorted overgeneralizations: "And life will always be uncontrollably awful.

Novels can bring their authors to the brink of madness. Novels can shelter their authors, too. As a writer, I protected the characters in The God of Small Things, because they were vulnerable. Many of the characters in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness are, for the most part, even more vulnerable. But they protect me. Especially Anjum, who was born as Aftab, who ends up as the proprietor and Manager of the Jannat Guest House, located in a derelict Muslim graveyard just outside the walls of Old Delhi. Anjum softens the borders between men and women, between animals and humans and between life and death. I go to her when I need shelter from the tyranny of hard borders in this increasingly hardening world.

To lovers out there …. Some people think being single means purity. It means you are a good , innocent person. It means that you are doing better in life, and everything is good. It means you are a strong person. You can manage everything that you don’t need anyone in your life. Having someone it doesn’t mean you are incapable, weak, vulnerable and you are dependent. Being in a relationship with the right person. It is life changing. It is the best thing that everyone should hope for. Two is always better than one. It is twice of everything good, with less effort, strength and time. Being single and alone should not be by choice, but should be circumstantial . Love it is a powerful and beautiful thing . You can benefit a lot from it and it can do lot of things for you.

Neoliberal victim theory is characterized first and foremost by a victim-blaming conception of victimization as subjective and psychological rather than social and political. According to this conception, victimization does not so much happen ‘to’ someone as arise from the self – through the having of a ‘victim personality’, through the making of bad choices, through inadequate practice of personal vigilance and risk management, through the failure to practise the rigorous discipline of positive thinking. This way of knowing victimization transforms social vulnerability into personal responsibility, erasing the social foundations of suffering in order to mask rising inequality, and making it seem logical to regard victims of poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence as the authors of their own suffering.

I am not a buddy-buddy person at work. I feel the need to say this because I think that sometimes we give ourselves a pass at caring about our colleagues because we’re introverts, or we don’t want to make friends at work. You might think that I am the sort who loves to make lots of work friends, and therefore I don’t understand how this feels to you, but I assure you: I understand that you don’t feel like that human side is all that interesting in the workplace. Being an introvert is not an excuse for making no effort to treat people like real human beings, however. The bedrock of strong teams is human connection, which leads to trust. And trust, real trust, requires the ability and willingness to be vulnerable in front of each other. So, your manager will hopefully treat you like a human who has a life outside of work, and spend a few minutes talking about that life when you meet.

Shame: Is fear of ridicule and belittling used to manage people and/or to keep people in line? Is self-worth tied to achievement, productivity, or compliance? Are blaming and finger-pointing norms? Are put-downs and name-calling rampant? What about favoritism? Is perfectionism an issue? Comparison: Healthy competition can be beneficial, but is there constant overt or covert comparing and ranking? Has creativity been suffocated? Are people held to one narrow standard rather than acknowledged for their unique gifts and contributions? Is there an ideal way of being or one form of talent that is used as measurement of everyone else’s worth? Disengagement: Are people afraid to take risks or try new things? Is it easier to stay quiet than to share stories, experiences, and ideas? Does it feel as if no one is really paying attention or listening? Is everyone struggling to be seen and heard?

I remain inspired and transformed by something I learned from Harriet Lerner’s book The Dance of Connection.3 Dr. Lerner explains that we all have patterned ways of managing anxiety. Some of us respond to anxiety by overfunctioning and others by underfunctioning. Overfunctioners tend to move quickly to advise, rescue, take over, micromanage, and get in other people’s business rather than look inward. Underfunctioners tend to get less competent under stress. They invite others to take over and often become the focus of family gossip, worry, or concern. They can get labeled as the “irresponsible one” or the “the problem child” or the “fragile one.” Dr. Lerner explains that seeing these behaviors as patterned responses to anxiety, rather than truths about who we are, can help us understand that we can change. Overfunctioners, like me, can become more willing to embrace our vulnerabilities in the face of anxiety, and underfunctioners can work to amplify their strengths and competencies.

He told me to stay away from you.” Strong hands roamed her back in the most comforting fashion. “You should have listened.” Rose raised her face to look at him. “But then I would not have known what it was to be truly happy.” Grey’s eyes widened, and for a moment he looked young and vulnerable. “Don’t say that. I’ve made you miserable.” She smiled sadly. “True, but those nights with you at Saint’s Row? That was happiness for me. The most I’ve ever known.” His mouth opened and she pressed her fingers again his lips to close them. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know it’s not what I want to hear.” Grey frowned, and reached up to move her hand from his face. He held her fingers within his. He gave off more heat than the fire she’d fried herself in front of earlier. Heat that went straight to her bones, right to the very center of her being, radiating out into her limbs. There was nothing seductive about their embrace and yet she ached inside, that wet and willing part of herself desperate to take him inside once more. She wanted to claim him, mark him. Ruin him for anyone else. “I was happy too,” he said softly. So softly she wouldn’t have known it was him who spoke were she not watching his beautiful lips as they formed the words. “God help me, you make me forget every vow and promise I’ve ever made.” Heart pounding, Rose didn’t resist as he dropped her hand to thread his fingers in her hair, pressing against her scalp. “You make me feel like someone else,” he told her gruffly. “A good man. A worthy man, and not a selfish bastard too corrupted to ever be loved.” Her eyes burned, but Rose managed to hold the tears at bay. She bit her lip, staring at him, she knew, with her heart in her eyes. She didn’t care. “You are a good man,” she whispered. “The best I know.” Who else would cut himself off from almost all contact with people simply to keep himself from returning to a way of life he wanted to leave behind? “You shouldn’t say things like that.” “Why not? I believe them.” “Because when you say them, I want to believe them.” And then he lowered his head and captured her mouth with his own.

Gordon MacDonald once wrote about how what he called the “sinkhole syndrome” happens in a human life. It may be triggered by a failure at work, a severed relationship, harsh criticism from a parent, or for no apparent reason at all. But it feels like the earth has given way. It turns out, MacDonald wrote, that in a sense we have two worlds to manage: an outer world of career and possessions and social networks; and an inner world that is more spiritual in nature, where values are selected and character is formed — a place where worship and confession and humility can be practiced. Because our outer worlds are visible and measurable and expandable, they are easier to deal with. They demand our attention. “The result is that our private world is often cheated, neglected because it does not shout quite so loudly. It can be effectively ignored for large periods of time before it gives way to a sinkhole-like cave-in.” He quotes the haunting words of Oscar Wilde: “I was no longer captain of my own soul.” The sinkhole, says MacDonald, is the picture of spiritual vulnerability in our day.

The Pathe & Mullen (1997) sample almost unanimously reported deterioration in mental and physical well-being as a consequence of the harassment. (..) These victims often described a preoccupation with their stalker, one commenting: "I think I’ve become as obsessed as the stalker himself". (..) Whenever stalking victims present it is essential to assess their suicide potential and continue to monitor this. (..) Victims of stalking often respond to cognitive-orientated psychological therapies because stalking breaches previously held assumptions about their safety. The belief of victims in their strength and resilience and their confidence in the reasonable and predictable nature of the world are frequently shattered, to be replaced with feelings of extreme vulnerability and an expectation of pervasive danger and unpredictable harm. Cognitive therapies attempt to restructure these morbid perceptions of the world that threaten the victim’s adaptation and functioning. (..) Avoidance can respond to behavioural therapies such as prolonged exposure and stress inoculation, which aim to assist victims to gradually resume abandoned activities and manage the associated anxiety.

I heard a compelling lecture by an African American pastor from the north side of Chicago. He opened his talk with numbers, counting up all of the hours that a God-fearing person in his parish has spent in church over the course of her life. It was a lot. Then he described what is talked about during those hours in church. It’s all about hope, he told us. For change, for a better future, for justice, for relief of suffering. And then he asked the predominantly white audience why we expected our African American patients to give up hope—for a cure, for another chance at life—at this most vulnerable point in their lives. This is a time, he said, when they need hope the most. If the doctor’s only concept of hope and miracles is the cure of disease, then there truly is nothing more to talk about with a family wanting everything done in the name of God. But guided by Betty Clark, the pastor on our palliative care team, I have found other ways of transmitting hope to families looking for a miracle. The miracle of time at home, of pain management, of improved quality of life. These are all concepts I have seen families embrace in place of survival—the only concept of hope previously imagined. I have also found it helpful to open up the question of God’s will. Once, a religious family explained to me that they didn’t want to play God by withdrawing the breathing tube from their dying loved one. I asked them whether another interpretation might be that they were playing God by keeping her alive when her body was actively dying. Mightn’t this be God demonstrating that it was her time to die? And were we, in our hubris, thwarting God’s will? Many families agreed with my suggestion that almighty God doesn’t need help from mere mortals. If He wants to heal a body, He can do it on his own.

It is not only in childhood that people of high potential can be encouraged or held back and their promise subverted or sustained. The year before I went to Amherst, a group of women had declined to stand for tenure. One of them simply said that after six years she was used up, too weary and too eroded by constant belittlement to accept tenure if it were offered to her. Women were worn down or burnt out. During the three years I spent as dean of the faculty, as I watched some young faculty members flourish and others falter, I gradually realized that the principal instrument of sexism was not the refusal to appoint women or even the refusal to promote (though both occurred, for minorities as well as women), but the habit of hiring women and then dealing with them in such a way that when the time came for promotion it would be reasonable to deny it. It was not hard to show that a particular individual who was a star in graduate school had somehow belied her promise, had proved unable to achieve up to her potential. This subversion was accomplished by taking advantage of two kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. The first is the quality of self-sacrifice, a learned willingness to set their own interests aside and be used and even used up by the community. Many women at Amherst ended up investing vast amounts of time in needed public-service activities, committee work, and teaching nondepartmental courses. Since these activities were not weighed significantly in promotion decisions, they were self-destructive. The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation. Even women who arrived at Amherst full of confidence gradually became vulnerable to distorted visions of themselves, no longer secure that their sense of who they were matched the perceptions of others. When a new president, appointed in 1983, told me before coming and without previous discussion with me that he had heard I was “consistently confrontational,” that I had made Amherst “a tense, unhappy place,” and that he would want to select a new dean, I should have reacted to his picture of me as bizarre, and indeed confronted its inaccuracy, but instead I was shattered. It took me a year to understand that he was simply accepting the semantics of senior men who expected a female dean to be easily disparaged and bullied, like so many of the young women they had managed to dislodge. It took me a year to recover a sense of myself as worth defending and to learn to be angry both for myself and for the college as I watched a tranquil campus turned into one that was truly tense and unhappy.

Ellen Braun, an accomplished agile manager, noticed that different behaviors emerge over time as telltale signs of a team’s emotional maturity, a key component in their ability to adjust as things happen to them and to get to the tipping point when “an individual’s self interest shifts to alignment with the behaviors that support team achievement” (Braun 2010). It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber Team Dynamics Survey Ellen created a list of survey questions she first used as personal reflection while she observed teams in action. Using these questions the same way, as a pathway to reflection, an agile coach can gain insight into potential team problems or areas for emotional growth. Using them with the team will be more insightful, perhaps as material for a retrospective where the team has the time and space to chew on the ideas that come up. While the team sprints, though, mull them over on your own, and notice what they tell you about team dynamics (Braun 2010). • How much does humor come into day-to-day interaction within the team? • What are the initial behaviors that the team shows in times of difficulty and stress? • How often are contradictory views raised by team members (including junior team members)? • When contradictory views are raised by team members, how often are they fully discussed? • Based on the norms of the team, how often do team members compromise in the course of usual team interactions (when not forced by circumstances)? • To what extent can any team member provide feedback to any other team member (think about negative and positive feedback)? • To what extent does any team member actually provide feedback to any other team member? • How likely would it be that a team member would discuss issues with your performance or behavior with another team member without giving feedback to you directly (triangulating)? • To what extent do you as an individual get support from your team on your personal career goals (such as learning a new skill from a team member)? • How likely would you be to ask team members for help if it required your admission that you were struggling with a work issue? • How likely would you be to share personal information with the team that made you feel vulnerable? • To what extent is the team likely to bring into team discussions an issue that may create conflict or disagreement within the team? • How likely or willing are you to bring into a team discussion an issue that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view? • If you bring an item into a team discussion that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view, how often does the team reach a consensus that takes into consideration all points of view and feels workable to you? • Can you identify an instance in the past two work days when you felt a sense of warmth or inclusion within the context of your team? • Can you identify an instance in the past two days when you felt a sense of disdain or exclusion within the context of your team? • How much does the team make you feel accountable for your work? Mulling over these questions solo or posing them to the team will likely generate a lot of raw material to consider. When you step back from the many answers, perhaps one or two themes jump out at you, signaling the “big things” to address.

Children who have a wider range of instant heart response have a more efficient feedback system, and this increased efficiency helps them regulate their emotion state: their heart speed up more when they are excited, and slow down more when they are calm Conscious contemplation takes at least half a second, so anyone who even tries to think about how to return a serve will end up endlessly watching the ball fly by. Their goal is not necessarily to be first but to be just right. An unwanted message might lead us to make a decision too quickly, even if we do not realize it. The greatest comedians are masters of delay most of us could become better communicators without changing a word we say - just by saying some of those words a little bit faster The two most important elements of a relationship are chemistry and compatibility, and a photo won't help you with either Time-based theory of conflict, derived from Sun Tzu, in which the crucial insights for a fighter come in stages: first, observe the rapidly changing environment; second, orient yourself based on these observations, process the disorder, and understand when and how your opponent might become confused; third, decide what to do; and finally, act quickly at just the right moment, when your opponent is most vulnerable. active procrastination is smart: it simply means managing delay, putting of projects that really don't need to be done right away passive procrastination is dumb, equivalent to laziness. This group says proscrastination might be a good or bad, depending on how much effort we put into it.

we always have team members go back to their direct reports and share their profile information. This serves three purposes. First, it provides a great opportunity for demonstrating vulnerability with their subordinates. Second, it gives those subordinates real insights into their leaders, so that they’ll feel more comfortable providing feedback and interpreting behavior correctly. Third, it helps the executives develop a better understanding of their own profiles, because teaching is one of the best ways of learning.

Trust is the foundation of teamwork. • On a team, trust is all about vulnerability, which is difficult for most people. • Building trust takes time, but the process can be greatly accelerated. • Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time.

When it comes to teams, trust is all about vulnerability. Team members who trust one another learn to be comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another around their failures, weaknesses, even fears.

we do not know the physics of climate system responses to warming well enough to blame most of the warming on human activities. Human causation is simply assumed. The models are designed with the assumption that the climate system was in natural balance before the Industrial Revolution, despite historical evidence to the contrary. They only produce human-caused climate change because that is the way they are designed. This is in spite of abundant evidence of past warm episodes, such as 1,000- to 2,000-year-old tree stumps being uncovered by receding glaciers; temperature proxy evidence for the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods covering that same time frame; and Arctic sea ice proxy evidence for a natural decrease in sea ice starting well before humans could be blamed. Natural warming since the Little Ice Age of a few hundred years ago is simply ignored in the design of climate models, since we do not know what caused it. Simply put, the computerized climate models support human causation of climate change because that’s what they assume from the outset. They are an example of circular reasoning. There is little to no evidence of long-term increases in heat waves, droughts, or floods. Wildfire activity has, if anything, decreased, even though poor land management practices are now making some areas more vulnerable to wildfires even without climate change. Contrary to popular perception and new reports, there is little to no evidence of increased storminess resulting from climate change. This includes tornadoes and hurricanes. Long-term increases in monetary storm damages have indeed occurred, but are due to increasing development, not worsening weather. Sea level has been rising naturally since at least the mid-1800s, well before humans could be blamed. Land subsidence in some areas (e.g. Norfolk, Miami, Galveston-Houston, New Orleans) would result in increasing flooding problems even without any sea-level rise, let alone human-induced sea-level rise causing thermal expansion of the oceans. Some evidence for recent acceleration of sea-level rise might support human causation, but the magnitude of the human component since 1950 has been only 1 inch every 30 years. Ocean acidification is now looking like a non-problem, as the evidence builds that sea life prefers somewhat more CO2, just as vegetation on land does. Given that CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, yet had been at dangerously low levels for thousands of years, the scientific community needs to stop accepting the premise that more CO2 in the atmosphere is necessarily a bad thing. Global greening has been observed by satellites over the last few decades, which is during the period of most rapid rises in atmospheric CO2. The benefits of increasing CO2 to agriculture have been calculated to be in the trillions of dollars. Crop yields continue to break records around the world, due to a combination of human ingenuity and the direct effects of CO2 on plant growth and water use efficiency. Much of this evidence is not known by our citizens, who are largely misinformed by a news media that favors alarmist stories. The scientific community is, in general, biased toward alarmism in order to maintain careers and support desired governmental energy policies. Only when the public becomes informed based upon evidence from both sides of the debate can we expect to make rational policy decisions. I hope my brief treatment of these subjects provides a step in that direction. THE END

Nacola Shardae, damn her feathers, was a true queen. In that single little speech, she managed to hit every vulnerability and fear Danica and I had regarding this child.

The bedrock of strong teams is human connection, which leads to trust. And trust, real trust, requires the ability and willingness to be vulnerable in front of each other. So,

We’ve discussed two parallel adaptations to manage the sun’s dueling effects on body chemistry—the evolution of dark skin to protect our stores of folate and the evolution of a genetic trigger for increased cholesterol to maximize production of vitamin D. Both of those adaptations are common in people of African descent and are effective—in the bright, strong sun of equatorial Africa. But what happens when people with those adaptations move to New England, where the sun is much less plentiful and far less strong? Without enough sunlight to penetrate their dark skin and convert the additional cholesterol, they’re doubly vulnerable—not enough vitamin D and too much cholesterol. Sure enough, rickets—the disease caused by a vitamin D deficiency that causes poor bone growth in children—was very common in African American populations until we started routinely fortifying milk with vitamin D in the last century. And there appear to be connections among sunlight, vitamin D, and prostate cancer in African Americans as well. There is growing evidence that vitamin D inhibits the growth of cancerous cells in the prostate and in other areas, including the colon, too. Epidemiologists, who specialize in unlocking the mystery of where, why, and in whom disease occurs, have found that the risk of prostate cancer for black men in America climbs from south to north. When it comes to prostate cancer in black men, the risk is considerably lower in sunny Florida. But as you move north, the rate of prostate cancer in black men climbs until it peaks in the often cloud-covered heights of the Northeast.

Goal setting is more art than science. We weren’t just teaching people how to refine an objective or a measurable key result. We had a cultural agenda, as well. Why is transparency important? Why would you want people across other departments to know your goals? And why does what we’re doing matter? What is true accountability? What’s the difference between accountability with respect (for others’ failings) and accountability with vulnerability (for our own)? How can OKRs help managers “get work done through others”? (That’s a big factor for scalability in a growing company.) How do we engage other teams to adopt our objective as a priority and help assure that we reach it? When is it time to stretch a team’s workload—or to ease off on the throttle? When do you shift an objective to a different team member, or rewrite a goal to make it clearer, or remove it completely? In building contributors’ confidence, timing is everything.

The details differ from person to person, but the kernel is the same. We recoil from the notion that this is it—that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we’ll get a shot at. Instead, we mentally fight against the way things are—so that, in the words of the psychotherapist Bruce Tift, “we don’t have to consciously participate in what it’s like to feel claustrophobic, imprisoned, powerless, and constrained by reality.

Brené Brown, research expert in courage, shame, and empathy, begs to differ. She proposes that there is enormous power in expressing vulnerability: “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.4 Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.

Here’s a remarkable insight: We can understand a child’s level of sturdiness or vulnerability by tracking what’s called allostasis, the process by which we maintain stability in our bodies. But you don’t have to remember that scientific word! The neuroscientist and researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett has another word for this continuous balancing of energy and resources: body budgeting. Just as a financial budget keeps track of money, she says, bodies track “resources like water, salt, and glucose as you gain and lose them.” Although we are not always aware of our body’s metabolic budget, everything we experience, including our feelings and actions, becomes deposits or withdrawals in our body budget. A hug, a good night’s sleep, playing with friends, and a healthy meal: All of these are deposits. Then there are withdrawals: things like forgetting to eat meals or drink enough fluids, being deprived of deep sleep, or being isolated or ignored.

Exiles are the wounded inner parts which carry the emotions and memories of our childhood wounds. Managers are the hypercritical, controlling inner parts which attempt to protect our exiles from being triggered. Firefighter inner parts also help to hide the vulnerable exile parts from coming into our consciousness but they do so by dousing out the “fires” (triggers) immediately by causing us to engage in addictive, compulsive, and self-harming behaviors to escape the pain.

the paintings opened up a dimension that you did not normally see in photographs, in these paintings you could feel the weight of time passing. I thought that was why, as I stood before a painting of a young girl in half-light, there was something that was both guarded and vulnerable in her gaze. It was not the contradiction of a single instant, but rather it was as if the painter had caught her in two separate states of emotion, two different moods, and managed to contain them within the single image. There would have been a multitude of such instants captured in the canvas, between the time she first sat down before the painter and the time she rose, neck and upper body stiff, from the final sitting. That layering—in effect a kind of temporal blurring, or simultaneity—was perhaps ultimately what distinguished painting from photography. I wondered if that was the reason why contemporary painting seemed to me so much flatter, to lack the mysterious depth of these works, because so many painters now worked from photographs.

vulnerability is when a woman expressing what she feels while fully in her feelings, without any story, and without trying to manage the perception of anyone.

I kept my leash on her magic intact as she slowly relaxed in my arms and released a juddering sob. She pressed her face to my chest and my heart leapt a little as she leaned into me like I was someone who could protect her. Once she relaxed completely, the flood of magic stopped pouring from her and I pulled my own power back, releasing her hand. Her hand shot out and caught my arm, her fingers gripping my bicep as I tried to pull away. “Don’t leave me,” she begged and I cleared my throat as I looked down at her. Her eyes were still closed and she was pretty much unconscious. I very much doubted she had any idea who was holding her. If she did she would likely be telling me to get the hell off of her. But she asked me not to leave and I found that I didn’t want to. Besides, she’d only had that nightmare because of what me and Max had done to her in that swimming pool. So maybe I owed her my help with this if that’s what she wanted. “I won’t,” I replied as I shifted her against my chest and scooped her into my arms. I stood and headed for the exit. The Orb was absolutely filled with ice and flowers and I guessed that the faculty wouldn’t be overly impressed when they had to come and clean it up tomorrow so I couldn’t just leave her here to get caught. Besides, she’d be easy prey for a Nymph in this state too and even with the extra security in place after the attack we couldn’t be sure one wouldn’t slip past the defences. I hadn’t spent the last few weeks trailing her around campus to protect her from them just to quit now and leave her vulnerable. If the Nymphs managed to get hold of a power like hers it could be disastrous. And that was the only reason I’d admit to for getting her out of here. The way my heart was beating as I held her close had nothing to do with it. Her friends had been forced to retreat all the way to the door by the onslaught of magic but they moved forward as they saw she was alright. “I can take her now,” the boy said firmly. I eyed his scrawny arms and raised an eyebrow at him in disbelief. There was no way in hell he’d be able to carry her any distance. “Not necessary,” I replied dismissively. “I’ll take her back to our House. You’re not even from Ignis anyway so why don’t you trot along home?” I made a move to pass them but Sofia stepped into my way, squaring her shoulders as she prepared to argue with me. I vaguely knew her from around the House and seeing her with the Vegas but her power was practically irrelevant to me so I’d never paid her much attention. She was also barely over five foot tall which meant I was looking down on her by over a foot and a half but she still didn’t back down. “Thank you for your help but Tory wouldn’t want you to be holding her like that,” she said firmly. “Diego and I will manage to-” “I said I’m taking her back to the House,” I replied flatly. “Diego and you can try to stop me if you think you can.” I snorted dismissively and tried to sidestep her. She shifted right back into my way and her skin began to glow a glittery pale pink as her Order tried to push its way from her skin with her anger. She had pretty big balls for a low powered Pegasus, I’d give her that. “What is it you think I’m going to do to her?” I asked. “I’m not a goddamn monster.” Sofia scowled at me like she didn't agree with that statement and I released a breath of frustration before pushing past her anyway. (Darius)

It is evident that our national economy in the United States (writ large as “globalization”), is largely in the hands of Pharaonic interests.[12] The acquisitive oligarchy now largely manages the government and controls the media. It has, moreover, supported a sustained process of deregulation alongside rigged credit laws, inequitable tax arrangements, and low wages that has resulted in a growing gap between a small party of “haves” and a large company of “have-nots” who are economically vulnerable and without leverage.

Only after the nation had been herded into suburbs for over a decade were perceptive critics like Lewis Mumford able to see the type of person the housers were trying (and succeeding) to engineer. The suburbs fostered what Mumford called “compulsory mobility,” which was more controlling than the compulsory stability of being forced to live within the medieval city’s walls, because it limited the possibility of human interaction much more dramatically. And without the possibility of contact that is not managed for commercial or other purposes congenial to those who want to control him, man is reduced to the most vulnerable form of individual life and political impotence. The sprawling nature of the suburb was itself a form of control. “Sprawling isolation,” according to Mumford, “has proved an even more effective method of keeping a population under control” than enclosure and close supervision because it dramatically limits the possibility of human interaction and the unpredictable and uncontrollable flow of information that goes with it. Modern forms of social control depend on controlling the flow of information, not on constant supervision. By limiting the options to choosing a Ford over a Chevy or Coke over Pepsi, the people who control the flow of information channel behavior into certain acceptable patterns while at the same time promoting the illusion of freedom of choice. By inhibiting direct contact, the suburb allows information to be “monopolized by central agents and conveyed through guarded channels, too costly to be utilized by small groups or private individuals.” As a result, “each member of Suburbia becomes imprisoned by the very separation that he has prized: he is fed through a narrow opening: a telephone line, a radio band, a television circuit.*! Here Mumford is articulating, without being specific about it, one of the prime goals of psychological warfare, namely, the prohibition of unauthorized communication among subject peoples. Mumford goes on to say that “this is not . . . the result of a conscious conspiracy by a cunning minority” but his disclaimer is less persuasive than the picture of social control he paints. If, one wonders, this system has not been put into effect by conscious design, how did it get there? Is it possible to have social control without social controllers?

The strongest guarantees of security come from server-side authorization, precisely because it is the server that mediates interaction with the resources managed by the application. The server is thus the last line of defense for those resources. The further out from the data store a component is, the more vulnerable it is to compromise, which is why servers should fundamentally not trust any subject until that subject proves it is trustworthy.

startups are more likely to be vulnerable to the Good Idea, Bad Bedfellows failure pattern when they pursue opportunities that involve 1) complex operations requiring the tight coordination of different specialists’ work; 2) inventory of physical goods; and 3) large, lumpy capital requirements. By contrast, consider the more modest management demands on a purely software-based startup like Twitter when it launched. A small team of engineers created the site, and it spread virally without a paid marketing push. Capital requirements were modest and there was no physical inventory to manage. As Twitter grew, it eventually added an array of specialists to manage various functions—for example, community relations, server infrastructure, copyright compliance, etc. But it didn’t need these specialists at the outset.

There is a stigma around mental health, it is silly to feel ashamed from our vulnerability & certainly leaders need to normalize the fact that it is OK not to be OK.. it is awkward that taking care of our own health is a guilty pleasure and people subliminally equate feeling burned out to being a good employee, husband/wife... Etc

My knuckles brushed one of his wings- smooth and cool like silk, but hard as stone with it stretched taut. Fascinating, I blindly reached again... and dared to run a fingertip along some inner edge. Rhysand shuddered, a soft groan slipping past my ear. 'That,' he said tightly, 'is very sensitive.' I snatched my finger back, pulling away far enough to see his face. With the wind, I had to squint, and my braided hair ripped this way and that, but- he was entirely focused on the mountains around us. 'Does it tickle?' He flicked his gaze to me, then to the snow and pine that went on forever. 'It feels like this,' he said, and leaned in so close that his lips brushed the shell of my ear as he sent a gentle breath into it. My back arched on instinct, my chin tipping up at the caress of that breath. 'Oh,' I managed to say, I felt him smile against my ear and pull away. 'If you want an Illyrian male's attention, you'd be better off grabbing him by the balls. We're trained to protect our wings at all costs. Some males attack first, ask questions later, if their wings are touched without invitation.' 'And during sex?' The question blurted out. Rhys's face was nothing but feline amusement as he monitored the mountains. 'During sex, an Illyrian male can find completion just by having someone touch his wings in the right spot.' My blood thrummed. Dangerous territory; more lethal than the drop below. 'Have you found that to be true?' His eyes stripped me bare. 'I've never allowed anyone to see or touch my wings during sex. It makes you vulnerable in a way that I'm not... comfortable with.' 'Too bad,' I said, staring out too casually toward the mighty mountain that now appeared on the horizon, towering over the others. And capped, I noted, with that glimmering palace of moonstone. 'Why?' he asked warily. I shrugged, fighting the upward tugging of my lips. 'Because I bet you could get into some interesting positions with those wings.' Rhys loosed a barking laugh, and his nose grazed my ear. I felt him open his mouth to whisper something, but- Something dark and fast and sleek shot for us, and he plunged down and away, swearing.

Andrei avoided the internet as well and this evasion only added to his gloom. He loved music, especially old songs, and he loved movies, of all sorts. If he had the patience, sometimes he would read. While most of the pages he turned bored him to sleep, certain books with certain lines disarranged him. Some literature brought him to his feet, laughing and howling in his room. When the book was right, it was bliss and he wept. His room hushed with serenity and indebtedness. When he turned to his computer, however, or took out his phone, he would inevitably come across a viral trend or video that took the art he loved and turned it into a joke. The internet, in Andrei’s desperate eyes, managed to make fun of everything serious. And if one did not laugh, they were not intelligent. The internet could not be slowed and no protest to criticize its exploitation of art could be made because recreations of art hid perfectly under the veneer of mockery and was thus, impenetrable. It was easy to use Chopin’s ‘Sonata No. 2’ for a quick laugh, to reduce the ‘Funeral March’ to background music. It was a sneaky way for a digital creator to be considered an artist—and parodying the classics made them appear cleverer than the original artist. Meanwhile, Andrei’s body had healed playing Chopin alone in his apartment. He would frailly replay movie moments, too, that he later found the world edited and ripped apart with its cheap teeth. And everyone ate the internet’s crumbs. This cruel derision was impossible to escape. But enough jokes, memes, and glam over someone’s precious source of life would eventually make a sensitive body numb. And Andrei was afraid of that. He needed his fountain of hope unblemished. For this reason, he escaped the internet’s claws and only surrendered to it for e-mails, navigation, and the weather.

It is our ability to reason logically, solve problems, multitask, and control ourselves that allows us to manage work, family, and so many other crucial parts of our lives with wisdom, creativity, and intelligence. To do this, we have to be deliberate and attentive and flexible, which we are capable of doing thanks to what we can think of as the CEO of the human brain—our executive functions, which are also vulnerable to the incursions of an unsupportive inner voice.

A time later, I located the Fool. He knelt beside me, his arm around my shoulders. I had not been aware of him steadying me. I wobbled my head to look at him. His face sagged with weariness and his brow was creased with pain, but he managed a lopsided smile. “I did not know if I could do it. But it was the only thing I could think of to try.” After a few moments, his words made sense to me. I looked down at my wrist. His fingerprints were renewed there; not silver as they were the first time he Skill-touched me, but a darker shade of gray than they had been for some time. The thread of awareness that linked us had become one strand stronger. I was appalled at what he had done. “Thank you. I suppose.” I offered the words ungraciously. I felt invaded. I resented that he had touched me in such a way, without my consent. It was childish, but I had not the strength to reach past it just then. He laughed aloud at me, but I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. “I did not think you would like it. Yet, my friend, I could not help myself. I had to do it.” He drew a ragged breath. His voice was softer as he added, “And so it begins again, already. Scarcely two days am I at your side, and fate reaches for you. Will this always be the cost for us? Must I always dangle you over death’s jaws in an effort to lure this world into a better course?” His grip on my shoulders tightened. “Ah, Fitz. How can you continually forgive what I do to you?” I could not forgive it. I did not say so. I looked away from him. “I need a moment to myself. Please.” A bubble of silence met my words. Then, “Of course.” He let his arm fall away from my shoulders and abruptly stood clear of me. It was a relief. His touch on me had been heightening the Skill-bond between us. It made me feel vulnerable. He did not know how to reach across it and plunder my mind, but that did not lessen my fear. A knife to my throat was a threat, even if the hand that held it had only the best intentions. I tried to ignore the other side of that coin. The Fool had no concept of how open he was to me just then. The sense of it tainted me, tempting me to attempt a fuller joining. All I would have to do was bid him lay his fingers once more on my wrist. I knew what I could have done with that touch. I could have swept across into him, known all his secrets, taken all his strength. I could have made his body and extension of my own, used his life and his days for my own purpose. It was a shameful hunger to feel. I had seen what became of those who yielded to it. How could I forgive him for making me feel it?

Evolution is driven by the physical survival of the species and thus, much of the brain’s functioning is centered on automatic fight-or-flight mechanisms as opposed to conscious and compassionate decision making. Because of this, the conscious and unconscious management of fear and anxiety is a core component of our personalities, attachment relationships, and identities. The considerable degree of postnatal brain development and the critical developmental periods of early childhood experiences in the sculpting of the brain add to our vulnerability to the unresolved trauma of those who raise us.

Childhood adversity increases depression risk via “second hit” scenarios—lowering thresholds so that adult stressors that people typically manage instead trigger depressive episodes. This vulnerability makes sense. Depression is fundamentally a pathological sense of loss of control (explaining the classic description of depression as “learned helplessness”). If a child experiences severe, uncontrollable adversity, the most fortunate conclusion in adulthood is “Those were terrible circumstances over which I had no control.” But when childhood traumas produce depression, there is cognitively distorted overgeneralization: “And life will always be uncontrollably awful.” Experience childhood poverty, and your future prospects are better if your family is stable and loving than broken and acrimonious