Web 3 Quotes

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Unbelievable and true. Anna Solokov is neither a frightened girl nor a criminal spider in the center of a huge web of drugs and god knows. No, that dangerous young woman could easily do both at different times, and to different people. No doubt that is part of George’s attraction to her. She is victim. Yet when necessary, or when it suits her, she is victimizer. Does he imagine he is battling for her soul?
Susan Rowland (Murder on Family Grounds (Mary Wandwalker #3))
She wanted to tell him that she understood him now, in a way she'd never understood anyone before. Because she was with him. It wasn't even like being in the web; it was much closer than that, much deeper. He'd torn down all the barriers and put his soul into her hands.
L.J. Smith (Dark Visions (Dark Visions, #1-3))
I'm terrified that I will never be able to put him from my mind. I don't love him but I'm afraid that he will make it impossible for me ever to love anyone else.
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway?
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
All of my creation is an effort to weave a web of connection with the world: I am always weaving it because it was once broken.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944)
I know women. And when they clam up like this? They’re not just working one thought over in their brains. Nope, they’re constructing a complicated web of scenarios and what ifs, each thread layering over another, thickening and twisting until suddenly they’re mad about something that never even occurred to you.
Elle Kennedy (The Score (Off-Campus, #3))
Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
I love you." Why it worked right then, why the webbing of my godmother's spell frayed as though the words had been an open flame, I don't know. I haven't found any explanation for it. There aren't any magical words, really. The words just hold the magic. They give it a shape and a form, they make it useful, describe the images within. I'll say this, though: Some words have a power that has nothing to do with supernatural forces. They resound in the heart and mind, they live long after the sounds of them have died away, they echo in the heart and the soul. They have power, and that power is very real. Those three words are good ones.
Jim Butcher (Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3))
What is evil?" asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. "A web we men weave." Ged answered.
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
At Highgarden we have many spiders amongst the flowers. So long as they keep to themselves we let them spin their little webs, but if they get underfoot we step on them.
George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
Have you no pity?' Glokta could only shrug. 'I did have. As a boy I was soft-hearted beyond the point of foolishness. I swear, I would cry at a fly caught in a spider's web.' He grimaced at a brutal spasm through his leg as he turned for the door. 'Constant pain has cured me of that.
Joe Abercrombie (Last Argument of Kings (The First Law #3))
The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0). Today we see marketing as transforming once again in response to the new dynamics in the environment. We see companies expanding their focus from products to consumers to humankind issues. Marketing 3.0 is the stage when companies shift from consumer-centricity to human-centricity and where profitability is balanced with corporate responsibility.
Philip Kotler
Sometimes it just seems that love is not enough, does it?
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
If you believe you are beyond harm, will you go inside? Will you enter this palace so prominent in blood and glory, follow your face through the web-spanned dark, toward the exquisite chiming of the clavier? The alarms cannot see us. The wet policeman lurking in the doorway cannot see us. Come …
Thomas Harris (Hannibal (Hannibal Lecter, #3))
There is magic in the web" Shakespeare (Othello, Act 3, Scene 4)
William Shakespeare (Othello)
He looked down at the mask hanging around his neck. So simple a lie, and he could walk freely throughout the world. But would he then be trapped within the web of his own deception? What freedom could he find in denying the truth about himself?
R.A. Salvatore (The Halfling's Gem (Forgotten Realms: The Icewind Dale, #3; The Legend of Drizzt, #6))
Spiders evidently as surprised by the weather as the rest of us: their webs were still everywhere - little silken laundry lines with perfect snowflakes hung out in rows to dry.
Leslie Land (The 3,000 Mile Garden: An Exchange of Letters on Gardening, Food, and the Good Life)
As a spider web of tingles skitters over my skin. I can’t believe it. I’ve never felt this. Not even with Penny. I’m actually nervous to be with a woman.
K.A. Tucker (Four Seconds to Lose (Ten Tiny Breaths, #3))
Loving someone else isn’t easy. It doubles pain. It doubles worry. It doubles sentiments that I dislike in one dose. Loving someone else is a complex web of emotions, trying to ensnare me.
Krista Ritchie (Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters #3))
Judging from the spiderwebs clinging to it, the emergency stairway was hardly ever used. To each web clung a small black spider, patiently waiting for its small prey to come along. Not that the spiders had any awareness of being "patient". A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. This was all genetically predetermined. The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical doubt, no moral complications. Probably. Unlike me. I move,therefore I am.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung. From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
Mitch, Mitch, Mitch. If I stay, you’ll only fall madly in love with me like so many men before you.” “It’s you we have to worry about,” he sighed out. “You’ve already been trapped in my erotic web of lust. Might as well give it up to the daddy of all cats.” Grinning, Sissy stretched out next to Mitch, her arm thrown over his waist. “You keep on dreamin’ that dream, kitty.” “I will. I own ponies in that dream, too.
Shelly Laurenston (The Mane Attraction (Pride, #3))
And now we have the World Wide Web (the only thing I know of whose shortened form—www—takes three times longer to say than what it’s short for)
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt (Dirk Gently, #3))
Except that once you had broken up, it was much easier to do so again. He ought to know. How many times had he and Charlotte split? How many times had their relationship fallen to pieces, and how many times had they tried to reassemble the wreckage? There had been more cracks than substance by the end: they had lived in a spider's web of fault lines, held together by hope, pain and delusion.
Robert Galbraith (Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike, #3))
Technology is linking us in ways we never imagined possible: Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, and others—all blend to create a web of interconnected minds.
Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3))
The real potential of Web3 is in allowing businesses and people to collectively function more similarly to biological ecosystems.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
The possibility of injury or death was a strong attraction: as the online world became more and more pre-edited and slicked up, and as even its so-called reality sites raised questions about authenticity in the minds of the viewers, the rough, unpolished physical world was taking on a mystic allure.
Margaret Atwood (MaddAddam (MaddAddam, #3))
He’d meant what he said, that he believed Libby Rhodes to be present in every theoretical universe of his existence; to be a person of great significance in every single one. It was too familiar, too traceable. Too many places their lives would have collided, a web of unavoidable consequences where coincidence dressed up like fate. Within it, Nico truly believed all their other outcomes ricocheted, but eventually returned. Other lives, other existences, it didn’t matter. They were polarities, and wherever they went, his half would always find hers.
Olivie Blake (The Atlas Complex (The Atlas, #3))
My mind is like a web browser 29 tabs are open, 3 are on the dino game, and I have no clue where the music is coming from.
?
A feeling of unease settled over Derek as he glanced between the two young agents. “If the White House doesn’t control you, who exactly do you take orders from?” “God,” was Peter’s quick response, then there was a pause and he grimaced. “And my dad.
P.D. Atkerson (Web of Lies (Castling Book 3))
It would have been like losing me, like losing my own soul, Rob said, but it wasn't really like him saying it to her, it was as if he were simply realizing these things himself. And now it's like finding my soul again. The other half of me. Kaitlyn felt it again, the universe around her hushed and waiting, enclosing the two of them. This time, though, there was a trembling joy to the hush, a certainty. They weren't on the threshold anymore. They were passing through. Everything being said between them, without spoken words or even words of the mind. It was simply as if their souls were mingling, joining in an embrace that wasn't quite the web and wasn't quite Rob's healing power, although it had elements of both. It was beyond all that. It was a union, a togetherness, that Kaitlyn had never dreamed of. I'm with you. I belong to you. I'm a part of you. I will be forever.
L.J. Smith (Dark Visions (Dark Visions, #1-3))
Cyber bullying occurs online daily. Most don't consider their actions or words to be bullying. Here's a few clues that you're a cyber bully. (1) You post information about someone in order to ruin their character. (2) You post threats to someone. (3) You tag someone in vulgar degrading posts. (4) You post any information intended to harm or shame another individual seeking to gain attention. Then, you are a cyber bully and need to get some help.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Sweet Destiny)
There is great potential for your business to grow exponentially if you take advantage of digital advertising. With an online presence, your products will be visible to a wider audience. You’ll be able to take your product to where your target customers are.
Olawale Daniel
There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
Would she be able to bear never seeing him again? Never in this life?
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
He turned to face her, his body tingling. She gave a little shudder. "Did you feel that too?" she asked. "Yes," he said softly, "but don't talk." She pushed him away. "It was our sensor webs, you fool. Something's triggered them.
Jonathan Stroud (Ptolemy's Gate (Bartimaeus, #3))
Why are you here?” she asked weakly. “You know why.” “No, I don’t,” she replied. “I think you do,” he murmured. “I don’t.” “Melissa, we’re not going to pretend it didn’t happen.” Crow nuzzled her neck. “What didn’t happen?” Melissa moaned. “Need a reminder?” he whispered into her ear. Melissa’s knees buckled as her mind waged war with her senses. Every nerve ending in her body craved his touch, while her instincts screamed at her to run for her life. And there she stood wedged between the wall and Crow—between logic and lust. Caught in a spider’s web of need and confusion and heat. “I think we better stop,” she breathed out. “Baby, I’m not stopping. But I promise to go real slow.
Paula Marinaro (Taming Crow (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club, #3))
I am afraid that it will all be ruined. It is like stepping out into the darkness when one has a world of light and warmth behind one.
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
So that’s what the problem was! The coffee maker was smarter than the agent operating it.
P.D. Atkerson (Web of Lies (Castling Book 3))
a two-column layout, we place it right after the second column. To be safe, just in case the same problem arises when the page is displayed as a four-column layout, we also put:
Riwanto Megosinarso (Step By Step Bootstrap 3: A Quick Guide To Responsive Web Development Using Bootstrap 3)
There is no future, Loki,” said Frigga. “Only possibilities that become more and more likely probabilities, and probabilities that become realities.” The queen smiled down at him. “Although some people say that with each choice we make a new thread is spun, and from all our choices a new universe is born. Our fate is not one single strand of thread, but an infinite spider web.
C. Gockel (In the Balance (I Bring the Fire, #3.5))
1. The consciousness that created the universe dwells within us. 2. We exist in the energy web and are one with it. 3. Consciousness weaves and directs energy. 4. Everything exists for us as a possibility.
John Kehoe (Quantum Warrior: The Future of the Mind)
Web of time Veil of space Carry us to our chosen place Borne of water Trialed by Fire My Sinclair blood claims this power For the good of all With harm to none So as it is spoken So let it be done.
Maeve Greyson (My Tempting Highlander (Highland Hearts, #3))
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction. They
Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me Starter Pack: Books 1-3 and Novellas 1 & 2: Shatter Me, Destroy Me, Unravel Me, Fracture Me, Ignite Me)
A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
Google gets $59 billion, and you get free search and e-mail. A study published by the Wall Street Journal in advance of Facebook’s initial public offering estimated the value of each long-term Facebook user to be $80.95 to the company. Your friendships were worth sixty-two cents each and your profile page $1,800. A business Web page and its associated ad revenue were worth approximately $3.1 million to the social network. Viewed another way, Facebook’s billion-plus users, each dutifully typing in status updates, detailing his biography, and uploading photograph after photograph, have become the largest unpaid workforce in history. As a result of their free labor, Facebook has a market cap of $182 billion, and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has a personal net worth of $33 billion. What did you get out of the deal? As the computer scientist Jaron Lanier reminds us, a company such as Instagram—which Facebook bought in 2012—was not valued at $1 billion because its thirteen employees were so “extraordinary. Instead, its value comes from the millions of users who contribute to the network without being paid for it.” Its inventory is personal data—yours and mine—which it sells over and over again to parties unknown around the world. In short, you’re a cheap date.
Marc Goodman (Future Crimes)
As he had once said to someone in England, though he did not care to remember whom, he had liked the sight of the sea because it represented his escape from England. And he had escaped. But she had said that perhaps it was from himself he wished to escape and that it could not be done. For wherever he went, he must inevitably take himself along too.
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
But then night would fall, revealing the sky’s hidden treasure—the stars, after all, weren’t gone during the day, merely obscured—and his loneliness would recede, supplanted by the sense that the universe, for all its inscrutable vastness, was not a hard, indifferent place in which some things were alive and others not and all that happened was a kind of accident, governed by the cold hand of physical law, but a web of invisible threads in which everything was connected to everything else, including him.
Justin Cronin (The City of Mirrors (The Passage, #3))
Kat gushes about Google's projects, all revealed to her now. They are making a 3-D web browser. They are making a car that drives itself. They are making a sushi search engine -- here she pokes a chopstick down at our dinner -- to help people find fish that is sustainable and mercury-free. They are building a time machine. They are developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.
Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1))
One longs and longs to be grown up, doesn't one?," she said, "I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them and marrying him and living happily ever after. But life is not nearly as that simple when one finally does grow up.
Mary Balogh (The Devil's Web (Web, #3))
For two days, we had travelled the Labyrinth - across pits of darkness and around lakes of poison, through dilapidated shopping malls with only discount Halloween stores and questionable Chinese food buffets. The Labyrinth could be a bewildering place. Like a web of capillaries beneath the skin of the mortal world, it connected basements, sewers and forgotten tunnels around the globe with no regard to the rules of time and space. One might enter the Labyrinth through a manhole in Rome, walk ten feet, open a door and find oneself at a training camp for clowns in Buffalo, Minnesota. (Please don't ask. It was traumatic.)
Rick Riordan (The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo, #3))
She was wearing her best dress, a ball gown made of iridescent shot silk, which appeared silver from one angle, and lavender from another. The front was simple in design, with a smooth, tight-fitting bodice and a low scooped neckline. A web of intricate tucks in the back flowed into a cascade of silk that fluttered and shimmered whenever she moved.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Spring (The Ravenels, #3))
The thing is, Jesus was the ultimate embracer of chaos. He preached and taught and shepherded a flock, and in the midst of his tumultuous ministry, he accepted everyone. Everyone was allowed to join in on the love. The widows, the prostitutes, the lepers, the orphans, people with great need, people who brought drama and stress into his life, and folks who weren’t always lovable or even kind. Furthermore, Jesus told us to love them too. He didn’t ask us kindly or say, “Hey guys, maybe you could . . .” No, he straight up called us to stand with the oppressed. Jesus looked at them and said, “Bring it on.” Jesus took in the messy, broken pieces and said, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5 WEB). Amid our chaos, fear, and frustration there is the reminder, “For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1 WEB, emphasis added).
Rachel Hollis (Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be (Girl, Wash Your Face Series))
But no one else cared that Professor Lupin’s robes were patched and frayed. His next few lessons were just as interesting as the first. After boggarts, they studied Red Caps, nasty little goblinlike creatures that lurked wherever there had been bloodshed: in the dungeons of castles and the potholes of deserted battlefields, waiting to bludgeon those who had gotten lost. From Red Caps they moved on to kappas, creepy water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
Looking around him, Lever realized the office was very much like the man himself: boring, dull, and nearly completely useless.
P.D. Atkerson (Web of Lies (Castling Book 3))
How can anyone understand the web of relations among thousands of intersecting groups across the world?3
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Duneen had somehow managed to slip through the World Wide Web. No 4G, no 3G, no signal.
Graham Norton (Holding)
A spider has no special skills other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84: Book 3)
Its practically suicide. And for what? For some woman?" "Not just some woman." He grabbed a dagger and strapped it to his thigh under his tunic. "The woman. The only one I'll ever need or want.
Crista McHugh (Deception's Web (Deizian Empire, #3))
No two generations in history have experienced such a highlighted cognitive dissonance, because never has change occurred at so rapid a pace. Look at the rate of penetration—the amount of time it takes for a new technology to be adopted by fifty million people. Radio took thirty-eight years to reach that mark; the telephone took twenty years; and television took thirteen. More recently, the World Wide Web took four years, Facebook took 3.6, Twitter took three, and the iPad took only two. Google Plus, which nobody even finds useful, took only eighty-eight days to be adopted by fifty million.
Michael Harris (The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection)
the term “smart contract” has become more mainstream since the advent of first Bitcoin and then Ethereum, it was first coined by Nick Szabo in 1996, and thus precedes the development of blockchain networks.
Shermin Voshmgir (Token Economy: How the Web3 reinvents the Internet)
#3 SCEGLI Blogger, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter... non sono tutti uguali. Identifica la piattaforma più adatta per raccontare la tua storia e i tuoi personaggi. 7 passi per diventare un vero scrittore digitale
Storia Continua (Oltre l'eBook)
Letty dozed in the webbing of her recliner, a copy of The Quarterly Journal of Economics covering her face. Beneath that, pressing against her nose, was a paperback version of J. D. Robb’s Celebrity in Death, which Letty estimated was the fortieth of the In Death novels she’d read. While not as prestigious as the Journal, the Robb novel was distinctly more intelligent and certainly better written; but, a girl has to maintain her intellectual status with the D.C. deep state, so the Journal went on top.
John Sandford (Toxic Prey (Lucas Davenport, #34, Letty Davenport, #3))
You may be a serious writer if …. 10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas … but not nearly as littered as your head. 9. you keep pen and paper next to your bed. And in the glove compartment. And in your gym bag. Also on the rim of the bathtub. 8. a day without Roget’s Thesaurus is a day without sunshine. 7. your emotional landscape includes creativity, confidence, elation, frustration, and the occasional neurosis. 6. you’ve ever had to clean peanut butter and bread crumbs off your keyboard, because the work was going well, and you didn’t want to stop for lunch. 5. grammar and punctuation turn you on. 4. your interest in a new acquaintance is directly proportionate to his/her potential as a secondary character. 3. you’ve worn the white e, r, s, and t clean off your keyboard. 2. the search history on your web browser would raise red flags with the FBI, CIA, DEA, and mental health professionals everywhere. 1. you have stories to tell, and you just. Keep. Telling. Them.
Kathy Disanto
3. When making your dramatic exit, crawl along one of the web strands that extend outward from the center. Avoid the webbing that runs in concentric circles, as it's the stickiest. 4. Once you've escaped, say something snarky to the queen, like "Sorry I couldn't stick around.
Andrew Shaffer (How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters: Fight Back When Monsters and Mother Nature Attack)
Web, what do you want of me?” I asked him at last. “Only to make you think,” he answered soothingly. “Not to make you angry, though I seem to excel at that. Or perhaps your anger is always there, festering inside you, and I am the knife that lances the boil and lets it burst forth.
Robin Hobb (Fool's Fate (Tawny Man, #3))
Mindset Shift Recap: #1: Sell a result, not a website. A website is only ever a tool. #2: Business owners always care most about their core business needs; not design, coding or technical aspects. #3: The market pays you for the value you create; not your time, effort, background, or education.
Rob Anthony O'Rourke ($1,000,000 Web Designer Guide: A Practical Guide for Wealth and Freedom as an Online Freelancer)
such thoughts had often knocked for entrance, but had always been excluded for the very good reason that if they were once entertained it involved ripping up the whole web of his life, canceling almost every decision his will had ever made, and really beginning over again as though he were an infant.
C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength (The Space Trilogy #3))
We have knowledge, we have the living oracles in our midst, and with all this let me say to the Latter-day Saints that they stand upon slippery places. They do not all fully know the paths they walk in, they do not all perfectly understand their own ways and doings, many do not altogether realize their own weaknesses, do not understand the power of the devil and how liable they are to be decoyed one hair's breadth, to begin with, from the line of truth. They are first drawn by a fine line, in a little time it becomes a cord, it soon increases to a strong rope, and from that to a cable; thus it grows from the size of a spider's web, in comparison. [JD3:222]
Brigham Young
You can’t tell what a warrior looks like.
W.E.B. Griffin (The Majors (Brotherhood Of War, #3))
A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. This was all genetically predetermined. The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical doubt, no moral complications. Probably.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
Along with the lives and memories of hundreds of marid. Rain spirits who danced in the clouds to shatter themselves upon the ground, seeping deep into the earth to join aquifers. Shy stream guardians, darting through quiet ponds and underground springs with webbed hands and turtlelike beaks. Merpeople with shimmering skin and seaweed hair, caught in the nets of humans, hunted and speared. For every lethal marid—ones like Sobek and others who commanded sharks, who lived on the blood of the drowned and warred with the daevas—there seemed twenty gentle ones, protectors not hunters, content with seeing to the tiny aquatic creatures who called their realms home and urging their life-giving waters to sate the surrounding lands and make them flourish.
S.A. Chakraborty (The Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy, #3))
Their vast display should have made him feel tiny and alone, but the effect was exactly the opposite; it was in daylight that he felt his solitude most keenly. There were days when his soul ached with it, the feeling that he had moved so far away from the world of people that he could never go back. But then night would fall, revealing the sky’s hidden treasure—the stars, after all, weren’t gone during the day, merely obscured—and his loneliness would recede, supplanted by the sense that the universe, for all its inscrutable vastness, was not a hard, indifferent place in which some things were alive and others not and all that happened was a kind of accident, governed by the cold hand of physical law, but a web of invisible threads in which everything was connected to everything else, including him. It
Justin Cronin (The City of Mirrors (The Passage, #3))
(I) "My soul spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and alarmingly: 'Words, words, do not make too many words. Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness, and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are all completely mired in madness?'" (2) Jung's soul: "There are hellish webs of words, only words...Be tentative with words, value them...for you are the first who gets snared in them. For words have meanings. With words you pull up the underworld. Word, the paltriest and mightiest. In words the emptiness and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image of the God." (3) "But if the word is a symbol, it means everything. When the way enters death and we are surrounded by rot and horror, the way rises in the darkness and leaves the mouth as the saving symbol, the word.
C.G. Jung (The Red Book: Liber Novus)
Unlike IR #2, the digital revolution IR #3 had a less powerful overall effect on productivity growth, and the main effect of its inventions occurred in the relatively short interval of 1996 to 2004, when the invention of the Internet, web browsers, search engines, and e-commerce created a fundamental change in business practices and procedures that was reflected in a temporary revival of productivity growth.
Robert J. Gordon (The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World Book 60))
Shifting in his seat, Lever turned his attention to the agent sitting up front. “So . . . is this where you take me to some creepy warehouse somewhere and kill me? I was voted most likely to die under mysterious circumstances, you know.
P.D. Atkerson (Web of Lies (Castling Book 3))
Most women are trained to act like simpering fools,” she scoffed. “Is that what you want from me?” She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, enjoying that he watched how her breasts lifted with the gesture. “Oh, do allow me a moment to swoon here in virginal protestation so I might feel less guilty for succumbing to the seduction of this large and dangerous rogue who is intent upon ravishing my pure and virtuous person. I am an innocent, harmless girl caught in his dastardly web—
Kerrigan Byrne (Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls, #3))
Social media has exploded our narcissism. “Facebragging” has become a new slang term for the way that social media has enabled us to shamelessly self-promote, self-congratulate, and generally make public fools of ourselves. As Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, authors of The Narcissism Epidemic, have pointed out, there’s a kind of democratization on the web, where everyone’s opinion has been elevated (or deflated) to a common level. Journalists who fight to present information with clarity and objectivity find themselves contradicted and shouted down by raging bloggers and commenters with no actual knowledge of whatever circumstance they may be reporting. Self-expression on the web has led to a sense of entitlement, a belief that “everybody’s opinion is just as valid as everyone else’s.”2 Andrew Keen refers to the phenomenon as “ignorance meets egoism, meets bad taste, meets mob rule.”3 It’s a world where the way up is to be louder, more flashy, more harsh and outspoken.
Daniel Montgomery (Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey)
There was no freedom for someone like him. There would always be someone who wanted something from him. Heck. Everyone had someone that they had to take orders from. Freedom was an illusion you give yourself, but . . . perhaps this was the lesser of two evils. 
P.D. Atkerson (Web of Lies (Castling Book 3))
You can cruise the world's millions of omega-3 Web sites without encountering any reflections about where these prized fatty acids are coming from and at what social or environmental cost. For some people, what goes into their bodies has become an overriding obsession. Perhaps we are witnessing a successor to the Me Generation--namely, the Don't Care About the Rest of the World as Long as I Have a Spa and Some Omega-3 Fatty Acids Generation. Let's call it the Omega-3 Generation for short. Or is that thought just too depressing?
Charles Clover (The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat)
Last year’s leaves exploded into rustling traitors under Haydn’s boots. Branches clawed at his cloak and he ducked, swiping away pale gray webs of moss. Gorawen’s fingers were wrapped around his left hand. A moonstone gleamed from his right. The dim light barely lifted the shadows as Haydn tucked the stone beside a log. Another flash of soaked moonbeams lurked on the edge of his sight. Half-covered, they’d not reveal their path to those following while marking a clear trail for his and Gorawen’s return and keep their own direction sure.
Hope Ann (Shadows of the Hersweald: A Hansel and Gretel Novella (Legends of Light #3))
I would like to believe and give in to my naiveté, I would like to embrace the fact that I am back in the place where the long fingers of civilization cannot reach me and rip my heart out. At this moment, I would like to embrace myself. I would like to be unconcerned with the rest of the world and take pleasure in knowing that I have found my home. All of my life, all of my adult life, which began with the first notion of understanding, I have been searching for this sensation. You, cruel world, have tried to bring me down, tried to crush me with your code of conduct, your ethics, and your preconceived limits on liberty. You have raped me and robbed me of happiness; you have stolen my dreams and my dignity, leaving me to rot with the rest of you. Today, I know I have escaped your poisoned web; I know your rules do not apply to me, for after all you have done to crush me, I am still standing proudly above the set of your sick play. I am in love—a feeling you no longer thought I was capable of. I am in love—living, breathing, dreaming again—triumphant over your sick schemes.
Henry Martin (Eluding Reality (Mad Days of Me #3))
Had she been able to listen to her body, the true Virginia would certainly have spoken up. In order to do so, however, she needed someone to say to her: “Open your eyes! They didn’t protect you when you were in danger of losing your health and your mind, and now they refuse to see what has been done to you. How can you love them so much after all that?” No one offered that kind of support. Nor can anyone stand up to that kind of abuse alone, not even Virginia Woolf. Malcolm Ingram, the noted lecturer in psychological medicine, believed that Woolf’s “mental illness” had nothing to do with her childhood experiences, and her illness was genetically inherited from her family. Here is his opinion as quoted on the Virginia Woolf Web site: As a child she was sexually abused, but the extent and duration is difficult to establish. At worst she may have been sexually harassed and abused from the age of twelve to twenty-one by her [half-]brother George Duckworth, [fourteen] years her senior, and sexually exploited as early as six by her other [half-] brother… It is unlikely that the sexual abuse and her manic-depressive illness are related. However tempting it may be to relate the two, it must be more likely that, whatever her upbringing, her family history and genetic makeup were the determining factors in her mood swings rather than her unhappy childhood [italics added]. More relevant in her childhood experience is the long history of bereavements that punctuated her adolescence and precipitated her first depressions.3 Ingram’s text goes against my own interpretation and ignores a large volume of literature that deals with trauma and the effects of childhood abuse. Here we see how people minimize the importance of information that might cause pain or discomfort—such as childhood abuse—and blame psychiatric disorders on family history instead. Woolf must have felt keen frustration when seemingly intelligent and well-educated people attributed her condition to her mental history, denying the effects of significant childhood experiences. In the eyes of many she remained a woman possessed by “madness.” Nevertheless, the key to her condition lay tantalizingly close to the surface, so easily attainable, and yet neglected. I think that Woolf’s suicide could have been prevented if she had had an enlightened witness with whom she could have shared her feelings about the horrors inflicted on her at such an early age. But there was no one to turn to, and she considered Freud to be the expert on psychic disorders. Here she made a tragic mistake. His writings cast her into a state of severe uncertainty, and she preferred to despair of her own self rather than doubt the great father figure Sigmund Freud, who represented, as did her family, the system of values upheld by society, especially at the time.   UNFORTUNATELY,
Alice Miller (The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting)
Eddie suddenly remembered what it had been like to lay his ear against that strange unfound door in the clearing where the bear had lived its violent half-life, that door with its somehow terrible stripes of yellow and black. It was all of a piece, he realized now; all part of some awful, decaying whole, a tattered web with the Dark Tower at its center like an incomprehensible stone spider. All of Mid-World had become one vast haunted mansion in these strange latter days; all of Mid-World had become The Drawers; all of Mid-World had become a waste land, haunting and haunted.
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
What was a little dark, anyway? Just no sun, [Petra] reminded herself as her sneakers pounded toward the opening. Just dark, all three fine, she whispered to herself again and again, spinning the words outward into a mobile in her mind. They floated into dark-three, all-just-fine and then into all-fine, dark-just-three.
Blue Balliett (The Calder Game (Chasing Vermeer, #3))
Whether she was engaged, married or single, nothing could or ever would come of the weakness he was forced to acknowledge that he had developed. He would re-establish the professional distance that had somehow ebbed away with her drunken confessions and the camaraderie of their trip up north, and temporarily shelve his half-acknowledged plan to end the relationship with Elin. It felt safer just now to have another woman within reach, and a beautiful one at that, whose enthusiasm and expertise in bed ought surely to compensate for an undeniable incompatibility outside it. He fell to wondering how long Robin would continue working for him after she became Mrs. Cunliffe. Matthew would surely use every ounce of his husbandly influence to pry her away from a profession as dangerous as it was poorly paid. Well, that was her lookout: her bed, and she could lie in it. Except that once you had broken up, it was much easier to do so again. He ought to know. How many times had he and Charlotte split? How many times had they tried to reassemble the wreckage? There had been more cracks than substance by the end: they had lived in a spider's web of fault lines, held together by hope, pain, and delusion. Robin and Matthew had just two months to go before the wedding. There was still time.
Robert Galbraith (Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike, #3))
Every year or so I like to take a step back and look at a few key advertising, marketing, and media facts just to gauge how far removed from reality we advertising experts have gotten. These data represent the latest numbers I could find. I have listed the sources below. So here we go -- 10 facts, direct from the real world: E-commerce in 2014 accounted for 6.5 percent of total retail sales. 96% of video viewing is currently done on a television. 4% is done on a web device. In Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared. The rate of engagement among a brand's fans with a Facebook post is 7 in 10,000. For Twitter it is 3 in 10,000. Fewer than one standard banner ad in a thousand is clicked on. Over half the display ads paid for by marketers are unviewable. Less than 1% of retail buying is done on a mobile device. Only 44% of traffic on the web is human. One bot-net can generate 1 billion fraudulent digital ad impressions a day. Half of all U.S online advertising - $10 billion a year - may be lost to fraud. As regular readers know, one of our favorite sayings around The Ad Contrarian Social Club is a quote from Noble Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who wonderfully declared that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” I think these facts do a pretty good job of vindicating Feynman.
Bob Hoffman (Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey)
Getting Started Setting up your Kindle Oasis Kindle controls Status indicators Keyboard Network connectivity VoiceView screen reader Special Offers and Sponsored Screensavers Chapter 2 Navigating Your Kindle The Kindle Home screen Toolbars Tap zones Chapter 3 Acquiring & Managing Kindle Content Shop for Kindle and Audible content anytime, anywhere Recommended content Managing your Kindle Library Device and Cloud storage Removing items from your Kindle Chapter 4 Reading Kindle Documents Understanding Kindle display technology Customizing your text display Comic books Children's books Images Tables Interacting with your content Navigating a book Chapter 5 Playing Audible Books Pairing a Bluetooth audio device Using the Audible Player Audiobook bookmarks Downloading Audible books Audiobook Library Management Chapter 6 Features X-Ray Word Wise Vocabulary Builder Amazon FreeTime (Amazon Fire for Kids in the UK) Managing your Amazon Household Goodreads on Kindle Time to Read Chapter 7 Getting More from Your Kindle Oasis Carrying and reading personal documents Reading Kindle content on other devices Sharing Using your Kindle with your computer Using the Experimental Web Browser Chapter 8 Settings Customizing your Kindle settings The Settings contextual menu Chapter 9 Finding Additional Assistance Appendix A Product Information
Amazon (Kindle Oasis User's Guide)
3 · Esther’s House Again, the world is full of people who think they know what they really do not know — other people have had their convictions and beliefs and feelings for them. 23. Домът на Естър стр. 423 Светът е пълен с хора, които смятат, че знаят това, което всъщност не знаят — вместо тях други хора носят техните убеждения, тяхната вяра и чувства.
Thomas Wolfe (The Web and the Rock)
The agent carrying the team’s nonlethal rifle raised it and fired. The projectile that launched down the aisle and wrapped itself around Bellamy’s legs was nicknamed Silly String, but there was nothing silly about it. A military technology invented at Sandia National Laboratories, this nonlethal “incapacitant” was a thread of gooey polyurethane that turned rock hard on contact, creating a rigid web of plastic across the back of the fugitive’s knees. The effect on a running target was that of jamming a stick into the spokes of a moving bike. The man’s legs seized midstride, and he pitched forward, crashing to the floor. Bellamy slid another ten feet down a darkened aisle before coming to a stop, the lights above him flickering unceremoniously to life.
Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3))
Darwin’s Bestiary PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.
Philip Appleman
the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought.” Langdon remained silent, wondering where she was going with this idea. “What I’m saying is this . . . two heads are better than one . . . and yet two heads are not twice better, they are many, many times better. Multiple minds working in unison magnify a thought’s effect . . . exponentially. This is the inherent power of prayer groups, healing circles, singing in unison, and worshipping en masse. The idea of universal consciousness is no ethereal New Age concept. It’s a hard-core scientific reality . . . and harnessing it has the potential to transform our world. This is the underlying discovery of Noetic Science. What’s more, it’s happening right now. You can feel it all around you. Technology is linking us in ways we never imagined possible: Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, and others—all blend to create a web of interconnected minds.
Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3))
But I was wrong about that. From the moment of my reluctant entrance into the vaccine debate in 2005, I was astonished to realize that the pervasive web of deep financial entanglements between Pharma and the government health agencies had put regulatory capture on steroids. The CDC, for example, owns 57 vaccine patents1 and spends $4.9 of its $12.0 billion-dollar annual budget (as of 2019) buying and distributing vaccines.2,3 NIH owns hundreds of vaccine patents and often profits from the sale of products it supposedly regulates. High level officials, including Dr. Fauci, receive yearly emoluments of up to $150,000 in royalty payments on products that they help develop and then usher through the approval process.4 The FDA receives 45 percent of its budget from the pharmaceutical industry, through what are euphemistically called “user fees.”5 When I learned that extraordinary fact, the disastrous health of the American people was no longer a mystery; I wondered what the environment would look like if the EPA received 45 percent of its budget from the coal industry!
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
I still don’t see why we couldn’t sleep in that cave,” Mari said as MacRieve led her out into the night. “Because my cave’s better than their cave.” “You know, that really figures.” After the rain, the din of cicadas and frogs resounded in the underbrush all around them, forcing her to raise her voice. “Is it far?” When he shook his head, she said, “Then why do I have to hold your hand through the jungle? This path looks like a tractor busted through here.” “I went back this way while you ate to make sure everything was clear. Brought your things here, too,” he said as he steered her toward a lit cave entrance. When they crossed the threshold, wings flapped in the shadows, building to a furor before settling. Inside, a fire burned. Beside it, she saw he’d unpacked some of his things, and had made up one pallet. “Well, no one can call you a pessimist, MacRieve.” She yanked her hand from his. “Deluded fits, though.” He merely leaned back against the wall, seeming content to watch her as she explored on her own. She’d read about this part of Guatemala and knew that here limestone caverns spread out underground like a vast web. Above them a cathedral ceiling soared, with stalactites jutting down. “What’s so special about this cave?” “Mine has bats.” She breathed, “If I stick with you, I’ll have nothing but the best.” “Bats mean fewer mosquitoes. And then there’s also the bathtub for you to enjoy.” He waved her attention to an area deeper within. A subterranean stream with a sandy beach meandered through the cavern. Her eyes widened. A small pool sat off to the side, not much larger than an oversize Jacuzzi, and laid out along its edge were her toiletries, her washcloth, and her towel. Her bag—filled with all of her clean clothes—was off just to the side. Mari cried out at the sight, doubling over to yank at her bootlaces. Freed of her boots, she hopped forward on one foot then the other as she snatched off her socks. She didn’t pause until she was about to start on the button fly of her shorts. She glanced up to find him watching her with a gleam of expectation in his eyes. “You will be leaving, of course.” “Or I could help you.” “I’ve had a bit of practice bathing myself and think I can stumble my way through this.” “But you’re tired. Why no’ let me help? Now that I’ve two hands again, I’m eager to use them.” “You give me privacy or I go without.” “Verra well.” He shrugged. “I’ll leave—because your going without is no’ an option. Call me if you need me.
Kresley Cole (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night (Immortals After Dark, #3))
In the beginning, there was the internet: the physical infrastructure of wires and servers that lets computers, and the people in front of them, talk to each other. The U.S. government’s Arpanet sent its first message in 1969, but the web as we know it today didn’t emerge until 1991, when HTML and URLs made it possible for users to navigate between static pages. Consider this the read-only web, or Web1. In the early 2000s, things started to change. For one, the internet was becoming more interactive; it was an era of user-generated content, or the read/write web. Social media was a key feature of Web2 (or Web 2.0, as you may know it), and Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr came to define the experience of being online. YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google, along with the ability to comment on content, expanded our ability to watch, learn, search, and communicate. The Web2 era has also been one of centralization. Network effects and economies of scale have led to clear winners, and those companies (many of which I mentioned above) have produced mind-boggling wealth for themselves and their shareholders by scraping users’ data and selling targeted ads against it. This has allowed services to be offered for “free,” though users initially didn’t understand the implications of that bargain. Web2 also created new ways for regular people to make money, such as through the sharing economy and the sometimes-lucrative job of being an influencer.
Harvard Business Review (Web3: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights Series))
Seth Godin, author of more than a dozen bestsellers, including Purple Cow and Permission Marketing, understands the importance of frequency and consistency in a book marketing and public relations campaign. He practices these through following these seven steps: Permission marketing. This is a process by which marketers ask permission before sending ads to prospects. Godin pioneered the practice in 1995 with the founding of Yoyodyne, the Web’s first direct mail and promotions company (it used contests, online games, and scavenger hunts to market companies to participating users). He sold it to Yahoo! three years later. Editorial content. Godin was a long-time contributing editor to the popular Fast Company magazine. Blogging. Seth's Blog is one of the most-frequented blogs. Public speaking. Successful Meetings magazine named Godin one of the top 21 speakers of the 21st century. Words used to describe his lectures include "visual," "personal," and "dynamic." Community-building. His latest company, Squidoo.com, ranked among the top 125 sites in the U.S. (by traffic) by Quantcast, allows people to build a page about any topic that inspires them. The site raises money for charity and pays royalties to its million-plus members. E-books. Godin took a step to publish all his books electronically, then worked with Amazon on his own imprint, Domino, which published 12 books. Recently, Godin ended that project – since as he said in a blog, it was a "project" and he is always looking for more and different opportunities. Continuous improvement. Godin is always on the lookout for more ideas, more business opportunities and more engagement with his community.
Michael R. Drew (Brand Strategy 101: Your Logo Is Irrelevant - The 3 Step Process to Build a Kick-Ass Brand)
Found a startup society. This is simply an online community with aspirations of something greater. Anyone can found one, just like anyone can found a company or cryptocurrency.2 And the founder’s legitimacy comes from whether people opt to follow them. Organize it into a group capable of collective action. Given a sufficiently dedicated online community, the next step is to organize it into a network union. Unlike a social network, a network union has a purpose: it coordinates its members for their mutual benefit. And unlike a traditional union, a network union is not set up solely in opposition to a particular corporation, so it can take a variety of different collective actions.3 Unionization is a key step because it turns an otherwise ineffective online community into a group of people working together for a common cause. Build trust offline and a cryptoeconomy online. Begin holding in-person meetups in the physical world, of increasing scale and duration, while simultaneously building an internal economy using cryptocurrency. Crowdfund physical nodes. Once sufficient trust has been built and funds have been accumulated, start crowdfunding apartments, houses, and even towns to bring digital citizens into the physical world within real co-living communities. Digitally connect physical communities. Link these physical nodes together into a network archipelago, a set of digitally connected physical territories distributed around the world. Nodes of the network archipelago range from one-person apartments to in-person communities of arbitrary size. Physical access is granted by holding a web3 cryptopassport, and mixed reality is used to seamlessly link the online and offline worlds. Conduct an on-chain census. As the society scales, run a cryptographically auditable census to demonstrate the growing size of your population, income, and real-estate footprint. This is how a startup society proves traction in the face of skepticism. Gain diplomatic recognition. A startup society with sufficient scale should eventually be able to negotiate for diplomatic recognition from at least one pre-existing government, and from there gradually increased sovereignty, slowly becoming a true network state.
Balaji S. Srinivasan (The Network State: How To Start a New Country)
You!’ the first guard yelled. ‘Hands on your head, don’t move.’ Wing slowly put his hands on his head, showing no hint of emotion. ‘What the hell?’ the other guard said. ‘He’s just a kid.’ He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and slowly moved behind Wing and grasped one of his wrists. In one fluid motion, Wing grabbed the guard’s own wrist with his free hand and twisted hard. There was a sickening crunch, the guard howling in pain as Wing stepped backwards, too close for the man to bring his gun to bear. He pulled the guard’s wounded arm further over his own shoulder, dragging the man closer, and jerked his head backwards, his skull connecting with the man’s nose with a crunch. Wing rotated around the guard, pressing the wounded arm up into the small of the man’s back and ducking behind him, giving the other guard no clean shot without hitting his associate. He pushed hard, sending the stunned guard staggering towards his partner, and delivered a sharp kick to the base of his spine. The wounded guard’s momentum sent him careering into the other man, yowling with pain and confusion. Wing took two short steps and in a blur of movement pulled the handcuffs from the wounded man’s belt and snapped them closed around both his broken wrist and the wrist of the unwounded guard’s gun hand. Wing pressed his fingers into the pressure point behind the wounded guard’s ear and he collapsed, instantly unconscious, pulling the other guard down with him and pinning his gun to the ground. The conscious guard snatched for the gun with his free hand, but Wing dropped on to him, his knee pressing into his throat hard enough to choke him but without crushing his windpipe. Wing delivered a sharp knuckle jab to the guard’s shoulder and his free arm was instantly disabled too. Wing could hear the sound of at least half a dozen more guards racing up the stairs from below. He knew there would be more than he could handle. He reached down and took a smoke grenade from the webbing on the pinned guard’s chest and pulled the pin with his teeth, tossing it through the doorway into the stairwell. There were cries of confusion from just below as the confined space filled with impenetrable clouds of white smoke. Wing pulled a flashbang stun grenade from the other side of the pinned guard’s webbing and waited a couple of seconds before tossing it into the stairwell too. He closed his eyes, the flash of the grenade clear even through his eyelids. ‘Who the hell are you?’ the guard pinned beneath Wing gasped. ‘Just a kid,’ Wing said with a slight smile and punched him unconscious.
Mark Walden (Escape Velocity (H.I.V.E., #3))