X Relationship Quotes

Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.

Your silence furnishes a dark house. But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.

For you she learned to wear a short black slip and red lipstick, how to order a glass of red wine and finish it. She learned to reach out as if to touch your arm and then not touch it, changing the subject. Didn't you think, she'd begin, or Weren't you sorry. . . . To call your best friends by their schoolboy names and give them kisses good-bye, to look away when they say Your wife! So your confidence grows. She doesn't ask what you want because she knows. Isn't that what you think? When actually she was only waiting to be told Take off your dress--- to be stunned, and then do this, never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious: in one motion up, over, and gone, the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing, her face flashing away from you in the fabric so that you couldn't say if she was appearing or disappearing.

That love can be a band: tears if you pull it too hard, but also flexible enough to stretch around the most chaotic mass

Having a child together doesn't guarantee a future wedding. Never let your present partner suffer because of your baby mama or baby daddy. Careful of comprising your future happiness for an 'X you can't solve.

All of that Hollywood stuff! Like these women wanting men to pick them up and carry them across thresholds and some of them weigh more than you do. I don't know how many marriage breakups are caused by these movie and television addicted women expecting some bouquets and kissing and hugging and being swept out like Cinderella for dinner and dancing then getting mad when a poor, scraggly husband comes in tired and sweaty from working like a dog all day, looking for some food. ~Malcolm X

the farther the curve strays from the x-axis, the farther the relationship is from breakup.

...she kept hoping Mulder and Scully would kiss each other well and good. Having a relationship vicariously through fantasy and excellent scripting was all Aggie had at the moment - and to be honest, it wasn't all that bad. Her imagination was always better than reality...

I don't care how happily married you are or how deeply enmeshed you are with your children and family and career -- every woman needs a couple of chicks who'll break out the sangria just because you need to vent.

Finding fault with yourself is also the key to overcoming the hypocrisy and judgmentalism that damage so many valuable relationships. The instant you see some contribution you made to a conflict, your anger softens—maybe just a bit, but enough that you might be able to acknowledge some merit on the other side. You can still believe you are right and the other person is wrong, but if you can move to believing that you are mostly right, and your opponent is mostly wrong, you have the basis for an effective and nonhumiliating apology. You can take a small piece of the disagreement and say, “I should not have done X, and I can see why you felt Y.” Then, by the power of reciprocity, the other person will likely feel a strong urge to say, “Yes, I was really upset by X. But I guess I shouldn’t have done P, so I can see why you felt Q.” Reciprocity amplified by self-serving biases drove you apart back when you were matching insults or hostile gestures, but you can turn the process around and use reciprocity to end a conflict and save a relationship.

But things are good," Caro went on. "It's kind of scary how good." "What do you mean, scary?" Caro shrugged. "I mean, our whole relationship is the payoff of being brave enough to go for something we both wanted. But we have to stay brave.

I was taught the popular folktale of racism: that ignorant and hateful people had produced racist ideas, and that these racist people had instituted racist policies. But when I learned the motives behind the production of many of America’s most influentially racist ideas, it became quite obvious that this folktale, though sensible, was not based on a firm footing of historical evidence. Ignorance/hateracist ideasdiscrimination: this causal relationship is largely ahistorical. It has actually been the inverse relationship—racial discrimination led to racist ideas which led to ignorance and hate. Racial discriminationracist ideasignorance/hate: this is the causal relationship driving America’s history of race relations.

If Mike convinces a woman to date him because he is dominant, the resulting relationship will be entirely different than if he had inspired this same woman to date him by convincing her that, through dating him, she could improve herself (though such dynamics might be ameliorated through therapy). One of the core reasons why people either end up in one bad relationship after another—or come to believe that all members of a certain gender have very constrained behavior patterns—is that they do not understand how different lures function (in male communities, this often manifests in the saying “AWALT,” which stands for “all women are like that”). These people do not realize that the lure they are using is creating those relationship dynamics and/or constrained behavior patterns. Talking with individuals who say guys or girls always act like X or Y feels like talking to a fisherman who insists that all fish have whiskers. When you point out that all the lures in his tackle box are designed specifically to only catch catfish, he just turns and gives you a quizzical look saying, “what's your point?

The practice of baring all, analyzing every nuance embedded in a quarrel, is a surefire way to keep an argument alive. Better to establish a temporary peace and revisit the conflict later. Often, by then, both parties have decided the issue isn’t worth the relationship.

Other-blamers and abusers lie so frequently that their partners often do not know what to believe. How can a relationship of any kind withstand the betrayal of a constant barrage of deception, excuses, and denials?

I understand the temptation to draw an angry X through a whole season or a whole town or a whole relationship, to crumple it up and throw it away, to get it as far away as possible from a new life, a new future. But I think that’s both the easiest and the most cowardly choice. These days I’m walking over and retrieving those years from the trash, erasing the X, unlocking the door. It’s the only way that darkness turns to light.

Dr. Bone Specialist came in, made me stand up and hobble across the room, checked my reflexes, and then made me lie down on the table. He bent my right knee this way and that, up and down, all the way out to the side and in. Then he did the same with my left leg. He ordered X rays then started to leave the room. I panicked. I MUST GET DRUGS. "What can I take for the pain?" I asked him before he got out the door. "You can take some over the counter ibuprofen," he suggested. "But I wouldn't take more than nine a day." I choked. Nine a day? I'd been popping forty. Nine a day? Like hell. I couldn't even go to the bathroom on my own, I hadn't slept in three weeks, and my normally sunny cheery disposition had turned into that of a very rabid dog. If I didn't get good drugs and get them now, it was straight to Shooter's World and then Walgreens pharmacy for me. "I don't think you understand," I explained. "I can't go to work. I have spent the last four days with my mother who is addicted to QVC, watching jewelry shows, doll shows and make-up shows. I almost ordered a beef-jerky maker! Give me something, or I'm going to use your calf muscles to make the first batch!" Without further ado, he hastily scribbled out a prescription for some codeine and was gone. I was happy. My mother, however, had lost the ability to speak.

The very idea that you can somehow make your life alright by attaining primitive material goals – whether it’s getting the ideal relationship, the ideal job, a beautiful Berber rug or forty quids’ worth of smack – the underlying idea, ‘if I could just get X, Y, Z, I would be okay’, is consistent and it is quite wrong.

In fact, we are most in agreement when we are silent with each other, because then our assumptions about how we are in agreement are able to fully unfurl themselves, but all it takes is someone breaking that silence and stating the contents of their mind, for the assumption of our shared reality to completely collapse upon us. Because it turns out, you know, I think it's one way, you think it's another, I believe we're doing X, you think we're doing Y, I think we're serving so and so, and you think we're serving somebody else. And this is why I think great relationships are built in silence, because then nobody ever finds out what's really going on.

A Christian's duty, Lewis believed, is not simply to tolerate "X" but to make life with "X" an occasion to work on one's own character flaws.

In our lives we often act like we can reach an equilibrium: once we get into a relationship, we’ll be happy; once we move, we’ll be productive; once X thing happens, we’ll be in Y state. But things are always in flux. We don’t reach a certain steady state and then stay there forever. The endless adjustments are our lives.

...you shouldn't have to lie about your relationship status... Exspecially not so that your friend and your boyfriend can get together guilt-free. That's not how friendship works, last I checked." - THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS

So imagine two scenarios. Let’s say it’s the holidays, and two different neighbors invite you to their parties in the same week. You accept both invitations. In one case, you do the irrational thing and give Neighbor X a bottle of Bordeaux; for the second party you adopt the rational approach and give Neighbor Z $50 in cash. The following week, you need some help moving a sofa. How comfortable would you be approaching each of your neighbors, and how do you think each would react to your request for a favor? The odds are that Neighbor X will step in to help. And Neighbor Z? Since you have already paid him once (to make and share dinner with you), his logical response to your request for help might be, “Fine. How much will you pay me this time?” Again, the prospect of acting rationally, financially speaking, sounds deeply irrational in terms of social norms. The point is that while gifts are financially inefficient, they are an important social lubricant. They help us make friends and create long-term relationships that can sustain us through the ups and downs of life. Sometimes, it turns out, a waste of money can be worth a lot.

in learning how to imagine x, you gain abilities; later you have all the relevant imaginative abilities you had before, and more besides. and you notice, a priori, relationships of coherence or incoherence between attitudes that might figure in the realisation of x; later you are aware of all that you had noticed before, and more besides. and you think of new questions to explore in your imagining...and later you have in mind all the questions you had thought of before, and more besides.

Love caught me with my pants down, watering skeleton flowers and humming the blues.

Listen to both words and silences – things she’s not telling you.

Even those with less-severe Other-blaming traits end up damaging relationships because they lack an ability to attend or respond to their partner’s emotions with kindness and caring. The resulting lack of emotional connection is a major reason relationships fail. In couples’ therapy, it is difficult to get an Other-blamer to pay attention to his effect on his partner. Even if his wife is crying, the Other-blaming husband may sit there unmoved or, worse yet, argumentative and defensive. He is so busy protecting himself from experiencing shame and blame that he has little capacity to be warmly responsive.

There are many ways to generate numerical falsehoods from data, many ways to create proofiness from even valid meaurements. Causuistry distorts the relationships between two sets of numbers. Randumbness creates patterns where none are to be found. Regression to the moon disguises nonsense in mathematical-looking lines or equations or formulae, making even the silliest ideas seem respectable. Such as the one described by this formula: Callipygianness=(S+C)x(B+F)/T-V) Where S is shape, C is circularity, B is bounciness, F ir firmness, T is texture, and V is waist-to-hip ratio. This formula was devised by a team of academic psychologists after many hours of serious research into the female derriere. Yes, indeed. This is supposed to be the formula for the perfect butt. It fact, it's merely a formula for a perfect ass

You are holding on to a life that no longer serves you. A job that punishes you for your relationships, a friendship that could have blossomed in the Underworld, a mother who has taught you to be a prisoner.

want relationships to work like an ATM. I give to others, and they spit out exactly what I request. Instead, it’s more like a slot machine. I never know what I’m going to get in return, and sometimes I get nothing but X’s across the board.

These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. Rice was the basis for our society. Peasants planted the seeds and had highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. As the Master said, “Let the producers be many and the consumers few.' When the Feed came in from Atlantis, from Nippon, we no longer had to plant, because the rice now came from the matter compiler. It was the destruction of our society. When our society was based upon planting, it could truly be said, as the Master did, “Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.' But under the Western ti, wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness. So the filial relationships became deranged. Chaos,” Dr. X said regretfully, then looked up from his tea and nodded out the window. “Parking lots and chaos.

If you get into a relationship with somebody who’s not treating you poorly, you may find yourself feeling increasingly uncomfortable. And then, unconsciously, your mind might seek a ‘predictable’ response. You may try to provoke a bit of a response. Maybe I’ll do X and it’ll piss him off. If this elicits the behavior you’re most familiar with-he gets angry and treats you poorly-it can actually be validating. The worldview has been confirmed. Even though the result is chaos and conflict, it’s comforting to know that it’s familiar.

The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.

✓ EXPRESS YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Say, “I’m thrilled about the offer. This is my first choice, for reasons X, Y and Z, and I’d love to join the team.” ✓ EXPLAIN YOUR REQUEST: “I just have a few questions about the terms that I’d like to address before I’ll be ready to sign.” ✓ ESTABLISH YOUR CONTRIBUTION: “I know this position often pays $X, and I believe I can add enough value to the organization to earn it.” ✓ ASK FOR ADVICE: “I hope it’s okay to ask you about this—my relationships with people here are very important to me. I trust you and I’d very much value your recommendations on how to proceed.

Because after all the poems I've written for him and others this is the first poems ever written for me. I'll never be as good of a poet as you, Poet X, and I believe you're strong enough to defend yourself and me at the same time, but I'll always have your back, and I'll always protect your heart.

When you see something happening for 10 times, you expect it to happen 11th times also. If it happens, you feel “normal”. If it doesn’t, you get either disappointment or pleasant surprise. So, expectations are like 3D glasses that make you experience Maya with a new range of emotions. But don’t keep these glasses on 24x7, otherwise you will forget what your loved ones originally look like. Similarly, if you are caught up with a loved one who wears these glasses 24x7, try to preserve your originality not only for yourself but also for them so that they find you original and whole when they let go of those glasses (hopefully).

I’m possessive, and I get jealous. I know that. I accept it. I own up to it. I would be picturing thisimaginary person I love having s-e-x,” I whispered the word just in case, “with whoever he’s been in a relationship with, and I’d want to stab each one of those girls. But not everyone is like that. That’s part of the reason why I don’t have a boyfriend. I know I’m crazy. I already feel sorry for whatever poor bastard ends up with me some day, but he’ll know what he’s getting into. I don’t hide it.” Trip shook his head, grinning wide. “You said it. You’re fuckin’ nuts.” What was I going to do? Deny it? “Diana, I hate to tell you, I don’t know anybody like that.” I frowned. “That’s okay. I’m sure there’s some nice, divorced Catholic boy out there somewhere in the world, who waited to lose it until he got married and now he’s waiting again for the right girl.” “Doubt it.” I gave Trip a face before checking on the steaks again. “Quit killing my dreams.” “I’m just keepin’ it real for you, honey.” “Okay, maybe if he’s really nice to me and good to me, and I’m the love of his life, and he writes me sweet notes on a regular basis telling me that I’m the light of his life and he can’t live without me, I’ll give him ten women tops. Tops.” I let out a breath. “I’m getting mad just thinking about it.

Your cousin Albert told me that, in business, they call this a pivot. But life is filled with them too. The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets. You may not ever have a romantic relationship with x, but you two will be friends for the rest of your lives, and that is something of equal or greater value if you choose to see it that way.

5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a bet which rolls on profits from the success of one of the horse to engross the stake on the next one. 5.5 So a) To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers?Plus and minus, self-evidently; sometimes multiplication, and yes, division. But these sings are limited. Thus an entirely failed relationship might be expressed in terms of both loss/minus and division/ reduction, showing a total of zero; whereas an entirely successful one can be represented by both addition and multiplication. But what of most relationships? Do they not require to be expressed in notations which are logically improbable and mathematically insoluble? 5.6 Thus how might you express an accumulation containing the integers b, b, a (to the first), a (to the second), s, v? B = s - v (*/+) a (to the first) Or a (to the second) + v + a (to the first) x s = b 5.7 Or is that the wrong way to put the question and express the accumulation? Is the application of logic to the human condition in and of itself self-defeating? What becomes of a chain of argument when the links are made of different metals, each with a separate frangibility? 5.8 Or is "link" a false metaphor? 5.9 But allowing that is not, if a link breaks, wherein lies the responsibility for such breaking? On the links immediately on the other side, or on the whole chain? But what do you mean by "the whole chain"? How far do the limits of responsibility extend? 6.0 Or we might try to draw the responsibility more narrowly and apportion it more exactly. And not use equations and integers but instead express matters in the traditional narrative terminology. So, for instance, if...." - Adrian Finn

Indeed, election data show it is true that the candidate who spends more money in a campaign usually wins. But is money the cause of the victory? It might seem logical to think so, much as it might have seemed logical that a booming 1990s economy helped reduce crime. But just because two things are correlated does not mean that one causes the other. A correlation simply means that a relationship exists between two factors — let’s call them X and Y—but it tells you nothing about the direction of that relationship. It’s possible that X causes Y; it’s also possible that Y causes X; and it may be that X and Y are both being caused by some other factor, Z. Think about this correlation: cities with a lot of murders also tend to have a lot of police officers. Consider now the police/murder correlation in a pair of real cities. Denver and Washington, D.C., have about the same population — but Washington has nearly three times as many police as Denver, and it also has eight times the number of murders. Unless you have more information, however, it’s hard to say what’s causing what. Someone who didn’t know better might contemplate these figures and conclude that it is all those extra police in Washington who are causing the extra murders. Such wayward thinking, which has a long history, generally provokes a wayward response. Consider the folktale of the czar who learned that the most disease ridden province in his empire was also the province with the most doctors. His solution? He promptly ordered all the doctors shot dead.

We know, however, that the mind is capable of understanding these matters in all their complexity and in all their simplicity. A ball flying through the air is responding to the force and direction with which it was thrown, the action of gravity, the friction of the air which it must expend its energy on overcoming, the turbulence of the air around its surface, and the rate and direction of the ball's spin. And yet, someone who might have difficulty consciously trying to work out what 3 x 4 x 5 comes to would have no trouble in doing differential calculus and a whole host of related calculations so astoundingly fast that they can actually catch a flying ball. People who call this "instinct" are merely giving the phenomenon a name, not explaining anything. I think that the closest that human beings come to expressing our understanding of these natural complexities is in music. It is the most abstract of the arts - it has no meaning or purpose other than to be itself. Every single aspect of a piece of music can be represented by numbers. From the organization of movements in a whole symphony, down through the patterns of pitch and rhythm that make up the melodies and harmonies, the dynamics that shape the performance, all the way down to the timbres of the notes themselves, their harmonics, the way they change over time, in short, all the elements of a noise that distinguish between the sound of one person piping on a piccolo and another one thumping a drum - all of these things can be expressed by patterns and hierarchies of numbers. And in my experience the more internal relationships there are between the patterns of numbers at different levels of the hierarchy, however complex and subtle those relationships may be, the more satisfying and, well, whole, the music will seem to be. In fact the more subtle and complex those relationships, and the further they are beyond the grasp of the conscious mind, the more the instinctive part of your mind - by which I mean that part of your mind that can do differential calculus so astoundingly fast that it will put your hand in the right place to catch a flying ball- the more that part of your brain revels in it. Music of any complexity (and even "Three Blind Mice" is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about. Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.

The form the picture had taken was not unreservedly welcome to the patient’s conscious mind. Luckily, however, while painting it Miss X had discovered that two factors were involved. These, in her own words, were reason and the eyes. Reason always wanted to make the picture as it thought it ought to be; but the eyes held fast to their vision and finally forced the picture to come out as it actually did and not in accordance with rationalistic expectations. Her reason, she said, had really intended a daylight scene, with the sunshine melting the sphere free, but the eyes favoured a nocturne with “shattering, dangerous lightning.” This realization helped her to acknowledge the actual result of her artistic efforts and to admit that it was in fact an objective and impersonal process and not a personal relationship.

Across history, racist power has produced racist ideas about the racialized ethnic groups in its colonial sphere and ranked them—across the globe and within their own nations. The history of the United States offers a parade of intra-racial ethnic power relationships: Anglo-Saxons discriminating against Irish Catholics and Jews; Cuban immigrants being privileged over Mexican immigrants; the model-minority construction that includes East Asians and excludes Muslims from South Asia. It’s a history that began with early European colonizers referring to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole as the “Five Civilized Tribes” of Native Americans, as compared to other “wild” tribes. This ranking of racialized ethnic groups within the ranking of the races creates a racial-ethnic hierarchy, a ladder of ethnic racism within the larger schema of racism.

Transformational Relationships, as opposed to Transactional ones, are entered into for the purpose of change and growth. In Transformational Relationships, all parties give more than they take. There is an abundance mind-set, and an openness to novelty and change. Rather than viewing people or services as a “cost,” as in the transactional mind-set, everything is viewed as an investment, with the possibility of 10X (10 times), 100X, or even bigger returns and change.

The technology has proven so valuable that SpaceX’s competitors have started to copy it and have tried to poach some of the company’s experts in the field. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s secretive rocket company, has been particularly aggressive, hiring away Ray Miryekta, one of the world’s foremost friction stir welding experts and igniting a major rift with Musk. “Blue Origin does these surgical strikes on specialized talent* offering like double their salaries. I think it’s unnecessary and a bit rude,” Musk said. Within SpaceX, Blue Origin is mockingly referred to as BO and at one point the company created an e-mail filter to detect messages with “blue” and “origin” to block the poaching. The relationship between Musk and Bezos has soured, and they no longer chat about their shared ambition of getting to Mars. “I do think Bezos has an insatiable desire to be King Bezos,” Musk said. “He has a relentless work ethic and wants to kill everything in e-commerce. But he’s not the most fun guy, honestly.

If you estimate that the wage of the average store employee is $18,000 and that the cost of finding, hiring and training each new employee is 1.5 times his salary, then the total cost to the company for the different levels of retention between the two groups is $18,000 x 1.5 x 1,000 = $27,000,000. And that’s just the hard cost. The drain of experienced employees who have developed valuable relationships with their customers and their colleagues is harder to measure but is just as significant a loss.

Freud focused on the puzzling development of conscience. He reasoned that the child begins life with a sense that all are present to serve him. A youngster eventually recognizes that others exist but not initially that they are complex beings with their own thoughts and relationships. Freud discovered that the child’s life changes dramatically when he realizes that others are subjects, just as he is: subjects in their own right (Covitz 2016). Until that time, the child understands others more or less only in their capacities to satisfy his needs: as either good or bad, as satisfying his demands or not. When the child accepts the complexity of family relationships and is able to understand that Mom and Dad have an independent relationship, he has begun to embrace them as subjects (i.e., as doers) with their own thoughts, feelings, and relationships. He has, Freud would say, developed a conscience (an uber-Ich, or a “Guiding I”). Those who fail to accept others as subjects in their own right comprise the personality-disordered subgroup of humanity.

You know you want to accomplish X, so you invest time, money, and relationships into achieving it. About the worst thing that can happen is not something going wrong, but something going wrong and catching you by surprise. Why? Because unexpected failure is discouraging and being beaten back hurts. But the person who has rehearsed in their mind what could go wrong will not be caught by surprise. The person ready to be disappointed won’t be. They will have the strength to bear it. They are not as likely to get discouraged or to shirk from the task that lies before them, or make a mistake in the face of it.

For most people passing through the urban park across from my house, the cottonwood is past its prime- scarred by fire…soon to be marked with a large red X by the crew… For me, he’s a presence in my life that’s hard to describe. Martin Buber, in I and Thou, spoke of two different ways of relating to a tree. On the one hand, he said, “I can assign it to a species and observe it as an…object. But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I’m drawn into a relationship, and the tree ceases to be an It.” Buber and his tree were able to enter into a mystery of reciprocity.

One day, Carmona had an idea. Axcom had been employing various approaches to using their pricing data to trade, including relying on breakout signals. They also used simple linear regressions, a basic forecasting tool relied upon by many investors that analyzes the relationships between two sets of data or variables under the assumption those relationships will remain linear. Plot crude-oil prices on the x-axis and the price of gasoline on the y-axis, place a straight regression line through the points on the graph, extend that line, and you usually can do a pretty good job predicting prices at the pump for a given level of oil price.

The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all. The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and conflict, the desire to attempt to accept everything equally and to make everything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form of entitlement. Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad. And because they refuse to reject anything, they live a valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. All they give a fuck about is sustaining the high a little bit longer, to avoid the inevitable failures of their life, to pretend the suffering away. Rejection is an important and crucial life skill. Nobody wants to be stuck in a relationship that isn’t making them happy. Nobody wants to be stuck in a business doing work they hate and don’t believe in. Nobody wants to feel that they can’t say what they really mean. Yet people choose these things. All the time. Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word “no.” In this way, rejection actually makes our relationships better and our emotional lives healthier.

For most of their relationship, Eric avoided paying his due because he knew Alice would pay when he didn't. If he paid only 10 units, she would come up with the other 30. If he didn't feel like driving over to her house then she would come to his. if he didn't wish to break a deadlock after an argument, he could count on her to play the mediator. But he miscalculated just how far he could push Alice. her share of the 40x began to slowly decline, leaven him to make up the shortfall. Only small amounts were at first involved, but they suffered remorseless inflation until the full weight of the relationship came to descend on this delicate shoulders. Alice had in a myriad of ways imply ceased to care, and Eric realized that unless he continued to pump around 30x into the situation, Alice and he would inevitably collide and break up.

The theory of the ally in this sense examines and expands upon issues relating to the role of men with respect to feminist struggle, white people with respect to anti-racist struggle, etc. Much of the discussion and debate within this discourse turns on the question of the "good" ally, of how a person of privilege committed to ally work must acknowledge and reflect upon their privileges and do the intellectual and practical work to divest themselves of the illegitimate power such privilege affords. These discussions may be directed at a generalized concept of, e.g., the white anti-racist ally as well as questions of what it means to develop specific and personal relations of trust between individuals and groups involved in anti-oppression work. This conception of the ally calls to attention the place of power within relationships, structures, practices and processes, not simply the content of particular demands or objectives.

Teach all nations” (the last words of the glorified Jesus – Matthew xxviii. 19) “baptizing them into these relationships of the divine, into the connection of[24] the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” From the very context of the words, it is clear that by “baptizing into” we are not to understand a dipping in water, a so-called “Christening” in which there has to be an utterance of certain words like a magic formula. The word μρθητεύειυ [teach] is likewise deprived of the notion of teaching proper by the clause which follows it. God cannot be taught or learned, since he is life and can be apprehended only with life. “Fill them with the spiritual relation” (ὂυομα [name]; cf. Matthew x. 41: “whoso receiveth a prophet εις ὂυομα προϕήτου [in the name of a prophet], i.e., in so far as he is a prophet)[25] “which connects the One, the modification (separation), and the developed reunification of life and spirit (i.e., not in conceptual thinking alone).

As children, Other-blamers were likely exposed to developmental or attachment trauma, such as abusive, shaming, rejecting, or neglectful parenting. Parents who are substance abusers or psychologically troubled often underfocus on a child’s needs. Parents may have exhibited narcissistic or Other-blaming behaviors that the child models. Another possible cause is parents who were permissive or conflict avoiding and did not hold the child accountable. Parents who overfocus on achievement or behavioral compliance can also encourage a fear of failure that may bring on Other-blaming tendencies. These experiences can cause children to feel unloved, unprotected, and inadequate. They may struggle to experience empathy for others and may develop an unhealthy hypersensitivity and overreaction to shaming experiences. While Other-blaming as a shame-management strategy may be adaptive in childhood, it causes difficulties for adult relationships at all levels, from presidential to personal.

Jesus explains this unity in another way (Matthew xviii. 19): “If two or three of you shall agree as touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be done for you of my father.” The expressions “ask” and “vouchsafe” are relative strictly to a unification in respect of objects (πράγματα [things]); it was only for a unification of this kind that the matter-of-fact language of the Jews had words. But here the object in question can be nothing but the reflected unity (the σνμϕωνία τὠν δνοἰν ὴ τριὠν [agreement of two or three]); regarded as an object, this is a beautiful relationship, but subjectively it is unification; spirits cannot be on in objects proper. The beautiful relationship, a unity of two or three of you, is repeated in the harmony of the whole, is a sound, a concord with the same harmony and is produced thereby. It is because it is in the harmony, because it is something divine. In this association with the divine, those who are at one are also in association with Jesus. Where two or three are united in my spirit (είς τό ὂνομα μοΰ [into my name], cf. Matthew x. 41), in that respect in which being and eternal life fall into my lot, in which I am, then I am in the midst of them, and so is my spirit.

In describing a protein it is now common to distinguish the primary, secondary and tertiary structures. The primary structure is simply the order, or sequence, of the amino-acid residues along the polypeptide chains. This was first determined by [Frederick] Sanger using chemical techniques for the protein insulin, and has since been elucidated for a number of peptides and, in part, for one or two other small proteins. The secondary structure is the type of folding, coiling or puckering adopted by the polypeptide chain: the a-helix structure and the pleated sheet are examples. Secondary structure has been assigned in broad outline to a number of librous proteins such as silk, keratin and collagen; but we are ignorant of the nature of the secondary structure of any globular protein. True, there is suggestive evidence, though as yet no proof, that a-helices occur in globular proteins, to an extent which is difficult to gauge quantitatively in any particular case. The tertiary structure is the way in which the folded or coiled polypeptide chains are disposed to form the protein molecule as a three-dimensional object, in space. The chemical and physical properties of a protein cannot be fully interpreted until all three levels of structure are understood, for these properties depend on the spatial relationships between the amino-acids, and these in turn depend on the tertiary and secondary structures as much as on the primary. Only X-ray diffraction methods seem capable, even in principle, of unravelling the tertiary and secondary structures. [Co-author with G. Bodo, H. M. Dintzis, R. G. Parrish, H. Wyckoff, and D. C. Phillips]

THEORY OF ALMOST EVERYTHING After the war, Einstein, the towering figure who had unlocked the cosmic relationship between matter and energy and discovered the secret of the stars, found himself lonely and isolated. Almost all recent progress in physics had been made in the quantum theory, not in the unified field theory. In fact, Einstein lamented that he was viewed as a relic by other physicists. His goal of finding a unified field theory was considered too difficult by most physicists, especially when the nuclear force remained a total mystery. Einstein commented, “I am generally regarded as a sort of petrified object, rendered blind and deaf by the years. I find this role not too distasteful, as it corresponds fairly well with my temperament.” In the past, there was a fundamental principle that guided Einstein’s work. In special relativity, his theory had to remain the same when interchanging X, Y, Z, and T. In general relativity, it was the equivalence principle, that gravity and acceleration could be equivalent. But in his quest for the theory of everything, Einstein failed to find a guiding principle. Even today, when I go through Einstein’s notebooks and calculations, I find plenty of ideas but no guiding principle. He himself realized that this would doom his ultimate quest. He once observed sadly, “I believe that in order to make real progress, one must again ferret out some general principle from nature.” He never found it. Einstein once bravely said that “God is subtle, but not malicious.” In his later years, he became frustrated and concluded, “I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.” Although the quest for a unified field theory was ignored by most physicists, every now and then, someone would try their hand at creating one. Even Erwin Schrödinger tried. He modestly wrote to Einstein, “You are on a lion hunt, while I am speaking of rabbits.” Nevertheless, in 1947 Schrödinger held a press conference to announce his version of the unified field theory. Even Ireland’s prime minister, Éamon de Valera, showed up. Schrödinger said, “I believe I am right. I shall look an awful fool if I am wrong.” Einstein would later tell Schrödinger that he had also considered this theory and found it to be incorrect. In addition, his theory could not explain the nature of electrons and the atom. Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli caught the bug too, and proposed their version of a unified field theory. Pauli was the biggest cynic in physics and a critic of Einstein’s program. He was famous for saying, “What God has torn asunder, let no man put together”—that is, if God had torn apart the forces in the universe, then who were we to try to put them back together?

The day-to-day horror of writing gave me a notion of tournament time. Writing novels is tedious. When will this book be finished, when will it reveal its bright and shining true self? it takes freakin’ years. At the poker table, you’re only playing a fraction of the hands, waiting for your shot. If you keep your wits, can keep from flying apart while those around you are self-destructing, devouring each other, you’re halfway there. … Let them flame out while you develop a new relationship with time, and they drift away from the table. 86-7 Coach Helen’s mantra: It’s OK to be scared, but don’t play scared. 90 [During a young adult trip to Los Vegas] I was contemplating the nickel in my hand. Before we pushed open the glass doors, what the heck, I dropped it into a one-armed bandit and won two dollars. In a dank utility room deep in the subbasements of my personality, a little man wiped his hands on his overalls and pulled the switch: More. Remembering it now, I hear a sizzling sound, like meat being thrown into a hot skillet. I didn't do risk, generally. So I thought. But I see now I'd been testing the House Rules the last few years. I'd always been a goody-goody. Study hard, obey your parents, hut-hut-hut through the training exercises of Decent Society. Then in college, now that no one was around, I started to push the boundaries, a little more each semester. I was an empty seat in lecture halls, slept late in a depressive funk, handed in term papers later and later to see how much I could get away with before the House swatted me down. Push it some more. We go to casinos to tell the everyday world that we will not submit. There are rules and codes and institutions, yes, but for a few hours in this temple of pure chaos, of random cards and inscrutable dice, we are in control of our fates. My little gambles were a way of pretending that no one was the boss of me. … The nickels poured into the basin, sweet music. If it worked once, it will work again. We hit the street. 106-8 [Matt Matros, 3x bracelet winner; wrote The Making of a Poker Player]: “One way or another you’re going to have a read, and you’re going to do something that you didn’t expect you were going to do before, right or wrong. Obviously it’s better if you’re right, but even if you’re wrong, it can be really satisfying to just have a read, a feeling, and go with it. Your gut.” I could play it safe, or I could really play. 180 Early on, you wanted to stay cool and keep out of expensive confrontations, but you also needed to feed the stack. The stack is hungry. 187 The awful knowledge that you did what you set out to do, and you would never, ever top it. It was gone the instant you put your hands on it. It was gambling. 224

THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.

OUR PAST BRINGS US TO OUR FUTURE “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” —Joel 2:25 I believe in a very deep way that our past is what brings us to our future. I understand the temptation to draw an angry X through a whole season or a whole town or a whole relationship, to crumple it up and throw it away, to get it as far away as possible from a new life, a new future. In my worst moments, I want to slam the door on the hard parts of our life in Grand Rapids. Deadbolt it, forget it, move forward, happier without it. But I don’t want to lose six years of my own history behind a slammed door. These days I’m walking over and retrieving those years from the trash, erasing the X, unlocking the door. It’s the only way that darkness turns to light. I’m mining through, searching for light, and the more I look, the more I find all sorts of things Grand Rapids gave me. I see moments of heartbreak that led to honesty about myself I wouldn’t have been able to get to any other way. I am thankful for what I learned, what I became, what God gave me and what God took away during that season. WHAT HAVE the hard, dark seasons of your life yielded in light and insight and growth and gifts? Have you sifted through those times, looking for those gifts? Ask God to bring light out of that darkness. May 11 WHY WE WRITE Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. —Psalm 100:1 A writer friend came over yesterday. She’s written a novel. She brought over a fat, beautiful binder full of story, and I can’t wait to read it. We talked about publication and agents and sharing your work, about marketing and the internet and a million other things. And we talked about why we write. You know those conversations when you think you’re helping someone, sharing from your vast well of knowledge, only to realize that this person is actually instructing you, reminding you of something fundamental that you’ve forgotten? My friend sat across the table from me, and it seemed like she could have combusted into flames, burning with sheer, clean passion about this story. After she left, I realized that some days I forget why we write, and she reminded me. I write because other writers’ words changed my life a million and one ways, and I want to be a part of that. I began writing because there were things I wanted to say with so much urgency and soul I would have climbed a tower and shouted them, would have written them in skywriting, would have spelled them out in grains of rice if I had to.

In a manner similar to exploiting every available tax loophole; every feasible advantage over his debtors, contractors, and workers; every opportunity to have “special” relationships advance his deal-making aims, he made an unerring political calculation to seize the transitional moment of national insecurity. His business acumen worked brilliantly, against all odds. But his transactional win represents a profound danger to the nation because it sells out the most essential qualities of democratic values, of moral integrity, and of true inventiveness. What binds us together is the shared reality of our country’s history and its present: E pluribus unum. “Out of many, one.” The country’s cherished motto cannot hold when truth is open to transactional competition from “alternative facts.

Good to note: The purpose of dating someone new is not to endlessly commiserate with them about someone old.

No one, I repeat, NO ONE, wants to go on a date with someone with air brushed photos, or just that ONE pic someone took of you at the beach when you miraculously looked like Gwyneth Paltrow or Hugh Jackman back in 2006.

Guys who say in their profile how good they are at kissing, make me right away, not want to kiss them! #1, the truly gifted and confident don’t need to advertise, and #2 I want to get to actually know someone in person before I can decide if I want to start lip locking. 

This great focus on relationships, and the appearance of coupling or marrying for status, can cause the public to perceive them to be promiscuous. Many of them are, indeed, but it is not their usual style. What they normally want is a lifelong companion, a true partner they can integrate themselves completely with, forever and ever. The sad reality is that this is a rare gem to find, so many of them scamper from one bed to another, hoping to find The One.

The Enfield I’ve realized, is really a temperamental woman disguised as a motorcycle and ours is not a relationship of convenience. Sometimes she can be adamant and uncooperative and very difficult to reason with. She can sense my moods and even my intentions. Once, attracted to a more advanced model, I had considered a trading alliance with her. The modern motorcycle beckoned me enticingly from billboards and newspapers in full seductive colour. I visited the showroom and took a test ride on the sleeker machine. This new one felt different. Lighter and easily excited into full flight with her ‘0 to 100 in x seconds’ flat! To an Enfield, that’s premature ejaculation.

Another salesman flew down to SpaceX to sell the company on some technology infrastructure equipment. He was doing the standard relationship-building exercise practiced by salespeople for centuries. Show up. Speak for a while. Feel each other out. Then, start doing business down the road. Musk was having none of it. “The guy comes in, and Elon asks him why they’re meeting,” Spikes said. “He said, ‘To develop a relationship.’ Elon replied, ‘Okay. Nice to meet you,’ which basically meant, ‘Get the fuck out of my office.’ This guy had spent four hours traveling for what ended up as a two-minute meeting. Elon just has no tolerance for that kind of stuff.” Musk could be equally brisk with employees who were not hitting his standards. “He would often say, ‘The longer you wait to fire someone the longer it has been since you should have fired them,’” Spikes said.

Flow state is enormously powerful. When I get into flow with my writing, hours can pass as though they were mere seconds. I can sit at my keyboard entranced, feeling as though there is no distance between me and the words that I’m tapping out on the screen. That I am entirely at one with language, and that there is an open channel of communication between my head, my heart, and the reader. That feeling is transcendental, even sacred, and I am convinced that when we feel that feeling, we are in the process of doing something truly valuable.

You have a really warped relationship with technology. – May

Other-blamers instinctively seek out those willing to be controlled, manipulated, or intimidated. This sets up relationships with submissive people who will not challenge, correct, or blame them.

That night, they sat around the hotel room with a bottle of tequila and some salt and limes and talked about names for the new real estate company. A few ideas sprang up right away but got rejected just as fast. A half bottle of tequila later, the name "Real Estate Maximums Incorporated" was tossed around as a possibility. Nobody spoke for a moment because everyone liked it. Maximums meant that everyone would get the most out of the relationship-real estate agents and customers alike. The name did a good job of communicating the everybody wins principle at the heart of the endeavor. But after a few more minutes, they realized it didn't quite work. It wasn't snappy enough for a good brand name, and it was too long to fit on a real estate sign. More tequila got poured. No one could come up with another name that felt as on-target as Real Estate Maximums. Someone suggested shortening it to R. E. Max. That made it snappier and appealing in a brand name sense; but when you wrote it out, it looked too much like a real person's name. You could imagine junk mail arriving at the office in care of Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Max. Collins pointed out that Exxon had formed only a few years before, and the X with a slash through it looked very smart. So Liniger took out the dots and tried a slash through the middle of the word and then capitalized all the letters. They looked at the pad of paper and saw: RE/MAX. A silence came over them, followed by a few backslaps and cheers. Everything about the word looked exactly right, as though they were talking about an established global company. Now, what about colors? They were on a roll. Now was no time to stop. A few more shots of tequila went around while they debated the right look for the new RE/MAX. It didn't take long to figure it out: Everyone in the room was a Vietnam vet and patriotic to the core. The colors, of course, had to be red, white, and blue. When they considered the whole package, they knew they had it. And that's how the idea for the distinctive RE/MAX brand was hatched. Considering the time and resources that get poured into brand development today, their methods might seem unorthodox if admirably effective. No money was spent on advertising agencies, market research, or trademark protection. The only investment was a decent bottle of tequila; the only focus group, a bunch of guys sitting around a room having a good laugh.

Ignorance/hateracist ideasdiscrimination: this causal relationship is largely ahistorical. It has actually been the inverse relationship—racial discrimination led to racist ideas which led to ignorance and hate.

It is very important to note that the transcendence of the object is by no means a primitive component necessarily ingredient in all knowledge. It is missing in all ecstatic knowledge. In ecstatic knowledge the known world is still not objectively given. Only when the (logically and genetically simultaneous) act furnishing ecstatic knowledge and the subject which performs this act become themselves the content of knowledge in the act of reflection does the character originally given in ecstatic knowledge become a mere reference pointing to the “object.” It is only here that the object or that which turns into an object remains from now on “transcendent” to consciousness. Therefore, whenever there is consciousness, objects transcendent to consciousness must also be given to consciousness. Their structural relationship is indissoluble. Whenever self-consciousness and consciousness of an object arise, they do so simultaneously and through the same process. The categorical form of an object is not first impressed in a judgment upon a nonobjective given, not even in a one-term, simple judgment, as some people have thought (e.g., Heinrich Maier in his book *Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit*). This is a pure construction. Consciousness of an object precedes all judgment and is not originally constituted by judgment. The same holds true of consciousness of states of affairs. The consciousness of an object and the intentional object are not the result of an active [tätige] “forming” or “imprinting” which we perform on the given through judgments or any other operations of thought. On the contrary, they are the result of a pulling back, the result, that is, of the re-flexive act, in which an originally ecstatic [*ekstatisch gebender*] act turns back knowingly onto itself and comes upon a central self as its starting point. This central self can be given at every level and degree of “concentration” and “collectedness” in “self-consciousness.” What we had hold of [*das Gehabte*] remains “as” object, while the act of reflection turns the knowing back into the knower, as the result of a turning away [*Abwendung*] and a pulling back, and not of an active turning to [*Zuwendung*]. From what has been said, one may very well imagine that the real world could be abolished without consciousness and the self being altered or abolished thereby. But this could in no way be the case with the world of objects that transcend consciousness. Descartes as well as Lotze misunderstood this. Where a *cogito* exists, there must also be a *cogitatur* in which a transcendent object is thought. Only a being capable of reflection (*reflexio*) and self-consciousness *can* have objects. Charlotte Bühler has recently made it seem probable that the infant does not yet possess objective consciousness. In waking from the effects of a drug we can follow the process by which the givenness of the surrounding world becomes objective again. There is one last point of contact between the problem of reality and the consciousness of transcendence. The consciousness of transcendence, as already indicated, shows how the mere ecstatic possession of reality on the level of the immediately experienced resistance of an X to the central drives of life passes over into a reflexive and thus objective possession of reality. And we find similar transitions between ecstatic remembering which is merged in the being of what is past and reflexive remembering, between ecstatic drive activities and recurrent deliberation [*Besinnung*], between ecstatic surrender to a value and objectification of a value, between identifying with an alter ego and “understanding” [*Verstehen*] another, however slightly.” ―from_Idealism and Realism_

This graph shows all the observations together with a line that represents the fitted relationship. As is traditional, the Y-axis displays the dependent variable, which is weight. The X-axis shows the independent variable, which is height. The line is the fitted line. If you enter the full range of height values that are on the X-axis into the regression equation that the chart displays, you will obtain the line shown on the graph. This line produces a smaller SSE than any other line you can draw through these observations. Visually, we see that that the fitted line has a positive slope that corresponds to the positive correlation we obtained earlier. The line follows the data points, which indicates that the model fits the data. The slope of the line equals the coefficient that I circled. This coefficient indicates how much mean weight tends to increase as we increase height. We can also enter a height value into the equation and obtain a prediction for the mean weight. Each point on the fitted line represents the mean weight for a given height. However, like any mean, there is variability around the mean. Notice how there is a spread of data points around the line. You can assess this variability by picking a spot on the line and observing the range of data points above and below that point. Finally, the vertical distance between each data point and the line is the residual for that observation.

You’re very close with your nephew.” “Yes. Sometimes there are special relationships like that in families, you know?” He did not. She continued, “Where there is no static in the line. You just get each other.

CIA claimed to find no evidence that “any past or present employee of CIA, or anyone acting on behalf of CIA, had any direct or indirect dealing” with any of the figures mentioned in “Dark Alliance,” including Ross and Blandón. The report did admit, however, that there were instances where the CIA did not, “in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations.” But to that it offered the curious caveat that, under an agreement in 1982 between Reagan attorney general William French Smith and the CIA, agents were not required to report allegations of drug trafficking involving nonemployees, defined as paid and nonpaid “assets.” The CIA’s admissions were major.

Resilience, psychologists say, is built on a foundation of caring and supportive relationships within and outside of families. “Relationships that create love and trust, provide role models and offer encouragement and reassurance help bolster a person’s resilience,” wrote Harvard psychiatrists J. Heidi Gralinski-Bakker and Stuart T. Hauser in their 2004 paper on resilience in vulnerable populations. If that’s true, then it appears Black identity—a construct assigned to the darker peoples of the world for the purpose of discrimination—has become a shield, membership in a club that offers care and support through the toughest times.

CIA claimed to find no evidence that “any past or present employee of CIA, or anyone acting on behalf of CIA, had any direct or indirect dealing” with any of the figures mentioned in “Dark Alliance,” including Ross and Blandón. The report did admit, however, that there were instances where the CIA did not, “in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations.” But to that it offered the curious caveat that, under an agreement in 1982 between Reagan attorney general William French Smith and the CIA, agents were not required to report allegations of drug trafficking involving nonemployees, defined as paid and nonpaid “assets.” The CIA’s admissions were major. They implicated the U.S. government in cocaine trafficking during the eighties, and therefore in some of the devastation of the crack epidemic. There was some attention paid to the report, but overall, the revelations came and went.

the first step is communicating your boundary. When you communicate clearly, you set yourself (and your relationship) up for successful change. Setting an intention for yourself gives you the space and opportunity to identify your “why”: I’m doing this because of x or y, for example, because I want the relationship to survive, because I care about our friendship. While this does not need to be articulated to the other person it is helpful for it to be fully clear to you. If you would like to articulate your “why” to the other person, this may sound like “I really care about you, and I will have to make some changes in the way we communicate.

She was always human, difficult as it was for me to admit that; I made so much trouble for myself by refusing to see it.

could she really give up the details of her relationship with Hades in exchange for her best friend’s life?

In Transformational Relationships, all parties give more than they take. There is an abundance mind-set, and an openness to novelty and change. Rather than viewing people or services as a “cost,” as in the transactional mind-set, everything is viewed as an investment, with the possibility of 10X (10 times), 100X, or even bigger returns and change.

In fact, if you get into a relationship with somebody who’s not treating you poorly, you may find yourself feeling increasingly uncomfortable. And then, unconsciously, your mind might seek a “predictable” response. You may try to provoke a bit of response. Maybe I’ll do X and it’ll piss him off. If this elicits the behavior you’re most familiar with—he gets angry and treats you poorly—it can actually be validating. The worldview has been confirmed. Even though the result is chaos and conflict, it’s comforting in the sense that it’s familiar.

But now I have someone who loves me—and lets me love them in return. It’s still early days. We have a lot of road to cover. We’re going to have blips. We’re going to fight. Life is hard. Relationships are hard. I’m confident we can get through it together.

Another salesman flew down to SpaceX to sell the company on some technology infrastructure equipment. He was doing the standard relationship-building exercise practiced by salespeople for centuries. Show up. Speak for a while. Feel each other out. Then, start doing business down the road. Musk was having none of it. “The guy comes in, and Elon asks him why they’re meeting,” Spikes said. “He said, ‘To develop a relationship.’ Elon replied, ‘Okay. Nice to meet you,’ which basically meant, ‘Get the fuck out of my office.’ This guy had spent four hours traveling for what ended up as a two-minute meeting. Elon just has no tolerance for that kind of stuff.

What Musk had done that the rival automakers missed or didn’t have the means to combat was turn Tesla into a lifestyle. It did not just sell someone a car. It sold them an image, a feeling they were tapping into the future, a relationship. Apple did the same thing decades ago with the Mac and then again with the iPod and iPhone. Even those who were not religious about their affiliation to Apple were sucked into its universe once they bought the hardware and downloaded software like iTunes. This sort of relationship is hard to pull off if you don’t control as much of the lifestyle as possible. PC makers that farmed their software out to Microsoft, their chips to Intel, and their design to Asia could never make machines as beautiful and as complete as Apple’s. They also could not respond in time as Apple took this expertise to new areas and hooked people on its applications. You

The relationship between Musk and Bezos has soured, and they no longer chat about their shared ambition of getting to Mars. “I do think Bezos has an insatiable desire to be King Bezos,” Musk said. “He has a relentless work ethic and wants to kill everything in e-commerce. But he’s not the most fun guy, honestly.”fn3 In

Thus, multiple regression requires two important tasks: (1) specification of independent variables and (2) testing of the error term. An important difference between simple regression and multiple regression is the interpretation of the regression coefficients in multiple regression (b1, b2, b3, …) in the preceding multiple regression model. Although multiple regression produces the same basic statistics discussed in Chapter 14 (see Table 14.1), each of the regression coefficients is interpreted as its effect on the dependent variable, controlled for the effects of all of the other independent variables included in the regression. This phrase is used frequently when explaining multiple regression results. In our example, the regression coefficient b1 shows the effect of x1 on y, controlled for all other variables included in the model. Regression coefficient b2 shows the effect of x2 on y, also controlled for all other variables in the model, including x1. Multiple regression is indeed an important and relatively simple way of taking control variables into account (and much easier than the approach shown in Appendix 10.1). Key Point The regression coefficient is the effect on the dependent variable, controlled for all other independent variables in the model. Note also that the model given here is very different from estimating separate simple regression models for each of the independent variables. The regression coefficients in simple regression do not control for other independent variables, because they are not in the model. The word independent also means that each independent variable should be relatively unaffected by other independent variables in the model. To ensure that independent variables are indeed independent, it is useful to think of the distinctively different types (or categories) of factors that affect a dependent variable. This was the approach taken in the preceding example. There is also a statistical reason for ensuring that independent variables are as independent as possible. When two independent variables are highly correlated with each other (r2 > .60), it sometimes becomes statistically impossible to distinguish the effect of each independent variable on the dependent variable, controlled for the other. The variables are statistically too similar to discern disparate effects. This problem is called multicollinearity and is discussed later in this chapter. This problem is avoided by choosing independent variables that are not highly correlated with each other. A WORKING EXAMPLE Previously (see Chapter 14), the management analyst with the Department of Defense found a statistically significant relationship between teamwork and perceived facility productivity (p <.01). The analyst now wishes to examine whether the impact of teamwork on productivity is robust when controlled for other factors that also affect productivity. This interest is heightened by the low R-square (R2 = 0.074) in Table 14.1, suggesting a weak relationship between teamwork and perceived productivity. A multiple regression model is specified to include the effects of other factors that affect perceived productivity. Thinking about other categories of variables that could affect productivity, the analyst hypothesizes the following: (1) the extent to which employees have adequate technical knowledge to do their jobs, (2) perceptions of having adequate authority to do one’s job well (for example, decision-making flexibility), (3) perceptions that rewards and recognition are distributed fairly (always important for motivation), and (4) the number of sick days. Various items from the employee survey are used to measure these concepts (as discussed in the workbook documentation for the Productivity dataset). After including these factors as additional independent variables, the result shown in Table 15.1 is

Type I behavior promotes greater physical and mental well-being. According to a raft of studies from SDT researchers, people oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated. By contrast, people whose core aspirations are Type X validations such as money, fame, or beauty tend to have poorer psychological health. There’s even a connection between Type X and Type A. Deci found that those oriented toward control and extrinsic rewards showed greater public self-consciousness, acted more defensively, and were more likely to exhibit the Type A behavior pattern.5

knowledge of cardiovascular disease and whether such knowledge reduces behaviors that put people at risk for cardiovascular disease. Simple regression is used to analyze the relationship between two continuous variables. Continuous variables assume that the distances between ordered categories are determinable.1 In simple regression, one variable is defined as the dependent variable and the other as the independent variable (see Chapter 2 for the definitions). In the current example, the level of knowledge obtained from workshops and other sources might be measured on a continuous scale and treated as an independent variable, and behaviors that put people at risk for cardiovascular disease might also be measured on a continuous scale and treated as a dependent variable. Scatterplot The relationship between two continuous variables can be portrayed in a scatterplot. A scatterplot is merely a plot of the data points for two continuous variables, as shown in Figure 14.1 (without the straight line). By convention, the dependent variable is shown on the vertical (or Y-) axis, and the independent variable on the horizontal (or X-) axis. The relationship between the two variables is estimated as a straight line relationship. The line is defined by the equation y = a + bx, where a is the intercept (or constant), and b is the slope. The slope, b, is defined as Figure 14.1 Scatterplot or (y2 – y1)/(x2 – x1). The line is calculated mathematically such that the sum of distances from each observation to the line is minimized.2 By definition, the slope indicates the change in y as a result of a unit change in x. The straight line, defined by y = a + bx, is also called the regression line, and the slope (b) is called the regression coefficient. A positive regression coefficient indicates a positive relationship between the variables, shown by the upward slope in Figure 14.1. A negative regression coefficient indicates a negative relationship between the variables and is indicated by a downward-sloping line. Test of Significance The test of significance of the regression coefficient is a key test that tells us whether the slope (b) is statistically different from zero. The slope is calculated from a sample, and we wish to know whether it is significant. When the regression line is horizontal (b = 0), no relationship exists between the two variables. Then, changes in the independent variable have no effect on the dependent variable. The following hypotheses are thus stated: H0: b = 0, or the two variables are unrelated. HA: b ≠ 0, or the two variables are (positively or negatively) related. To determine whether the slope equals zero, a t-test is performed. The test statistic is defined as the slope, b, divided by the standard error of the slope, se(b). The standard error of the slope is a measure of the distribution of the observations around the regression slope, which is based on the standard deviation of those observations to the regression line: Thus, a regression line with a small slope is more likely to be statistically significant when observations lie closely around it (that is, the standard error of the observations around the line is also small, resulting in a larger test statistic). By contrast, the same regression line might be statistically insignificant when observations are scattered widely around it. Observations that lie farther from the

Table 14.1 also shows R-square (R2), which is called the coefficient of determination. R-square is of great interest: its value is interpreted as the percentage of variation in the dependent variable that is explained by the independent variable. R-square varies from zero to one, and is called a goodness-of-fit measure.5 In our example, teamwork explains only 7.4 percent of the variation in productivity. Although teamwork is significantly associated with productivity, it is quite likely that other factors also affect it. It is conceivable that other factors might be more strongly associated with productivity and that, when controlled for other factors, teamwork is no longer significant. Typically, values of R2 below 0.20 are considered to indicate weak relationships, those between 0.20 and 0.40 indicate moderate relationships, and those above 0.40 indicate strong relationships. Values of R2 above 0.65 are considered to indicate very strong relationships. R is called the multiple correlation coefficient and is always 0 ≤ R ≤ 1. To summarize up to this point, simple regression provides three critically important pieces of information about bivariate relationships involving two continuous variables: (1) the level of significance at which two variables are associated, if at all (t-statistic), (2) whether the relationship between the two variables is positive or negative (b), and (3) the strength of the relationship (R2). Key Point R-square is a measure of the strength of the relationship. Its value goes from 0 to 1. The primary purpose of regression analysis is hypothesis testing, not prediction. In our example, the regression model is used to test the hypothesis that teamwork is related to productivity. However, if the analyst wants to predict the variable “productivity,” the regression output also shows the SEE, or the standard error of the estimate (see Table 14.1). This is a measure of the spread of y values around the regression line as calculated for the mean value of the independent variable, only, and assuming a large sample. The standard error of the estimate has an interpretation in terms of the normal curve, that is, 68 percent of y values lie within one standard error from the calculated value of y, as calculated for the mean value of x using the preceding regression model. Thus, if the mean index value of the variable “teamwork” is 5.0, then the calculated (or predicted) value of “productivity” is [4.026 + 0.223*5 =] 5.141. Because SEE = 0.825, it follows that 68 percent of productivity values will lie 60.825 from 5.141 when “teamwork” = 5. Predictions of y for other values of x have larger standard errors.6 Assumptions and Notation There are three simple regression assumptions. First, simple regression assumes that the relationship between two variables is linear. The linearity of bivariate relationships is easily determined through visual inspection, as shown in Figure 14.2. In fact, all analysis of relationships involving continuous variables should begin with a scatterplot. When variable

Cambridge professor William Perkins rested at the cornerstone of British Puritanism in the late sixteenth century. “Though the servant in regard of faith and the inner man be equal to his master, in regard of the outward man . . . the master is above the servant,” he explained in Ordering a Familie, published in 1590. In paraphrasing St. Paul, Perkins became one of the first major English theorists—or assimilationist theologians, to be more precise—to mask the exploitative master/servant or master/slave relationship as a loving family relationship. He thus added to Zurara’s justifying theory of Portuguese enslavers nurturing African beasts. For generations to come, assimilationist slaveholders, from Richard Mather’s New England to Hispaniola, would shrewdly use this loving-family mask to cover up the exploitation and brutality of slavery. It was Perkins’s family ordering that Puritan leaders like John Cotton and Richard Mather used to sanction slavery in Massachusetts a generation later. And it was Perkins’s claim of equal souls and unequal bodies that led Puritan preachers like Cotton and Mather to minister to African souls and not challenge the enslavement of their bodies.4

But they wanted to prevent the limited number of White women from engaging in similar interracial relations (as their biracial babies would become free). In 1664, Maryland legislators declared it a “disgrace to our Nation” when “English women . . . intermarry with Negro slaves.” By the end of the century, Maryland and Virginia legislators had enacted severe penalties for White women in relationships with non-White men.23

What Musk had done that the rival automakers missed or didn’t have the means to combat was turn Tesla into a lifestyle. It did not just sell someone a car. It sold them an image, a feeling they were tapping into the future, a relationship. Apple did the same thing decades ago with the Mac and then again with the iPod and iPhone. Even those who were not religious about their affiliation to Apple were sucked into its universe once they bought the hardware and downloaded software like iTunes. This

Pluttr’s other massive draw is “pseudonymity mode.” The company maintains that people are the most authentic with their five closest friends - and with perfect strangers. The draw of strangers has forever fueled vast anonymous forums online. But anonymity also breeds awful behavior, one-off interactions rather than budding relationships, and endless lying about traits and backgrounds. So who really knows if you’re communing with a caring priest, a fellow AIDS sufferer, or a medical expert? Or an actual acquaintance of Person X? An employee of company Y? Or a fellow closeted gay person of an age, weight, and social background that attracts you? Well, Phluttr knows. And Phluttr can attest that this is a real, well-regarded person who authentically shares your affliction, secret, or curiosity without exposing actual identities (unless both sides request it). Wrap this up in NSA-grade encryption, and there’s no better place to buy sketchy substances, seek sketch advice, cheat on lovers, or cathartically confess to the above. Phluttr has now cornered the mark in id fulfillment, rumor spreading, and confidential gut spilling - and it’s just getting started.

The complicated algorithms of the pre-relationship: 1 mix tape + 2(accidental run-ins in the hallways – serious ex-girlfriends/possible fiancée(?)) + 1 set of in-laws + X(number of sexual partners – one night stands) will = eternal bliss. But the truth is that when it’s right—when it’s really right—that algorithm fades away and the equation simply becomes 1 + 1 = 2.

Breaking away from old psychological memes requires a Herculean effort in many cases. In essence, we are outgrowing a worldview while maintaining a relation-ship of sorts. Transcending an ideology can feel like going through a divorce and having to stay friends because of the kids.

How Advocacy Boosts Retention One of the most critical challenges facing fitness clubs is retention. About 30 percent of club members do not renew their memberships, according to IHRSA. In some clubs, turnover rates are even higher. In larger fitness chains, like the fitness club, improving retention rates by even one percent can mean millions in revenues. So how can Brand Advocates help fitness clubs keep more members? Here are three ways: 1. Members are more likely not to renew if their usage levels are low. Brand Advocates can help educate other members about services they may not currently be using, like Group X classes, personal training, swimming lessons, spa services, and more. As the club's most enthusiastic and engaged members, Advocates are glad to tell others about these services. 2. Brand Advocates will happily create content about why they're loyal customers. Ask your Advocates why they stay with your club. Advocates will create compelling answers, which you can then share with other members and even prospects. 3. Sponsor fun events where Advocates encourage new members to participate in club events and take advantage of club services. 4. Lastly, engaging your Advocates increases the likelihood that these enthusiastic members themselves will continue renewing their memberships month after month, year after year. By building and nurturing relationships with your Advocates you deepen their commitment to your club.

When a person has developed an ongoing relationship with the peaceful internal state, then he or she will likely begin to display certain characteristics such as empathy, forgiveness, magnanimity, altruism, compassion, and benevolence. And when someone displays any of the above, we generally start speaking about that person as spiritual, even though he or she may not represent a religion of any kind.