Zone Of Interest Quotes

Writer advice... Write. Finish things. Go for walks. Read a lot & outside your comfort zone. Stay interested. Daydream. Write.

Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day -- wham! -- there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live. In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. The actual dying part, the withering away of my physical body, was a mere formality. My spirit, my emotional being, whatever you want to call all that inner turmoil that has nothing to do with physical existence, were long gone, dead and gone, and only a mass of the most fucking god-awful excruciating pain like a pair of boiling hot tongs clamped tight around my spine and pressing on all my nerves was left in its wake. That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal -- unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead. And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. There is a classic moment in The Sun Also Rises when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, 'Gradually and then suddenly.' When someone asks how I love my mind, that is all I can say too

That’s the thing I want to make clear about depression: It’s got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorror, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal—unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature’s part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

The only thing I know about books, is that they should be like a woman's dress: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting. I read people.

It’s a common slander of the Jews, but it’s no slander of a huge fraction of the Germans. They went like sheep to the slaughterhouse. And then they donned the rubber aprons and set to work.

A comfort zone can be a mental state:Belief in God is a lot of peoples's comfort zone. Dont get me wrong, I'm not knocking faith; I just dont think you should have it because it makes you feel safe. I think you should have it because you do. Because somewhere deep inside you, you know beyond equivocating that something greater, wiser and infinitely more loving than we're capable of understanding has a vested interested in the universe, in the way things turn out. Because you can feel that, as much as the forces of darkness might try to gain the upper hand, there is an Upper Hand.

That’s the thing I want to make clear about depression: It’s got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal—unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature’s part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

Read any women's magazine and you'll see the same complaint over and over again: men - those little boys ten or twenty or thirty years on - are hopeless in bed. They are not interested in "foreplay"; they have no desire to stimulate the erogenous zones of the opposite sex; they are selfish, greedy, clumsy, unsophisticated. These complaints, you can't help feeling, are ironic. Back then, all we wanted was foreplay, and girls weren't interested. They didn't want to be touched, caressed, stimulated, aroused; in fact, they used to thump us if we tried. It's not really very suprising, then, that we're not much good at all that. We spent two or three long and extremely formative years being told very forcibly not even to think about it. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, foreplay changes from being something that boys want to do and girls don't, to something that women want and men can't be bothered with. (Or so they say. Me, I like foreplay - mostly because the times when all I wanted to do was touch are alarmingly fresh in my mind.) The perfect match, if you ask me, is between the Cosmo woman and the fourteen-year-old boy.

… I was soon wondering if I would ever again be able to attend a mass assemblage without my mind starting to play tricks on me. It wasn’t like the last occasion, when I became gradually immersed in the logistical challenge of gassing the audience. No.

Under National Socialism you looked in the mirror and saw your soul. You found yourself out. This applied, par excellence and a fortiori, (by many magnitudes), to the victims, or to those who lived for more than an hour and had time to confront their own reflections. And yet it also applied to everyone else, the malefactors, the collaborators, the witnesses, the conspirators, the outright martyrs (Red orchestra, White Rose, the men and women of July 20), and even the minor obstructors, like me, and like Hannah Doll. We all discovered, or helplessly revealed, who we were. Who somebody really was. That was the Zone of interest.

... both had let him feel that interesting failures may be worth more in the end than dull successes...

In a conclusive rebuke to the Nazi idea, these ‘subhumans’, it turns out, were the cream of humankind. And

we took the simple step of illegalising all opposition. And the autobahn to autocracy lay clear.

By bringing together people who share interests, no matter their location or time zone, social media has the potential to transform the workplace into an environment where learning is as natural as it is powerful.

There shall always be that voice that will tell you how you are wasting your time and ability, how you shall fail, how some tried and failed, why your prevailing slips are indications of your future doom, why you are unworthy to dare, why your background mismatches your vision and aspiration, why your personality misfits your mission and how arduous the errand is. You have a choice. You have your thought. You have what burns in you that tells you how you can make it. Though the world may be interested in your success, it is much interested in your slips and mediocrity as-well. Your vision must keep you in your mission. Dare in wisdom. Dare unrelentingly. Ponder!

In the solitude of my cell I have come to the bitter realisation that I have sinned gravely against humanity.

How to get and keep men interested in you (A Guide for the Modern Woman): Put them in the “friend” or “fuck” zone. Leave them there.

What you had to have is usually tabulated as follows: luck; the ability to adapt, immediately and radically; a talent for inconspicuousness; solidarity with another individual or with a group; the preservation of decency (“the people who had no tenets to live by—of whatever nature—generally succumbed” no matter how ruthlessly they struggled); the constantly nurtured conviction of innocence (an essential repeatedly emphasised by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago); immunity to despair; and, again, luck.

Russia does not require an invasion, only a zone of influence in the Intermarium that it can achieve by gradually compromising the democratic vitality of rimland states. (Hungary, in particular, is well on its way in this regard.)

One may discover integrity in the companionship of others, but one does not ever discover integrity by bowing to the demands of peer pressure. The heavier the pressure is toward conformity— no matter how lofty the proposed final goal— the more one must be suspicious of it and antagonistic to it. History has one consistent lesson in it: one by one, people give up what they know to be right and true for the sake of something loftier that they do not quite understand but should want in order to be good; soon, people are the tools of despots and atrocities are committed on a grand scale. And then, it is too late. There is no going back. Women are especially given to giving up what we know and feel to be right and true for the sake of others or for the sake of something more important than ourselves. This is because the condition in which women live is a colonized condition. Women are colonized by men, in body, in mind. Defined everywhere as evil when we act in our own self-interest, we strive to be good by renouncing self-interest altogether.

I looked at it out there. The figures that held my attention, as always (I too had an office at Buna, and spent many hours in front of its window), the figures that held my attention were not the men in stripes, as they queued or scurried in lines or entangled one another in a kind of centipedal scrum, moving at an unnatural speed, like extras in a silent film, moving faster than their strength or build could bear, as if in obedience to a frantic crank swivelled by a furious hand; the figures that held my attention were not the Kapos who screamed at the prisoners, nor the SS noncoms who screamed at the Kapos, nor the overalled company foremen who screamed at the SS noncoms. No. What held my eye were the figures in city business suits, designers, engineers, administrators from IG Farben plants in Frankfurt, Leverkusen, Ludwigshafen, with leather-bound notebooks and retractable yellow measuring tapes, daintily picking their way past the bodies of the wounded, the unconscious, and the dead.

Germany no longer feels bound by the Locarno Treaty. In the interest of the primitive rights of its people to the security of their frontier and the safeguarding of their defence, the German Government has re-established, as from today, the absolute and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone!” Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots, little men of clay in his fine hands, leap to their feet like automatons, their right arms upstretched in the Nazi salute, and scream Heils, the first two or three wildly, the next twenty-five in unison, like a college yell. Hitler raises his hand for silence. It comes slowly. Slowly the automatons sit down. Hitler now has them in his claws. He appears to sense it. He says in a deep, resonant voice: “Men of the German Reichstag!” The silence is utter.

They say that it is one of the most terrifying manifestations in nature: a bull elephant in a state of must. Twin streams of vile-smelling liquid flow from the ducts of the temples and into the corners of the jaws. At these times the great beast will gore giraffes and hippos, will break the backs of cringeing rhinoceri. This was male-elephantine heat. Must: it derived via Urdu from the Persian mast or maest—“intoxicated.” But I had settled for the modal verb. I must, I must, I just must.

Pay special attention to things that bring you joy that don’t involve mind-altering substances or a lot of money. Whether it’s cooking, capoeira, the guitar, or mountain biking, interests and hobbies add texture to your personality. Being “in the zone” is happiness. You lose the sense of time, forget yourself, and feel part of something larger.

Greg Stillson’s rural farm constituency seemed to have a morbid interest in the idea that the Jews were running the world.

They are quite incapable of coming up with anything even remotely as terrible as what I do all day—and they’ve stopped trying. Now I just dream

I want to be tested beyond my comfort zone. I don't want to be safe if it's more interesting to be dangerous.

For the survivors and their testimonies I want to single out from the huge and forbidding archive a volume that deserves permanent currency: Anton Gill’s The Journey Back from Hell. It is an extraordinarily inspiring treasury of voices, and one grounded and marshalled by the author with both flair and decorum. Indeed, these reminiscences, these dramatic monologues, reshape our tentative answer to the unavoidable question: What did you have to have to survive? What you had to have is usually tabulated as follows: luck; the ability to adapt, immediately and radically; a talent for inconspicuousness; solidarity with another individual or with a group; the preservation of decency (“the people who had no tenets to live by—of whatever nature—generally succumbed” no matter how ruthlessly they struggled); the constantly nurtured conviction of innocence (an essential repeatedly emphasised by Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago); immunity to despair; and, again, luck.

idea of Central Europe has a “fatal geographical flaw.” Central Europe, Mackinder and Fairgrieve tell us, belongs to the “crush zone” that lays athwart Maritime Europe, with its “oceanic interests,

I may enter a zone of transcendence, in which I marvel at all the accidents of fate, since the beginning of life on earth, that led to my genes being created and my standing in this particular garden in a contemplative and imagining mind. I’ve been reading recently how reflection evolved. what a fascinating solution to the rigors of survival…how amazing that a few basic ingredients- the same ones that form the mountains, plants, and rivers- when arranged differently and stressed could result in us. More and more of late, I find myself standing outside of life, with a sense of the human saga laid out before me. it is a private vision, balanced between youth and old age, a vision in which I understand how caught up in striving we humans get, and a little of why, and how difficult it is even to recognize, since it feels integral to our nature and is. but I find it interesting that, according to many religions, life and begins and ends in a garden.

This is the kind of education that Donald Trump never bothered to get before becoming president. Although he lived and worked for decades only a few blocks from the Council’s headquarters in an elegant Upper East Side townhouse, he never showed any interest in its work or in US foreign policy more broadly. Even as president he has never once visited a war zone. He loves military symbols—hence his desire for a military parade in Washington—but shows no understanding of how the armed forces actually operate.

In 1946, I lectured in the French occupation zone of Austria. I spoke against collective guilt in the presence of the commanding general of the French forces. The next day a university professor came to me, himself a former SS officer, with tears in his eyes. He asked how I could find the courage to take an open stand against collective guilt. “You can’t do it,” I told him. “You would be speaking out of self-interest. But I am the former inmate number 119104, and I can do it. Therefore I must. People will listen to me, and so it is my obligation to speak against it.

Meanwhile she's coldly interrogating me with her eyes. She's definitely in charge of this house and this moment. This must be Chloe. She escorts me to a table full of people and presents me. She introduces them briefly. This one's from Morocco, that one from Italy, he's Persian--I'm not exactly sure what that means--this one's from "the UK." They're all in their twenties, poised and dismissive. They don't know or care who I'm supposed to be at home or where I went to school. They're measuring something else I can't see and don't understand. They nod and turn back to each other. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Chloe to release them from having to feign interest. She introduces herself at substantially more length. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss; she grew up in Hong Kong and "in Europe." I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan. But she didn't ask.

She's shed her skins and plasma jeans, gets around in 2K retro gear like the frock she wears today; a loose, white elegy to what's been lost. Already she's flowing back into herself the way a river flows to fill a creek bed. But some hard layer has washed away and left her softer, more interested.

Life is more interesting when you stay out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself! Realize that you are responsible for your own life. If you are looking to make a change, seek help from others who have walked in your shoes! Just remember, you are not alone, keep looking forward, and pray for guidance!

I took quite an interest in polar expeditions. And I've been familiar with explorers who were still investigating polar zones, especially Greenland, with dog sleighs. What matters with dog sleighs is the guide. The guide is often a female dog, who is particularly subtle, and knows there's a crevice 25 or 30 meters ahead. Yet we can't see it under the snow. So we shall say she is violent because she warns the dog sleighs they're going to fall into the crevice, a 60 to 70 meter drop into a hole, and that will be it, death. Well, maybe I have the astuteness of a female dog leading dog sleighs, nothing more than that.

This is because the outcomes of life are not governed by passion; they are governed by principle. You may not think what you did this morning was important, but it was. You may not think that the little things add up, but they do. Consider the age-old brainteaser: Would you rather have $1 million in hand today or a penny that doubles in value every day for the next month? The $1 million right now sounds great, but after a 31-day month, that one penny would be worth over $10 million. Making big, sweeping changes is not difficult because we are flawed, incompetent beings. It’s difficult because we are not meant to live outside of our comfort zones. If you want to change your life, you need to make tiny, nearly undetectable decisions every hour of every day until those choices are habituated. Then you’ll just continue to do them. If you want to spend less time on your phone, deny yourself the chance to check it one time today. If you want to eat healthier, drink half a cup of water today. If you want to sleep more, go to bed 10 minutes earlier tonight than you did last night. If you want to exercise more, do it now for just 10 minutes. If you want to read, read one page. If you want to meditate, do so for 30 seconds. Then keep doing those things. Do them every single day. You’ll get used to not checking your phone. You’ll want more water, and you’ll drink more water. You’ll run for 10 minutes, and you won’t feel like you have to stop, so you won’t. You’ll read one page, grow interested, and read another. At our most instinctive, physiological level, “change” translates to something dangerous and potentially life-threatening. No wonder why we build our own cages and stay in them, even though there’s no lock on the door. Trying to shock yourself into a new life isn’t going to work, and that’s why it hasn’t yet.

I’m an observer. I am fascinated by people and how their minds work (and, of course, my own). Why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do – and that interest drives my writing. I was a physicist before fiction claimed my soul, so I’m an experimenter. I’m open to different ways of thinking. I like exaggerating, making things up. I’m a very open, honest person in life and that’s the way it should be, but when it comes to fiction, I want to pour a few sharp objects into the comfort zone. Our fears are powerful, yet we’ve all got a desire to laugh and be entertained. I could have followed the same path I do now as a scientist, examining how the brain works. Ironically I get much more freedom to experiment as a writer. That’s why I love it.

I think US/UK genre has become more open to “diverse” writers and writing; there’s a genuine interest in reading work from countries outside the US/UK and hearing voices that have been historically shut out, but at the same time, people are quite lazy. That sounds harsh, but I include myself in it — your tastes are shaped by what you’ve read and watched before, and it takes a little effort to understand stories that use a different voice, that follow different storytelling conventions, that are trying to subvert the dominant paradigm. There’s a quite large group of people who are “yay diversity” in theory, but I think the number of people who have then said to themselves, “OK, if I’m committed to this, I need to start reading outside my comfort zone and making an effort” is maybe a little smaller.

It was at that moment that Markisha decided to apply for CalWORKs. She’d rented a room in an apartment she shared with a barber in her neighborhood, and she needed some help paying for it. CalWORKs meant three hundred dollars a month, plus food stamps. So she went to the local welfare office—a “Family Resource Center,” known as an FRC—and walked inside. She was barely sober, emotionally a wreck, literally penniless, and her entire ambition in life was to keep and maintain a room and a half in a rundown section of west San Diego without having to sell her body to pay the rent. This is the kind of person at whom the weight of the state’s financial fraud prosecution apparatus tends to be trained in America. Markisha entered the financial fraud patrol zone when she walked through those doors at the FRC. For three hundred dollars a month, she was about to become more heavily scrutinized by the state than any twelve Wall Street bankers put together. The amounts of money spent in these kinds of welfare programs are very small, but the levels of political capital involved are mountainous. You can always score political points banging on black welfare moms on meth. And the bureaucracy she was about to enter reflects that intense, bitterly contemptuous interest.

When she started working at USAMRIID, Hensley had no knowledge of space suits and no interest in working in a hot zone; she planned to do research on a mild virus that causes common colds, especially in children. This kind of cold virus infects many kinds of wild animals. Hensley thought that one of the wild cold viruses could jump out of an animal into a person somewhere on earth and start a global outbreak of a fatal, emerging cold.

Susannah looked over at Eddie and felt a passing ripple of irritation. He seemed to have lost interest in the whole thing--had "zoned out," in his weird 1980s slang. She thought to throw an elbow into his side, wake him up a little, then remembered Roland shaking his head at her and didn't. You wouldn't know he was thinking, not from that slack expression on his face, but maybe he was. If so, you better hurry it up a little, precious, she thought.

…We tend to form comfort zones based on similarity, and then produce macro- opinions and clichés about ‘Others’, whom, in fact, we know so little about. When people stop talking, genuinely talking, to each other, they become more prone to making judgements. The less I know about, say Mongolians, the more easily and confidently I can draw conclusions about them. If I know ten Mongolians with entirely different personalities and conflicting viewpoints, I’ll be more cautious next time I make a remark about Mongolian national identity. If that number is 100, I may be even more detailed in my approach, for I will know that, while they share common cultural traits, Mongolians are not a monolithic mass of undifferentiated individuals. As a storyteller I am less interested in generalizations than in undertones and nuances. These may not be visible at first glance, but they are out there, lurking beneath the surface, durable and distinct.

Now give me some advice about how to take full advantage of this city. I’m always looking to improve my odds.” “Just what I’d expect from a horny actuary.” “I’m serious.” Carlos reflected for a moment on the problem at hand. He actually had never needed or tried to take full advantage of the city in order to meet women, but he thought about all of his friends who regularly did. His face lit up as he thought of some helpful advice: “Get into the arts.” “The arts?” “Yeah.” “But I’m not artistic.” “It doesn’t matter. Many women are into the arts. Theater. Painting. Dance. They love that stuff.” “You want me to get into dance? Earthquakes have better rhythm than me…And can you really picture me in those tights?” “Take an art history class. Learn photography. Get involved in a play or an independent film production. Get artsy, Sammy. I’m telling you, the senoritas dig that stuff.” “Really?” “Yeah. You need to sign up for a bunch of artistic activities. But you can’t let on that it’s all just a pretext to meet women. You have to take a real interest in the subject or they’ll quickly sniff out your game.” “I don’t know…It’s all so foreign to me…I don’t know the first thing about being artistic.” “Heeb, this is the time to expand your horizons. And you’re in the perfect city to do it. New York is all about reinventing yourself. Get out of your comfort zones. Become more of a Renaissance man. That’s much more interesting to women.

The truth, though is that Cantor's work and its context are so totally interesting and beautiful that there's no need for breathless Prometheusizing of the poor guy's life. The real irony is that the view of (Infinity) as some forbidden zone or road to insanity-which view was very old and powerful and haunted math for 2000+ years- is precisely what Cantor's own work overturned. Saying that (Infinity) drove Cantor mad is sort of like mourning St. George's loss to the dragon: it's not only wrong but insulting.

He couldn't make the thought go anywhere, and soon zoned out into watching the television screen. It showed a crazy-haired old gent tramping around an undistinguished patch of countryside. He couldn't remember selecting the channel, and with the sound off it really wasn't very interesting. Was it worth turning the sound up? Probably not. It increasingly seemed to him that television was being created for someone else. He was welcome to watch it, of course, but it was not he whom the creators had in mind. ("Maybe Next Time")

If what we’re doing is good, why does it smell so lancingly bad? On the ramp at night, why do we feel the ungainsayable need to get so brutishly drunk? Why did we make the meadow churn and spit? The flies as fat as blackberries, the vermin, the diseases, ach, scheusslich, schmierig—why? Why do rats fetch 5 bread rations per cob? Why did the lunatics, and only the lunatics, seem to like it here? Why, here, do conception and gestation promise not new life but certain death for both woman and child? Ach, why all der Dreck, der Sumpf, der Schleim? Why do we turn the snow brown? Why do we do that? Make the snow look like the shit of angels. Why do we do that?

The French psychologist Jacques Salomé talks about the need to develop a personal intimacy with one’s own self as a counterbalance to the couple. There is beauty in an image that highlights a connection to oneself, rather than a distance from one’s partner. In our mutual intimacy we make love, we have children, and we share physical space and interests. Indeed, we blend the essential parts of our lives. But “essential” does not mean “all.” Personal intimacy demarcates a private zone, one that requires tolerance and respect. It is a space—physical, emotional, and intellectual—that belongs only to me. Not everything needs to be revealed. Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.

How, then, to proceed? My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with “P” on this side (“Positive”) and “N” on this side (“Negative”). I try to read what I’ve written uninflectedly, the way a first-time reader might (“without hope and without despair”). Where’s the needle? Accept the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the “P” zone. Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of incremental adjustments. The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this? The interesting thing, in my experience, is that the result of this laborious and slightly obsessive process is a story that is better than I am in “real life” – funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathetic, with a clearer sense of virtue, both wiser and more entertaining. And what a pleasure that is; to be, on the page, less of a dope than usual.

As I noted in the previous chapter, we interpret active eyes as a sign of an active mind. But mantis shrimps actually have small, weak brains. The hypermobile nature of their eyes is not a sign of a probing intelligence. But it is the key to understanding how and what they see. Our retinas have cone-rich foveae, where our vision is sharpest and most colorful. We train this zone onto different parts of the world by flicking our eyes from place to place. And when we spot something interesting in our peripheral vision, we redirect our gaze at it to analyze it in detailed color. Mantis shrimps do something similar. The midband sees color, but its view is confined to a thin strip of space. The hemispheres probably only see in black-and-white, but their view is panoramic. As the mantis shrimp moves its eyes around, it looks for movements and objects of interest with the hemispheres. When it spots something, it flicks its eyes across and scans the midbands over the area, as if waving two supermarket scanners along a shelf. Does the mantis shrimp start with a monochrome view, which it gradually paints with colors? “I don’t think so,” Marshall tells me. He suspects that “they never construct a solid two-dimensional representation of color” in their brains. Instead, as they scan with their midbands, they simply wait for anything that excites the right combination of photoreceptors.

The Belt and Road is global in nature. Its ruling principle is interdependence, a close network of common interests by which every country’s development is affected by the development path in other countries. In his Jakarta speech, Xi called it a “community of shared destiny.” The expression featured in Chinese official pronouncements since at least 2007, when it was used to describe relations between Taiwan and the Mainland. Applied to relations outside China’s borders, it was a reformulation—a modern version—of the traditional concept of Tianxia (天下), which scholars such as Zhao Tingyang had been popularizing with extraordinary success. Zhao argued that the most important fact about the world today is that it has not become a zone of political unity, but remains a Hobbesian stage of chaos, conflict, noncooperation and anarchy.16 Looking for a way to frame new political concepts distinct from Western ideas of world order, the Chinese authorities quickly appropriated Tianxia—a notion that originated about three thousand years ago—and made it the cornerstone of their most ambitious geopolitical initiative. The idea of a community of shared destiny and the Belt and Road develop the two sides of every human action. Both have their own emphasis: the former belongs to the idea, the concept or type, the latter is aimed at practice. Together they form the “dialectical unity of theory and practice, goals and paths, value rationality and instrumental rationality.”17

Taking the leap is just the first step. Then you must cross the desert. And make no mistake — that journey will be hell.” “Will it be worth it?” he asked. “You tell me,” the old man responded. “How worthy is your goal? And how big is your why?” “I can’t imagine anything better,” he affirmed. “Then yes, it will be worth it. You see, everyone who stands at the edge of this cliff sees something different on the other side. What you see on the other side is your particular goal, and that is unique to you. “But there’s a reason why you have not achieved that goal yet — you are not worthy of it. You have not become who you need to become to deserve it. “As you cross the desert to your promised land, you will endure tests and trials specific to you and your goal. If you persist, those test and trials will transform you into who you need to be to be worthy of your goal. “You can’t achieve your highest, noblest goals as the same person you are today. To get from where you are to where you want to be you have to change who you are. “And that is why no one can escape that journey — it is what transforms you into a person worthy of your goal. The bad news is that that journey is hell. The good news is that you get to pick your hell.” “Pick my hell?” he asked. “What do you mean?” “Because of your natural gifts and interests, your inborn passion and purpose, there are some hells that are more tolerable to you than others. “For example, some men can endure hard physical labor because their purpose lies in such fields as construction or mechanics, while other men could not even dream of enduring that hell. “I’ve met people who knew they were born to be writers. Their desert to cross, their hell to endure was writing every day for years without being paid or being recognized and appreciated. But in spite of their hell, they were happy because they were writing. Though they still had to earn their way to the valley of their ultimate goal, they were doing what they were born to do. “Ever read the book Getting Rich Your Own Way by Scrully Blotnick?” He shook his head. “That book reveals the results on a two-decade study performed by Mr. Blotnick and his team of researchers on 1,500 people representing a cross-section of middle-class America. Throughout the study, they lost almost a third of participants due to deaths, moves, or other factors. “Of the 1,057 that remained, 83 had become millionaires. They interviewed each millionaire to identify the common threads they shared. They found five specific commonalities, including that 1) they were persistent, 2), they were patient, and 3) they were willing to handle both the ‘nobler and the pettier’ aspects of their job. “In other words, they were able to endure their particular hell because they were in the right field, they had chosen the right career that coincided with their gifts, passions, and purpose. “Here is the inescapable reality: No matter what you pick as your greatest goal, achieving it will stretch you in ways you can’t imagine right now. You will have to get out of your comfort zone. You will have to become a different person than you are right now to become worthy of your goal. You must cross that hellacious desert to get to your awe-inspiring goal. “But I get to pick my hell?” he asked. “You get to pick your hell.

Tegmark: That’s right, and there’s a more elemental example. In a certain sense, your genes have invented you. They built your brain so that you could make copies of your genes. That’s why you like to eat—so you won’t starve to death. And that’s why we fall in love—to make copies of our genes, right? But even though we know this, we still choose to use birth control, which is the opposite of what our genes want. Some people dismiss the idea that there will ever be anything smarter than humans for mystical reasons—because they think there’s something more than quarks and electrons and information processing going on in us. But if you take the scientific approach, that you really are your quarks, then there’s clearly no physical law of physics that precludes anything more intelligent than a human. We were constrained by how many quarks you could fit into a skull, and things like that—constraints that computers don’t have. It becomes instead more a question of time. And, as you said, there’s a relentless pressure to make smarter things, because it’s profitable and interesting and useful. The question isn’t if this will happen, but when. And finally, to come back to those ants. Suppose you’re in charge of a huge green-energy project, and just as you’re about to let the water flood the hydroelectric dam you’ve built, someone points out that there’s an anthill right in the middle of the flood zone. Now, you know the ants don’t want to be drowned, right? So you have to make a decision. What are you going to do? Harris: Well, in that case, too bad for the ants. Tegmark: Exactly. So we ought to plan ahead. We don’t want to end up like the ants.

I think it’s important to reiterate here that I didn’t start out wanting to be a gardener, or a designer for that matter. It was all trial and error and figuring things out. And sometimes you’ve got to try something outside of your comfort zone to figure out what it is that you truly love. Well, you could say that about you and me right from the start. You were never looking for the loud guy, and I certainly wasn’t looking for the quiet girl. Now I look back and go, “If I would’ve ended up with that quiet guy or that stable guy or that safe guy, I would never have been able to pursue any of these dreams, because no one would have pushed me to these new places I discovered in myself.” Those other types of guys might have allowed me to stay in that safe place. They wouldn’t have drawn you out. That’s interesting. And if I had wound up with some cheerleader who was always the life of the party, I don’t think I would have found my way, either. I needed you for that. Nowadays when I think about the name Magnolia, I think about it in terms that refer to much more than the blossoming of our business. I think about the buds on the three, and how they really are just the tightest buds--they look like rocks, almost. And I feel like when Chip and I met, that tight little bud was me. I was risk averse, and in some ways, I don’t think I saw the beauty or the potential in myself. Then I wound up with Chip Gaines and-- You bloomed? I did. If I hadn’t married Chip, I might not have ever bloomed. I can’t imagine what my life would be if we hadn’t traveled this road. We celebrated our twelfth anniversary recently, and my dad said something that I thought was really beautiful. He said, “Chip, I always thought, when I was out on the baseball field hitting you those grounders, that I was training you to be the next greatest baseball player. But now, looking back and seeing the person you’ve become, I was really training you to be the next greatest dad.

The school is teeming with activity. The rooms are small and large, many are special-purpose rooms, like shops and labs, but most are furnished like rather shabby living or dining rooms in homes: lots of sofas, easy chairs, and tables. Lots of people sitting around talking, reading, and playing games. On an average rainy day—quite different from a beautiful suddenly snowy day, or a warm spring or fall day—most people are inside. But there will also be more than a few who are outside in the rain, and later will come in dripping and trying the patience of the few people inside who think the school should perhaps be a “dry zone.” There may be people in the photo lab developing or printing pictures they have taken. There may be a karate class, or just some people playing on mats in the dance room. Someone may be building a bookshelf or fashioning chain mail armor and discussing medieval history. There are almost certainly a few people, either together or separate, making music of one kind or another, and others listening to music of one kind or another. You will find adults in groups that include kids, or maybe just talking with one student. It would be most unusual if there were not people playing a computer game somewhere, or chess; a few people doing some of the school’s administrative work in the office—while others hang around just enjoying the atmosphere of an office where interesting people are always making things happen; there will be people engaged in role-playing games; other people may be rehearsing a play—it might be original, it might be a classic. They may intend production or just momentary amusement. People will be trading stickers and trading lunches. There will probably be people selling things. If you are lucky, someone will be selling cookies they baked at home and brought in to earn money. Sometimes groups of kids have cooked something to sell to raise money for an activity—perhaps they need to buy a new kiln, or want to go on a trip. An intense conversation will probably be in progress in the smoking area, and others in other places. A group in the kitchen may be cooking—maybe pizza or apple pie. Always, either in the art room or in any one of many other places, people will be drawing. In the art room they might also be sewing, or painting, and some are quite likely to be working with clay, either on the wheel or by hand. Always there are groups talking, and always there are people quietly reading here and there. One

Obviously, I didn’t pursue that girl any longer, and I didn’t think about Missy much after our so-called date, mainly because I didn’t think she was interested in me. But then a few days later, one of our mutual friends from church called me. She told me Missy couldn’t stop thinking about me. I didn’t find out until several months later that the friend also called Missy that night and told her I really liked her! Neither one of us thought much about our fake date, but our friend decided to play matchmaker. The next time I saw Missy was at a youth meeting at the Kelletts’ house. Oddly enough, Missy’s family had lived in the same house for years until Mike and his family bought it. After the meeting I decided to check the credibility of our mutual friend who told me Missy was interested in me. We were outside and Missy was telling me stories of when she used to live there. I led her to the backyard and after she finished a story, I made my move. I turned and planted a juicy lip lock on her, to which she responded enthusiastically. I just wanted to see if she was interested in me and I got the answer. I have to admit I felt a spark or two during the encounter. It was nice! Missy remembers a few more details of our early dating. Missy: During our mock date, I also felt like we had a great time together. However, because we had mutually agreed to go out on this public-relations date, I would have never assumed anything more. I am not an aggressive person, and even though I felt something between us, I would have never made the first move! That’s why, when Jason dropped me off, I just got out of the truck and went inside. He obviously hadn’t asked me out because he thought I was pretty, funny, or interesting. In my mind, this was just business, whether I liked it or not. And I didn’t like it. I was definitely attracted to him, but where I came from and the way I was raised, it was the boy’s responsibility to make the first move. And he didn’t, at least not that night. When my friend called me a few days later and told me that he liked me, I was surprised and thrilled! Little did I know that she’d done the same thing to Jason. The night after our first kiss at our youth minister’s house, I remember trying not to get my hopes up. I knew about his reputation of dating as many girls as possible, and I thought there was a great chance that I would never hear from him again. However, I decided to go outside my comfort zone and give him a call. One of his mom’s friends answered the phone and when I asked to speak to Jason, she told me he was on his way to his girlfriend’s house. I hung up, feeling dejected. About fifteen minutes later, he showed up at my house. I was the girlfriend!

Interestingly, we found more healthy islanders age 90-plus in the mountains than on the coast, so fish doesn’t seem to be contributing to longevity.

for most political leaders the warnings of the experts counted for little when compared with the immediate advantages of monetary union. As soon as a country adopted the euro, its public debt received the highest rating by the international agencies, and consequently its government could borrow at about the same interest rate as the most virtuous members of the bloc. This meant that countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Italy could borrow at rates well below the double-digit rates they had to pay before adopting the euro. In particular, the possibility of borrowing at low cost in the international financial markets is what made possible the Spanish real-estate boom. As a result of the euro-induced boom, wages and inflation grew much faster in Spain than in Germany or France. At the same time, the ECB, being mainly concerned with the level of inflation in the largest economies of the euro zone – Germany, France, and Italy – allowed the interest rate to remain low – too low for the conditions prevailing in Spain.

ECB – unlike, say, the US Federal Reserve which is placed within a political structure where Congress, the President, and the Treasury supply all the necessary political counterweights – is free (indeed, is supposed) to operate in a political vacuum: the parliaments and governments of the members of the euro zone have lost control over monetary policy, while the EP has no authority in this area. Moreover, the ECB enjoys not only ‘instrument independence’ but also ‘goal independence’. When a central bank enjoys only instrument independence, it is up to the government to fix the target – say, the politically acceptable level of inflation – leaving then the central bank free to decide how best to achieve the target. In the case of goal independence, the discretionary power of the central banker is much larger. The idea that central bankers, or other economic experts, may know what rate of inflation is in the long-run interest of a country (and, a fortiori, of a group of countries at very different levels of socioeconomic developments such as the EU) is indeed extraordinary. Politicians and elected policymakers, rather than experts, can be expected to be sensitive to the public’s preferred balance of inflation and unemployment. If the public wants to trade some unemployment for a somewhat higher rate of inflation, it can make this preference known by electing candidates who stand for such a policy; but no such possibility is given to the citizens of the euro zone or to their political representatives.

Anything that restricts entry works in the interests of the suppliers and against the interests of the buyers; so, it is not at all surprising that businesses lobby government aggressively for assistance in retarding entry with patents, copyrights, zoning laws, occupational licensing, environmental regulations, etc

What made it particularly interesting was that it multiplied easily in various species, in monkeys, humans, guinea pigs. It was extremely lethal in these species, which meant that its original host was probably not monkeys, humans, or guinea pigs but some other animal or insect that it did not kill. A virus does not generally kill its natural host.

for many youngsters ‘back home’ was what they saw out of the window; anything else was just an interesting holiday. The capital’s constantly evolving street slang provides the best illustration: Jamaican patois remained its foundation, but it included at least as many hip-hop reference points and a grab bag of longstanding Londonisms – you could visit three different time zones within the space of a sentence.

Border security” means running random checkpoints anywhere within one hundred miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, a Constitution-free zone in which agents can stop your car, inspect your belongings, and ask for your papers, regardless of your immigration status. (The Fourth Amendment does not allow for citizens to be subjected to random search and seizures, but in the interest of “national security,” the Fourth Amendment does not apply within a hundred miles of the border.)

Second only to the San Andreas Fault in size, the New Madrid Seismic Zone runs through the boot-heel north into the southern tip of Illinois and south into northeastern Arkansas for about 150 miles, which includes parts of the states of Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and Tennessee.

Wargaming, by definition, traffics in martial subject matter. Perceived in its full historical and material diversity, however, it is not inherently militaristic. Such at least is our governing belief—readers should use what follows to arrive at their own determination. Wargaming is also possessed of deeper significance to game studies and game history than the merely topical; that is, its relevance or import cannot be evaluated simply by the extent to which one does or does not think themselves interested in games about war. Its professional practitioners will often define wargaming as a tool for abductive reasoning, a term first introduced by Charles Sanders Pierce for testing hypotheses. As contributor Rex Brynen has previously suggested, “Wargaming is much more policy- and planning-oriented than most other gaming. It also has much more rigorous traditions of design, validation, adjudication, instrumentation/reporting, and analysis.

In summary, this book proposes the following prescriptions for resisting social fragmentation. First, an expansion of contact zones between multiple public spheres that enables diverse people to interact with one another is needed. Second, while communication continues in these contact zones, conclusive definitions of 'right' and 'wrong' must be deferred in order to prevent further moralization of politics and maintain politics at the level of interests. Third, to construct an order of mutual life-support, a 'soft' mutuality must be nurtured enough through care-based relationships and spontaneous compassion for the vulnerabilities of life.

But take notes on the things that give you joy and satisfaction, and start investing in those things. Pay special attention to things that bring you joy that don’t involve mind-altering substances or a lot of money. Whether it’s cooking, capoeira, the guitar, or mountain biking, interests and hobbies add texture to your personality. Being “in the zone” is happiness. You lose the sense of time, forget yourself, and feel part of something larger.

Against all logic and reason, CHAZ was allowed by the city (of Seattle) to run its course for more than three weeks. It was a large-scale experiment in anarchy, chaos, and brute-force criminality...There were numerous assaults, robberies, an attempted rape, six shootings, and two homicides...A movement that has border abolishment at the core of its ideology immediately set up its own border to keep out outsiders...While CHAZ was ostensibly created to be an explicitly ‘anti-racist’ zone, it ended up segregating along racial lines… Despite claiming to be a refuge for blacks from white racists, CHAZ ended up with a 100 percent black victim shooting rate (two unarmed young black males). “As much as CHAZ was an experiment in anarchy and chaos, it was also a successful experiment in propaganda making. What journalists were allowed to record was heavily controlled by the residents there...CHAZ supporters were not interested in reality. They wanted the media to broadcast to the world a fabricated utopia… “Despite claiming to be an ‘autonomous zone,’ CHAZ was a welfare state parasitizing off Seattle taxpayers.

I am looking at birds,’ snapped the brigadier, unaware that he had inadvertently strayed into the Soviet zone. ‘You are looking at our airfield,’ said the sentry. ‘Utter rot, my dear fellow. I am Brigadier Hinde and I have not the slightest interest in counting your planes. I am looking at birds and you are frightening them away, dash it!

Another impressive ratio is Altman Z-Score. Discovered in 1968 by Edward Altman, this quotient measures the probability of a company going into bankruptcy within two years. Over the last few decades, the formula has proven to be highly accurate. It was originally developed for public manufacturing companies, with other versions for private and non-manufacturing organizations becoming available later. The original Z-Score formula was as follows: Z = 1.2X1 + 1.4X2 + 3.3X3 + 0.6X4 + 0.99X5 Where: X1 = Working Capital / Total Assets X2 = Retained Earnings / Total Assets X3 = Earnings Before Interest and Taxes / Total Assets. X4 = Market Value of Equity / Book Value of Total Liabilities. X5 = Sales / Total Assets. If Z > 2.99, the company is in the Safe Zone.

Journalism will increasingly play a key role in informing the world's population about the causes and consequences of global warming: analysing the reports of scientists, including the alarmists and sceptics among them; investigating the influence of oil and coal industries on government policies; exploring the measures needed to save future generations from the looming disasters of extreme weather and world food shortages; and above all, as in any war, going to the "conflict zones" to carry out one of the basic tasks of journalism - reporting the impact of great events, in this case climate change, on ordinary people's lives. It will mean chronicling a gigantic struggle with nature, and a force that threatens to destabilise societies across the world in decades to come.

A lot of people considered Dani oblivious, but that wasn't true; she simply chose to ignore the things that didn't interest her in favor of the things that did. People, as a group, were therefore pushed to the back of her mind in favor of more relevant topics, such as snacks and poetry and panel research. But Zaf had a strange tendency to squeeze through the bars of her mental cage (which made no sense, since he was bloody huge) and stroll into her zone of focus like he belonged there.

We went there for an anniversary. It was Trevor’s idea. Trevor’s the traveller,’ Noonan continued. Trevor was her husband. ‘Enjoying the place you get to is one thing. But Trevor has this thing for the travel itself; the luggage and the security lines, the time zones, the little trays of food with the foil lids you peel back they give you onboard, and these days having to drag a pair of mewling teenage boys everywhere with us. Trevor gets giddy at all of it, somehow. Me, I could live a long happy life never going through a metal detector again. You ever been anywhere exotic, Pronsius?’ ‘I been the far side of Belmullet.’ ‘Good man.’ ‘Ah,’ Swift sighed, ‘I’ve no interest, really. Wherever I am, that’s where I like.’ ‘A man after my own heart.

Your Unique Ability is the combination of talents, interests and capabilities that is unique to you. How do we recognise it? Four ways: when you are in the zone of your Unique Ability, 1) people admire you because the results are stunning; 2) you love doing it and time flies; 3) it gives you energy rather than sapping it; and 4) you get better at it all the time. Success, insisted Sullivan, comes to people who pay attention to their Unique Ability, define it, and start shedding responsibilities that fall outside it.

indicators: You are forced to be out of your comfort zone. The manipulator is physically, mentally, and emotionally dominant so that everything is tilted toward favoring their wishes and desires. The manipulator should be the one with the upper hand at all times. When the power dynamic appears to shift, the manipulator will be swift to restore balance. The manipulator will try to undermine your confidence. The logic behind this is that the manipulator always seeks to create a reliance on them. If the victim is confident and able to fend for themselves, then the reliance they place on the manipulator will be minimized. Naturally, this is not in the manipulator’s best interest. The silent treatment. The manipulator will be prone to silence as a means of punishing the victim for behavior that is unacceptable in the manipulator’s eyes. This also extends to other forms of punishment, such as withholding affection or withdrawing their attention until the victim complies with the manipulator’s wishes. Guilt

Leave the baited hook alone. Turn off the ringer to that phone. Don’t take an interest in that loan. Don’t be a clone with no ring-tone of your own. Be prone to roam the guilt-free zone. Don’t fetch the bone, by the mirror thrown. Leave it alone with its sad groan (a tombstone on a grave unknown). Don’t postpone the gemstone able to atone. A wind has blown in the homegrown cyclone. The eagle has flown with wings long grown. A lesson’s been sown in the reflection’s own.

Forbidden zones were familiar to the point of institutionalisation in the Soviet System, but more than forty 'sensitive' cities remain shut off.

Nothing interesting ever happens to people who stay in their comfort zones all the time.

Don’t you wish to marry?” At Pandora’s lack of response, she pressed impatiently, “Well?” Pandora glanced at Kathleen for guidance. “Should I say the conventional thing or the honest thing?” Lady Berwick replied before Kathleen was able. “Answer honestly, child.” “In that case,” Pandora said, “No, I don’t wish to marry, ever. I like men quite well—at least the ones I’ve been acquainted with—but I shouldn’t like to have to obey a husband and serve his needs. It wouldn’t make me at all happy to have a dozen children, and stay at home knitting while he goes out romping with his friends. I would rather be independent.” The room was silent. Lady Berwick’s expression did not change, nor did she blink even once as she stared at Pandora. It seemed as if a wordless battle were being waged between the authoritative older woman and the rebellious girl. Finally Lady Berwick said, “You must have read Tolstoy.” Pandora blinked, clearly caught off guard by the unexpected statement. “I have,” she admitted, looking mystified. “How did you know?” “No young woman wants to marry after reading Tolstoy. That is why I never allowed either of my daughters to read Russian novels.” “How are Dolly and Bettina?” Kathleen burst in, trying to change the subject by asking after the countess’s daughters. Neither Lady Berwick nor Pandora would be sidetracked. “Tolstoy isn’t the only reason I don’t wish to marry,” Pandora said. “Whatever your reasons, they are unsound. I will explain to you later why you do wish to marry. Furthermore, you are an unconventional girl, and you must learn to conceal it. There is no happiness for any individual, man or woman, who does not dwell within the broad zone of average.” Pandora regarded her with baffled interest. “Yes, ma’am.” Privately Helen suspected that the two women were looking forward to a ripping argument.

Do you know why Chinese are out here doing this kind of work? It’s because the Europeans and Americans can’t.” “Why not?” I asked. “The French did the original work here.” Actually, the French used forced labor here and in other African colonies, as I indicated earlier. “Yes, but the French can’t work like that anymore. The Americans are a little bit better, but the French, definitely not. But it’s not because we can eat bitter; it’s because we have no choice. Of course we would like to live like Westerners. Of course we’d like to take vacations and to go home frequently, but we can’t. The Americans are smart. They take jobs that win them big profits. But we are a poor society and we’re struggling to rise higher. We’re stuck with work that doesn’t make much money.” I said the Chinese companies wouldn’t be out this far off the beaten path if there wasn’t decent money to be made. “The problem is that there are too many of our companies chasing after this kind of work,” he said. “China is screwed. We have so many people that we have no choice but to go overseas to look for whatever work we can find.” Narrowly speaking, he was absolutely right. But there was so much more to what had drawn China to a place like Mali. Rising powers throughout history have forever faced a simple but fateful choice: whether to take on the established players in their backyards, in places where their interests are greatest and most deeply entrenched, or try to expand into relatively uncontested zones of the world.

The way I identified with Wu-Wei was through football. You often hear athletes talking about being “in the zone”—a state of unself-conscious concentration. In the World Cup, when England inevitably end up in a quarterfinal penalty shoot-out, I believe it is their inability to access Wu-Wei that means the Germans win. (This was written prior to the 2014 World Cup, so my assumption that England would reach the quarterfinal has been exposed as hopelessly optimistic, but, look, I correctly predicted a German victory.) If you are in a stadium with 80,000 screaming supporters and the hopes of a nation resting on the outcome of a penalty kick, you need to be focused, you need at that moment to be in a state of mind which is the result of great preparation but has total fluidity. Kind of like a self-induced trance where the body is free to act upon its training without the encumbrance of a neurotic mind. Stood in front of the keeper, the ball on the spot, you need to have access to all the preparation that has gone into perfecting the kick that will place the ball in the top right corner of the net. You cannot be thinking, “Oh, God, if I miss this they’ll burn effigies of me in Essex,” or “I think my wife is fucking another member of the team,” “My dad never loved me; I don’t deserve to score.”—those mental codes are an obstacle to success. I once was a guest on Match of the Day, a British Premier League football-analysis show; before it began, I hung out with the host, ex-England hero Gary Lineker and pundit, and another ex-England hero, Alan Shearer. I chatted to the two men about their lives as top-level athletes and they both agreed that the most important component in their success had been mental strength, the ability to focus the mind, literally, in their case, on the goal, excluding all irrelevant, negative, or distracting information. Both of those men have a quality that you can feel in their presence of focus and assuredness. Lineker is more superficially affable and Shearer more stern, but there is a shared certainty and connectedness to their physicality that is interesting.

but none seemed remotely interested in the black SUV. The only person paying any attention to it was a meter man from the Department of Parking Enforcement, who stormed toward it with the zeal of a Navy SEAL team, already writing a ticket. “You can’t park that here!” he barked. “It’s a red zone!” Courtney lowered her window and glared at him. “I’m not parked. I’m idling! That’s allowable.” “Not on my watch,” the meter man huffed. “According to District Code 46a, subsection D, there is to be no blocking of the red zone for any amount of time for any purpose at all. . . .” “How about national security?” David Stern asked, rolling down his window. “You see, I’m the president of the United States.” “And I’m the queen of Sweden,” the meter man declared sarcastically. Unaware that he was facing the actual president, he dramatically ripped off the ticket and handed it to Courtney.

292.   What do these words have in common: age, blame, curb, dance, evidence, fence, gleam, harm, interest, jam, kiss, latch, motion, nest, order, part, quiz, rest, signal, trust, use, view, win, x-ray, yield, zone?

Jonas rubbed his eyes. “Okay, Masao, for some reason it seems the story’s being leaked anyway. First off, Danielson wasn’t my C.O., he was assigned to Guam when our mission began, then ended up overseeing the dives as they were in his waters. I had trained for the mission for several years along with three other pilots, two of which eventually dropped out. “The sub was called the Sea Cliff; the navy having refitted her to handle the Challenger Deep. Three teams of scientists were flown out to supervise the mission. I was briefed with some bullshit story about measuring deep-sea currents in the trench in order to determine if plutonium rods from nuclear power plants could be safely buried within the subduction zone. Funny thing—when we descended on that first dive the eggheads were suddenly no longer interested in currents, what they came for were rocks.” “Rocks?” “Manganese nodules. Don’t ask me why they wanted them, I haven’t a clue. My orders were to pilot the sub down to the hydrothermal plume and remain there while the geologists operated a remotely-controlled drone designed with a vacuum.” Jonas closed his eyes. “The first dive went okay; the second was three days later and by the time I had surfaced again I was seeing double.

What kinds of Work will You do in Freelancing? What kind of work will you do in Freelancing? And to understand the type of work in freelancing, You need to have a clear idea of what freelancing is. There is no specific type of freelancing, it can be of many types, such as - Freelance Photography, Freelance Journalism, Freelance Writer, Freelance Data Entry, Freelance Logo Designer, Freelance Graphics Designer etc. There's no end to the amount of work you can do with freelancing. The most interesting thing is that you are everything in this process. There is no one to twirl over your head, you are the boss here. Even here there is no obligation to work from 9-5. Today I discuss some freelancing tasks that are popular in the freelancing sector or are done by many freelancers. For example: Data Entry: It wouldn't be too much of a mistake to say that data entry is the easiest job. Rather, it can be said without a doubt that data entry is more difficult than any other job. Data entry work basically means typing. This work is usually provided as a PDF file and is described as a 'Word type work'. Any employee can take a data entry job as a part-time job for extra income at the end of his work. Graphics Design: One of the most popular jobs in the freelancing world is graphic design. The main reasons for the popularity of this work are its attractiveness and simplicity. Everything we see online is contributed by graphics. For example, Cover pages, Newspaper, Book cover pages, advertisements and Photographs, Editing or changing the background of a picture or photo, Creating banners for advertising, Creating visiting cards, Business cards or leaflets, Designed for webpages known as (PhD), T-shirt designing, Logo designing, Making cartoons and many more. Web Design and Development: 'Web design' or 'Site design' are used interchangeably. The most important job of freelancing is web design. From the simplest to the most difficult aspects of this work, almost all types of work are done by freelancers. There are many other themes like WordPress, Elementor, Joomla, and DV that can be used to create entire sites. Sometimes coding is required to create some sites. If the web designer has coding experience or skills then there is no problem, and if not then the site creation should be done by programmers. Programming: Programming means writing some signals, codes, or symbols into a specific system. And its job is to give different types of commands or orders to the computer. If you give some command to the computer in Bengali or English, the computer will not understand it. For that want binary code or number. Just as any book is written in English, Hindi, Japanese Bengali, etc. every program is written in some particular programming language like C++, Java, etc. The written form of the program is called source code. A person who writes source code is called a programmer, coder, or developer. While writing the program, the programmer has to follow the syntax or grammar of that particular programming language. Other work: Apart from the above jobs, there are various other types of jobs that are in high demand in the freelancing sector or market. The tasks are: Writing, Article or blog post writing SEO Marketing, Digital marketing, Photo, Audio, Video Editing, Admin jobs, Software development, Translation, Affiliate marketing, IT and Networking etc.

School choice promised to allow parents, irrespective of race, to choose outside of their zoned public school in the interest of their children’s education, while in reality, that choice was fraught at best and damaging at worst. Money that would have gone to making local public schools more equal and more viable for Black children was made available for transfer to already more privileged White schools.

Difference Between Freelancing & Outsourcing What is Freelancing? The term freelancer was first published in 1819 in a book by a writer named Walter Scott. Since then, various speculations about freelancing started. What is Freelancing? Why do freelancing? What is required to be efficient in freelancing? All kinds of questions started to arise. The word free means 'Free' and the word lance means 'Instrument' by which something is done. That is, the full meaning of Freelancing stands for “Doing something that is free or independent”. Freelancing is basically a profession where you can earn money by doing various types of work over the internet. Be it inside the country or outside the country. What is Outsourcing? "Outsourcing" is the short form of the English word Outside Resourcing. The term outsourcing was first coined around 1989 and was first seen as a business strategy. Later in the 1990s, this subject was included as an important component of business economics. Since then people started to have various interests in outsourcing. Out means 'Outside' and source means 'Source'. In other words, the whole meaning of Outsourcing is "To bring work from an external source". Outsourcing means the process of taking the work of an organization or company from an external source. For example – “Can't find any qualified person within the company to do a job in your company. So you offer some money to an outside freelancer to do the job and he agrees to do the job. Well, that's called Outsourcing”. Difference Between Freelancing & Outsourcing: Hope you have a clear idea about what is freelancing and what is outsourcing and that there are no questions in your mind about these topics. Now let's discuss the differences between freelancing and outsourcing in detail – 1. Origin: Freelancing started around 1998 and its journey started from GURU, a freelancing marketplace then known as SOFTmoonlighter.com. On the other hand, the term outsourcing was first coined around 1989 and was first seen as a business strategy. 2. Relation: A freelancer gets his payment from an outside source after doing the work. On the other hand, an outsourced contractor provides both the work and the payment at the end of the work to the freelancer. 3. Activities: Freelancers do not have to follow any rigid rules when it comes to working. They can work or start whenever they want, as long as they can submit work before their deadline. He will get payment only if he can submit the work on time or he will not be paid. 4. Payment: A freelancer will agree to receive the exact amount of payment before doing a job, and will get the same amount as the contract at the end of the job. But he will not get any monthly salary. On the other hand, similarly, an outsourced contractor pays the freelancers at the end of the contracted work. In this case, the outsourced contractors also do not keep the freelancers as any kind of salaried employees. 5. Advantages: A freelancer is everything when it comes to freelancing. He decides his own schedule. No one can force him to work, he can work whenever he wants and quit when he wants. A freelancer does not have to give office hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and can work any time within 24 hours. You can work at home, so there is no need to go to the office to work. 6. Disadvantages: There are some risks involved in freelancing. There is no guarantee that you will be offered any work or that you will be paid. Since you are not entering into a contract in person, the possibility of non-payment or fraud remains. In the case of freelancing, every month's income is not the same, you can earn as much money as you work. Moreover, you may not always find the job you want. If this article of mine is of any use to you or you like it, then definitely share it and help others to know. Please Visit Our Website (Bhairab IT Zone) to read more Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing, Thank You.

Do you know great minds enjoy excellence, average minds love mediocrity, and small minds adore comfort zones?

What is Outsourcing? "Outsourcing" is the short form of the English word Outside Resourcing. The term outsourcing was first coined around 1989 and was first seen as a business strategy. Later in the 1990s, this subject was included as an important component of business economics. Since then people started to have various interests in outsourcing. Out means 'Outside' and source means 'Source'. In other words, the whole meaning of Outsourcing is "to bring work from an external source". Here are the key aspects of outsourcing: 1. Opportunities: It can encompass a wide range of functions including customer support, information technology services, human resources functions, manufacturing, accounting, marketing, and more. 2. Benefits: Outsourcing offers several benefits including cost savings, access to specialized skills and technology, increased efficiency, scalability, and ability to focus on core competencies. 3. Global Reach: Outsourcing is not restricted by geographical boundaries. That's why companies can engage service providers from around the world to access global talent pools and cost advantages. 4. Types of Outsourcing: Outsourcing can be divided into several categories. Such as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), and many more depending on the nature of the service being outsourced. 5. Challenges: Although outsourcing can offer many benefits. It also presents challenges related to data security, communication, cultural differences, and the need for effective management of outsourcing relationships. 6. Outsourcing model: Companies can choose from several outsourcing models, including offshoring (outsourcing to a service provider in another country), nearshoring (outsourcing to a service provider in a nearby country), and onshoring (outsourcing to a service provider within the same country). Outsourcing means the process of taking the work of an organization or company from an external source. For example – “You Can't find any qualified person within the company to do a job in your company. So you offer some money to an outside freelancer to do the job and he agrees to do the job. Well, that's called outsourcing”. Simply put, Outsourcing is basically the payment you pay a freelancer to do the work they are good at. Please Visit Our Blogging Website to read more Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing, Thank You.

I didn’t know enough about jiu-jitsu history to ask detailed questions. I simply picked up whatever anyone said, and tried to casually follow up on it. My interest was not academic. I was not there to debunk myths, if that’s what they were. I was moderately skeptical about the Gracie myth (having been raised on a diet of Bertrand Russell books), but I was not skeptical about the effectiveness of their grappling system.

Otherwise, I adhere to that which happened, in all its horror, its desolation, and its bloody-minded opacity.

What is Outsourcing? "Outsourcing" is the short form of the English word Outside Resourcing. The term outsourcing was first coined around 1989 and was first seen as a business strategy. Later in the 1990s, this subject was included as an important component of business economics. Since then people started to have various interests in outsourcing. Out means 'Outside' and source means 'Source'. In other words, the whole meaning of Outsourcing is "to bring work from an external source". Here are the key aspects of outsourcing: 1. Opportunities: It can encompass a wide range of functions including customer support, information technology services, human resources functions, manufacturing, accounting, marketing, and more. 2. Benefits: Outsourcing offers several benefits including cost savings, access to specialized skills and technology, increased efficiency, scalability, and ability to focus on core competencies. 3. Global Reach: Outsourcing is not restricted by geographical boundaries. That's why companies can engage service providers from around the world to access global talent pools and cost advantages. 4. Types of Outsourcing: Outsourcing can be divided into several categories. Such as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), and many more depending on the nature of the service being outsourced. 5. Challenges: Although outsourcing can offer many benefits. It also presents challenges related to data security, communication, cultural differences, and the need for effective management of outsourcing relationships. 6. Outsourcing model: Companies can choose from several outsourcing models, including offshoring (outsourcing to a service provider in another country), nearshoring (outsourcing to a service provider in a nearby country), and onshoring (outsourcing to a service provider within the same country). Outsourcing means the process of taking the work of an organization or company from an external source. For example – “You Can't find any qualified person within the company to do a job in your company. So you offer some money to an outside freelancer to do the job and he agrees to do the job. Well, that's called outsourcing”. Simply put, Outsourcing is basically the payment you pay a freelancer to do the work they are good at. Please Visit Our Blogging Website named (Bhairab IT Zone) to read more Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing, Thank You.

That’s a big range, so when starting people out, I prefer they rely on their rate of perceived exertion, or RPE, also known as the “talk test.” How hard are you working? How easy is it to speak? If you’re at the top of zone 2, you should be able to talk but not particularly interested in holding a conversation. If you can’t speak in complete sentences at all, you’re likely into zone 3, which means you’re going too hard, but if you can comfortably converse, you’re likely in zone 1, which is too easy.

What is Freelancing? Freelancing is a work arrangement where individuals offer their services to clients on a project basis, often remotely and without being tied to a single employer. In this model, freelancers are self-employed and take on various assignments from different clients, rather than having a traditional full-time job. A Freelancer can provide various types of services in a wide range. Such as Article writing, Graphic design, Web development, Digital marketing, Consulting, SEO, and more. They have the flexibility to choose the projects they work on, set their own rates, and determine their work schedules. Some Features of Freelancing are Discussed Below: 1. Flexibility: Freelancers usually work on projects of their choice and set their own working hours. Because they have that freedom, which allows them to balance work with personal life. 2. Independence: Freelancers are essentially their own bosses. They manage their work, clients, and business operations independently. 3. Diversity: Freelancers can work on different projects for different clients, gaining exposure to different industries and challenges. 4. Remote Work: Most freelancers work remotely, enabling them to collaborate with clients from around the world without the need for a physical office. 5. Project-Based: Freelancers are hired for specific projects or tasks, with defined start and end dates, rather than being employed on a long-term basis. 6. Skill-Based: Freelancers offer specialized skills that clients might not have in-house, making them valuable for tasks requiring expertise. 7. Income Variation: Freelancers' income can vary based on the number and type of projects they take on, making financial planning important. 8. Client Relationships: Building strong client relationships is crucial for repeat business and referrals. 9. Self-Promotion: Freelancers often need to market themselves to attract clients and stand out in a competitive market. Basically, you can do freelancing with the work you want to do or the work you are good at. The most interesting thing is that in this field you are everything and your decision is final. Please Visit Our Blogging Website to read more Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing, Thank You.

John Bull’, says someone, ‘can stand a great deal, but he cannot stand two per cent …’ Here the moral obligation arises. People won’t take 2 per cent; they won’t bear a loss of income. Instead of that dreadful event, they invest their careful savings in something impossible – a canal to Kamchatka, a railway to Watchet, a plan for animating the Dead Sea, a corporation for shipping skates to the Torrid Zone. A century or two ago, the Dutch burgomasters, of all people in the world, invented the most imaginative occupation. They speculated in impossible tulips.

In Brain Rules, John Medina shares how he’s able to keep the attention of his students in classes that last more than an hour: he plans his class in modules that last no more than ten minutes. Each module starts with a Hook—an interesting story or anecdote, followed by a brief explanation of the key concept. Following this format ensures that his audience retains more information and doesn’t zone out. (That’s the primary reason this book is organized in short sections that take less than ten minutes to read.)

I’d questioned all my life choices in the last week. So far there wasn’t much that I liked about any of it. Reduced to a probie, paying through the nose for everything, running calls to put Band-Aids on idiots. Except this was turning out to be interesting

A person who exercises frequently in zone 2 is improving their mitochondria with every run, swim, or bike ride. But if you don’t use them, you lose them. This is another reason why zone 2 is such a powerful mediator of metabolic health and glucose homeostasis. Muscle is the largest glycogen storage sink in the body, and as we create more mitochondria, we greatly increase our capacity for disposing of that stored fuel, rather than having it end up as fat or remaining in our plasma. Chronic blood glucose elevations damage organs from our heart to our brain to our kidneys and nearly everything in between—even contributing to erectile dysfunction in men. Studies have found that while we are exercising, our overall glucose uptake increases as much as one-hundred-fold compared to when we are at rest. What’s interesting is that this glucose uptake occurs via multiple pathways. There is the usual, insulin-signaled way that we’re familiar with, but exercise also activates other pathways, including one called non-insulin-mediated glucose uptake, or NIMGU, where glucose is transported directly across the cell membrane without insulin being involved at all. This in turn explains why exercise, especially in zone 2, can be so effective in managing both type 1 and type 2 diabetes:

In Conversation With The Earth! Hello I am Earth , your home, Hello I am human from Climate summit at Rome, Pleasure meeting you today, Well I thought you met and saw me everyday, Nevermind, human mind is a curious creation, Look at the devastation and your numb sensation, Water levels rising, Frequent wildfires are least surprising, Landslides burying people alive, For the poor Earth is no longer a place to thrive, CO2 emissions creating a blanket of doom, The world looks like a planet draped in agony and gloom, Deforestation has left me naked, By your callousness I feel raped, you humans are so ungrateful and wicked, The rising heat will kill us both, I will manage drifting in the universe but imagine your plight in the cosmic broth? You are the cause of your own extinction, And you seek mercy from me for this inevitable destruction, I am part of the universe the universe is not a part of me, And if there is a cause, an effect too there shall be! But I am wondering why you are still procrastinating, You are more interested in Mars’s Terraforming, Instead of saving your present home, Where there is Italy, Germany, India, America, Russia, China, many others and Rome, You seem to ignore my pleadings and warning signs, And somehow your conscience resigns, Into a slumber of thoughtlessness, And you seem willing to endure this perpetual feeling of restlessness, But refrain from acting now, Sometimes you just need to start, without wasting too much time on thinking how, This maybe my last conversation with you , my dear human being, It is time you believed in what you are seeing, A ravaged soul of mine, I fret and fume, yet you convince yourself I am fine, Because you can still breathe in my air, But how long, because you are offering me a bargain that is unfair, Very soon you may need protected air zones to survive, And then only those with a penny in the pocket shall be alive, Where will your less fortunate brothers and sisters go? I think after the great fall, today humanity has fallen really too low, Not placing restraint on their acts so ignoble, Although you see my scars so fresh and palpable, Anyway, why shall you care as long as you can breathe, And not realise the irony, the day you feel choked I too shall no more be able to breathe! Mars is a distant dream, Pay heed now when I yell and scream, Mars is just a reflection in the mirror, But I am the mirror, you just need to be a heedful observer, And act now before it is too late, And stop wasting time in a bureaucratically complex debate, Maybe this will be the last summer for you and me too, But I am still believing and expecting the best from you! By: Javid Ahmad Tak

Now Where Do You Find Customers? When novice entrepreneurs search for opportunities, they too often look beyond their Zone of Influence. They think the action is happening somewhere else, in some other location or industry. But seasoned entrepreneurs almost always find and create opportunities within the context of who they are, what they know, and especially who they know. In each of the examples above, the business validation process begins with potential customers in the entrepreneur’s orbit. Actual people with names. Tribes you belong to or are interested in, most of whom are already self-organized online. People you know how to reach, today. Though it’s rarely a part of their official origin stories, the biggest companies in the world—even the viral apps now worth billions—started through personal networks and real human connections. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in a weekend by emailing friends to use it. Version 1 did well, validating it. And Microsoft started with Bill Gates building software for a guy in Albuquerque. He had a CUSTOMER FIRST. In the beginning, founders should reach out to their friends, their former colleagues, their communities. You may think your business is unique, but trust me, it’s not. Every successful business can start this way. For example, Anahita loves her dogs and wanted healthier snacks for them. She started taking her homemade organic dog treats to her local dog park. She would sell out every time. A year later she now has a store called the Barkery, a dog bakery. Before you even think about picking a business idea, make sure you have easy access to the people you want to help. An easy way to do this is to think about where you have easy access to a targeted group of people whom you really want to help—like, say, new moms in Austin, cyclists, freelance writers, and taco obsessives (like me!). CHALLENGE Top three groups. Let’s write out your top three groups to target. Who do you have easy access to that you’d be EXCITED to help? This can be your neighbors, colleagues, religious friends, golf buddies, cooking friends, etc. The better you understand your target group, the better you can speak to them. The more specifically you can speak to their problems, the better and easier you can sell (or test products). Note how this process prioritizes communication with people, through starting (taking the first iteration of your solution straight to customers) and asking (engaging them in a conversation to determine how your solution can best fix their problem). Business creation should always be a conversation! Nearly every impulse we have is to be tight with our ideas by doing more research, going off alone to build the perfect product—anything and everything to avoid the discomfort of asking for money. This is the validation shortcut. You have to learn to fight through this impulse. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.