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- - ==Place strong words at the beginning and at the end.== - WORKSHOP background-color:: blue - DONE 1. Read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and study emphatic word order. id:: 65de6ca5-e3ac-47c8-bd5c-87cc589d62a9 - Lincoln Gerrysburg Address - ==**Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent**==, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that **nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure**. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, **we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.** The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, **to be dedicated here to the unfinished work** which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- **that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.** - MLK I Have a Dream Speech - I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. - ==Five score years ago==, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a **joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.** But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, **the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.** One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. - In a sense **we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check**. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, **America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."** - But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check—a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. - We have also **come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now**. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the **dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.** - It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. - But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. **Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred**. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of **meeting physical force with soul force.** - The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that **their destiny is tied up with our destiny.** And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. **We cannot walk alone.** - And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" - We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. - **We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.** - We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. - We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and **robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only."** - We cannot be satisfied **as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.** - No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. - I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. - Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. - I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. **It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.** - **I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."** - I have a dream that one day **on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.** - I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. - ==I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.== - I have a dream today. - I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama **little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.** - I have a dream today. - I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted [sic], every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. - This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. - This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." - **And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.** So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. - And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, ==will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"== - DONE 2. With a pencil in hand, read an essay you admire. Circle the first and last words in each paragraph. id:: 65de6cbc-5c3b-4765-be00-018a608ceb14 collapsed:: true - Books/Notes from Underground Chapter 1 - **I am a sick man**.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well—**let it get worse!** - **I have been going on like that for a long time**—twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, **I will not scratch it out on purpose!)** - **When petitioners used to come for information** to the table at which I sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I succeeded in making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the most part they were all timid people—of course, they were petitioners. But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not endure. He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left off clanking it. **That happened in my youth, though**. - **But do you know, gentlemen**, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with **shame for months after. That was my way.** - **I was lying when I said just now** that I was a spiteful official. I was lying from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to that. I felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements. I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them, purposely would not let them come out. They tormented me till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and—sickened me, at last, how they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that ... However, **I assure you I do not care if you are....** - **It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything;** neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my conviction of forty years. I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... **Stay, let me take breath ...** - **You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you**. You are mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am—then my answer is, I am a collegiate assessor. I was in the service that I might have something to eat (and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant relation left me six thousand roubles in his will I immediately retired from the service and settled down in my corner. I used to live in this corner before, but now I have settled down in it. My room is a wretched, horrid one in the outskirts of the town. My servant is an old country-woman, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty smell about her. I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and that with my small means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg. I know all that better than all these sage and experienced counsellors and monitors.... But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! **Why, it is absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.** - But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? - Answer: Of himself. - **Well, so I will talk about myself.** - DONE 3. Do the same for recent examples of your work. Revise sentences so that **powerful and interesting words, which may be hiding in the middle, appear near the beginning and at the end**. id:: 65de6cd0-2668-47f4-b9fd-85c257ecbe79 collapsed:: true - Letters/2023 In Review - Hello Hello Hello, - **Aite, so.. I think I still live in the year 2020**.. the pre-pandemic first quarter after which time till now has been a **big blur**. It all feels like **one giant moment in time** that in my head somehow will eventually end after which I will get out of the house lol. Maybe it's just the #WFH syndrome. - *Time has been a big blur since the pandemic and I still live in the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2020.* Maybe it's just the #WFH syndrome. I know I will get out my house and eventually time will become linear again. So far, last 3 years have felt like **one giant moment in time.** #nice - **Regardless, 2023 is about to wrap up**. and I wanted to **reflect on** this year - on what got done, what is left unfilfilled, the wins, the cries, whatever. Here are is a list of the top of my head: - I got married :) - job at JOKR tail ending; I am about to transition out as soon as Feb next year - Renovate AI launched Jan 17th, and as of this month we have had $250K+ in revenue! - Launched Vox AI early Nov - second. Foray into Audio AI. A billion dollar++ vertical on it's own - Eb1 got approved. Oh year. Well first it got reject, oh wait, first I got an RFE, then a rejection - took a week to get out of this mini depression. Then I got new immigration firm, then voila, approved approval by Nov end. So now? Now, I get the Green card benifits by summer 2024 - benifits alone, the card would be a year or so. - What else? Hmm. Well, it's takes effort to recall if an event was 2022 or 2023 or somewhere in between and after 2020 you see. But yes, I did move apartments @Avalon. We love the building. And we love our new place. And I can't over the view and energy from the flyover (More on this later - remind me) - That's about what on the top on my end. Anyway the point is **not to be exhaustive** here. But to lay it out and let you know what **cooking** :) - *The list is not exhaustive*. That's about what is at the top of my mind. But to lay it out and let you know what **cooking** :) - I guess biggest deal of all is **my venture** into Entrepreneurship. Now I had this realization in 2022 - entrepreneurship is the ultimate responsibility, and I am **embarking** on this journey knowing very well that this ain't easy. This requires **utmost** disciplines, self motivation, and an ultimate test for **resilience** and accountability. The 'accountability' is the real deal. And my realization was that at this stage of my life I wouldn't have it any other way. Which is to say, if I am unhappy and unsatisfied in life, it better be because of me, myself. - My venture into entrepreneurship is the biggest deal of all. .... I am responsible for it. - Looking forward to 2024, I see Trial and Error growing into $100K+ MRR - this with ease. I would open a dev center in India. The 'big trip India trip' would require much planning and I am really looking forward to it. Especially since I get to skip the immigration line. - Time flies, so I also feel 2024 will end of in an **iffy**, I can feel this already the the coming year will run fast. Lot of money will flow in. And a much calculated investment will flow out. I see us **leveraging AI** at the top 0.1% of tech folks - for all purposes. As you know, my hypothesis is slowly but surely humans are transforming into **cyborgs**. We will be best friends with technology. - I see us **leveraging AI** at the top 0.1% of tech folks - for all purposes. Time flies, so I also feel 2024 will end of in an **iffy**, I can feel this already the the coming year will run fast. Lot of money will flow in. And a much calculated investment will flow out. We will be best friends with technology. As you know, my hypothesis is slowly but surely humans are transforming into **cyborgs.** - Finally, I see my continuation to learn the entrepreneurial way - a full stack syallabus as I like to do things from first principles. This include deep dive into economy, finance and most interestingly business law. - Aite, this is suppose to be a short letter. Just so you get the taste ;) - there are many topics within what I laid out that I hope to write and elaborate on in subsequent letter my man. - Until then - keep it simple, and keep it crazy! - - Sid - - DONE 4. Survey your friends to get the names of their dogs. Write these in alphabetical order. **Imagine that this list appears in a story.** Play with the order of the names. Which should go first? Which last? Why? id:: 65de6cd6-e352-46b2-bd06-21d9136071fd - Bailey, Buddy, Charlie, Daisy, Lucy, Luna, Max, Molly, Rocky, Sadie - Max... - ... Molly - why? because Max captures attention; make me curious. Molly feels heavy and substantial as well. Lucy feels weak, generic, uninteresting. - - -