sizing up

They are organizers and disruptors, optimists and skeptics, some of them sizing up the current political landscape looking for reasons to hope and others demanding — at the top of their lungs — immediate action.

Across Los Angeles, some religious leaders are sizing up their own properties, encouraged by new legislation making it easier to develop the land.

He surveyed the parking lot, where entrepreneurs speaking fast-paced Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and other tongues were sizing up new arrivals, offering rides and other services.

But on “Radical Optimism,” all that’s at stake is coupledom: sizing up each other, testing the possibilities, envisioning permanence or — surprisingly graciously — letting go.

Bookies are sizing up their customers and making sure losses will be paid; bettors are similarly wary, worrying that the bookmaker won’t make good on winnings or “slow pay” a little at a time.