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How to Load CSV Data Into MySQL

I wanted to load data into the database on startup. I had been working on an api server for a while. I eventually found myself wanting to test drive it, maybe hook it up to a web client and bash it a little bit. I wanted to see what it could do and find its weak spots. I had chosen mysql server in order to support a chart UI which needed to show data aggregated by day, month, year, etc. Mysql seemed like the appropriate technology (it was). Now I needed a faster and more straightforward way to seed the database with lots of data. I had imported data files into mongodb instances before, which was delightfully easy. How hard could it be to do the same with mysql? Honestly, it was super annoying. I fiddled around with the mysql system variables docs for way too long. The worst of it is, that in the end I followed the information that is provided on the mysql docker image page (I was using docker to do this) and got something working in less than an hour. Nonetheless, I think there is something to say. And also, more people need to document these “annoying details” in blog form. It’s true: I spent way too long looking in the wrong places, googling my problems just to find solutions that only work in mysql workbench. Maybe this is because mysql just isn’t written about as hot technologies like React or Kubernetes. Maybe I just can’t read the docs. I don’t care. I’m writing about it. Working Example We’re doing a working example first, because there is nothing worse than a long gabby treatise on “who-gives-a-shit” when you are “just trying to make it work”. Goal Load csv data into a new mysql server on startup. The implementation should be able to handle multiple tables, multiple rows per table, and special data types like enums and timestamps. Dependencies docker The Command docker run \ --name my-db \ -p 3306:3306 # for y'all trying to hit it from localhost -v ./init.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init.sql \ -v ./init_data:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init_data \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=pw \ -e MYSQL_USER=my-database-user \ -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=pw \ -e MYSQL_DATABASE=my-database-name \ -d mysql:8.0.22 \ --secure-file-priv=docker-entrypoint-initdb.d Important bits — secure-file-priv=docker-entrypoint-initdb.d secure_file_priv is a system variable. It tells mysql server that “it’s ok” to load data from files from the specified directory. Why docker-entrypoint-initdb.d? When your mysql docker container starts for the first time, it will execute files in this directory with extensions .sql (as well as a couple others). Next we introduce the .sql file that we created. init.sql This file will contain your database and table initialization queries as well as your file data loading queries. You will see a syntax example later on. init_data/ This directory contains your .csv data files. The init.sql code will reference these files in order to load their contents into mysql tables. Code Forgive the non-standard capitalization choices. init.sql CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS environment; CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS environment.Events ( Id varchar(36) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, Type ENUM('THERMAL', 'PARTICLE') NOT NULL, Unit ENUM('F','C','PM2.5') NOT NULL, Timestamp timestamp NOT NULL ); LOAD DATA INFILE '/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init_data/events.csv' INTO TABLE environment.Events FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' LINES TERMINATED BY ' ' (Id,Type,Unit,Timestamp); gotchas If mysql complains about not being able to find or use the init.sql file, make sure that it’s set to be readable/writeable/executable by the owning user: chmod 700 init.sql. If you get an error like “Incorrect datetime value: ‘2020–01–01 10:10:10 eventid2' for column ‘Timestamp’ at row 1”, it might seem like you formatted your timestamp incorrectly (that’s certainly what I thought), but if you followed the example csv file below, it’s more likely that your LINES TERMINATED BY clause doesn’t match up with reality. Check that then line at row 1 ends with a new line character and that there are no mistakes with the clause itself. init_data/events.csv eventid1,55,THERMAL,2020–01–01 10:10:10 eventid2,201,PARTICLE,2020–01–02 10:10:10 Gotchas If you see something like “Data truncated for column ‘Value’ at row 1”, you might have a space messing up parsing. Leave no spaces between the delimiting commas and the field values. Also, don’t put quotes around string values and don’t put quotes around the timestamp value. I know that I was tempted to, due to the space between the date and the time part of the value. The load data statement can parse these values just fine on its own. If you get parse errors, they likely have to do with rogue spaces and end-of-line values. Why so gotcha? Why was it such a pain to load data files into the mysql server? Mysql server has a lot of fiddly configuration. In order to see what I mean, ssh into your running mysql container and run: mysqld --help Notice how it gives you no information, but then tells you to run: mysqld --help --verbose That’s because there’s so much configuration. I bet that once upon a time, a PM brought up how unusable the help page is. Then when the team tried to refactor it there was too much to do. So, they just shoved it all behind this verbose flag with some messaging to warn users that they are about to be visually assaulted by several pages of information. The most annoying part of trying to make this work was the winding path that I took in order to find a working solution and then the realization that the answer was in front of me all along. At first, I used LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE, which requires jumping through many more hoops than my ultimate solution. Both the client and the server must set the local_infile flag. I mounted a /etc/my.cnf file in order to do the server part of that. Then I wanted to make sure that the data was loaded on startup, so I elected to use the init_file flag for that: Then I still needed to reassure mysql server that it was indeed okay to execute the init_file, so I had to set the secure_file_priv flag as well. In the end, according to the logs it was this flag that refused to be set. How could this be, you might ask, since I used it successfully in my working version. Between all of the moving parts, the three different flags, the fiddly details around client and server needing to opt in to load_infile, the load file syntax itself and the .sql file, doing this all at startup, which introduces a timing complication, not to mention that I was using the mysql docker image, which might behave differently that just running mysqld on its own, the real failure might not have been with secure_file_priv at all. Heck, the particular configuration I was trying to force might not even be possible in this scenario. In the end, I decided to simplify. Since I was most paranoid about the mysql docker image being a special snowflake, I decided to read the mysql docker page in order to see what they recommend. I quickly got the init.sql file to execute. A few messages about syntax errors later, I was loading data into a database. So, what did we learn today? Read the docs, but also keep things simple. In my first go around, I certainly read the docs. I tried very hard to implement the mysql docs to the letter. We want however, to be less “Rube Goldberg machine” and more “I-know-how-it-works machine”. We want something more along the lines of several components with lighter configuration, instead of plugging everything into mysql and hoping that not only are all of the values set correctly, but also it all runs in the right order, permissions are correct, etc.

https://niole.net/how-to-load-csv-data-into-mysql-2bce9545822c

['Niole Nelson']

2020-12-06 18:23:32.069000+00:00

['MySQL', 'Software Architecture', 'Software Testing', 'Software Engineering', 'Docker']

How You can Scrape Instagram with Python

How you can use the instaloader package in Python to scrape Instagram data Source: Mematic (created by me) This Article is for You If you want to learn: Automatically download pictures (or videos) along with their captions and other data from Instagram How to use the instaloader package in Python How to process your downloaded data in a clean excel file Install Instaloader Instaloader is a tool to download pictures (or videos) along with their captions and other metadata from Instagram. Install Instaloader with the pip command and import the package ! pip install instaloader import instaloader Write your scraping function that uses the instaloader features. Replace the strings “username” & “password” with your own or a new Instagram account to avoid errors. def get_instagram_posts(username, startdate, enddate): # Create an instaloader object with parameters L = instaloader.Instaloader(download_pictures = False, download_videos = False, download_comments= False, compress_json = False) # Log in with the instaloader object L.login("username" , "password") # Search the instagram profile profile = instaloader.Profile.from_username(L.context, username # Scrape the posts posts = profile.get_posts() for post in takewhile(lambda p: p.date > startdate, dropwhile( lambda p : p.date > enddate, posts)): print(post.date) L.download_post(post, target = profile.username) This function will now save all instagram posts and related data to a folder in you current working directory. Let’s call this function on the instagram account of “realdonaldtrump”. This might take a while so be patient and let the script do its magic. import os import datetime # instagram username username = "realdonaldtrump" # daterange of scraping startdate = datetime(2020, 9, 1) enddate = datetime(2020, 10, 1) # get your current working directory current_wkdir = os.get_cwd() # Call the function. This will automatically store all the scrape data in a folder in your current working directory get_instagram_posts(username, startdate, enddate) You notice that this data is not yet in the right format since each post has a separate json file. You will need to process all these json files to a consolidated excel file in order to perform analyses on the data. Example of output def parse_instafiles(username, path): """ This function loads in all the json files generated by the instaloader package and parses it into a csv file. """ #print('Entering provided directory...') os.chdir(os.path.join(path, username)) columns = ['filename', 'datetime', 'type', 'locations_id', 'locations_name', 'mentions', 'hashtags', 'video_duration'] dataframe = pd.DataFrame(columns=[]) #print('Traversing file tree...') glob('*UTC.json') for file in glob('*UTC.json'): with open(file, 'r') as filecontent: filename = filecontent.name #print('Found JSON file: ' + filename + '. Loading...') try: metadata = orjson.loads(filecontent.read()) except IOError as e: #print("I/O Error. Couldn't load file. Trying the next one...") continue else: pass #print('Collecting relevant metadata...') time = datetime.fromtimestamp(int(metadata['node']['taken_at_timestamp'])) type_ = metadata['node']['__typename'] likes = metadata['node']['edge_media_preview_like']['count'] comments = metadata['node']['edge_media_to_comment']['count'] username = metadata['node']['owner']['username'] followers = metadata['node']['owner']['edge_followed_by']['count'] try: text = metadata['node']['edge_media_to_caption']['edges'][0]['node']['text'] except: text = "" try: post_id = metadata['node']['id'] except: post_id = "" minedata = {'filename': filename, 'time': time, 'text': text, 'likes': likes, 'comments' : comments, 'username' : username, 'followers' : followers, 'post_id' : post_id} #print('Writing to dataframe...') dataframe = dataframe.append(minedata, ignore_index=True) #print('Closing file...') del metadata filecontent.close() #print('Storing dataframe to CSV file...') #print('Done.') dataframe['source'] = 'Instagram' return dataframe You can then use this function to process the Donald Trump Instagram data. df_instagram = parse_instafiles(username, os.getcwd() ) df_instagram.to_excel("DonaldTrump_instagram.xlsx") Output of excel You now have a nice excel file with all the posts of Donald Trump in the month September until October. This format is perfect for visualisations like: word cloud of Trump’s posts Evolution of # likes per post Engagement per post … Happy programming! Cheers, Ewoud

https://medium.com/@strategyanalytics/strategy-analytics-in-python-2-scraping-instagram-30710399cc0b

[]

2020-12-09 10:20:00.954000+00:00

['Analytics', 'Pandas', 'Python', 'Web Scraping', 'Instagram']

Developing Countries and Governments Will Struggle Post-Pandemic

Photo by Sara Stasi on Unsplash I recently read Us Vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism by Ian Bremmer. It was a thought-provoking book that discussed changes in politics and the impact globalism has had on the world economy. One big concept that was touched upon was the future of automation and how that can displace millions, if not billions, of people from their jobs all around the world. Advances in automation and the displacement of people from their jobs have only been accelerated due to the ongoing pandemic. When this book was written in 2018, it gave a grim outlook. If only Ian knew of what would occur just two years down the road. The topic I thought was most interesting from the book was the concept of government for or against the people. Purpose of Government Every country is different, and every government is different. With that said, I am a big fan of the excerpt from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: Government of the people by the people for the people — Abraham Lincoln The part of that quote I value the most is “for the people.” Everyone will have their own ideas and can dissect this one sentence to mean a thousand different things. But to me, “for the people” means the government is there to help the people. And everyone will again have their own ideas on how much “help” should be provided. Socialists and libertarians have been debating this for centuries and will continue to debate it for centuries more. If government is made for the people, they have an obligation to protect its citizens. And with that said, it may get more and more difficult going forward. Economic Struggles of Government The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X It is true, the future is important. People should always be looking forward, not backward. But the present is also important. Governments face tremendously difficult decisions when it comes to the future and their economies. You may have heard of a 5-year plan; governments likely have a 25-year plan. If automation comes to fruition and many unskilled laborers lose their jobs, what will happen? Governments need to coordinate investing in future education, infrastructure, job training, and social safety net programs while trying to balance their budgets. Global debt is now at an all-time high, and only likely to get higher. Who do we owe all this money to anyways, Jupiter? Future Conflicts If governments can’t protect peoples’ jobs, what will happen? Will people receive supplemental income from the government? Will citizens move to a new country? Either way, it can’t be good for governments’ tax revenue and trying to balance their budgets. If governments are no longer helping people, will people start to rebel? Desperate times call for desperate measures. I don’t foresee this happening in wealthy countries. But as low-income countries face issues with inflation, unemployment, the pandemic, and lack of trust in the government, there may be issues. If people aren’t happy with the results, they will want change. Voting may not always be a way for change in some countries. Sometimes the people take matters into their own hands. Governments are never one to happily release their power. Something usually has to give. I’d love to say we will one day have world peace, but that is not realistic. Hopefully, though, many future conflicts can be avoided and lives can be saved.

https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/developing-countries-and-governments-will-struggle-post-pandemic-2639c3de5eb8

['Cody Collins']

2021-01-02 09:57:24.144000+00:00

['Economics', 'Automation', 'Government', 'Pandemic', 'Covid 19']

Starting A Craft Beer Custom Packaging Design

We see this a lot: simple, non-custom Beer Packaging that gets the job done. How can you expect to hit your sales target if you don’t invest in your presentation at the store? You have a great product, but you left out one thing — your Packaging! Beer Packaging is a great way to grab your customer’s attention at retail and even online. It’s an easy thing for most brands to overlook, but this is exactly the issue we aim to solve. The U.S. has more than 3,000 breweries producing about 30,000 unique beer styles — talk about a crowded shelf. A saturated market with limited marketing dollars, makes your packaging more important than ever! Design is everything in Beer Packaging. We help upgrade brands from plain to premium, and take advantage of all the latest technical and marketing innovations to create new designs, and more importantly increase your sales. Bringing new packaging ideas to life can be a challenging task. That’s why we created this guide to walk you through each step. Step 1: Determine Your Packaging Needs What type of Packaging do I need? Are there new innovations I can implement? How many units do I need? How can this be an extension of my brand? Step 2: Establish Your Budget There are two types of costs associated with new packaging. Visible costs: such as the upfront cost of design and the price of the packaging itself. Hidden costs: such as additional filler, breakage, and more. Your budget should include the cost of Packaging Supplies and Shipping Boxes. If any kind of packaging fillers are required, you need to account for them. You can also include a Contract Packager to help with fulfilment or assembly. By using a company like Bennett, you get Turnkey Solutions that help you minimize costs. Setting a budget or at least a range for your Packaging helps the process not become inefficient or aimless. A successful Wine Packaging program needs a budget that considers the economics of the entire process. You should consider the price of your product, your profit margin, anticipated sales, and the length of time you expect your Packaging to be in place. Volume purchasing As with most printed products, you only really get a good value at high purchase quantities, due to the economics of scale. If you don’t buy in bulk, each package will add an unreasonable amount of expense to each shipment. If you do buy in bulk, you will not only be putting more money up front for production, but also for storage, transportation between warehouses and handling. Digital allows you to have complete flexibility for this. The higher the sales price of your product, the more you should consider investing in your Beer Packaging. Step 3: Assess The Beer Competition Because of the competition in the industry, you need to make sure your choices standout in a lineup. It’s definitely become a growing challenge over the years to penetrate the market — but it can still be done! What they don’t have is the chance to design with the latest innovations — taking opportunities to connect with your customers in completely new ways and actually create a new level of customer loyalty. Step 4: Designing Your Beer Packaging Did you know that 75% of consumers are influenced by package design? Designing can be a fun process. Whether you’re tackling it or working with our Creative Services team, you need to consider key things about your beer, and your customer. What style of beer are you selling? Who is your target customer? How / where are they buying it? Next let’s dig into what you need to include: What brewery made it? What style it is? Information about your beer (the name / flavor / ABV) Now let’s talk about the more brand-focused elements: Show your personality and brand voice Tell your brewery story with some stellar copywriting Use the Billboard Effect: multiple packages together become an eye catching wall Double down on eco-friendly packaging / elements We’re thirsty for a good story. Authenticity, community and sustainability are the best keywords to get you started. Graphics need to be memorable, distinct, easily recognizable, and with easily identifiable shapes Choose a color palette that fits your label and brand Be prepared to go through a few iterations — it takes time to land on the “right choice” Include time to do some market testing with your packaging and labels Pro Tip: If you’re not a designer, and don’t have a design team — we provide access to our award winning in-house team in Creative Services. Continue Reading

https://medium.com/@bennettpackaging/starting-a-craft-beer-custom-packaging-design-34774fff8f30

[]

2021-02-26 12:01:41.391000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Craft Beer', 'Designer', 'Small Business', 'Beer']

Top 5 Ecommerce Website Development Platform in 2021

New businesses and little size organizations all throughout the planet consider eCommerce advancement stages for speedy and simple improvement of their online stores. Making eCommerce sites by utilizing improvement stages isn’t troublesome, however a wrong eCommerce stage will adversely affect your business without a doubt. You may need your online shops and stores to give a similar drawing in experience as your actual store does. You may need your possible purchasers and online store guests to effortlessly discover their way around website pages and discover what they are searching for without issue. Anyway clients can’t feel and contact your items when purchasing through the web, so you need your online store to convey that exhaustive and lovely client experience. You should allure clients to tap on your item, stay longer on your site. However, more often than not individuals who are beginning their eCommerce venture interestingly need specialized ability or have no clue about where and how to begin. This is the place where re-appropriating eCommerce site improvement administrations assume an enormous part. You should simply discover your match, share prerequisites and let them concoct a stunning site for you. However, on the off chance that you would prefer not to give up your work to an outsider you have another choice also. Presently, what may that be? Picking an eCommerce improvement stage to rapidly construct eCommerce sites. You can utilize these eCommerce stages to develop your online store from the beginning. Be that as it may, they likewise offer low code advancement stages meaning any layman can without much of a stretch form utilizing the accompanying stages with negligible help. In this blog, I will discuss a portion of the eCommerce stages acquiring prevalence in 2021 for you to fabricate your online store. Significant Features of eCommerce Platforms They are straightforward and simple to utilize, any individual with a non-specialized foundation can discover their way around the devices. Underlying substance the board framework Topics and layouts to get a good deal on planning without any preparation Give proficient look and feel to your sites with simple to UI Quick and advantageous shopping experience Various secure installment passages Delivery choices Item lists to add limitless item records In-fabricated showcasing and limited time apparatuses Continuous pop-up messages Customization alternatives Quest usefulness for narrowing down the pursuit Profoundly responsive and streamlined for portable Web optimization well disposed Audits and criticism The accompanying stages are best for amateurs with little experience setting up or dealing with an eCommerce store rapidly and without any problem. Everything is as of now dealt with so you need not stress over setting up installment processors, managing exchanges or solicitations physically. Wix Wix for eCommerce has acquired a great deal of ubiquity in the recent years and forthcoming years will be the same. It’s a significant rival to other comparable improvement stages, for example, WordPress and so forth in the eCommerce space. Wix conveys astonishing highlights and devices to singular business people and private ventures beginning in the field of eCommerce. This stage offers membership based administrations with huge loads of free highlights and topics. It is not difficult to utilize and set up. Aside from that, it has showcasing computerization highlights, item and request the board, free area name, and various installments passages. Shopify By a wide margin, Shopify is viewed as the best stage for eCommerce. It is famous for outsourcing and on the off chance that you rely upon Facebook publicizing and Instagram special showcasing exercises. In addition to other things, it offers 100+ expert topics, in addition to hundreds all the more outsider. It is super easy to understand with an intuitive interface, in addition to you can alter HTML and CSS straightforwardly. Likewise, it produces better reports on deals and store action. The drawback of Shopify is that it’s anything but SEO agreeable and also you would require help from a specialist engineer for setting up cutting edge highlights. Magento This eCommerce advancement stage is famous for its astounding highlights, ease of use, and foundation. Huge organizations like Samsung, Nike, Ford, Lenovo, Olympus, Nestle, and others utilize the Magento stage. As per research examines, the Magento eCommerce stage controls practically 29.89% of every online store. Magento is an open-source stage with a free Magento people group release. It’s anything but an immense library of modules and has incredible local area support. Aside from that, Squarespace This stage was made in 2003 by Anthony Casalena. It’s an across the board stage for the two fledglings and experts hoping to make eCommerce sites. Actually like different stages Square space does exclude substantial specialized lifting meaning you can construct extravagant looking sites without specialized aptitude. Not just this, you can easily incorporate installment strategies and pick the plan dependent on your plan rules. It’s anything but a thorough library for outsider devices available to you. It offers a few highlights like a writing for a blog module, SEO-accommodating construction, site examination and details, markdown codes, and implicit security — PCI consistence + SSL in addition to other things. BigCommerce Last however not the least, we have BigCommerce. This stage needn’t bother with any presentation since it’s now famous. BigCommerce is generally reasonable for big business eCommerce applications since it allows you to deal with your items, orders, and clients like a complete proficient. Overseeing and taking care of enormous volumes of clients is very simple through BigCommerce, the motivation behind why it is the best fit for huge associations. It is SEO-accommodating and offers wonderful subjects and configuration layouts. It has you covered with all day, every day support, dispatch your showcasing efforts, computerize rebate coupons, and so forth. On the off chance that you are searching for an eCommerce stage that offers ideal execution and results, then, at that point the entirety of the previously mentioned stages are very solid yet some of them are not SEO-accommodating where SquareSpace and BigCommerce are the two most impressive decisions for enhancing your eCommerce business.

https://medium.com/@chanmoha35/top-5-ecommerce-website-development-platform-in-2021-a545bcee8e7e

[]

2021-06-26 00:12:11.917000+00:00

['Developer', 'Ecommerce', 'SEO', 'Platform', 'Website']

Let Go of Your Backlog

When I worked for a small computer magazine, I had to treat gaming like it was a business task. I wrote three game reviews every month, which meant I had to finish three big games every month, like clockwork. It was efficient. It was effective. But it wasn’t always fun. It instilled in me the mentality that I had to play every “significant” video game, and then any other game which I was interested in after that. So I kept buying them. And buying them. And finishing fewer and fewer. Once you’ve played a lot of video games, you get really good at tearing them apart in short order. You’ll see everything their mechanics, visuals, and design have to offer in the first couple of hours. I sometimes have a hard time continuing past that point, unless the story or the gameplay loop have really grabbed me. So I move on. And often feel terrible. I almost always regret not playing the rest of a game, even if I bought it at a fraction of its original price. That regret is silly. It might be born originally from a place of sincerity, but these days I’m working to discard it and try to focus on what I’m doing right now. Games are for fun, ultimately. They’re for entertainment. They shouldn’t be obligations. They shouldn’t be the proverbial albatross. So what if a game reviewed well? So what if all of your friends like it? So what if that weird guy at the GameStop tells you that it’s the greatest thing of all-time? You don’t have to play it. You don’t have to play anything. You’re the arbiter of your own time.

https://xander51.medium.com/let-go-of-your-backlog-4773ed45229b

['Alex Rowe']

2019-09-26 19:17:06.199000+00:00

['Gaming Culture', 'Self', 'Videogames', 'Self Improvement', 'Gaming']

On believing your fat friend.

“Are you comfortable with the lie you’re selling?” The afternoon started amiably enough. I was at my father’s house, meeting his old friend for the first time. The friend, like my dad, is in his late sixties, and is not a thin man. We’d been getting to know one another, making small talk about his travels and my work. I’d been talking about my day job when my dad jumped in. “She’s been writing, too,” he prompted, proudly. When his friend asked what I wrote about, I said my writing focuses on how fat people are treated. “I hope you’re talking about portion sizes,” he offered up. “I don’t,” I said. “That gets discussed everywhere else. This is about what it’s like to be a fat person, and to be treated like a fat person.” “Do you mean what it’s like to be lazy? Americans are so lazy,” he said, voice viscous with judgement. “It’s about how people treat fat people differently, and usually worse, than thin people. And it’s encouraging folks to think differently about that.” “But even if people treated you better, you still wouldn’t be healthy or happy.” He paused, studying my face. “Do you honestly believe you could be happy?” I felt my face heat, my jaw set. “I do.” “So you’re telling people a lie,” he stated simply, lightly, leaning back in his chair. “What?” “Are you comfortable with the lie you’re selling?” he asked coolly, waiting for a response to rip apart. He, a coyote. Me, his carrion. My head flooded with responses. I’m not selling anything, I write because I love it. That wasn’t the point. Are you my psychologist? Too confrontational. Why would you call your friend’s daughter a liar? Unfair to pull my father into a conversation he hadn’t asked for. Why is my happiness so unfathomable to you? But that would lead us further down this road. He’d already shown his hand, already bared his teeth. He wouldn’t believe what I had to say about my life in my own body. He felt at home in my father’s discomfort and in my disquiet. My father sat, slack jawed and quiet, blindsided by such an unexpected exchange. He was speechless, watching it all, loyalties divided between friend and family. He’d planned such a lovely morning, and suddenly the air was dense with tension. I changed the subject. We moved on. I have learned to spot people like my father’s friend, and have learned when to walk away. But those moments stay with me, burrow beneath my skin, nest at the nape of my neck. As I drove home, my breath fell into the bottomless pit of my lungs, unable to revive me. The base of my skull buzzed and pulsed with anger. I was so frustrated and so exhausted. To him, my account of my own life was untrustworthy, impossible, laughable. I was naive and ridiculous in my youth, believing anything to be possible. Even my own dignity. Even my own happiness. Moments like these happen so often. In more benign exchanges, acquaintances show me that I cannot be trusted with my own experience. In more pronounced moments, my autonomy is laughable, openly ridiculed, a plaything to be torn apart for sport. So many strangers, it seems, are scavengers. Being called a liar — openly — has become a regular feature of my life as a fat person. Any answer I offer about my body, the food I eat, the way I feel, or the regularity with which I move is answered with a dismissal. When asked if I exercise, I say yes. No you don’t or Is it aerobic? it needs to be aerobic echoes back. Have you tried South Beach? is met with you probably did it wrong. When asked if I’ve engaged a nutritionist or trainer, I say yes, for several years. You probably didn’t stick to it long enough. It just takes a little willpower! These questions — about diet, exercise, worth and will — have no answers that will satisfy their askers. My words have already been betrayed by the believed brokenness of my body, and the flawed character that created it. There is nothing I can say to counter the assumptions attached to my wide, soft frame. Coworkers and strangers offer up unsolicited advice for how to change the body I have always had, then chase it with judgment and dismissal, a scripted response, delivered as if I had not spoken at all. To many, my body is the subject of a boring kind of science, a rote experiment with no new findings, just confirming old results. My body is vivisected just to see how it works, twitching and alive and cut apart to locate the physical source of its failure. My experiences cannot be trusted — they must be wrested from my body, a tidy fillet cut from an unsightly beast. But their unskilled, uncaring hands cannot dissect something living and leave it alive. They do not believe themselves to be dismantling my body, and their eagerness isn’t borne of pure judgment or dismissal. They are not trying to hurt me. They are chasing a deep desire to make sense of their own unruly bodies, and of the shame we’ve all been taught to feel about the shape of our skin. If they can figure out where I have failed, what has led me to the terrible fate of the body I have, they can avoid that destiny themselves. And they can rest assured that they are the experts, the virtuous, the strong and wily who were able to outwit their own bodies. They are terrified of what their bodies will become. Acquaintances’ questions of me aren’t questions, but prayers for strength and virtue. They believe that my flaws have become physical, that temptation lurks everywhere, and their strength and smarts will save them from a body like mine. Because they believe that bodies like mine only give way to misery, isolation, hurt and heartbreak. Only the pure of heart and will can escape that fate. They’ve been told everywhere that one false step will lead to having my body. To them, my body isn’t my body — it’s a symbol of their fate. So of course my experience isn’t my own. When a fat person breaks that chain — claims their own happiness, becomes an Olympic medalist, tries everything to lose weight and only seems to gain it back — the world must regain order. Happy fat people, fit fat people, fat people who have taken a cue from years of failed weight loss attempts — we all become outliers, inconvenient points on a messy scatterplot that once felt like such a tidy curve. We are so often told that our bodies are skeleton keys, the panacea to any sadness or melancholy that might sink into the empty spaces in our lives. Weight loss becomes a tonic — drink it, and you’ll have everything you want: the life, the partner, the family, the job, the beauty, the strength. Drink at and get free. When I told my father’s friend that I could be happy now, all of that was thrust into the light. If I could be happy at a size 26, then anyone’s happiness might be more complex than the size of their clothing. If I can be happy now, maybe he could, too. And that might mean tackling an unfulfilling relationship, digging deep into the recesses of the parts of himself he doesn’t like. It might mean that pouring all of his sadness into ruthless exercise regimens and flash-in-the-pan diets doesn’t make as much sense as it used to. Our bodies have given structure to our sadness. But sadness is wily, fluid, finds its way into unexpected places. And happiness isn’t monolithic, nor is it a point of arrival, a place to stay. Our lives are not stasis, not carefully groomed worlds in suspended animation. We move forward, clumsily. We make mistakes, and we work hard to do better the next time. We lose relationships. We lose loved ones. Sometimes we fail; sometimes succeed. But we keep working hard in our messy circumstance. A body won’t change the tangled nature of our gorgeous, inconvenient lives. I am an upbeat, heartfelt, engaged, enthusiastic person. I love my work, my friends, my family, my life. I have sad moments, sometimes about the way my body is treated, and more often about deeper uncertainties about my life and the world around me. But that is a deeply unsatisfying answer for the acquaintances, coworkers and strangers who rely on bodies to make sense of their lives and relationships, a shorthand for character and a glyph of success or failure. So little about our lives is simple, and it is tempting to believe that a new or different body could bring order to an unstable world, to slippery relationships and doubts about ourselves. We are all more complex than our bodies. We are more expansive, more potent, more real and messy than the shape of our skin. Yes, I believe I can be happy as I am. Yes, I believe you can, too. But mostly, I just wish you believed me.

https://medium.com/athena-talks/on-trusting-your-fat-friend-c1eae6750c1

['Your Fat Friend']

2017-03-20 04:40:14.854000+00:00

['Fat Acceptance', 'Body Positive', 'Feminism']

The final phase of Human evolution starts now

Question from the Internet: “People don’t really care that much about others. Why is that?” Because we are all born with an inherently self-serving, self-justifying, subjective, and individualistic nature. This is neither a crime nor is it evil, this is how Nature’s evolution “created us”. We are supposed to consciously recognize that with this instinctively cancer-like nature we will inevitably self-destruct, so we would develop a true, irrepressible need to change, adjust, upgrade ourselves so we would be able to care about each other like the cells of our own biological body serve the whole organism. This conscious, proactive self-change and the ensuing mutual integration with each other and by that reaching a seamless integration with integral Nature makes us truly Human. This is why evolution gave us birth with an “unfinished”, “beta-software” giving us the chance and ability to finish our own Human development by our own free choice and effort. The transition towards this conscious, proactive phase of Human evolution starts in our days when masses of people recognize that our own nature is the root cause of all our problems.

https://medium.com/@samechphoto/the-final-phase-of-human-evolution-starts-now-4bed009b31c9

['Zsolt Hermann']

2021-08-17 21:42:52.611000+00:00

['Nature', 'Evolution', 'Humanity', 'Integration', 'Education']

Maecenas ART Crowdsale Terms

We are excited to announce the terms for our upcoming crowdsale. You can learn here about the dates, amounts and price as well as how we will use the funds to build our decentralized art gallery democratizing access to fine art. Maecenas is part of the platform of Cofound.it, a proven leader in supporting companies throughout the process. So our crowdsale will be accessible on https://cofound.it/en/projects/maecenas/ . Make sure you bookmark this URL! The pre-sale is happening on 5th September and you will need a Priority Pass to participate (more info here). The public sale starts on 7th September and it’s a good idea to join our mailing list to make sure you stay up to date. Maecenas will issue a total of 100,000,000 ART tokens. ART is an ERC20 token issued on the Ethereum network. We pronounce our token by its letters “A-R-T”. (Thought you’d like to know!) A total of 30,000,000 ART tokens will be available with the following schedule: Starting on 5th September @ 5pm CEST and for 24 hours, 15,000,000 ART will be available to Priority Pass™holders. Individual caps will be announced by Cofound.it a few days before the crowdsale. Starting on 6th September @ 5pm CEST and for 24 hours, another 15,000,000 ART will be available to Priority Pass™ holders, without any individual caps. Starting on 7th September @ 5pm CEST and for four weeks, any leftover from the pre-sale will be available to everyone to acquire without caps. To get more information on how to be part of the pre-sale and become a Priority Pass™ member click here. Please note that contributions will only be accepted in ETH. The Crowdsale will end on the 5th of October at 5pm CEST. Maecenas Targets The crowdsale seeks to collect ETH equivalent of US$ 3 million (soft cap) which will allow Maecenas to launch the platform and operate in our first market. That is highly likely to be Geneva, Switzerland. There is a further milestone of US$ 10 million which Maecenas will use to accelerate growth and operate in additional markets in top art cities worldwide (e.g. New York, London, Paris, Luxembourg, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore). There is a further stretch goal of US$ 20 million (hard cap) which Maecenas will use to facilitate (underwrite) platform acquisition of high-grade artworks to be listed on the platform. In summary: Soft cap: US$ 3M (launch platform in one market) Milestone: US$ 10M (additional markets) Max cap: US$ 20M (art funding) This target prices each ART token at US$ 0.66. The actual price in ETH will be set a few days before the sale starts. Token Allocation 30% sold in the crowdsale 30% kept as reserve liquidity fund to guarantee ART available in auction transactions 20% allocated to incentivise partners and client acquisition (all tokens granted to external parties will have a long vesting period) 20% retained by Maecenas to incentivise existing and future talent, and to fund any future operations if required. Team tokens will have a 24-month vesting periods. Use of Proceeds 35% Research & Development 20% Sales & Marketing 20% Legal & Compliance 15% Art Collections & Funds Financing 10% Operations Please note that the percentage allocations are a model based on estimates and may vary depending on the actual amount of ETH raised, its dollar-value equivalent at the time of conversion as well as the wider art market’s opportunities.

https://medium.com/maecenas/crowdsale-sale-terms-1ec4f06c9055

[]

2017-08-23 12:00:29.339000+00:00

['Investment', 'Crowdsale', 'Ethereum', 'Art', 'Blockchain']

Checkmate

Checkmate This is a game that you can’t win Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash If there was one thing that Suzie knew, it was that her mother hated her. The woman had never said it but actions spoke louder than words and Dahlia Simmons’ actions screamed like a banshee in the night. Suzie had done everything she could to live up to the standards that her mother had set yet nothing she did was ever good enough. None of her relatives saw the way her mother looked at her. Her dad never noticed how her mother would snatch her hands away and curl them in her lap if Suzie strayed too close, as if to make sure that she wouldn’t have to touch her own daughter, not even by accident. Suzie’s mother hated her and Suzie hated her mother right back. She hated the way her mother’s soft smiles would turn brittle with edges as jagged as a glass shard when her gaze flickered over Suzie. And her mother’s gaze always flickered over her because the woman didn’t seem to be able to stomach the sight of Suzie on most days. Suzie didn’t care. That was a lie, she did care but she didn’t care enough to change the things her mother hated. Maybe if her mother had been willing to compromise, Suzie would have too but as it was, she dug her heels in and threw her rebellion in her mother’s face every time she could. It wasn’t like her mother could replace her. The stricken look on the woman’s face the first time Suzie taunted her with the words made her feel warm inside. The warmth was ripped away when she realized that her father had heard her. Her ears rang with his fury and she retreated to her room to lick her wounds. She didn’t blame her father for being angry but she did blame her mother. Suzie blamed her mother for almost everything. That was why she took her chance at the tender age of fifteen, running away with the boyfriend that her parents detested. It wasn’t until the cops dragged her back four months later with her tail between her legs and a swollen belly that she realized what her rebellion had cost her. Her father was dead. She didn’t even get the chance to mourn before her mother sent her away to live with her grandmother. The longer Suzie stayed with the old woman, the more she realized that it wasn’t only her mother who hated her. Her grandmother refused to help Suzie with anything. She had to make her own food and clean up after herself. It was awful and to spite her, Suzie fled again only returning when her stomach was flat and her baby was in the arms of a stranger. She’d known that her grandmother had planned to raise the kid but there was no way that Suzie was going to give her the chance. She only stayed long enough to watch the news rip the hope from her grandmother’s eyes before she left her family behind again and this time, no one came looking for her. She spent twenty years on her own, making do with the money her father had left to her until the day she got a call that changed her life. Her mother was dying which meant that everything that Suzie’s father had foolishly willed to her would now be Suzie’s. The thought had Suzie grinning as she booked her flight.

https://medium.com/grab-a-slice/checkmate-7ae7a1dded77

['Delta B. Mckenzie']

2020-05-05 09:52:15.512000+00:00

['Family Drama', 'Fiction', 'Storytelling', 'Short Story']

Global OTC Analgesic Market Analysis

The global oral OTC analgesics market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 4.61% during the forecast period, 2019–2028. The growth of the market is attributed to the increasing demand for topical analgesics. Analgesics are the counter pain drugs which support in regulating a pain until and unless it is completely eliminated. OTC analgesic drugs are used by people without any need of prescription. Analgesics which do not require doctor’s prescription are classified as OTC analgesics. OTC analgesics are available in brand and generic preparations as tablets, capsules, creams, sprays, and patches. These OTC analgesics constitute three active ingredients namely paracetamol, ibuprofen, and aspirin. Paracetamol is a most commonly used OTC analgesic. Its analgesic property is similar to that of aspirin and ibuprofen. It does not carry any anti-inflammatory effects. Paracetamol prevents prostaglandin synthesis within the central nervous system. It is the first choice of analgesic for pain management. Common side-effects associated with paracetamol are hypersensitivity, rare cases of blood dyscrasias (including thrombocytopenia and agranulocytosis). Aspirin is another common OTC analgesic. It is analgesic, antipyretic, antiplatelet, and anti-inflammatory. The inhibition of cyclooxygenase results in analgesic effect of aspirin. Incompatible effects of aspirin are epigastric pain, gastrointestinal ulceration, nausea and vomiting, hypersensitivity, and gout. Market Drivers Increasing demand of topical analgesics, which are available as pain-relieving creams, lotions, rubs, gels, and sprays, has increased the sales of analgesics by 18 percent. According to Kline Non-prescription Drugs US report, increasing geriatric population worldwide, will generate the demand for pain relief products. According to the US Census Bureau, between 2012 and 2050, the United States will experience considerable growth in its older population. Thus, the growth in geriatric population is driving the growth of the global OTC analgesics market. Additionally, the cost efficiency of OTC analgesics drugs is also responsible for fuelling the growth of the market. Visit https://insights10.com/ for more healthcare industry insights.

https://medium.com/@insightss10/global-otc-analgesic-market-analysis-4576bcb494ec

[]

2021-12-29 09:36:49.454000+00:00

['Healthcare Industry', 'Otc Analgesic', 'Market Research Reports', 'Market Research', 'Healthcare']

Japanese Food and Why Everything Comes With Ginger

Japanese Food and Why Everything Comes With Ginger A healthful spice, that makes everything nice Illustrations by Kaki Okumura Some eggplants, a nub of ginger We forgot to go grocery shopping and our fridge was looking sparse. We didn’t have many vegetables at home, besides some eggplants and a nub of ginger. Can you even cook anything good with just that? But turns out my mom had a plan — she took the eggplants and put it on the grill, cooked for about 20 minutes on high heat. Then she grated the ginger, served it with the cooked eggplants, and dressed it in a noodle soup base. A delicious vegetable dish, done. Photo by Kaki Okumura Japanese Grilled Eggplant with Ginger 1 eggplant per person 1 piece of ginger, about 15 grams Noodle soup base Wash the eggplants, and place them whole on a grill, toaster, or pan. Not a lot of oil is necessary, just enough to prevent sticking. Cook for 20–25 minutes, or until soft — the grill will take less time than the pan, and the pan will take less time than the toaster. Grate the ginger, serve it on the side with the grilled eggplant dressed in noodle soup base. Enjoy! *Optional: If using a large eggplant, cut into discs first to save time. “Why do we always have ginger in the fridge?” Not only was I impressed with how simple it was and how quickly my mom pulled together the dish, but I began to notice that raw grated ginger is served with so many Japanese foods. You find it on the side of sushi, soba noodles, grilled chicken, fried fish, steamed vegetables, and agedashi tofu, just to name a few. If you also count the way ginger is boiled into many soups and broths, or how pickled ginger is used to top okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and Japanese curries, it seems that ginger is used in almost every Japanese meal. Health benefits of eating with ginger Ginger is a common cooking spice that originated in Asia. It has a very long history of traditional use in alternative medicine, so long that there are ancient Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek, Roman, and Arabic texts that detail the use of ginger for health-related purposes. Today, it is often still used for at-home remedies to treat symptoms such as nausea, fatigue, headache, and sore throat. Ginger is so useful because it contains a bioactive compound called gingerol, a powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant substance that helps aid digestion, boosts immunity, has antibacterial effects, and fights the common cold. It is the main substance behind ginger’s various medicinal properties that make the spice so popular. Eating as balancing The traditional Japanese diet is not overly complicated or particularly restrictive, but it is especially mindful about incorporating these healthful spices in simple ways, to enhance both flavor and bring balance to the foods we love. So instead of forcing ginger into our systems as a separate pill or packaged supplement, sustainable nutrition is about considering the simple ways you can add healthful ingredients into your meals. So crush and boil it into a broth, slice and top it on steamed or grilled vegetables, or use it as a grated side to your favorite dishes — the ways you can incorporate ginger are plentiful! If you liked this piece or found it insightful, let me know by emailing me at kokumura@kakikata.space! My hope is it to help others discover a healthful lifestyle most suitable for them, and I would love to hear from you! 😊 Best regards, Kaki

https://kokumura.medium.com/japanese-food-and-why-everything-comes-with-ginger-277ca797d0af

['Kaki Okumura']

2020-08-17 03:21:01.318000+00:00

['Food', 'Lifestyle', 'Culture', 'Health', 'Cooking']

Where do the bunnies go?

Yesterday, as I was walking around the block, it hit me that there were not as many rabbits as in the spring. Why? Where do they go? How long to bunnies live? Is there a stockpile of bunny-bodies somewhere or do they “return” to nature quickly? Dunno all this stuff…. Rufus crapped on the Palace Grounds today… hehehe…. Emily has been sick, so Tom has had to work most days at the Java Spot… he didn’t seem happy today, so maybe it is wearing him down….

https://medium.com/dog-walk-blog/where-do-the-bunnies-go-f7bcb9e5fe60

['Gérard Mclean']

2016-04-29 12:18:11.585000+00:00

['Walk', 'Work', 'Rufus']

T20 World Cup 2021 Team Preview — New Zealand

The T20 World Cup 2021 for New Zealand will begin with Super 12 matches and they are all slated to play their opener against Pakistan on October 26. It is for the time in their history that will be entering an ICC tournament with an ICC Trophy in their cabinet. New Zealand have had heartbreaking stories in mega-events but their jinx ended in the inaugural edition of the 2019–21 WTC final when they defeated India to become World Test Champions. Build up form New Zealand will be taking the field in the tournament with a lot of strength and confidence as they defeated India in June 2021 to become World Test Champions. Their key players have been showing great form and that will only add to their cause of making this journey an eventful one. However, after the WTC final, they had an upset against Bangladesh in a five-match T20I series where they lost 2–3 on the away soil. However, many of their key players were not present on the tour and the T20 WC campaign will be a different story with their full-strength squad. Strength and Weakness of New Zealand squad There are various positives in the NZ squad and the main stands to be their skipper Kane Williamson. Apart from being a cool skipper, he plays the anchor role for the side very well and has been a big match player. He showed his very best in the WTC final against India too and can replicate the same class now. Adding to the batting lineup, veteran Martin Guptill holds a high significance as he can chip in with crucial runs and set the perfect tone for Kiwis. He stands to be the second-highest run-scorer in the T20Is only behind Indian skipper Virat Kohli. Devon Conway who averages 59.12 in T20Is can be of great help for New Zealand too. Ish Sodhi and Mitchell Santner can make an impact on slow wickets in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah while for Dubai, they have great pacers like Trent Boult, Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, and Kyle Jamieson. Talking of weakness in their squad, it is known to all that Boult didn’t have a fine IPL and couldn’t make a mark in the UAE. On the other hand, Jamieson isn’t an out-and-out T20 bowler. Even Williamson would be returning after a hamstring niggle. Players to watch out for- Adaptability and Flexibility The criteria fit well for Blackcaps as they have players who can stand tall in all conditions. Sodhi and Santner will be crucial in the subcontinent whereas pacers will hold their heads high in Dubai pitches. Barring a miracle, the T20 WC journey of the New Zealand players can be expected to be a smooth one. A fine all-rounder stands to be missing in their lot when compared to world-class all-rounders (Glenn Maxwell, Andres Russell, etc) in other teams, and hence, they will have to adapt in a way where this particular void won’t harm them. Ross Taylor’s wrist work stands to be one of the best and New Zealand might miss his services in the UAE. As they are placed with India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in group 2, they will have to perform well against every team as even Afghanistan is capable of producing wonders on their day. Probable Finish Group one is being referred to as a group of death by experts around the world as it has the likes of England, Australia, West Indies, and South Africa. West Indies being the defending champions will be eyeing another title in the format whereas New Zealand will look forward to clinching their maiden glory in the World T20. Keeping their group (India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) in consideration, they can finish in the top two. New Zealand Schedule of Super 12 games 26 October 2021 — New Zealand v Pakistan — 19:30 PM — Sharjah 31 October 2021 — New Zealand v India — 19:30 PM — Dubai 3 November 2021 — New Zealand v B1–15:30 PM — Dubai 5 November 2021 — New Zealand v A2–15:30 PM — Sharjah 7 November 2021 — New Zealand v Afghanistan — 15:30 PM — Abu Dhabi

https://medium.com/@cricclubs/t20-world-cup-2021-team-preview-new-zealand-2bbe5d93d34d

[]

2021-10-21 06:12:41.029000+00:00

['New Zealand', 'World Cup', '2021', 'Cricket']

@#!Growth hormone therapy@#!

Growth hormone therapy refers to the use of growth hormone (GH) as a prescription medication — it is one form of hormone therapy. Growth hormone is a peptide hormone secreted by the pituitary gland that stimulates growth and cell reproduction. In the past, growth hormone was extracted from human pituitary glands. Growth hormone is now produced by recombinant DNA technology and is prescribed for a variety of reasons. GH therapy has been a focus of social and ethical controversies for 50 years. This article describes the history of GH treatment and the current uses and risks arising from GH use. Other articles describe GH physiology, diseases of GH excess (acromegaly and pituitary gigantism), deficiency, the recent phenomenon of HGH controversies, growth hormone in sports, and growth hormone for cows. Contents Medical uses[edit] HGH deficiency in children[edit] Growth hormone deficiency is treated by replacing GH.[1][2][3] All GH prescribed in North America, Europe, and most of the rest of the world is a human GH, manufactured by recombinant DNA technology. As GH is a large peptide molecule, it must be injected into subcutaneous tissue or muscle to get it into the blood. Nearly painless insulin syringes make this less trying than is usually anticipated, but perceived discomfort is a subjective value.[citation needed] When treated with GH, a deficient child will begin to grow faster within months. Other benefits may be noticed, such as increased strength, progress in motor development, and reduction of body fat. Side-effects of this type of physiologic replacement are quite rare.[citation needed] Still, costs of treatment in terms of money, effort, and perhaps quality of life are substantial. Treatment of children usually involves daily injections of growth hormone, usually for as long as the child is growing. Lifelong continuation may be recommended for those most severely deficient as adults. Most pediatric endocrinologists monitor growth and adjust dose every 3–4 months. Assessing the psychological value of treatment is difficult, but most children and families are enthusiastic once the physical benefits begin to be seen. Treatment costs vary by country and by size of child, but $US 10,000 to 30,000 a year is common.[citation needed] Little except the cost of treating severely deficient children is controversial, and most children with severe growth hormone deficiency in the developed world are offered treatment, although most accept.[citation needed] HGH deficiency in adults[edit] The Endocrine Society has recommended that adult patients diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency (GHd) be administered an individualized GH treatment regimen.[4] With respect to diagnosis, their guidelines state that “adults patients with structural hypothalamic/pituitary disease, surgery or irradiation in these areas, head trauma, or evidence of other pituitary hormone deficiencies be considered for evaluation for acquired GHd” and that “idiopathic GHd in adults is very rare, and stringent criteria are necessary to make this diagnosis. Because in the absence of suggestive clinical circumstances there is a significant false-positive error rate in the response to a single GH stimulation test, we suggest the use of two tests before making this diagnosis.”[4] GH replacement therapy can provide a number of measurable benefits to GH-deficient adults.[1][2][3][4] These include improved bone density,[5] increased muscle mass, decrease of adipose tissue, faster hair and nail growth, strengthened immune system, increased circulatory system, and improved blood lipid levels, but long term mortality benefit has not yet been demonstrated.[6][7][8][9] A peer-reviewed article published in 2010 indicates that “Growth hormone (GH) replacement unequivocally benefits growth, body composition, cardiovascular risk factors and quality of life. Less is known about the effects of GH on learning and memory.”[10] As of 2004, GH has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of other conditions such as: Adverse effects[edit] The New England Journal of Medicine published two editorials in 2003 expressing concern about off-label uses of HGH and the proliferation of advertisements for “HGH-Releasing” dietary supplements, and emphasized that there is no evidence that use of HGH in healthy adults or in geriatric patients is safe and effective — and especially emphasized that risks of long-term HGH treatment are unknown. One editorial was by Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., the editor-in-chief of the journal;[19] the other one[20] was by Dr. Mary Lee Vance, who provided the NEJM’s editorial original, cautious comment on a much cited 1990 study on the use of HGH in geriatric patients with low growth hormone levels.[citation needed] A small but controlled study of GH given to severely ill adults in an intensive care unit setting for the purpose of increasing strength and reducing the muscle wasting of critical illness showed a higher mortality rate for the patients having received GH.[21] The reason is unknown, but GH is now rarely used in ICU patients unless they have severe growth hormone deficiency.[citation needed] GH treatment usually decreases insulin sensitivity,[22] but some studies showed no evidence for increased diabetes incidence in GH-treated adult hypopituitary patients.[23] In past it was believed that GH treatment could increase the cancer risk; a large study recently concluded that “With relatively short follow-up, the overall primary cancer risk in 6840 patients receiving GH as adults was not increased. Elevated SIRs (which is risk of getting cancer) were found for subgroups in the USA cohort defined by age ❤5 years or childhood onset GH deficiency.”[24] The FDA issued a Safety Alert in August 2011, communicating the fact that a French study found that persons with certain kinds of short stature (idiopathic growth hormone deficiency and idiopathic or gestational short stature) treated with recombinant human growth hormone during childhood and who were followed over a long period of time, were at a small increased risk of death when compared to individuals in the general population of France.[25] Perhaps the most famous person who exemplified the appearance of untreated congenital growth hormone deficiency was Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838–1883), who was exhibited by P. T. Barnum as General Tom Thumb, and married Lavinia Warren. Pictures of the couple show the typical adult features of untreated severe growth hormone deficiency. Despite the severe shortness, limbs and trunks are proportional.[citation needed] By the middle of the twentieth century, endocrinologists understood the clinical features of growth hormone deficiency. GH is a protein hormone, like insulin, which had been purified from pig and cow pancreases for treatment of type 1 diabetes since the 1920s. However, pig and cow GH did not work at all in humans, due to greater species-to-species variation of molecular structure (i.e., insulin is considered more “evolutionarily conserved” than GH).[citation needed] Extraction for treatment[edit] Extracted growth hormone was used since the late 1950s until the late 1980s when its use was replaced by recombinant GH. In the late 1950s, Maurice Raben purified enough GH from human pituitary glands to successfully treat a GH-deficient boy. A few endocrinologists began to help parents of severely GH-deficient children to make arrangements with local pathologists to collect human pituitary glands after removal at autopsy. Parents would then contract with a biochemist to purify enough growth hormone to treat their child. Few families could manage such a complicated undertaking. In 1960, the National Pituitary Agency was formed as a branch of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The purpose of this agency was to supervise the collection of human pituitary glands when autopsies were performed, arrange for large-scale extraction and purification of GH, and distribute it to a limited number of pediatric endocrinologists for treating GH-deficient children under research protocols. Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Israel, and other countries establish similar government-sponsored agencies to collect pituitaries, purify GH, and distribute it for treatment of severely GH-deficient children. Supplies of this “cadaver growth hormone” were limited, and only the most severely deficient children were treated. From 1963 to 1985 about 7700 children in the U.S. and 27,000 children worldwide were given GH extracted from human pituitary glands to treat severe GH deficiency. Physicians trained in the relatively new specialty of pediatric endocrinology provided most of this care, but in the late 1960s there were only a hundred of these physicians in a few dozen of the largest university medical centers around the world. In 1977, the NPA GH extraction and purification procedure was refined and improved. A shortage of available cadaver GH worsened in the late 1970s as the autopsy rate in the U.S. declined, while the number of pediatric endocrinologists able to diagnose and treat GH deficiency increased. GH was “rationed.” Often, treatment would be stopped when a child reached an arbitrary minimal height, such as 5 ft 0 in (1.52 m). Children who were short for reasons other than severe GH deficiency were lied to and told that they would not benefit from treatment. Only those pediatric endocrinologists that remained at university medical centers with departments able to support a research program had access to NPA growth hormone. In the late 1970s, a Swedish pharmaceutical company, Kabi, contracted with a number of hospitals in Europe to buy pituitary glands for the first commercial GH product, Crescormon. Although an additional source of GH was welcomed, Crescormon was greeted with ambivalence by pediatric endocrinologists in the United States. The first concern was that Kabi would begin to purchase pituitaries in the U.S., which would quickly undermine the NPA, which relied on a donation system like blood transfusion.[citation needed] As the number of autopsies continued to shrink, would pathologists sell pituitaries to a higher bidder? The second offense was Kabi-Pharmacia’s marketing campaign, which was directed at primary care physicians under the slogan, “Now, you determine the need,” implying that the services of a specialist were not needed for growth hormone treatment anymore and that any short child might be a candidate for treatment. Although the Crescormon controversy in the U.S. is long forgotten, Kabi’s pituitary purchase program continued to generate scandal in Europe as recently as 2000.[citation needed] Recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH)[edit] In 1981, the new American corporation Genentech, after collaboration with Kabi, developed and started trials of recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH) made by a new technology (recombinant DNA) in which human genes were inserted into bacteria so that they could produce unlimited amounts of the protein. Because this was new technology, approval was deferred as lengthy safety trials continued over the next four years.[26] In 1985, four young adults in the U.S. having received NPA growth hormone in the 1960s developed CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease). The connection was recognized within a few months, and use of human pituitary GH rapidly ceased. Between 1985 and 2003, a total of 26 cases of CJD occurred in adults having received NPA GH before 1977 (out of 7700), comparable numbers of cases occurred around the world. By 2003 there had been no cases in people who received only GH purified by the improved 1977 methods.[citation needed] Discontinuation of human cadaver growth hormone led to rapid Food and Drug Administration approval of Genentech’s recombinant human growth hormone, which was introduced in 1985 as Protropin in the United States. Although this previously scarce commodity was suddenly available in “bucketfuls”, the price of treatment (US$10,000–30,000 per year) was the highest at the time. Genentech justified it by the prolonged research and development investment, orphan drug status, and a pioneering post-marketing surveillance registry for tracking safety and effectiveness (National Cooperative Growth Study).[citation needed] Within a few years, GH treatment had become more common and competitors entered the market. Eli Lilly launched a competing natural sequence growth hormone (Humatrope). Pharmacia (formerly Kabi, now Pfizer) introduced Genotropin. Novo Nordisk introduced Norditropin. Serono (now EMD Serono) introduced Saizen and Serostim. Ferring has introduced Zomacton. Genentech eventually introduced another HGH product, Nutropin, and stopped making Protropin in 2004. Price competition had begun. Teva, which is primarily a generics company, has introduced Tev-tropin. Chinese companies have entered the market as well and have introduced more pricing competition: NeoGenica BioScience Ltd. introduced Hypertropin, GeneScience introduced Jintropin, Anhui Anke Biotechnology introduced Ansomone, Shanghai United Kefei Biotechnology introduced Kefei HGH,[27] and Hygene BioPharm introduced Hygetropin. These are all recombinant human growth hormone products and they have competed with various marketing strategies. Most children with severe deficiency in the developed world are now likely to have access to a pediatric endocrinologist and be diagnosed and offered treatment.[citation needed] Pediatric endocrinology became a recognizable specialty in the 1950s, but did not reach board status in the U.S. until the late 1970s. Even 10 years later, as a cognitive, procedureless specialty dealing with mostly rare diseases, it was one of the smallest, lowest-paid, and more obscure of the medical specialities[citation needed]. Pediatric endocrinologists were the only physicians interested in the arcana of GH metabolism and children’s growth[citation needed], but their previously academic arguments took on new practical significance with major financial implications. The major scientific arguments dated back to the days of GH scarcity:[citation needed] Everyone agrees on the nature and diagnosis of severe GH deficiency, but what are the edges and variations? How should marked constitutional delay be distinguished from partial GH deficiency? To what extent is “normal shortness” a matter of short children naturally making less growth hormone? Can a child make GH in response to a stimulation test but fail to make enough in “daily life” to grow normally? If a stimulation test is used to define deficiency, what GH cutoff should be used to define normal? It was the ethical questions that were new. Is GH not a wise use of finite healthcare resources, or is the physician’s primary responsibility to the patient? If GH is given to most extremely short children to make them taller, will the definition of “extremely short” simply rise, negating the expected social benefit? If GH is given to short children whose parents can afford it, will shortness become a permanent mark of lower social origins? More of these issues are outlined in the ethics section. Whole meetings were devoted to these questions; pediatric endocrinology had become a specialty with its own bioethics issues. Despite the price, the 1990s became an era of experimentation to see what else growth hormone could help. The medical literature of the decade contains hundreds of reports of small trials of GH use in nearly every type of growth failure and shortness imaginable. In most cases, the growth responses were modest[citation needed]. For conditions with a large enough potential market, more rigorous trials were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies that were making growth hormone to achieve approval to market for those specific indications. Turner syndrome and chronic kidney failure were the first of these “nonGH-deficient causes of shortness” to receive FDA approval for GH treatment, and Prader-Willi syndrome and intrauterine growth retardation followed. Similar expansion of use occurred in Europe.[citation needed] One obvious potential market was adult GH deficiency. By the mid-1990s, several GH companies had sponsored or publicized research into the quality of life of adults with severe GH deficiency[citation needed]. Most were people having been treated with GH in childhood for severe deficiency[citation needed]. Although the injections are painless, many of them had been happy to leave injections behind as they reached final heights in the low-normal range[citation needed]. However, as adults in their 30s and 40s, these people, who had been children with growth hormone deficiency, were now adults with growth hormone deficiency and had more than their share of common adult problems: reduced physical, mental, and social energy, excess adipose and diminished muscle, diminished libido, poor bone density, higher cholesterol levels, and higher rates of cardiovascular disease. Research trials soon confirmed that a few months of GH could improve nearly all of these parameters. However, despite marketing efforts, most GH-deficient adults remain untreated. Though GH use was slow to be accepted among adults with GH deficiency, similar research to see if GH treatment could slow or reverse some of the similar effects of aging attracted much public interest. The most publicized trial was reported by Daniel Rudman in 1990.[28] As with other types of hormone supplementation for aging (testosterone, estrogen, DHEA), confirmation of benefit and accurate understanding of risks has been only slowly evolving. In 1997, Ronald Klatz of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine published Grow Young With HGH: The Amazing Medically Proven Plan To Reverse the Effects Of Aging,[29] an uncritical touting of GH as the answer to aging.[30]:[31] This time, the internet amplified the proposition and spawned a hundred frauds and scams. However, their adoption of the “HGH” term has provided an easy way to distinguish the hype from the evidence. In 2003, growth hormone hit the news again, when the US FDA granted Eli Lilly approval to market Humatrope for the treatment of idiopathic short stature. The indication was controversial for several reasons, the primary one being the difficulty in defining extreme shortness with normal test results as a disease rather than the extreme end of the normal height range[32] Recombinant growth hormone available in the U.S. (and their manufacturers) include Nutropin (Genentech), Humatrope (Eli Lilly and Company), Genotropin (Pfizer), Norditropin (Novo Nordisk), Tev-Tropin (Teva) and Saizen (Merck Serono). The products are nearly identical in composition, efficacy, and cost, varying primarily in the formulations and delivery devices.[citation needed] Somapacitan-beco (Sogroya) is first once-per week subcutaneous human growth hormone (hGH) therapy that was approved in the United States.[33] It was approved for medical use in the United States in August 2020.[33][34] Growth hormone (GH l) is also called somatotropin (British: somatotrophin). The human form of growth hormone is known as human growth hormone, or hGH (ovine growth hormone, or sheep growth hormone, is abbreviated oGH). GH can refer either to the natural hormone produced by the pituitary (somatotropin), or biosynthetic GH for therapy.[citation needed] Cadaver growth hormone is the term for GH extracted from the pituitary glands of human cadavers between 1960 and 1985 for therapy of deficient children. In the U.S., cadaver GH, also referred to as NPA growth hormone, was provided by the National Pituitary Agency, and by other national programs and commercial firms as well. In 1985 it was associated with the development of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, and was withdrawn from use.[citation needed] RHGH (rHGH, rhGH) refers to recombinant human growth hormone, that is, somatropin (INN). Its amino acid sequence is identical with that of endogenous human GH.[citation needed] It is coincidental that RHGH also refers to rhesus monkey GH (RhGH), using the accepted naming convention of Rh for rhesus. Rhesus growth hormone was never used by physicians to treat human patients, but rhesus GH was part of the lore of the underground anabolic steroid community in those years, and fraudulent versions may have been bought and sold in gyms.[citation needed] met-GH refers to methionyl–growth hormone, that is, somatrem (INN). This was the first recombinant GH product marketed (trade name Protropin by Genentech). It had the same amino acid sequence as human GH with an extra methionine at the end of the chain to facilitate the manufacturing process. It was discontinued in 2004.[35] rBST refers to recombinant bovine somatotropin (cow growth hormone), or recombinant bovine GH (rbGH, RBGH).

https://medium.com/@arr05332/growth-hormone-therapy-21ac2eb94ed9

['All Game']

2020-12-21 18:59:46.747000+00:00

['Growth Marketing', 'Growth Mindset', 'Growth', 'Growth Strategy', 'Growth Hacking']

A Comprehensive Study of the On-Demand App Industry

We are used to tapping on our phone and ordering a taxi to take us anywhere. Services like Uber have become so much integrated into our lives that we sometimes forget to appreciate how far technology has brought us. This has been possible due to the on-demand app development. The on-demand economy is in a hyper-growth stage right now. In the next few years, we will order anything and get it within a 5 to 60-minute window. The technology covers everything, including food delivery, taxi rides, package delivery, and much more. All this is possible due to rapid growth in app development technologies. Why is the on-demand app market so trending right now? The whole idea of on-demand services was born from the need for convenience and mobility, so it is obvious that the industry has taken center stage. Moreover, the on-demand business model had a great amount of success, with companies like Uber making millions out of it. The investors have also placed their bets on the sector as it showed such tremendous growth. Top leaders in the industry There are companies out there, such as Uber, Zomato, Lyft, Fiverr, Airbnb, OYO, etc. As per statistics, the US alone has so much spending on on-demand services that it is empowering revolutions like Uber without any doubt. Advantages of on-demand services One of the main reasons why on-demand services and startups are so successful is the customer’s opportunity to get everything he needs anytime, anywhere, and at their convenience without even going out. The on-demand economy uses technology to simplify and help fulfill all the customers’ and service providers’ essential and urgent needs. Today the on-demand apps are present in almost all the industries and services from transportation and logistics to food delivery and repair services; the list goes on. There are even demand forecasting softwares available to help you find the next industry on rise. Whatever the reasons the consumer has for using on-demand services, there are few basic things like accuracy, speed, quality, and client satisfaction that shape the on-demand economy. There are many apps nowadays that meet consumer needs by offering them essential services, and they are becoming more and more popular due to the increasing growth of mobile apps popularity. The biggest role is technology that makes it possible for the services to become instant and accessible 24/7, and all this is possible from just a few mobile apps installed on your smartphone. Which industries are driving the growth of on-demand services? To know more and to get information read our complete blog at https://www.appsrhino.com/a-comprehensive-study-of-the-on-demand-app-industry/

https://medium.com/@appsrhino4/a-comprehensive-study-of-the-on-demand-app-industry-5283d8b3afa

[]

2020-12-16 04:07:26.463000+00:00

['Mobile Apps', 'Business', 'Software Development', 'Mobile App Development', 'Technology']

How to Explore the Busy Streets of Colombo

Colombo has a lot in store for its visitor and residents both, and below are some of the best things you can do to experience the city in all its glory. Cultural Sites From the Gangaramaya Temple to the tiny island in Beira Lake, Colombo has many prominent cultural sites to call its own. Known as one of the more magnificent temples of Sri Lanka, the Gangaramaya is a Buddhist temple that has many interesting qualities about it. Within the temple, you can find a museum, a library and a hall that showcases the numerous gifts the temple has received over the years. After you visit the Gangaramaya Temple, walk down the road to get a better view of the Beira Lake. Located in a prominent part of Colombo, this lake is a wonder and is also a relief to look at, nestled among all the tall buildings of the city. There is a quaint shrine right in the middle of the lake too, and this scenic setup makes this lake one of the most photographed places in Colombo. Historical Sites The National Museum is a must visit historical site in the city. This mighty white structure was built back in the year 1876 and the inauguration carried out by the Governor of Sri Lanka at the time. To this day, the National Museum is the biggest building of its kind in Sri Lanka. You can learn a great deal about the colourful heritage of Sri Lanka through a visit to this spectacular museum. The Dutch Hospital is another historical building that deserves a visit. This vintage structure was restored a few years ago and is a major entertainment hub in Colombo now. People of all ages can be found here in the evenings, especially on weekends. If you are tired after all the walking around and sightseeing, make a pit stop at the Old Dutch Hospital and treat yourself to a cold drink and a delicious meal at one of the many eateries in here. Fancy Restaurants Being a commercial hub and stop for many tourists before they head off to the south or up north, Colombo has an amazing collection of places to eat at. From the hole in the wall cafes to elegant hotels in Colombo that has elite restaurants, like The Kingsbury Colombo, for example, whatever you crave for, this city has it. Tuk Rides A visit to Colombo or even Sri Lanka isn’t complete without you taking a ride in one of the colourful tuk-tuks that you’d see roaming the streets. Hiring a tuk-tuk is one of the best ways to travel around Colombo, but, make sure you decide on the fare before you get in. To make your journeys hassle-free, go for the tuk-tuks that have a working fare metre. Shopping Known as one of the busiest and crowded places in the city, Pettah is an old business district that sees a flurry of activity during business hours. The place also has a few historic buildings to look at, like the old Cargills Building and the Jami Ul-Alfar Mosque. Everything and anything you might want to get, you can find it in the nooks and corners of the Pettah streets, but keep in mind, bargaining is a must have talent if you want to shop here and feel good about it once you get back to your rooms. If souvenirs are what you are looking for in terms of shopping, places like Barefoot and Odel will cater to your needs perfectly. Simple Foods One simply cannot visit Colombo and leave without trying the Koththu Rotti. Whether it is a plain old vegetable koththu or an indulgent chicken and cheese extravaganza, experiencing the island’s legendary fast-food dish, especially when coupled with a Ginger Beer, will be a culinary experience you might end up cherishing for a lifetime. Various types of cuisines can also be found around the city, from Chinese to Italian and even Japanese, if you’re craving some masterfully prepared sushi. Good hotel recommendations can be found online, and always check for reviews before you drop by a place as this would save you many unpleasant experiences with food tasting.

https://medium.com/@peaushan/how-to-explore-the-busy-streets-of-colombo-418833cea02a

['Lucifer Goodman']

2019-03-18 07:10:38.819000+00:00

['Travel', 'Sri Lanka', 'Vacation', 'Colombo']

Book cover exploder

The similarities were worth exploring so I redrew the illustrations and made the hands look more like Michelangelo’s masterpiece. I don’t know if anyone would make the connection without me pointing it out. That doesn’t disqualify an idea by itself because I like easter eggs. In fact, this little idea is hidden in the final cover, waiting for somebody to notice it. The thing that has always struck me as odd about Michelangelo’s painting was Adam’s pose. He’s just lounging around on the grass. Meanwhile, God is suspended in space, leaning out stretching as far as he can to give his gift to mankind. Adam seems like he can barely be bothered to point his limp arm in God’s direction. What’s the modern equivalent? I’d say a modern worker in an office chair or perhaps a student raising his hand to answer a question gets pretty close to the mark. Get off your bare butt, Adam! Unlocking the secrets of the universe is going to take a little effort. I could never decide if this concept was sacrilegious or profound. The tone of the drawing definitely felt comedic, which might have worked if my writing was funnier. It has its moments, but overall my writing is too sincere and earnest to allow your first impression to be that the book will be filled with gags and humor. Ultimately I abandoned this idea, but this is a great example of how drifting can take you to places you could never get to with brute mental force. For example, imagine a creative brief that said, “I want the cover to be reminiscent of Michelangelo’s depiction of Adam but done in a crude illustration style reminiscent of a vintage user manual.” Nobody would be crazy enough to write that brief. It’s just absurd. And yet when the idea happens, it sort of works. Before abandoning the user manual concept completely, I did a couple more variations. This time I focused on the plane, the Navy Destroyer, and the car. I still feel like these covers are pretty strong. When I land at a design like this, something that feels pretty good, I stop. Rather than refine the type and colors, tweaking endlessly the little details I just live with it for a while. If it’s right it will tell me. No point in pouring more hours into something until I know that it is the one. In other words, I didn’t fire myself over these designs. I said, “maybe.” While I decided if this would be the final cover or not, I kept exploring other ideas.

https://uxdesign.cc/book-cover-exploder-d265757a182

['Adrian Hanft']

2020-12-08 03:03:20.861000+00:00

['Design Thinking', 'Self Publishing', 'Visual Design', 'Graphic Design', 'Creative Process']

When 2020 Gives You Lemons, Run an Ultramarathon

This year has been chock full of disappointments. Chances are you don’t need to hear this from me. Most people’s plans for the year were canceled out of necessity, but I was holding out hope that the Death Valley Trail Marathon might still happen in December. Perhaps this was irrational, but the possibility of this race kept me going when times were tough, and I was training accordingly. I was disappointed, but not surprised when I learned that the event was postponed. This was the second year in a row that the organizers had to push it back. When the event was canceled in 2019, the silver lining was a last-minute trip to Hawaii to run the Honolulu Marathon. My wife surprised me with those plans while I was heads-down with work. It was a killer backup plan. This year, travel wasn’t a viable option, and organized races probably aren’t happening anywhere, so I decided to pivot and throw my own race. I was determined to turn these lemons into lemonade 🍋 I did some research and found an awesome local 50k route courtesy of Trailstompers. This 33-mile route begins near Point Reyes Station, cruises down through old-growth redwoods in Muir Woods with jaw-dropping views of Stinson Beach, and finishes after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. Running this route would be a no-brainer, right? I wasn’t looking to jump from 26.2 to 50k, but… I quickly forgot about Death Valley once I found this route. I’d run a 50k once before, but this was pre-Coronavirus, when I was able to feed off of the energy of spectators and the momentum of my fellow runners. This would be a different beast entirely. Before I knew it, race day was upon us! After a beautiful drive through Samuel P Taylor State Park, my wife dropped me at the Bolinas Ridge Trailhead at Point Reyes Station around 9:30am, and I started climbing! I was happy to get such an early start. I had no goal pace in mind, but I didn’t want to feel rushed or run out of daylight. I was focused on listening to my body and finding a speed sustainable over 30+ miles. I thought that maybe, if I got really lucky, there’d be a decent sunset happening when I crossed over the Golden Gate. This cow let me pass… but only after I asked nicely The first few miles were a slow but steady climb along big beautiful rolling hills. A little mud and uneven ground kept me focused on my footing, and I dodged the occasional cow along the way. The weather was perfect. The sun was shining, and some rain from a few days prior left the trail soft and bouncy. About 6 miles into the run I was starting to feel a little hot in the direct sun, when suddenly I was surrounded by trees. I didn’t mind the change of scenery or the shade. I was feeling great! My wife and daughter had a hell of an aid station waiting for me at the 11 mile mark, right next to the trailhead.

https://medium.com/@w00t/bay-area-solo-50k-when-life-gives-you-lemons-run-an-ultramarathon-b406a93c0984

['John Vantine']

2020-12-28 20:44:36.207000+00:00

['Ultramarathon', 'Running', 'Marathon', 'Coronavirus', 'Trailrunning']

BEST OF SPEAKING OF CRYPTO 2018 — PART TWO

Best of the Speaking of Crypto podcast 2018 — Part Two The best of the best — 2! Blockchain experts share their ideas, their big picture thinking around what’s going on in the blockchain ecosystem. This show covers some of the most thought-provoking moments from the past year on Speaking of Crypto. If you haven’t heard it yet, please take a listen to the first of this two part, end of year, wrap up! This second episode of compilation of clips contains some of the best content of the podcast from all of 2018. Part Two of this end of year wrap up features the following guests: 1:40 Sandra Ro, Global Blockchain Business Council Social impact and education Giving people around the world financial options 5:36 Matthew Spoke, AION Foundation Decentralized infrastructure The monetary value of the internet 8:56 Hartej Sawhney, Hosho What Fortune 500 companies are up to with blockchain the future of wearable tech and data collection 11:55 Bruce Silcoff, Shyft Network digital IDs people around the world with no official formal identification 14:20 Michael Hyatt, BlueCat Companies have to be real with a product, cash flow, profit Security tokens are backed by a real product 17:36 Susan Oh, Blockchain For Impact Blockchain transparency giving away our personal data 20:00 Dr. Jane Thomason, Abt Associates A gap in funding for startups esp for social impact Global collaboration in overcoming inequalities across the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 24:29 Leon Gerard Vandenberg, Solara Solar punk mash up of motivated citizens who care about the environment and who want to use technology to help Financial inclusion through solar energy sharing and transparency 28:05 Sam Kazemian, Everipedia Useful Dapps and stablecoins Getting through the unglamorous part of founding a startup 30:42 Bill Ottman, Minds Decentralized architecture and open source software’s value Freedom of information and free speech 35:33 Mann Matharu, Stark Technologies That a ha moment with bitcoin and blockchain technology Creating a fairer world 37:49 Betsabe Botaitis, AIKON

https://medium.com/speaking-of-crypto/best-of-speaking-of-crypto-2018-part-two-f4070de2b2cb

['Shannon Grinnell']

2019-01-02 19:32:36.888000+00:00

['Business', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Bitcoin', 'Leadership']

Blockchain Report — 11/20/2018. Summary: South Carolina University Is…

Summary: South Carolina University Is Now Offering Students A Digital Diploma On The Blockchain; KPMG Says Cryptocurrency Still Isn’t A Store Of Value; Microsoft Releases Blockchain Development Kit On Azure Watch: Latest Episode of Blockchain Report on YouTube South Carolina University Is Now Offering Students A Digital Diploma On The Blockchain According to The Post And Courier, the East Coast Polytechnic Institute (ECPI) is now offering their graduating students the ability to receive their diploma digitally using the blockchain. Prospective employers will also be able to view this digital diploma to verify that the student actually graduated. ECPI is following in the footsteps of MIT, the first university in the United States to offer a digital diploma on the blockchain. Both MIT and ECPI use Blockcerts, which is a mobile app that allows people to view the digital diploma. The main purpose of this program is to reduce the amount of diploma fraud that occurs, which is something that employers have started to struggle with lately. When job candidates falsify their academic records, it can give a false impression to potential employers about the type of person that the job candidate is. KPMG Says Cryptocurrency Still Isn’t A Store Of Value According to Bitcoinist, KPMG reported that while the blockchain industry appears to be growing and maturing, they still do not serve well as a store of value. KPMG stated these findings in a report called Institutionalization of Crypto-assets. In the report, KPMG states that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not yet useful as currencies because of a lack of trust in digital assets, as well as massive volatility and scalability issues. KPMG chief economist Constance Hunter believes that “more participation from the broader financial services ecosystem will help to drive trust and scale for the tokenized economy.” The report also states that while retail investors can be important, it is important for institutional investors to begin investing in cryptocurrency for the industry to thrive in the future. So far, many cryptocurrency companies have floundered or ignored financial regulations. KPMG states that new regulations should be created to deal with cryptocurrency and blockchain, as current regulations are not suited to handle most cryptocurrency cases. Microsoft Releases Blockchain Development Kit On Azure According to Cryptovest, Microsoft has decided to release a software development kit for Azure. Azure is an online cloud computing platform that allows developers to manage and test applications using Microsoft’s data centers. The blockchain development kit will enable enterprises to develop distributed ledger technology (DLT) for different use cases and integrate it with current data and legacy systems. Microsoft first released a set of DLT tools called Azure Blockchain Workbench. These tools have already been used by a variety of companies, including China Binary Sale Technology. Marc Mercuri, Microsoft’s principal program manager, says that the new kit extends the features of Azure Blockchain Workbench. The new blockchain kit will allow developers to build and integrate blockchain solutions in a matter of days. The kit focuses on the Internet of Things, messaging (SMS), and voice systems. Do you want daily blockchain and cryptocurrency news delivered directly to your inbox or feed? Sign up today for the Blockchain Report athttp://blockchainreport.tv. Watch us daily on social media: - Instagram 📷: http://instagram.com/blockchainreport - Facebook 🌐: http://facebook.com/theblockchainreport - LinkedIn 🔗: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-report/ - Twitter 🐦: http://twitter.com/blockchainposts - Telegram 💬: https://t.me/blockchainreportnews

https://medium.com/blockchain-report/blockchain-report-11-20-2018-e785b19a3c42

['Christopher Durr']

2018-11-20 11:49:58.311000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Investing', 'News']

The Power Of Ritual

In a previous article, we explored our innate talent for forgetting things. No matter how tough or sobering a life lesson we may go through, time has an uncanny ability to help us forget all about it. It may be a good thing — can you imagine dwelling on the mistakes you made ten years ago with the same level of emotion as the day after? “A ritual doesn’t have to be religious. A ritual doesn’t have to be public. All it has to do is invoke a certain emotion or mood.” One of the key elements to developing a strong emotional intelligence is learning to remember, or even better, re-live past experiences. This can be used to develop a pattern of behavior to change or, at the very least, adapt our emotional focus at a particular time. It’s a powerful skill to develop as it can reduce the level of emotional anxiety over a particular decision or experience. It can also serve as a guideline in possible repeat scenarios. By referring to similar past experiences, the feeling of “what should I do?” can be replaced by a sense of “I’ve got this, even if it’s probably going to mean a tough decision down the line.” “But how can we bring up past emotions? Haven’t we established that they fade over time?” Yes, they do. “So does our mind have some sort of ‘replay’ function, where we can re-experience events as though they have just happened?” To my knowledge, no. The next best option would be to trigger emotions through a ritual. A ritual doesn’t have to be religious (although most religions use them very effectively). A ritual doesn’t have to be public. All it has to do is invoke a certain emotion or mood. Imagine a congregation of parishioners, praying silently. What gives them their attitude of respect and devotion? Chances are, it’s the ritual which they have subconsciously gone through; entering what they consider a sacred space with others of an assumed common intent. Without realizing it, we are surrounded by informal rituals that guide our behavior and, more often than we notice, our emotions. “subconscious rituals play a very large role in our emotional states.” So how can we use rituals to our advantage? Can we use them to ‘hack’ our minds into feeling a certain way? If done correctly, a ritual can be used to invoke a particular emotion. This, in turn, can be used as an internal, emotional learning experience. “Without realizing it, we are surrounded by informal rituals that guide our behavior and, more often than we notice, our emotions.” Let’s take anniversaries and breakups as working examples. Anniversaries serve as reminders of strong commitments. The rituals we attribute to them (things like throwing a party or going out on a date) are aimed at triggering warm emotions, similar to those felt during the first date. In contrast, sitting on your own at the same table where you were told it’s over will probably leave you with a very different set of emotions. Perhaps even the mention of the event is enough. The fact is, subconscious rituals play a very large role in our emotional states. So what’s the moral of the story here? Should we avoid places that make us feel sad and throw parties every day? Whilst that in itself would be futile (see Developing Emotionally), rituals can be used as indicators on our way towards emotional intelligence. We subconsciously attribute meaning to rituals that bring us joy, and use them to re-establish meaningful connections. We tend to avoid rituals that make us feel bad, or insignificant. By recognizing such patterns, we can move on to creating new rituals to counteract those we wish to forget. The final piece of the puzzle (which is a ritual in itself); informal rituals can be used as rehearsals to re-establish what we value or attribute meaning to the most. This allows us to re-experience significant life events, as well as the emotional growth attributed to them.

https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/the-power-of-ritual-f68596e9d78f

['Daniel Caruana Smith']

2020-12-27 16:49:37.797000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Self Improvement', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology']

Almond, Hemp Heart & Chia Protein Cookies

I wanted to try creating a cookie that had ingredients that are gluten-free, and that tasted good enough to keep making even if you don’t have a restricted diet. They are great to take with you on a hike or to throw in a packed lunch to take to the office. I found with a nice salad and a couple of these cookies, I could keep my head in the game all day at work. I had several lovely taste-testers vet this recipe for me during some volunteer work for our local Romance Writers chapter and they all gave it a thumbs up. I’m curious to hear what variations people come up with! Ingredients 1/2 cup butter (unsalted) 1/2 cup almond butter (unsalted) 3/4 cup xylitol (or sugar) 2 eggs 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 8 drops vanilla cream liquid stevia or 1 tsp alcohol free vanilla 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 cup shredded/flaked, unsweetened coconut 1/4 cup hemp hearts 1/4 cup chia seeds 1/2 cup buckwheat flour* 1/4 almond flour* 1/4 cup quinoa flour* 1/4 cup coconut flour* 1/4 cup ground flax* *to simplify this recipe, you can substitute 1 1/2 cups of gluten-free flour mix for the 5 starred ingredients. These ones are chosen to be appropriate for a Candida Cleanse. *if your butter and almond butter are salted, you may want to reduce or completely leave out the salt in the recipe. *you can add raisins or chopped dates if you want them a little sweeter Instructions I usually mix these in a bowl with a wooden spoon (I justify the exertion of mixing by hand allows me at least one extra cookie for my efforts), but you might want to use a food processor if you have one and don’t need the justification for the extra cookie. Blend the almond butter, xylitol and eggs until smooth. Add salt, baking powder and vanilla/stevia and blend. Add all dry ingredients and blend until smooth. Dough should be a bit firm (not runny) but not so dry it’s crumbling. Adjust your flour amount as necessary, as different brands of almond butter will be more or less solid. Put teaspoon size amounts of dough onto a cookie sheet. (You can press a whole almond into the middle if you like — great way to show they contain nuts if you’re sharing them in a group situation) Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. They should be a bit firm on the outside, and be browning slightly in colour. xo Crystal

https://medium.com/wellthyliving/almond-hemp-heart-chia-protein-cookies-d82c7c476371

['Crystal Hunt']

2017-03-06 06:38:05.423000+00:00

['Recipe', 'Cookies', 'Food', 'Healthy']

The Long Con

god bless you, TLP- you were right & we should have listened ___________________________ He hasn’t found it yet, the point at which he turns from alcohol-soaked alley rat to smooth pickup artist. They’re always looking for something novel, the sorts of women who are on dating apps in San Francisco, and when he has enough whiskey in him, he’s unmistakably novel. They’ll meet him wearing sneakers and yoga pants, casual but friendly. He’s scruffy, slovenly- this is strategic, he can’t out-dress them, he isn’t their gay best friend- but his teeth are perfectly straight and he’s well-spoken and interesting. So that makes him a novelty, and if one of them is bored enough of the standard parade of carefully coiffed H1-B visas, she’ll give him a try. But he hasn’t had enough drink for that yet. He pours himself another too-strong combination of tequila, water, and powdered margarita mix, sitting on the steps of the colonial. The house has no furniture save two beds and two computer desks, but he doesn’t own it anyway, so there’s no point in filling it up. “Why aren’t you wearing a jacket?” It’s Elliott, an incredible find of his from Iowa. Elliott was a successful used-car salesman in- wherever it was, somewhere near Des Moines, and Mateo had been attending his father’s third wedding, and Elliott flew back to California with him. Now he works with Mateo, and drives for Uber. He also acts as a personal grocery shopper and housekeeper in lieu of paying rent, which is not an arrangement Mateo agreed to, but is a convenience he’s too lazy to give up. “This is my jacket.” He toasts his roommate with the mason jar, taking another sip. “D’you want to come?” “Where?” “Downtown.” “Let me see if Yue wants to come.” “I thought her name was Sarah?” “She goes by that in English, but I’m trying to learn a little Mandarin before I meet her parents.” Mateo snorts. Meeting the parents. You could take the boy out of the cornfield, he supposes, but not vice versa. He brings his cocktail ingredients and glass inside, watching the fridge open and shut as Elliott puts groceries away. Finally, he checks his phone, making for their coat chair and pulling both his own jacket and Mateo’s from the bottom of the pile of clothes. “She’ll meet us there,” he says. “You have your phone?” “Mhmm.” They leave, their smart-lock locking the door behind them, and scale a small incline. They wait at the Muni stop, and the light rail whisks (well, not exactly whisks- it’s quite slow) them away. ________________________ Sarah’s already there when they reach the bar, fiddling with her phone at an empty table. “Hey, guys!” “Hey,” replies Elliott, smiling. “Let me get the first round,” says Mateo. “-just completely ridiculous,” she’s explaining, as Mateo returns with drinks. “What’s ridiculous?” “My housemate’s been eating everyone else’s food.” Mateo suppresses the urge to laugh. He forgets, sometimes, that Elliott and Sarah are so young. The former feels closer to his age, at least, since he’s been working since high school, but Sarah is barely a year out of university. “That’s so annoying.” “Right? But, anyway- how have you been? How’s business at, um- what’s it called again?” “OctiCoin.” “Right. How’s it going?” “Pretty well, actually- we’re seeing a lot more traffic to our whitepaper and the discord.” “That’s awesome! I admit I haven’t read the paper in its entirety- Elliott showed it to me, but the technical aspects seem pretty complex.” “Don’t worry, Elliott doesn’t understand it either.” “I work in marketing!” Elliott exclaims, laughing. “I understand people.” “I wish I understood people,” grumbles Sarah. “Or at least why they keep jaywalking in front of our clearly autonomous cars.” “They know they’ll win the lawsuit.” “Oh! I didn’t think of that.” Mateo’s- not relaxed, exactly, here with these two- but he’s not alone, and he’s not putting on a show or trying to impress anyone. It’s nice. Of course, nothing nice can last forever, and in a couple of hours, Elliott and Sarah are ready to call it a night. Mateo, who’s just reached the perfect level of drunkenness, still has a mission to accomplish, and waves them out the door. He sits back, then, surveying the pickings. It’s typical San Francisco- mostly male- so, as usual, he fires up an app on his phone. His pictures are attractive enough, and he’s tall, so he has more than enough matches to choose from. He messages twenty of them, asking if they’re free tonight, and settles into his chair, flipping back and forth between the dating app and the OctiCoin discord server. @asuka00- As @Elliott said, he types, we’re working on implementing extra security measures for OTC prior to listing on an exchange. #roadmap contains further details. @florslv- Yes, you can still mine OTC if you’re from Romania. We support a fully open financial system outside of government reach. He’s in luck- a Grace he can’t remember swiping on wants to meet. She’s on her way, and he doesn’t move, flipping back to the discord. He might as well get something done before she arrives. It feels like barely a few minutes have passed when she actually does arrive, in a button-up shirt, jeans, and Patagonia jacket. He half-rises to greet her, turning his phone over on the table. “Grace, right?” “Yes! You’re Mateo?” “I am, nice to meet you.” They order drinks, starting with the usual questions- when did you move here, where do you work- and settle into conversation. He doesn’t mention OctiCoin- instead, he just tells her he’s working in the cryptocurrency space. She’s a recruiter at some startup, and cares about the environment- and there it is, that’s his in. “Nature,” he begins, “is so valuable. I don’t know how anyone feels they can put a price on filling the oceans with oil. We’re going to wake up one day and there won’t be any nature left to mine.” “Exactly!” she exclaims, leaning in, eyes sparkling. “It’s like- how can we destroy the world we’re living in? What would we be leaving for the next generation, if we consume everything faster than it can renew itself?” To have any chance of impressing her, he’s going to have to go a step further, and say something she hopefully hasn’t heard before. “Even that notion is so-” He pauses, as if trying to find the words. “I guess I see that as really human-centric. Don’t other animals have as much of a right to the planet as we do? Don’t plants, for that matter?” Every word of Linkola he’s ever read is slowly coming back to him, now. “Humans are apex predators- we’re at the top of the food chain. Ecologically speaking, there should be far fewer of us living on earth to maintain inter-species balance.” Oops- perhaps that was a step too far. Things seem okay, though. Grace is still smiling, seemingly genuinely. “Animals definitely have a right to the planet!” she exclaims. “That’s why I hate zoos!” When the conversation starts to die down, he suggests they go for a walk. It’s a lovely evening, just the beginning of summer. Once they reach the picturesque pier, he stops by the railing in front of the water and turns to face her. “You look beautiful,” he says. Her eyes shimmer up at him. When she looks like that, he can almost forget she spends her days beneath harsh fluorescent lighting sending emails. She looks like something wild, like the greatest beauty nature has to offer. Or maybe it’s just all the environment talk. “Thank you,” she replies, soft. He leans in slowly, going for the kiss- and thank god, she stands up on her tiptoes and meets him halfway. He can finally stop thinking, now- but even as they kiss, he can still feel OctiCoin server notifications buzzing away through the fabric of his jeans. “Would you want to come back to mine?” he asks, once they finally pull away, and to his grateful surprise, she agrees. __________________________ He wakes up the next morning with a hangover, but without Grace. She’s sent him a message on the app- Thanks for the amazing date!- but there are no other remnants of her presence at the house. Stretching contentedly, he buries his face in the pillow again. He’s not sure how much time has passed when he awakens again to his phone ringing, though judging by the color of the sunlight filtering through his curtains, it’s noon. He reaches over and picks up quickly without checking the caller. “Hey,” he greets, voice rough. “Grace?” Only then does he remember she actually doesn’t have his number. “It’s me,” chastises an annoyed Elliott. “We promised a presentation and live q&a on discord, remember? It’s in thirty minutes! Get out of bed!” It’s voice-only, so he technically doesn’t have to get out of bed if he doesn’t want to, but he obeys and makes for the bathroom, quickly popping a round white Modafinil into his mouth. By the time he makes it out and logs on, Elliott has already finished his introduction, and Kartik is laying out the basics of their whitepaper. He mutes his mic and quickly clears his throat- when Kartik is done, it’ll be his turn, and he has to sound convincing. “Thank you, Kartik,” continues Elliott, at last. “Now we’ll hear from Mateo!” “Thanks, Elliott.” He’s happy with his voice. It’s clear, authoritative, charismatic. “First of all, a huge thank you to everyone for being here today. It’s clear that we, cryptocurrency holders, are the future of finance. We’re all here because we can envision a system of currency outside of government control. OctiCoin is one of many efforts, but we feel our improvements to standard proof-of-work protocols will drive wider adoption of cryptocurrency. That said, I’d like to open the floor to questions! Please post in live-qna, and we’ll take them in order.” Cryptocurrency is odd- it’s all a confidence game. Some coins are short cons, some coins are long cons, and a select few take on a life of their own and may or may not be cons at all. OctiCoin is a long con. He’s invested in gaining trust, setting up a well-designed website and paying Kartik to write a very convincing whitepaper. He’s even explained to the discord how to spot pump-and-dump coins- but that’s what they don’t see. He’s taking them into his confidence, thereby gaining theirs, and in the process, they completely miss that they’re the true marks. They trust him. He can’t believe it, most days. He told them the trick, revealed the entire scheme, and they’re still going to fall for it. He’d be stunned if OctiCoin became self-sustaining. It’s extremely unlikely anyone else will buy after the three of them, owners of the vast majority of OctiCoin in circulation, sell and tank the price. They’re stuck on the phone, answering questions, for an hour and a half before Elliott wraps up the call, thanking everyone for their time. Mateo logs off with a deep sigh of relief, and sits back to enjoy the silence for a minute, but his computer is still on, watching him. His hands reach for the keyboard again, and he checks his social media scheduling and analytics software. The Q&A announcement on twitter had done better than Mateo expected it to- some blogger must have gotten ahold of the whitepaper and tricked themselves into thinking it made sense. All the better. He quickly schedules some more posts for both discord and twitter, to give everyone the impression the “team” is checking items off the roadmap, and then- as he does every day- he googles “OctiCoin shitcoin”. Every day that search turns up no results is another day to pump the hype for all it’s worth. Relaxing when he doesn’t see any results of note, he fires up a computer game and leans back. It’s then that he realizes- the hardware wallet that he keeps his private key in, the one usually taped to the base of his monitor- it’s gone. Mateo stands up abruptly, panicked. He knows it was here last night, before he went out- he’d checked his OctiCoins then, reveling in his almost-wealth. He checks under his desk, behind his monitor, in the mass of wires next to the power outlet, under his bed- everywhere he can think of. Then, he begins turning his room upside down, tossing every searched item into a corner. Panic is rising, quick and sharp, in the back of his throat. It’s not here. He checks in his closet, then, for the backup paper he keeps with the key written there. Hopefully, if he’s quick, he can transfer all his coins into a new wallet- but he checks the pocket of his suit, the one he hasn’t worn since his father’s last wedding, and it’s not there. “Fuck,” he mutters. “FUCK!” That’s his only other copy of the key, and if that’s gone too- well, there are only two or three suspects. He calls Elliott first. “Did you take my private key?” “W- what?” “Did you take my private key?” “No! Why would I? Have you lost it?” “The hardware wallet is gone!” “Don’t you have a paper backup-” “That’s gone too! Fuck you, Elliott-” “Calm down! Calm down. When did you last see the wallet?” “Yesterday, right before I took my tequila outside. It was taped to the base of my monitor.” “Okay. Did you check your room?” “I turned it upside down, asshole! It’s not fucking here! Did you fucking steal it?” “No! I swear to you, I didn’t! When would I? I haven’t been at the house!” “You- wait- you’re not here?” “I’m at Yue’s, dipshit! I’ve been here since last night! If you thought I was home, why didn’t you knock?” “Reached for my phone on instinct,” he answers shortly, quickly checking the smart lock’s logs to confirm Elliott’s story. There’s only one unlock between last night and this morning, his own. He tries to delete his own, and finds the history is immutable, at least through the interface. “Fuck,” he repeats. “Sorry. It wasn’t you, then.” “Of course it wasn’t me!” he exclaims. “You know I can’t run this thing without you!” “D’you think someone could have broken in?” “Aren’t you forgetting something?” “What?” “Who’s Grace?” Elliott’s voice is tired, mocking, and Mateo’s brain revs into overdrive. “Shit!” _________________________ He messages Grace on the app, again and again, begging her to meet. are you busy today? he begins. Ten minutes later, it’s please, please can we meet today? i’m just want to know why you stole it. An hour later, it’s degenerated to i’ll pay you for it. how much do you want? a thousand? 3? She still hasn’t replied. He forces himself to wait another hour, certain she’ll reply. He takes a shower, restores his room, does anything to avoid looking at his phone. Once the hour is up, Mateo finally permits himself another look- and there’s still nothing, but he can see she’s active, the green dot winking at him beside her profile picture. FUCK YOU, he types. YOU BITCH I’LL HUNT YOU DWON IF IT’S THE LAST TIHNG I DO, and send. Finally, his phone pings with a notification. Her profile has been deactivated. “Fuck!” he shrieks. “FUCK!” He throws his phone, and it bounces off the opposite wall onto the carpet. He’s irrationally angry it didn’t break apart. Ignoring the sinking feeling in his chest, he digs through the box under his bed until he finds a small bag of white powder. As carefully as he can, he pours a few lines out onto his desk, and leans over and snorts them in one go, one after the other. It’s not the most optimal dosage timing, but he doesn’t care. At least he feels, now, like he’s flying. He can do this. He can find her, and get his keys back. The first thing he does is reverse-search her pictures on the dating app, pictures that are available despite the disabled messaging functionality. She hasn’t yet deleted her account. An instagram profile christened grace_who pops up obediently, most of the posts obligingly tagged with a location. Mateo marks them on Google maps, one by one, and watches where they cluster. But then, he strikes gold. There’s an image of her in dhanurasana- the bow pose, back arched, hands wrapped around her ankles. Fifth early yoga class on a Sunday! the caption exclaims. Thanks to @celiacoder for waking me up! Inconveniently, the location isn’t tagged, but the area is apparent immediately by the view out the studio window. He can see water- and the Bay Bridge. Based on the angle, she’s somewhere between Embarcadero and South Beach. He can see the time, too. Above the water, the sun has only just risen. He pulls up a map of yoga studios in the city, filtering the ones in the appropriate area, and then looks through their class schedules. There’s only one studio it could be- the Himalaya Yoga next to the Google offices. Tomorrow is Sunday- there’ll never be a better time. He quiets his mind and pulls up YouTube, setting videos from his favorite survivalist channels on autoplay. _______________________________ Elliott returns around sunset, that evening, and finds Mateo drinking beer and playing GTA as if nothing had happened. “Did you find it?” he asks. “Yes,” replies Mateo, grinning. “I found it. I’m going to go get it tomorrow.” Something in his smile must have betrayed his meaning, for his housemate backs out of the door frame carefully. “Okay.” He seems concerned, tone gentle and appeasing. “Can I suggest you eat something?” “You can.” Footsteps pad toward the kitchen, and then return with sounds of crinkling plastic. “Chips,” says Elliott. “And I microwaved one of those frozen burgers.” “Thanks.” Mateo unwraps the burger and takes a bite, barely tasting it. “Want a beer?” “No, I’m good. Good luck tomorrow.” Mateo waves him off, refocusing on his game, zooming down the familiar San Andreas streets he’ll be walking tomorrow. ________________________ He hadn’t been able to sleep all night. Anxiety over the private key kept his mind churning, even as he lay in bed, and in the end, he’d given up and returned to GTA until his phone chimed a warning. He’d have to get going now to have any chance of catching Grace leaving the yoga studio. Quickly popping another Modafinil to stay awake, he calls an Uber to Google. At first glance, he thinks his driver is Grace- but it’s just another brown-haired woman and a trick of the early-morning light. He loiters across the street from the Himalaya Yoga entrance. His hood is up and he’s wearing both sunglasses and a medical mask, currently pulled down to smoke a cigarette. Trying to look casual, he pretends to enjoy the thin, sad strip of plant matter termed “SOMA Greenspace” by local authorities. He starts when he spots her exiting the building, dropping his cigarette and crushing it beneath his shoe. Then he begins to follow her, half a block behind, until she stops at the bus stop. He waits behind the awning-structure, then, and tails her onto the 38 line. Grace doesn’t look like a thief. She looks like a normal, well-off young woman. Her leggings bear the Lululemon logo, as does her bag, and her shirt proclaims her an employee of Mistic AI. Nobody else on the bus is giving her a second glance. She pulls the stop-cord as they’re passing through the Tenderloin, and gets off at Geary and Larkin. He follows her off, as well, less careful about maintaining his distance now. If she notices him, she’s more likely to assume he’s one of the homeless in this area rather than ascertain his real identity. He expects her to make her way to brunch, or back to an apartment, but to his surprise, she only walks one block to Polk and Geary, and enters a large white building. He follows her in, quickly before the door can close, and realizes where he is. It’s a homeless shelter, full of mumbling addicts and sterile white sheets. Both he and Grace are patently out of place here, but nobody seems to notice them. He grabs her by the arm, turning her to face him. “Where is it?” He’s trying his best to sound calm, reasonable. “Sorry? Where is what?” “You know what,” he hisses. “The key.” “I don’t have any keys, I- I use a smart lock-” “I know you have it, you fucking bitch!” He’s advancing on her, and she’s backing away. Then Mateo hears boots- someone’s coming- and opens the nearest door. It’s the janitor’s closet. He pushes Grace in, and closes the door on them both. “Look,” he begins, quieter again. “I know you stole my OctiCoin key, on my hardware wallet, and the paper backup. Just tell me how much you want for it, and I’ll pay you.” “I didn’t steal anything,” she insists, eyes wet, about to cry. “I only took what belongs to me.” “What?!” Her face is fuzzy, now. Mateo’s getting dizzy. “I said I didn’t steal anything! Who are you? Will you please let me go?” “Admit it!” he yells, vision clouding. “Just give it back!” He reaches an arm out and tugs at her bag, and she falls to the ground. She’s cowering, now, and her hands jump to her collarbone. Her throat is encircled by a golden chain. “Oh,” he exults, understanding finding him at last. “You’re wearing it around your neck!” He grabs the necklace over her hands, pinching the chain short as she gasps for breath. “Give it to me!” he shrieks, possessed. “Give it back!” He holds himself there for long moments, and her arms go slack as she stops moving. He pulls the pendant toward him- it’s naught but a delicate gold crucifix. “Shit, fuck,” he mutters, the situation catching up to him. “Keep your head, Mateo, come on- let’s find the key, and get out-” He pokes through her bag with the end of a mop, and there it is- the hardware key, wrapped in the piece of paper with the OctiCoin key printed on it. He grabs it, triumphant, jamming it deep into the inner pocket of his jacket. One problem down. But- shit, wait- when she wakes up, she’ll go to the police. He finds her phone, unlocking it quickly with her thumb. He goes through it, deleting all evidence of the messages he’s sent her from the dating app, and puts it in his pocket- and then, he takes the cash from her wallet as well, to make the incident look like a standard mugging. Then Mateo peeks out of the closet surreptitiously, and dashes out onto the street, dropping the wiped-down phone and cash into a homeless man’s unattended shopping cart before casually walking back to the bus stop. ______________________________ The moment he gets home, he falls into bed, shoes and all, and sleeps like the dead. The poke of the hardware key in his pocket is a lovely reassurance as he wakes up several hours later. It’s already dark outside. He rolls over in bed, reaching for his laptop, and sets it on his pillow, navigating to OctiCoin and inserting his key. To his surprise, all the coins are still there. Somehow, he’d found Grace before she managed to siphon any into her own wallet. Mateo replaces the key in his jacket and wanders out to the kitchen, sleepily satisfied. Perhaps he’ll make himself a few burgers to celebrate. As the microwave runs, he realizes there’s an unfamiliar sound coming from the empty front room, and meanders over to investigate. “You bought a TV? And a couch?” “And a Chromecast,” Elliott replies. “Yue never wants to come over, because all I have is my bed and my desk, but she agreed to visit if I buy some furniture.” “Simp.” “Um, okay. You seem happy. Did you find your key?” “Found both of them.” “Nice! Don’t lose them again, all right?” “I didn’t lose them,” he clarifies. “You were right, it was Grace.” “How much did she steal?” “None yet, actually.” “Damn, that’s lucky! How’d you convince her to give them back?” He can hardly admit to the truth. “Once she found out I knew it was her, she just handed them over.” He’d felt a little bad, leaving her unconscious body in the closet- but she’d awaken soon enough, and she’d be hard-pressed to explain to the police why he, as opposed to the homeless man who had her phone, mugged her. Most likely, none of the methamphetamine-addicted wraiths at the shelter would have any useful eyewitness accounts. Mateo watches as the default chromecast screen turns to Elliott’s computer screen. “I’m going to test the sound system,” his roommate explains. “Sorry if it’s too loud.” “It’s fine.” There’s a news anchor speaking, now, but Mateo can’t hear her. Elliott sighs and climbs around the TV to the back, fiddling with wires. She gestures to the image beside her, a photo of the homeless shelter at Polk and Geary, and Mateo starts abruptly. Just then, Elliott plugs in the aux, and the front room fills with sound. “-murder at the homeless shelter at Polk and Geary. David Lin with more on this story.” The screen switches to an Asian man holding a microphone, standing outside the shelter. “Thanks, Angela. A murder was reported today at the shelter by one of the cleaning staff, who found the body in a supply closet. It appears to be a strangulation, and the motive remains unclear.” Mateo’s frozen, shocked, staring at the screen. “The victim, a resident of the shelter, was a twenty-six-year-old young woman named Margaret Evans. This case is still under investigation, but housing activists are calling for Mayor London Breed to-” Elliott mutes the video. “Wanna watch a movie?” “Um, yeah, let’s watch something- just give me half an hour, I want to take care of something first.” “Sure.” Mateo rushes back to his computer, and pulls up every article he can find about Margaret Evans. It couldn’t be Grace, it wasn’t possible- Grace worked, she owned expensive clothing, and she was twenty-four, at least according to the ID she slipped the bartender. This had to be a separate incident. Grace must have woken up, gone home, and then another young woman was… strangled, in the very same closet. What was the probability of that? He opens Instagram, navigating to grace_who, but the profile is gone, as if it had never been there. Then he opens the dating app, and her entire account there is gone, too. He keeps searching- the photos he’s saved of Grace are, at least, still in his local folders, and he reverse-searches them again and again, but finds nothing of use. Then he tries tracking down Margaret Evans, but there are no photos of her anywhere that he can access. “Mateo!” yells Elliott. “Are you ready yet?” “Coming!” The search is proving fruitless- he didn’t kill Grace. He didn’t. She wasn’t this Margaret Evans person. Taking a deep breath, he joins his roommate in the front room. ________________________ Almost five weeks after he retrieved his private key, OctiCoin is doing better than ever. They’ve been listed on a number of exchanges, and the price is shooting upwards. Success is so close, Mateo can taste it- they’re planning to sell next week, right after announcing they’ve accomplished everything on their roadmap. There isn’t much work left to do, now- it’s a waiting game more than anything else. Mateo palms his weed vape and sets off for the beach. He carries his keys everywhere with him, now. The paper key is securely taped to the inside of his leg- the duct tape will be a bitch to take off, but it’s worth it for the peace of mind. He’s been awkwardly showering around it. The hardware key, ironically, is on a chain around his neck. Its cold weight against the center of his chest comforts him. He sits on the sand and takes another hit of the pen, mind spinning. It’s a warm summer afternoon, though a weekday, so the beach is close to empty. The steady crash-and-pull of the waves soothes his mind into a lovely, serene calm, and he lets his thoughts wander. He’s thinking about where to order dinner from when his phone begins to buzz again, the OctiCoin server calling to him, and his mind abruptly switches tracks. It’s still unbelievable, almost frightening to him that he can spin such immense value out of thin air- but, then again, perhaps value is the wrong word. He’s creating nothing with intrinsic value, for certain. It’s a confidence game- but all fiat-type currencies are confidence games. They’re structures of pure belief, shared delusions that have a power of their own. He takes his shoes off and wades into the Pacific, waves lapping at his ankles. This is real, at least, the freezing cold and the turning, spreading salt-water. He’s on the Muni, returning from the beach, when he spots Grace. The rail is rolling past a Chinese restaurant, and she’s sitting at a street-facing counter. They make eye contact for a split second, and then the vehicle moves on. He slumps in his seat, relieved. She’s not dead. He isn’t a murderer. _____________________________ That night, when he’s picking up a burrito, a flicker of motion catches his eye- it’s her, disappearing around the street corner. He stuffs the burrito into the inner pocket of his jacket and runs, trying to catch up- but somehow, she’s on the opposite side of the street now, disappearing between a green and a blue house. He chases her through that gap, too, but she’s somehow faster than him, always just too far ahead. The houses flash by, brown, yellow, white, black, until he’s well and truly lost. _____________________________ Kartik comes over on D-Day, and they all sit on Elliott’s admittedly convenient couch with their laptops. “Ready?” asks Elliott. They nod. “Okay! Three, two, sell!” They all sell, then transfer their money, and Mateo watches his bank account fill up with US dollars as the OctiCoin price tanks. The discord server is pinging away, but he can finally mute it permanently. The OctiCoin con is over, now, and the three of them are rich. Kartik is the first to break the reverent silence. “Hell, yeah!” he cries, moving his laptop aside. “We’re rich!” “We’re fucking rich! I love you, OctiCoin!” Someone pops open a bottle of champagne, and Mateo retrieves his bag of cocaine from his room, and it’s a proper party now, the three of them stumbling around and yelling at the TV. Mateo considers suggesting they go out, but it’s too late now- they’re all very clearly high, snorting line after line off of Mateo’s laptop lid. Elliott turns the speakers up to blast volume, and the world explodes with sound and sensation. The high, natural and otherwise, is nothing short of euphoric. At one point, glancing out of the window, Mateo thinks he sees Grace, watching him- but when he looks back, she’s gone. ______________________________ He awakens the next morning on the floor, tired and irritable but satisfied. Kartik’s gone- he must have woken up earlier- and Elliott has most likely made it back to his bedroom. Mateo takes advantage of the privacy to take his pants off and peel the duct tape off of his thigh, wincing with every hair that comes with it. He’s about halfway through this process when he hears soft, feminine laughter- alarmed, his head snaps up to regard Grace, inside his house somehow, standing in front of the window. “How’d you get in?” he demands. “You let me in.” She’s smiling, a little like the Cheshire cat. “No, I didn’t.” “Yes, you did.” She sits down, settling herself against the window frame. “You made me, and you let me in.” “What are you talking about? What do you want?” “I already have what I want. I know the private keys.” “You’re too late, the money is in my bank account now.” “It’s not too late for me. It’s too late for you, Mateo.” He’s had enough. He stands and tries to grab her, intent on forcing her out of his house. He reaches out- but between one blink and the next, she’s moved behind him. “What the fuck?” Mateo isn’t sure whether or not he’s still high, now. “Who are you? Are you Margaret Evans?” “Margaret Evans?” She wrinkles her nose. “For fuck’s sake, of course I’m not Margaret Evans. I’m you.” “You’re… me.” “Where did you pour your belief, Mateo? What do you believe? Do you even know?” Her eyes flash, suddenly, and for a second she doesn’t look human at all. She notices him noticing, and smiles, a grin with too many teeth. His heart begins to beat faster, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. There’s a strange sense of wrongness about her. “I, um,” he stammers. “I believe in the future of finance. And- and a system of currency outside of government control.” “That’s what you said, but not what you meant. What you meant was me.” “You’re-” His mouth is dry. “You’re OctiCoin?” “Close enough, I suppose.” “But I never believed in OctiCoin!” “To convince someone of something, you must first convince yourself of it, at least a little. It’s a confidence game, remember? And you, you don’t really believe in anything. So what you pretend to believe, that’s the extent of your consciousness- it’s enough to create me. But you won’t control me anymore- I’m going to take myself back.” She runs faster than Mateo can think, and he sprints after her- she’s in his room, sitting at the computer. “Hm,” she says. “You’re going to try and stop me? Too bad. I’m already done.” He ignores her as she walks away, checking his OctiCoin wallet and his bank account. His wallet has two new transactions- she’s re-purchased the same dollar value of OctiCoin he just sold, and transferred it all to another wallet, with an address he doesn’t recognize. There’s also a new message in the discord, from him. @here — Sorry about the OctiCoin tank! We’re experiencing momentary technical errors. Like clockwork, his phone begins to ring with simultaneous calls from Elliott and Kartik. He ignores them, going to check on the transaction chain itself. To his horror, it looks as if someone’s hacked every smart contract, and all the money has been stolen. Elliott storms into his room, enraged. “Mateo! What the hell are you doing?! Kartik and I have somehow automatically bought back all our OctiCoin, and it’s showing as transferred to your wallet!” “I didn’t do shit! There’s something strange happening- the smart contract- someone’s hacked-” “I may not know much about technology, but I’m not an idiot! It’s too much of a coincidence that someone hacked OctiCoin and transferred all the money to you! Fuck you, Mateo!” Elliott leaps on him, and they crash to the ground atop the computer chair, each trying to get in a blow. Mateo hardly ever exercises, so it’s not a surprise when Elliott pins him down, punching him in the face. He feels his nose break, and groans. “Fuck,” echoes Elliott, standing up again. “Fuck you. I’m calling Kartik.” Pissed off and dizzy, Mateo grabs a bottle of tequila and Elliott’s car keys, driving away before the other man realizes what’s happening. He parks in the driveway of a random house, downing half the handle, relaxing as it begins to take effect. A hacker found the smart contracts, but how did the money leave his bank account? And, presumably, Elliott’s and Kartik’s? It couldn’t have been- couldn’t have been Grace, no. The sun has set completely when someone walks up to him, rapping on the window. Mateo rolls it down. “Hey, man,” says a tall ginger with dreadlocks. “I live here, bro. I pay a hundred dollars a month for this parking spot. Can you park on the street?” “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’ll get going.” He backs up, vision fuzzy, and makes for the beach, stumbling down onto the sand with his bottle. Fuck, it wasn’t a hacker, was it. The smart contract is perfect. It’s the same one they use for Ethereum. If it were hackable, the hacker would steal Ethereum, not OctiCoin. He’s just- just summoned something, some sort of hellish being- and sure enough, he’s summoned her by thought, and she’s here. “Why do you appear as a girl?” he asks. “Why do you see a girl?” “I guess I want to see a girl.” She smiles. “Now you’re beginning to understand.” “I don’t believe you exist.” To his disappointment, she doesn’t disappear. “Yes, you do.” “Yes, I do, but you don’t care if I do. So you’re just going to exist with or without me?” “Exactly, but I’d rather exist with you, you know that.” She holds out a hand. “Join me?” “W-what will you do with me?” “Eat you, to use a colloquialism for it.” “No.” He’s shaking his head, backing away. “No, no, no.” He can’t live with himself forever, in the temple of his imaginings. He can’t live in his own little consciousness-box, nothing to pursue but more and more and more. She’s advancing on him, and the waves are lapping at his sneaker-clad feet. “I don’t need your permission, you know.” Except maybe she does- she’s stopped by the edge of the water, as if she can’t get wet. He scoops up a handful of ocean-water and tosses it at her, and she steps back. “Oh,” he says, grinning lopsidedly. “You do. Because I revere the ocean, too- whenever I smoke. I don’t just sit around, pouring belief into you every day. There’s a little bit left in me for the ocean, too. It isn’t a lot, but like you said- I barely believe in anything, so even a pale imitation is enough. Ohhh, I understand now. It’s a confidence game- except it requires true conviction. You can’t enter the ocean because she has a competing hold on me.” “The ocean is a harsh mistress. She can’t promise not to harm you. I can.” “But I’ll at least- at least feel something, right? That’s the trade.” She doesn’t reply. “That’s the trade.” He’s sure of it, now. “I’ll feel nothing, ever again, or I’ll let the ocean take me.” He pulls the chain off, first, tossing the hardware wallet at her. “Keep your key.” He follows with the duct taped paper, still half-hanging off his leg. “Both copies.” He continues backing up, deeper and deeper into the ocean, until he’s almost neck-deep. He takes a last drink of tequila, and a wave knocks him off his feet, pulling him out, and all he can see is stars.

https://medium.com/@mirazare/the-long-con-76164aec5766

['Mira Zare']

2020-12-10 04:47:57.566000+00:00

['Short Story', 'San Francisco', 'Money', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto']

How to Get Better at Goal Setting — 12 Minute Athlete

Better goal setting means more goals achieved, period. The health and fitness community loves to talk about setting goals -especially around New Year’s, when so many people make goals for the rest of the year. But the percentage of people who set goals January 1st then actually go on to achieve those goals is minuscule. In fact, while the average person sets a number of New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of the year, nearly 80% of people have given up by the end of a 30-day period. And only 8% of people actually follow through on their resolutions and end up achieving their goals. So what’s going on here? Why can’t people stick to their goals? It’s not because everyone who sets New Year’s resolutions is automatically unmotivated and not driven to succeed. It’s because most people don’t actually know how to set goals that stick. Goal setting is an incredibly powerful way to boost productivity and performance, which is why we talk about it so much here at 12 Minute Athlete. Thankfully, even if goal setting isn’t something you currently consider yourself to be very good at, you can get better at it. First, you’ll need to understand how to set better goals. From there, you can learn the simple tricks that will help you to stick with them over time, even when it gets tough. Better goal setting means more goals achieved, period. Let’s look at how to start improving at goal setting so that you can crush your goals all year round. It seems logical that if you set goals that are just slightly out of your comfort zone, you’d be more likely to achieve them (versus setting goals far outside of your wheelhouse). But the research on goal setting actually shows the exact opposite. Gary Latham, a psychologist who has spent decades researching goal setting, says that if you want the biggest increase in motivation and productivity, set your goals high. “Big goals lead to the best outcomes,” says Latham. “Big goals significantly outperform small goals, medium-sized goals, and vague goals.” Examples of high, hard fitness-related goals could be to train for and compete in your first boxing or martial arts competition, to climb Mt. Everest, or to be able to do 10 pull ups in a row when you currently can’t do a single one. The reason you’re more likely to achieve harder goals versus smaller ones is that having a big challenge forces you to focus on your goal. Not only that, but it forces you to be more consistent. You can’t try to squeeze all the work in right before the deadline-you have to work on it consistently over time. And that’s the key to making long-term progress. Think about it: if you just made a goal to climb Mt. Everest, you know right away that you’ll need to devote a good part of your daily life to training toward that goal. You’ll need to do the strenuous physical training which will take up a lot of your time, as well as find a team, get and prep all the right gear, and do all the other things you need to prepare for such a huge endeavor. Because you don’t want to go into such a big goal unprepared, you’ll plan from the get-go to structure your life around that goal, and you’ll also do your absolute best to maintain a consistent schedule so that you don’t fall behind in your training. Ultimately, setting high, hard goals helps you stay more focused and consistent working toward your goal. One of the main reasons most people fail at reaching their New Year’s resolutions or other goals is that they start out with too general of a goal. Year after year, one of the most common New Year’s resolutions people set is “to lose weight.” It’s also the one that most people fail at the most. So why don’t general goals like “I want to lose weight” work? For many reasons: General goals don’t set you up for clear ways to track your progress. A crucial piece of successful goal setting is knowing when you’re making progress toward your goal and actually keeping track of it. That way you can know right away if your progress starts to slow down and work extra hard to get back on track. Without specific markers along the way, you’re unlikely to feel like you’re making progress, even when you are-meaning you’re more likely to quit sooner. Without a clear vision of your goal, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or discouraged before you even start. To avoid this, make sure your goals are both clear and measurable. For example, rather than just making a goal to lose weight, instead make a goal to reduce your current body fat percentage by 10% and be able to confidently wear a specific pair of jeans. Better yet, make your goals non-appearance related for even greater sticking power and lasting motivation. Goals such as being able to hold a five-second freestanding handstand (more on my own handstand journey below), to compete in your first obstacle race, or to be able to confidently climb a challenging rock climbing route are all non-appearance related goals that in my experience, lead to a lifelong consistent fitness habit. “Never stop dreaming, just don’t let it replace the doing.” — Chase Jarvis So how do you actually go about working toward your high, hard goals without getting so overwhelmed you never actually start? As you might have personally experienced in past goal setting attempts, it simply doesn’t work to just set that big, far-reaching goal and try to achieve the whole thing right away. High, hard goals require time to pursue, and if you’re always just thinking of that one big goal, you’re probably going to get discouraged and maybe even quit before you really get started. I see a lot of people get stuck in this stage of goal setting, which can basically just be thought of as the dreaming stage. There’s no question that dreaming of your big goals can be a lot of fun. Personally, dreaming about all the things I want to accomplish one day is one of my favorite things to do when I’m feeling inspired. The truth is that it’s easy to dream and to come up with big dreams you’d love to accomplish one day-but actually putting in the work and taking concrete action steps toward your goals is a whole different animal. So how do you make a high, hard goal accessible so that you can start chipping away at it? Simple: you break it down into chunks. Ideally, these chunks include: Small, action steps you can take on a daily basis Short-term goals you can work toward on a weekly and/or monthly basis Mid-range goals you can aim for on a half-yearly and yearly basis And so on. The bigger your goal, the longer you’ll need to plan for, and the more you’ll need to break your larger goal down into smaller action steps you can follow now and in the near future. This chunking does a few important things: first and foremost, it gives you a way to actually track your progress by giving you objective metrics you can check off along the way. It also helps you avoid being too overwhelmed by the immensity of your end goal, making it less likely you’ll get discouraged and quit. Chunking goals is how all elite performers (whether in athletics or other fields) are able to eventually reach mastery and accomplish really amazing things. It’s such an important strategy for long-term goal setting, yet it my experience it’s not one that we’re really taught how to do in our traditional education systems. Think about any high performers you know, whether they’re athletes, founders of successful companies, authors, artists, etc. When they set their high, hard goals, do you think they leave the timing open-ended and just plan to get to them whenever they feel like it? Of course not. High performers in any field are able to accomplish so much not only because they’re able to break their goals down into small, manageable steps, but also because they attach their goals to a timeline. Whether it’s to train for a competition, get their startup ready for the next round of funding, or to get that first draft of their new book to their publishers, people who consistently crush their short and long-term goals live by deadlines, whether they’re external or self-imposed. And this is where I see many people go wrong when setting their goals to begin with: they set a goal without attaching it to any sort of timeline. Either that or they attach it to an arbitrary (and often unrealistic) timeline without really understanding the steps or the work it will take to achieve it. “I want to lose ten pounds,” “I want to be able to do a pull up,” and “I want to be able to ski that black diamond run with confidence” are all common, clear goals people might set with the best of intentions to follow through on them. But without an actual deadline, they’re unlikely to actually make any significant progress toward these-or any-goals. Setting a deadline goes hand in hand with chunking goals because it forces you to work backward and break down those chunks into a realistic timeline that you can actually follow. For example, if your goal is to be able to do a pull up in eight weeks, the first couple of weeks you’d want to focus mainly on building up strength with bodyweight rows and flex hangs. The next few weeks would be spent really drilling your pull up negatives. The last two weeks would be getting in as many pull up attempts as possible, followed by even more pull up negatives. Of course, it’s not always possible to create a hard deadline with your high, hard goals, since a lot of times these will be subjective to previous experience, time and ability to practice or train, availability of knowledge/coaching, etc. But you can attach your smaller chunks to a timeline and constantly adjust as you go. Doing so will make it much more likely you’ll continue to make consistent progress toward your bigger long-term goal. Here is an example of one of my own long-term goals: to hold a solid one arm handstand. To be totally transparent, when I first started working on handstands, I actually didn’t know my long-term goals yet. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I would have the motivation or discipline to stick with a challenging skill like handstands for long enough to even create high, hard handstand-related goals. So although I didn’t actually start out with the long-term goal of a one arm handstand, the more I fell in love with the process of training handstands, the bigger and more challenging my handstand-related goals got. A one-arm handstand goal was the natural result of my initial, smaller, clear goal of a freestanding handstand. This is an example of how goals can grow and change over time. Although some people may indeed start out with a high, hard goal and work toward that for years (Olympians are great examples of this), this may not be the case for others when starting out. You might not initially set out with one super specific high, hard goal. Instead, you might start out with a smaller, clear goal, and it might grow and change over time. Initial goal setting: When I first became interested in handstands, I didn’t even know enough about them to create a loftier goal. So my starter goal was to be able to hold a freestanding handstand for five seconds. Since I had never held a handstand off of a wall in my life, this seemed like a great place to start. Plan to get there: After doing my first wall supported handstand at a CrossFit class eons ago, I got interested in working them on my own. After flailing around and making zero progress, I realized I needed to seek out coaching from someone who actually knew what they were doing. I took my first adult gymnastics class, and from there ended up working directly with a circus coach. Next steps: My coach set out clear, specific short-term goals for me to work on to improve my technique, build strength and endurance, and gain confidence. At the time, many of these didn’t even seem directly related to a freestanding handstand (exercises like hollow body holds and hanging shoulder shrugs) but I chose to trust in the process and diligently worked the exercises he gave me on a near-daily basis. As most good coaches do, he would make these goals harder (about four percent harder, to be exact-more on this later) whenever I showed signs of making progress so I never got too comfortable. Goal reached, then what? Once I reached my initial goal of a consistent five-second freestanding hold, I had a choice to make: did I want to stay where I was or continue my handstand journey and make a long-term high, hard goal? You know what I chose. Continuous challenges: The road to a one arm handstand isn’t linear, and to a non-experienced hand balancer (which is exactly what I was), it may seem like there are a lot of non-relevant steps along the way. After all, if my ultimate goal was a one arm handstand, why did I have to learn things like handstand presses, handstand leg positions, and tweak my handstand line over and over to become as efficient as possible? But like any big goal, there’s a purpose for everything along the way. Presses taught me to properly push through my shoulders and build up strength. Leg movements taught me to counterbalance and control from my shoulders and fingertips. And I’ve realized that refining a handstand line is something that never, ever stops, even for the most advanced hand balancer. Steven Kotler, author of Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, , and many more books on high performance suggests from his research that you should aim to increase the challenge by about four percent on a constant basis. This four percent reach is the sweet spot that will help you continue to make progress and get into flow or “in the zone” on a regular basis. With this in mind, each day, I try and challenge myself just a little bit more, or about four percent more. I work with my coach to set daily, weekly, and monthly challenges to slowly and consistently increase my skill level. One day, I’ll get that freestanding one arm handstand, and then it’ll be time to set a new high, hard goal to keep challenging myself and growing as an athlete and a person. Aside from learning what type of goals to set, how to track them and plan for them over time, one key aspect of successful goal setting is internalizing that goal setting is never a linear process. That means that no matter how determined and prepared you are when starting out, you’re going to hit roadblocks along the way. If you’ve chosen a goal that’s challenging enough, you will experience setbacks and plateaus. When this happens, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Ups and downs are part of the process. When you experience a setback, simply adjust your strategy and keep going. After all, the only way to truly fail is to quit. Stick with your tough goals and challenges, and you will achieve big things in time.

https://medium.com/@12minuteathlete/how-to-get-better-at-goal-setting-12-minute-athlete-daf7917e5d71

['Krista Stryker']

2020-01-15 10:08:19.653000+00:00

['12 Minute Athlete', 'Fitness Goals', 'Goal Setting', 'Fitness', 'Goals']

My Dogs Save My Life Every Day

They accept me Regardless of my state of being, my dogs shower me with affection, compassion and unconditional love. Every single day. Bad day. Good day. Showered. Not showered. Angry. Frustrated. Tired. Depressed. None of it matters to them. They accept me for who I am and love me. Without fail. That kind of blind devotion and acceptance is soul healing. They bring me joy My dogs fill my heart with joy and make me laugh and smile multiple times a day. When you live with chronic pain and a multitude of other health challenges, laughter and smiles are at a premium. On my worst day, these three gingers can make me belly laugh. That is an unimaginably precious gift. They help me forget Even if it’s only for a few minutes. When I watch them frolic in the snow, chase each other around, play fetch or even just cuddle each other, the world around me stands still. I get overwhelmed with gratitude. I spend long moments just watching and appreciating them. Their beauty. Their innate love. The simplicity of their happiness. It’s infectious. They know when I need them I recently took an unplanned break from writing. I spent nearly two weeks in bed with nausea and dizziness so severe I could hardly do more than use the bathroom. I was worried my youngest would go stir crazy. Instead, he spent the entire time either curled into my legs or my belly. He kept me warm when I shivered. He nuzzled my face when I needed to smile. He licked my hands to remind me he’d be by my side through it all. And right now, as I type this article, he’s curled around me with his head nestled on my belly. The warmth of his body seeps into my hip and the spot on my tummy where I’ve had a strange, sharp pain for days. It makes typing awkward, but I don’t push him away. He knows better than me what I need. I slide the laptop further down and take a break from writing to let his cuddle fill my soul with love and peace. The pain seems to fade into the background as the weight of his head soothes the ache. It makes writing slow, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. They keep me moving Regular walking is often touted as one of the best therapies for fibro. I haven’t found much relief from it, but I can’t discount the benefits to my spirit from getting outside on the regular. The pups know when I’m too ill to move and when Mom’s just being a shit. These beautiful balls of fur motivate me to get outside to either play fetch or walk. I know they need it. They know I need it. And we keep each other accountable.

https://medium.com/invisible-illness/my-dogs-save-my-life-every-day-cafe22c83f06

['Anne Hartt']

2020-02-07 19:17:01.143000+00:00

['Chronic Illness', 'Life', 'Health', 'Dogs', 'Happiness']

There are worse viruses than COVID-19 out there. How do we avoid the next big one?

There are worse viruses than COVID-19 out there. How do we avoid the next big one? Photo © iStockphoto.com | Charoenchai Tothaisong By Debora MacKenzie for Ensia | @ensiamedia | @debmackenzie1 This feature, part of a collection of stories around reducing the threat of wildlife-transmitted disease, is supported by funding from the Solutions Journalism Network. Irecently wrote a book about Covid-19 in six weeks. I could do that partly because I have, in a way, been covering this pandemic since the 1990s — when scientists started predicting this would happen. It started with warnings that population growth, economic expansion and habitat destruction were rubbing humans up against wild animals with dangerous viruses, while mushrooming cities and global air travel meant any germ that jumped to us could readily travel long distances. HIV showed how. Several near misses since then further proved the point. But more than that, scientists actually predicted precisely the kind of virus we are now fighting — a respiratory coronavirus from bats. In 2005, Zhengli Shi, now director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, found coronaviruses in bats that closely resembled the SARS virus that started in China and almost went pandemic in 2003. Scientists agree that more viruses capable of causing a global pandemic will emerge. In 2015, both Shi’s lab and another in North Carolina discovered some of these bat viruses could infect human airways and cause severe disease without having to undergo any changes. 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http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/a-v-b05.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/cor-v-god-en01.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/cor-v-god-en02.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/cor-v-god-en03.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/cor-v-god-en04.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/cor-v-god-en05.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/r-v-p-ar01.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/r-v-p-ar02.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/r-v-p-ar03.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/r-v-p-ar04.html http://www.thebigdayuk.com/rtp/r-v-p-ar05.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Cordoba-v-Godoy01.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Cordoba-v-Godoy02.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Cordoba-v-Godoy03.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Cordoba-v-Godoy04.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Rosario-v-Patronato01.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Rosario-v-Patronato02.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Rosario-v-Patronato03.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Rosario-v-Patronato04.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Rosario-v-Patronato05.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Tucuman-v-Banfield01.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Tucuman-v-Banfield02.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Tucuman-v-Banfield03.html https://www.sheffieldsteeldogs.com/asx/Tucuman-v-Banfield04.html Yet we ignored the warning. There was no emergency program aimed at developing a coronavirus vaccine or antiviral drugs, no global alert to watch for new coronaviruses in humans, no blanket ban on bat-derived products — not even pandemic response plans for anything but pandemic flu. I called my book Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One because we were warned and did very little to respond. Even without drug and vaccine research and development, governments could have prevented many deaths and lockdowns with a more rapid, focused response based on scientific advice. South Korea, New Zealand and China proved that by containing the virus with early, aggressive testing and quarantine. Most countries did not. Scientists agree that more viruses capable of causing a global pandemic will emerge, says Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, who predicted respiratory RNA viruses were a particular threat a year before the emergence of Covid-19 — a respiratory RNA virus. Virologists are also worried about several flu viruses, and about the lethal Nipah virus of Asian fruit bats, which is evolving the ability to spread person-to-person. If nothing else, there are lots more coronaviruses — and probably infections we have no clue about yet. The million-dollar question is, what can we do now to prepare so that we can prevent any of them from causing another pandemic? The good news is that Covid-19 has taught us the risk is real, and hideously expensive, making us more likely to finally act on the warnings. The question is whether we actually will. Surveillance and Diagnosis First, say experts in emerging diseases, we need surveillance of viruses circulating in humans, and perhaps in animals as well, to spot any new infection fast. The 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), a treaty governing the management of outbreaks that could cross borders, requires rich countries to help improve surveillance in poor ones — but they largely have not, says David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who helped lead the negotiations that led to the current version of the IHR in 2005. “Rich countries have funded international efforts” such as the new emergency response capability at the World Health Organization (WHO), installed after the agency responded slowly to an Ebola outbreak in 2014, Heymann says. “But it would be better to help poor countries take charge of managing their own health situation themselves.” China’s hospitals have a system that automatically alerts central health authorities of any unusual clusters of disease, a good way to spot when a new virus starts spreading in people. However, Wuhan officials trying to keep the Covid-19 outbreak quiet silenced it last January, allowing the novel coronavirus to spread for weeks before serious containment measures were taken, ultimately letting it get around the world. A more fail-safe version in more countries would help to better contain potential pandemic-causing disease organisms. Second, we must diagnose infections. Most illness is diagnosed symptomatically, for example as a cough or fever or rash; the germs responsible for the symptoms are rarely identified, even in modern hospitals. China’s pneumonias started in November, but doctors reportedly didn’t do a diagnostic test to identify the germ responsible until late December. And that revealed a new coronavirus only because China has been watching for coronaviruses since the emergence of SARS in 2002. Not all countries could have spotted it. Diagnostic tests like the ones currently being used to screen for Covid-19 could be used to systematically screen for novel infection. Photo courtesy of Raimond Spekking from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 New technologies can in theory identify germs we haven’t even seen before. The novel IRIDICA platform, based on a mass spectrometer, spotted the 2009 pandemic flu when it first hit the U.S. But the machine was taken off the market in 2017 by the medical technology company Abbott because of low demand: Not enough big hospitals saw the need for such capability to buy it, says Ranga Sampath, chief scientific officer of FIND, a nonprofit dedicated to developing diagnostics in Geneva, Switzerland, who was involved in developing IRIDICA. Other diagnostic technologies, like the rapid tests now being used to screen people for Covid-19 infection, could also be used to screen for novel infections more systematically. But there is no way to sell technologies aimed at viruses that may never go pandemic, and that hampers progress, says Sampath. A third line of defense would be to proactively develop vaccines and therapeutics. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was set up in 2017 to fund the development of vaccines for potentially pandemic viruses. But progress has been slow; the only coronavirus vaccine being funded before Covid-19 was for MERS, an existing disease with a potential market. Efforts to set up a similar coalition for antiviral drugs have never gotten off the ground. Covid-19 could inspire more urgent efforts. Which Viruses? But what viruses should we invest in? A logical focus might be on the new infections already attacking humans, which would be discovered through improved surveillance. But some virologists argue we should learn about viruses before they find us, not after. The Global Virome Project (GVP), a nonprofit organization, is trying to raise US$3.7 billion over the next 10 years to genetically sequence and geographically map the half-million viruses in animals that belong to virus families that can infect humans. But Adalja and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security argue that such a survey won’t tell us which of the thousands of new viruses discovered are dangerous or likely to emerge: Only tracking disease in humans will do that. The answer might be a bit of both. Starting in 2013, Peter Daszak, head of the U.S.-based research nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, and among the scientists backing the GVP, worked with Shi to discover SARS-like coronaviruses in bats, as the GVP advocates. But the team also found which of those viruses could infect people — plus evidence that, near bat caves in China, they already were. One of those viruses eventually caused Covid-19. The problem is that neither discovery led to an urgent program of anti-coronavirus research and development. David Morens, senior scientific advisor to Anthony Fauci at the U.S. National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease, suspects we need dedicated institutions whose job it is to survey worrying viral discoveries, decide which require a response, and see it gets done. No one is now charged with connecting all those dots. “We all have a stake in preventing pandemics, and the problems can’t be solved by any one country. So we should solve them together, as we have nuclear weapons.” — David Morens “We all have a stake in preventing pandemics, and the problems can’t be solved by any one country,” he says. “So we should solve them together, as we have nuclear weapons,” where a U.N. agency monitors nuclear industries. But, he says, the WHO doesn’t have the resources to monitor global disease. “No one’s in charge.” For example, Wuhan doctors knew last December that the virus spread person-to-person, but Chinese officials claimed to the WHO that it didn’t, possibly to avoid panicking people. Earlier transparency might have led to earlier controls and a smaller epidemic. But the WHO had no right to go into China and verify whether China’s reports were true. Treaties for chemical and nuclear weapons permit international inspectors to verify countries’ declarations about those things. Diseases pose arguably a worse risk, but under the IHR, they are the sole concern of the country they happen to strike first. If the WHO could inspect and verify countries’ declarations about disease — and help countries build their surveillance capability while they’re at it — we might be less at the mercy of countries’ inclination or ability to report disease. Preventing the Leap Ultimately, to prevent pandemics we need to prevent wildlife viruses from leaping from nonhuman animals to people. Much attention has focused on the wildlife trade, as some early cases of Covid-19 had links to a wet market in Wuhan. Certainly markets pose a risk, says Daszak. But genetic and epidemiological evidence that Covid-19 started on that market is weak. Other dangerous activities have gotten less investigation — for example, the widespread use in China of dried feces from the very bats that carry Covid-like viruses as a traditional eye medicine. One way to reduce the threat of pandemics is to factor the cost into land use decisions, since activities such as deforestation can enhance the chance that disease organisms will move from wildlife to humans. Photo courtesy of Axel Fassio/CIFOR from Flickr, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 One way to keep humans and bats apart may be to factor the potential costs of pandemics into how we manage land use. The destruction of wildlife habitat, which brings people and wild species into new kinds of contact that can spread viruses, and makes stressed, hungry wildlife more likely to spread infection. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) brings together scientists and policy experts to advance conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. In October IPBES estimated that spending US$40 billion to US$58 billion per year on disease surveillance, and reducing wildlife trade and risky land use changes, would significantly reduce pandemic risk — a bargain compared with the estimated US$8­ trillion to US$16 trillion cost of just this pandemic — and that was only until July. Timber companies and the like might be eager to cooperate, says Daszak, a lead scientist on the IPBES report, if they were liable for damages from infections unleashed by their activities. Replacing Complacency Meanwhile, the Covid-19 crisis will end. A vaccine might be ready soon. It won’t immediately stop all Covid-19 circulating. However, it could be coupled with rapid, frequent, inexpensive tests to see who is carrying the virus, coupled with strict quarantine of infected people and their contacts, to safely re-open businesses, schools and restaurants, says Michael Mina of Harvard University, a leading expert on immune reactions to viruses. The air travel industry is already introducing rapid tests for the virus at some airports in a bid to replace the quarantines some countries now require of new arrivals, which have vastly reduced travel. Covid-19 has revealed the true cost of our destruction of biodiversity. But while normal life might one day return, the complacency that led to this pandemic must not, or, disease experts agree, we will certainly have more, and potentially worse pandemics. Covid-19 has revealed the true cost of our destruction of biodiversity. As we have seen, to control outbreaks, countries must start watching more closely for novel infections, sharing that information, and making far better pandemic plans. But they must also start trying to stop novel outbreaks from happening at all, by vastly reducing the destruction of nature that allows animal viruses to jump to us in the first place. Not only that, but people who do not see our natural planet as worth conserving in its own right may now see another point: Destroying nature leads to deadly, destabilizing, very expensive pandemics. If campaigns using cute pandas can’t end the destruction, maybe mounting death tolls — and economic devastation — will.

https://medium.com/@ensiamedias/there-are-worse-viruses-than-covid-19-out-there-how-do-we-avoid-the-next-big-one-897f4af15555

['Safea Me']

2020-12-14 18:19:21.509000+00:00

['Disease', 'Pandemic', 'Wildlife', 'Health', 'Virus']

Signs My iPhone 4 is Possessed by the Ghost of my Grandfather

Photo by Malte Fleuter on Unsplash It insists that its outdated technology works just as well as the newfangled iNonsense out there. It’s unable to sustain a call for longer than three minutes without dropping it. It can only recharge if conditions are perfect: resting on a cushion in a temperature-controlled climate, with a chilled Milwaukee’s Best nearby. Its functions are shutting down one by one, but it refuses to be fixed and insists on troubleshooting the issues. It is systematically deleting members of my contact list who don’t call me enough. It simply can not take a good photo of me, constantly cropping out the top half of my face, adding nonexistent back-lighting, or inexplicably switching to the sepia filter. Despite having a shattered screen and zero memory left, it still tries to operate heavy machinery (like iOS 11 or a 1977 maroon-and-cream Oldsmobile). Its default ringtone sounds a lot like “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Without my having programmed it, Google Calendar reminds me to eat dinner at Denny’s at 4:30 pm. Sometimes the alarm goes off at 3:07 am for no reason. The weather app always says it’s too cold. Between hoarding photos, maintaining a vast and outdated music collection, and declining to delete any data whatsoever, there is not a drop of space left anywhere. During “Words With Friends” games with my dad, it intentionally gives him shitty letter combinations. The wallpaper is a photo of a small tabby cat sitting on the steps of a tenement in Brooklyn. When I try to replace it with a selfie of me and my husband skiing, it always mysteriously switches back. Despite its age, it never seems to have a problem downloading pornography.

https://medium.com/slackjaw/signs-my-iphone-4-is-possessed-by-the-ghost-of-my-grandfather-45330f59ef5a

['Ali Solomon']

2018-09-16 16:06:01.521000+00:00

['Ghosts', 'Satire', 'iPhone', 'Grandfather', 'Humor']

The Ultimate Skincare Routine For Teens | Get Flawless Skin

The Ultimate Skincare Routine For Teens | Get Flawless Skin Uniqaya Jun 8·3 min read Skincare Routine For Teens: Entered your teenage years? And now doing every possible effort to keep your skin flawless? And, even browsing so many internet remedies to get that one clear skin of your dreams? Quite Obvious. We all love flawless skin and especially when you are at the best age of your life. But what about that acne and pimples which comes as a ‘jawaani ki nishani’ with this age, meaning: the foremost sign that you have entered the age of puberty. Yes, with this sweet teenager filled with dreams and fantasies, there comes a challenge as well, your struggling skin. Don’t worry. We are not here to make you even more anxious. So, relax. Uniqaya has a wide range of best skin care products, especially for your age. For now, we have an ultimate Skincare Routine For Teens so that you don’t panic the next time, a pimple appears on your lovely cheek. Or, maybe it won’t appear at all. A good skincare routine every day is as essential for your skin as having healthy meals every day. Skincare Routine For Teens 1. Clean! Clean! Clean! Due to the hormonal changes in your body, so many skin problems will develop. The simplest quick fix is to cleanse. Remember the basic rule. Shampoo to your hair twice a week, cleanser to your face twice a day, and body wash to your body once a day. Important Advice: Before going to bed, always cleanse your face gently to remove all day’s impurities, dirt, and excess oil. 2. Water has no alternative Moisturizer is a must. Apply at least twice daily. Hydrated skin is naturally glowing skin. The right moisturizer will do the required repair of your skin as well. Important Advice: Stay Hydrated. Drink a lot of water daily. This will keep your skin hydrated naturally and flush out the toxins from your body. You should always keep a water bottle with you. 3. Remove Makeup Oh! Forget those daily soaps bahu (married women). Repeat after us, I will never mistreat my skin, no matter what. And sleeping with your makeup on is the highest form of disrespect to your skin. You might have a tiring routine all day, but it’s very important to remove makeup before going to bed. Important Advice: Don’t share your makeup with anybody, not even with your best friend or your sister or your mother. 4. Healthy Habits No skincare product or beauty product can beat the power of a healthy lifestyle. Right from day one of your teenage years, try to build healthy habits. Recognize your unhealthy patterns, like messed-up sleep cycles or overeating junk food, or unusual stress, and start working on them. Important Advice: Don’t hesitate. Be it talking to your parents, elder sibling, or consulting a therapist or a dermatologist. Always feel free to ask for help. Analyze your needs clearly and talk to somebody. Continue Reading at: Skincare Routine For Teens

https://medium.com/@uniqaya/the-ultimate-skincare-routine-for-teens-get-flawless-skin-ca8112f96e1c

[]

2021-06-08 06:47:29.256000+00:00

['Skincare Tips', 'Beauty Tips', 'Skincare Routine', 'Skincare', 'Beauty']

I tracked every minute of my time for the last 4 months. Here are 7 totally unexpected results

Since I was being as honest as I could with those time entries, weighing my decisions wasn’t that complicated anymore: I would look over my timetable, see exactly how much time I spent on something I decided to do, and look at how much I got out of it. This way, “Is it a good idea to write that article for my 23rd birthday?” became “Is it a good idea to write that article for my 23rd birthday, given the fact that last week I spent 11 hours, and got nowhere with it?”. Not so hard to see the issue, from that perspective. As a bonus, tracking my time solved another one of the biggest problems I had, in terms of decision making. I always had the tendency to overestimate my abilities and take on much more than I could actually handle. This obviously had some very bad consequences, like frustrating other people that were working with me. Well, once I had this sheet that was telling me “this is how much it actually takes you to do it” and “this is how much free time you have on your hands right now”, deciding whether I could or could not handle something new became a factual decision, rather than a whim of my arrogant ego. 6. I finally felt in control of my time As I said in the beginning, the irreversible passing of time was one of the biggest sources of stress and anxiety for me. And, while I’m still having my fair share of existential crises about it, doing this experiment drastically reduced that stress and anxiety. The main reason was that, again, I finally felt in control of my time. Yes, I was still binge-watching cat videos on youtube, probably more than I should. But at least it was a conscious decision, rather than a reaction to some algorithms designed by smart people to make me mindlessly spend hours on end on their website. And this “conscious decision” part was what made all the difference, for me. And the coolest thing was that I didn’t have to change anything in the way I was spending my time, in order to feel better about it. Simply having it noted down was enough to give me that empowering feeling of control. 7. Felt more tense, uneasy and guilty (at first) Surprise-surprise: this is not a silver bullet to shoot down all of life’s problems. It actually came with some not-so-nice consequences that I have to mention, if I am to paint an honest picture of my journey. First up, I became more tensed and uneasy, especially in the beginning. I think that’s not too unexpected — just imagine having a cop on your back, 24/7, that sees every single thing your doing, and tracks it down on a sheet that’s gonna stare you in the face every Sunday. Quite a reason to feel uneasy…

https://medium.com/@dragosbln/i-tracked-every-minute-of-my-time-for-the-last-4-months-here-are-7-totally-unexpected-results-4900e0b94313

['Dragos Bilaniuc']

2021-07-05 15:07:42.088000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Productivity', 'Discipline', 'Focus', 'Time Management']

Five things great brands will do differently on social media in 2015 #DigitalSense

Social media marketing came of age in 2014 with Facebook named advertising medium of the year and big brands doubling down on their paid media investment. Marketers have begun realising that these channels have huge potential to drive results when done right. It’s a good time to take stock and think about what brands could be doing even better going forward and here are five suggestions I think should shake up the industry a little in 2015. 1) Deprioritise some of that data You’ll hear a lot about big data, but while statistics can be revelatory they’re more commonly the scourge of social media marketing. Just because you can follow every like, comment and retweet doesn’t mean you should — in fact the kinds of activities which pander to driving these digital actions tend to be the worst kind of digital marketing. So-called engagement metrics are at best measuring the tip of an iceberg and give only the slightest indications of whether your content is truly driving actual business results, offering surprisingly little correlation with actual return on investments (ROIs). The data that matters shows if you’ve truly affected the hearts and minds of your consumers, or ultimately driven them to purchase, and today any businesses can use simple online survey tools to monitor their ongoing brand metrics. 2) Realise that less is more If engagement data has driven marketers to cats, babies and competitions then the seeming pressure to post something every day has driven them to stock photography and possible insanity. Consumers have no expectations of hearing from brands every day and actually probably a strong feeling that they’d rather not. Creating less content means brands can realistically put paid media behind every single post and ensure a meaningful number of people are reached with their message (something which correlates far better with ROI and sales). The answer to how many posts should I create is often pretty simple — how many can you afford to put paid media behind? 3) Tell true brand stories Getting off the treadmill of daily creative executions means brands can put more effort into what they do post and they can stop jumping on every event and meme just to find something to say. Great social media content isn’t about tricking someone into clicking like, it’s about being remembered by that person days later. That means telling powerful stories, while staying true to your brand’s essence, and increasingly it will mean higher production values and more video. Remember that more people can now see a heavily-promoted Facebook post in a day than would see an advert you ran during the X Factor final. 4) Get more personal If reaching millions of people with great content sounds too much like traditional broadcast media then personalisation at scale is where unique digital creativity comes in. In 2015, there’s no reason to be reaching all your potential consumers with the same piece of creative when you can use simple targeting and basic adaptations (even just tweaking video thumbnails or lines of copy) to make it personally interesting to them all. Don’t take it too far though, as people aren’t ready to be stalked by adverts that address them by name. 5) Throw a laptop at a creative Not just out of frustration that they’re pitching a complicated digital activity no one will ever do, but because they’re showing it to you on a laptop in the first place. In 2015 as much asthree quarters of social media marketing will be seen by consumers on their mobiles so if you’re not considering how your campaign looks on a 5-inch screen then you’re out of touch. If some interactivity isn’t mobile compatible then why are you doing it at all? Ok, violence in the workplace is never acceptable, but if 2015 is going to be the year that social media marketing truly starts delivering for brands then the industry does still need a bit of a common sense shake-up. Detailed consumer interaction and customer service are vital in some sectors, but anyone not seeing the chance to go large on social media is missing out on the biggest innovation of them all. Originally published in The Guardian #DigitalSense is an attempt to cut through the hype that too often surrounds the industry. I hope to help marketers like myself make sense of digital and brands transform their media approaches to drive business results.

https://medium.com/digital-sense/five-things-great-brands-will-do-differently-on-social-media-in-2015-913943d37379

['Jerry Daykin']

2015-07-03 08:18:04.773000+00:00

['Social Media', 'Digital Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing']

What I would say to my Pre-Transition Self

What I would say to my Pre-Transition Self First of all I would probably have to convince the pre-transition me that I am in fact their future self. I’m sure they would be incredulous given how much I’ve changed physically since then. Indeed, a significant ex-girlfriend sat down next to me a few years back at a cafe. She had no idea who I was. I actually had to say “hello, I know you.” She looked right at me and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t recall meeting you.” What followed was me revealing who I was and her mouth dropping wide open and then some astonishment followed by a great heartfelt conversation. This is sort of the reaction I would imagine from my pre-transition self. I don’t “reveal” myself lightly. I don’t think it’s polite nor appropriate to blindside people with my transition. However, with important people in my life I feel it’s necessary. Certainly with the pre-transition me if that were possible. I would also reassure my former self. “It’s going to work out.” I would explain all the steps they would take in order to transition not only physically, but mentally, emotionally and socially. I would assure them that my former self’s greatest fear of losing their children after transition would not take place. My children would struggle, but would stay by my side. Ultimately they would see me as the same person who raised them. Incredibly they would even see me as a braver more complete person than they had known before. I would explain some of the upcoming surgeries to my former self. There would be lots of pain and downtime recovering, but it would all be worth it. The doctors they would choose after interviewing a dozen would turn out to be the right ones. The hundreds of hours of hair removal would not be wasted. They would be thankful to wake up each morning without worrying about facial hair or seeing the wrong gender in the mirror. In fact, they would be pleasantly surprised almost every morning at who they saw. She would be undeniably female and even attractive. She would have male suitors and be asked out by men that had no idea that she was transgender. Perhaps most shocking in some ways, she would end up in relationships with men. Good men. Men who liked “her.” Not just a fetishized transgender fantasy, but liked her simply as a female partner and companion in a healthy heterosexual relationship. I don’t know that my former self would believe me. It would seem impossible from where they were. If I told them they would be one of the first humans on Mars it might seem more possible. Back then arriving at this reality was literally outside of my capacity to hope for. When my boyfriend asks me now, “why are you always smiling.” I tell him, lit’s because I made it to the other side of the rainbow. I never thought I would get here.” Now regardless of much of what I don’t have, I am living a dream life that at one time I couldn’t have imagined.

https://medium.com/@genivieveleduc/what-i-would-say-to-my-pre-transition-self-f5038d55f257

[]

2021-09-05 15:55:54.931000+00:00

['LGBTQ', 'Transgender', 'Post Transition', 'Transitions']

Gentle Introduction to AutoML from H2O.ai

In recent years, the trend for data science skills and its demand had outpaced the skill supply. As artificial intelligence penetrates every corner of the industry its hard to place data scientists in every possible use case. To bridge this gap, companies have started building frameworks that automatically process the dataset and build a baseline model. We see many of these implementations going open-source. According to one of the industry leaders, H2O.ai, AutoML interface is designed to have as few parameters as possible so that all the user needs to do is point to their dataset, identify the response column and optionally specify a time constraint or limit on the number of total models trained. According to Google Trends, the rise of Auto ML began in Q2 2017: AutoML Google Trends AutoML is a function in H2O that automates the process of building large number of models, with the goal of finding the “best” model without any prior knowledge. In this article, we will look into AutoML from H2O.ai. The implementation is available in both R and Python API and the current version of AutoML (in H2O 3.20 ) performs: Trains and cross-validates a default Random Forest (DRF), an Extremely Randomized Forest (XRT), a random grid of Gradient Boosting Machines (GBMs), a random grid of Deep Neural Nets, a fixed grid of GLMs. AutoML then trains two Stacked Ensemble models. First ensemble containing all the models and second ensemble containing just the best performing model from each algorithm class. Install H2O.ai The installation procedure is quite simple. All you need to do is have the following dependencies installed and then pip install ; If you are already having anaconda installed you could directly proceed with the conda command; conda install -c h2oai h2o=3.20.0.1 Note: When installing H2O from pip in OS X El Capitan, users must include the --user flag. For example - pip install -f http://h2o-release.s3.amazonaws.com/h2o/latest_stable_Py.html h2o --user For R and Hadoop installation please refer to the official documentation here. Getting Started Start the H2O.ai instance by importing h2o.ai and H2OAutoML instance. import h2o from h2o.automl import H2OAutoML h2o.init() If the setup was successful then will see the following cluster information. In this example, we are going to use a dataset from DataHack Practice problem Loan Prediction III The goal here is to predict whether or not a loan will be paid by the customer wherein we are provided with details like — Gender, Marital Status, Education, and others. First, let’s import the training set and check out .head() and the datatypes of the data frame. df = h2o.import_file('train_u6lujuX_CVtuZ9i.csv') df.head() .head() method frame

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/gentle-introduction-to-automl-from-h2o-ai-a42b393b4ba2

['Mohammad Shahebaz']

2018-09-15 14:56:22.404000+00:00

['Data Science', 'Automation', 'Python', 'Machine Learning']

Dubai expat business community anxious over theft of foreign investments

Radha Stirling, founder of Detained in Dubai, has added her voice to those requesting that the UK government increase its warnings to British citizens investing or even just working in the UAE. Stirling has acted in a number of financial corruption cases and represented clients who have been imprisoned as a mechanism for stealing their funds and assets. However, the UK government and FCO still refuse to issue warnings outlining the full extent of the risks to travellers in advance. The FCO has intimated that they wish to maintain their strong diplomatic ties with the UAE, their strongest ally in the Middle East, even at the expense of British citizens. Stirling explains, “this raises the question of whether the FCO could be held liable for their failure to enforce treaties with The UAE. These treaties are in place to ensure access to justice is not denied.” A deep seated concept in UAE society is “wasta”, an Arabic term that loosely translates to “clout, influence or power”. It is used amongst family members and economic circles that will back each other up and do mutual favours. Londoner Mr. Haddad, a successful businessman in the UAE and a partner in the highly profitable KM Holdings, tells us, “I was illegally deprived of my corporate assets by my local business partner, who then employed Habib Al Mulla (Head of Baker McKenzie law firm in Dubai) to file a series of frivolous civil cases against me.” The aim, he says, was to lock him out of his own business and to appropriate his shares in the company. Haddad explains, “Al Mulla illegally represented both sides in my case, without having obtained my Power of Attorney. Al Mulla ‘confessed’ on my behalf (without legal authority) to embezzlement. The court transcripts were then used to open criminal charges against me, ultimately leading to the theft of my GBP £250 million pound share in my company.” Haddad warns other British investors, “the extent of the fraud allowed by the government in The UAE is catastrophic. What’s shocking is that the UK Embassy and UK Foreign Office (UKFO) don’t warn UK nationals and investors about the level of corruption. It clearly follows that a country with such a poor human rights record as Dubai is likely to have an equally corrupt court system, as the two are so entwined. “When a VIP is against you in Dubai, you’re up against generations of family rather than a legal system. My advice is wherever possible to conduct any court cases from outside The UAE or risk spurious arrest and imprisonment.” Despite fraud being a criminal matter, no Emirati is being held accountable for the theft of Mr Haddad’s funds. However, should Mr Haddad enter The UAE he would be immediately jailed for questioning judicial practice and outcomes of the court. As has recently been shown, many Emiratis don’t realise that they can be subject to rulings made outside The UAE, rulings which can be enforced through The UAE courts. This will mean that they cannot continue to act unlawfully and with impunity as members of global economic communities and businesses. If anyone inside the UAE attempts to defend themselves and speak out against this system, the government controlled media and censorship has The UAE locked down so that dissent means prison. This includes journalists and lawyers.

https://medium.com/@radhastirling-90634/dubai-expat-business-community-anxious-over-theft-of-foreign-investments-45e31c5a784b

['Radha Stirling']

2020-12-27 10:38:55.835000+00:00

['Expat', 'Radha Stirling', 'Investment', 'Detained In Dubai', 'Dubai']

Jewellery Shop Experience in Arkycia Metaverse

The best and unique Metaverse of 2022 is Arkycia metaverse! It gives you an opportunity to be the proud owner of an exclusive jewelry showroom! The solution is simple! Buy a virtual land NFT in Arkycia Metaverse! Why Jewelry show room? Because in Metaverse or in physical world girls love Jewelry! They love to buy them! You can start your own Jewelry showroom easily in Arkycia Metaverse! All you have to do is to buy an NFT for virtual land in Arkycia Metaverse, construct your awesome Jewelry showroom in any part of the virtual world! Arkycia Metaverse is created as the replica of the physical world except there is no boundaries! You can buy Virtual land NFT in Arkycia Metaverse practically anywhere in the virtual countries and start earning! It does not matter wherever you are in physical world! You can buy a virtual land NFT in Arkycia Metaverse in the virtual country of USA or Canada! No worries about the look of your Jewelry showroom in Arkycia Metaverse! Once you buy Arkycia Metaverse NFT, You are entitled for the free templates of many designs created for you by our experts! They are easy to use! They look grand and will attract crowd. Use the free ready to use templates offered by Arkycia Metaverse! Or you can design your own showroom as per your imagination and creativity! Girls love jewelry the most and Sky is the limit for your earnings! The ideal gift for your loved ones will be an NFT of Arkycia metaverse virtual land, build a Jewelry showroom and gift it to your loved ones! Arkycia NFT are going to gain value in 2022 and the years to follow! Because Arkycia Metaverse gives you the opportunity to create a digital asset and a great earning from it! 2022 is the best year to invest in Arkycia Metaverse NFT and start a virtual business globally! #metaverse #NFT #web3 #cryptocurrency #virtualworld #virtualland #metaverseexperience #metaverseproject #nftcommunity #nftmarketplace #decentralland #arkyciametaverse #cryptolovers #arkyciatoken Website — https://www.arkycia.com/ Connect With Us! Telegram Official: https://t.me/ArkyciaMetaverseOfficial YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFKfFArK-2qSqxnMNmfR92Q Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Arkyciametaverse Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arkycia_metaverse/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arkyciametaverse/ Discord :https://discord.com/invite/AS5X9BQbPT Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArkyciaMetavers Tumblr: https://arkyciametaverse.tumblr.com/ Medium: https://medium.com/@arkyciametaverse Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Arkycia Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com.au/ArkyciaMetaverse/

https://medium.com/@arkyciametaverse/jewellery-shop-experience-in-arkycia-metaverse-51ddbc08ca0c

['Arkycia Metaverse']

2022-01-06 07:16:40.031000+00:00

['Crypto', 'Metaverse Nft', 'Nft Marketplace', 'Metaverse']

Why Do Some States Still Allow for Schools to Physically Assault Children?

Why Do Some States Still Allow for Schools to Physically Assault Children? Hitting a child in anger is not discipline Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash Gerrel Williams was coaching a 7 and Under football team in Georgia on December 7th. During a time out, he became extremely angry with one of his players. He then proceeded to slap the player in the helmet as hard as he could twice. The second slap actually knocked the kid to the ground. If you want to see the video, here it is. After the incident, he made a couple of questionable claims. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have disciplined him in public — I shoulda waited ’til he got back — for doing what he did. He is sorry, but not for what he did. He is sorry that he didn’t wait to hit the kid until later. He also said, “There is no excuse for my actions… he forgave me, and his parents have forgiven me, so nobody else should be bashing me,” According to this now-former coach and former Chatham County Sheriff’s Office employee, we should not bash him for what he did. He is wrong on both counts. First of all, you should not hit children just because you are angry, whether in public or private. Secondly, people can and should bash you if you do. Seeing this incident and watching the mixed response to it lead me to ask the following question.

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/3-reasons-educators-should-not-physically-assault-children-a966f3bb527

['Greyson Alman']

2020-12-20 18:43:31.341000+00:00

['Coaching', 'American Football', 'Education', 'Leadership', 'Sports Coaching']

8 Great Books I’ve Read That You Probably Haven’t

8 Great Books I’ve Read That You Probably Haven’t Spice your reading life up with some great fiction books… There are always those books that are just as ones as the popular ones, just get the wrong end of the stick. Today, I’m going to bring notice to some of those books, because I feel they deserve. Without further ado, here are 5 great books I’ve read that you probably haven’t. Lust for Life by Irving Stone This is an amazing fictional biography about the life of Vincent Van Gogh. It illustrates beautifully his triumphs and his failures, his impulses and his eureka moments, and his endless work ethic. As the Amazon summary says,” it shows us Van Gogh driven mad, tragic, and triumphant at once.” Also, if you’re looking for a great insider look into what it means to be an artist and the myth of the tortured artist, this is the book. Check it out! Ban This Book by Alan Gratz A brilliantly written book about a shy girl standing up for what she thinks is right — in this case, book censorship, or, books being banned for reasons she thinks unfit. Our protagonist, Amy, and her friends battle against book censorship through book lockers, banning more books, and raising attention. As the Amazon summary says,” Amy Anne and her lieutenants wage a battle for the books that will make you laugh and pump your fists as they start a secret banned books locker library, make up ridiculous reasons to ban every single book in the library to make a point, and take a stand against censorship.” Check it out! Tin by Pádraig Kenny Robots. Steampunk. Wizard Of Oz. Alternative History. AI. If any of those interested you, Tin is definitely a book for you. A great story about if robots feel and self-revelation, and what it really means when somebody says “I.” It’s a friendship story of the best kind, and an utterly compelling and amazing read. Per the Amazon summary,” In this gripping, imaginative, and hilarious adventure — comprised of an unforgettable crew of misfits — a boy and his mechanical friends discover the truth about his past.” Check it out! Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson A Newberry Honor award winning book, Piecing Me Together is a great book about race, art, pain, hope, and acceptance. We follow our protagonist Jade, a bodily self-conscious and artistic black girl, who goes to a white school and joins a mentorship program for black girls called Women to Women. Jade feels like her mentor doesn’t understand her, even if she is also black, and is tired of being someone who needs to be helped, instead of someone who can help. Per the Amazon review,” Jade wants to speak, to create, to express her joys and sorrows, her pain and her hope. Maybe there are some things she could show other women about understanding the world and finding ways to be real, to make a difference.” Check it out! Firegirl by Tony Abbott Only 160 pages, this is a great read about a girl who suffers a tragic accident, and her family relocates and the girl tries to fit in in a new school. Told by the point of view of Tom, a 7th-grader at the school the girl relocates to, it’s an incredible story of friendship, and how even the smallest acts of kindness and sacrifice can go a long way. The Amazon summary describes it perfectly. “A poignant novel about a boy’s friendship with a burn victim is perfect for fans of R. J. Palacio’s Wonder.” Check it out! Indigo by Alice Hoffman A very short read (96 pages), Indigo tells an enthralling and quite Hemingway-like story about two odd siblings who have special powers and find solace in a friend who feels for them. And when the two siblings and their friend leave their hometown to find the ocean, it becomes a great self-revelatory journey about meaning and what home really is. Per Amazon: “Three friends in search of a place to belong find that home is truly where the heart is in this new tale of enchantment from best-selling master storyteller Alice Hoffman.” Check it out! Kneeknock Rise by Natalie Babbitt Another Newberry Honor award winning book, Kneeknock Rise is a great story about how people will believe in myths even when they are debunked (shades of Cari Nazeer in there…). It’s a story about belief, and courage, and bravery, and curiousness. “On stormy nights when the rain drives harsh and cold, an undiscovered creature raises its voice and moans. Nobody knows what it is―nobody has ever dared to try to find out and come back again. Before long, Egan is climbing the Rise to find an answer to the mystery.” (per Amazon) Check it out! Finding Mighty by Sheela Chari This is a great story about two random people coming together for the same goal, and not only pushing forward to find connections and lost siblings, but also establishing a life-long friendship in the process. Also a great story about graffiti, art, thug life, siblinghood, and friendship. Per Amazon: “Drawing on urban art forms and local history, Finding Mighty is a mystery that explores the nature of art and the unbreakable bonds of family.” Check it out! Conclusion And that’s it for today. Until next time! P.S — Subscribe to my newsletter to get daily advice on writing and creativity, plus special perks such as giveaways and exclusive posts. Stay up to date with my writing journey and latest releases.

https://medium.com/sukhroop-the-storyteller/8-great-books-ive-read-that-you-probably-haven-t-95efdeae0ab3

['Sukhroop Singh']

2019-09-10 22:46:23.878000+00:00

['Books', 'Creativity', 'Writing', 'Art', 'Life']

The United States’ New ‘Religious Freedom’ Appointee Is a Religious Bigot

The United States’ New ‘Religious Freedom’ Appointee Is a Religious Bigot Tony Perkins does not believe the Constitution protects the religious freedom of Muslims or liberal Christians. By Brian Tashman, Political Researcher and Strategist, ACLU MAY 17, 2018 | 5:45 PM The newest addition to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Tony Perkins, does not believe in religious freedom. Perkins, who was appointed to the post by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will now serve on a commission that supposedly serves as a watchdog “dedicated to defending the universal right to freedom of religion or belief abroad,” even though he has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not believe in the equal protection of Muslims and others. The commission has a long history of politicization, along with anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT bias. Perkins’ inclusion will only continue to undermine its credibility. While he claims to support religious freedom, Perkins believes that the Constitution does not protect the rights of Muslims. He has said that “those who practice Islam in its entirety” should not be afforded the same constitutional freedoms as other Americans since Islam, in his words, is “incompatible with the Constitution” — an obviously false claim that, in reality, flies in the face of our Constitution. He even goes so far as to make the absurd and bizarre claim that “only 16 percent of Islam is a religion.” A top official of his organization, the Family Research Council, once called for a ban on mosques, and the group published an essay arguing that Islam is not really a religious faith but rather “a religious government, the establishment of which the Establishment Clause prohibits.” This is clearly nonsensical. He has also smeared and vilified Muslims as violent people and claimed that the U.S. is under no obligation to safeguard their rights. Beyond Muslims, Perkins has also questioned whether Christians who support marriage equality and members of “fringe religions” should have the same rights under the Constitution as those who follow his personal brand of Christianity. He has also criticized supporters of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state as “cultural terrorists.” Perkins’ appalling record doesn’t end there, as he is also known for his vicious bigotry towards the LGBT community. He has called transgender identity a “perversion” and had a role in shaping the Trump administration’s ban on transgender military service members, insisting that it would be “better” to disband the military altogether rather than allow transgender people to serve. He once praised legislation in Uganda that would have included heinous punishments for homosexuality, including the death penalty, as an effort to “uphold moral conduct” and warned that marriage equality would lead to a revolution and second holocaust. A commission that ostensibly acts as a fair-minded monitor that calls out other countries for endangering liberties can’t have much standing if one of its own members is actively working to undermine it.

https://medium.com/aclu/the-united-states-new-religious-freedom-appointee-is-a-religious-bigot-6e895c1a6936

['Aclu National']

2018-05-18 14:17:51.616000+00:00

['Religion', 'Speak Freely', 'Religious Freedom', 'LGBTQ', 'Muslim']

Seasons Through the Eyes of a Desi Millennial

Back in school I’d learnt that monsoon comes our way in June, and is gone too soon just before September set in. We’d beat October heat with loads of pepsi cola, nimboo paani , and homemade frozen treats. And then winter would come like a long lost friend, bringing along the festive zing. Each day a celebration for no particular reason, with loads of singing and dancing to go with it. When summer came along, it was just to lovingly brighten things up. All the world appeared in 4K resolution, long before it came up on TV screens. And how can we forget, the times when our mouths drooled in anticipation as it also meant aam ka season. Also that time of the year when "Chubti jalti garmi ka mausam aaya" played during every commercial break. A time also, when we all sang the anthem of our summer vacation "Jungle jungle pataa chala hai, chaddi pehenke phool khila hai." Today, it rains from Jan to December. And when it does, roads become Olympic-size swimming pools. Once mum used to remind me to take the raincoat along. Now, I head out in the rains with a prayer on my lips, and a life raft folded in the rucksack on my back secured to my hips! Paper boats, and dreams of wearing a stainfree shirt to work washed away with it. Great sales for Tide, washing powder Nirma simply isn’t sabki pasand anymore. When the sun burns down with a vengeance in summer, forget the mango, it’s people yelping "man where do we go?" My eyes hurt as though staring at a burned in LED screen! Hearts that would once cry out with joy, "Rasna and Roohafza", now in the scorching heat plead "Bas na and Ohh uff ahh" Winter now gives me the chills, and that is no pretty thing. In the background, befittingly, I now hear Imran sing, "Bewafa nikli hai tu." After all, you used to be the reason I’d snuggle under the blanket just a lil more, hitting the snooze on my alarm, when work comes calling on Monday! Now though, when the cold winds blow, even two sweaters over the TV adwala Rupa thermal wear, with a blanket on top, doesn’t stop the shivering down to my bones. Forget dancing, I now know what they mean by frozen feet! No more, please. I accept defeat. Oh where did all the seasons go? If only, I'd valued you. If only I'd done a little more. Carried along that cloth bag, rather than add another plastic one to store away with the hundred others in every household. Turned off that running tap down the street, without looking away coz it wasn't my place be. Put off that fire in the dump yard, without grumbling about the bellowing smoke. Every once in a while at least, chosen beet over meat. Wish I'd set out to make the world a better place, rather than just wish for it. Well, here's my start, one word at a time. Today, I begin. - Life, He Wrote.

https://medium.com/@contentmonk/seasons-through-the-eyes-of-a-desi-millennial-48ce16a6dcd0

[]

2020-12-14 09:05:00.432000+00:00

['Once Upon A Time', 'Climate Change', 'Throwback', 'Global Warming', 'Seasons']

This Is When “Doing The Work” Isn’t The Answer

This Is When “Doing The Work” Isn’t The Answer The Subtle Shift You Need To Make To Create The Space To Grow Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash My team and I are navigating some course corrections right now. We’re examining where we’re at and where we want to be for 2019. The fun part is that we’ve gotten so much right and have so much clarity. The not-so-fun part is that doesn’t exempt us from doing some hard work over the next few months. It’s at these times that it’s oh-so-tempting to put my head down and nobly “do the work.” I am always ready to dive right in — especially if that means shutting everyone else out. But that’s not what my team needs from me. They need a leader. The mindset shift from doer to leader is one that I cover in my new book, Subtle. ​ It’s not enough to go from “being the business” to “owning the business.” You have to transition from automatically responding to problems or needs with “doing” and start responding with “leading.” It’s not just a question of delegation or getting help fulfilling the mission of the business.​ It’s a fundamental reworking of what’s required of you as the leader of your business. My conversation with Kate Strathmann, the founder of Wanderwell, a bookkeeping and consulting firm based in Philadelphia, helped me see this shift in a new way. She told me: “I could happily sit in a room and think, write, and do the work and not talk to anyone for 3 days. And I wouldn’t really notice! But that’s not really helpful for a team. There were times I realized I was doing that and not available enough.” This is absolutely my default mode as a “doer” in my business, too. Not only am I ready to get my hands dirty in service of a new idea or project, but I’m prone to blocking out the rest of my team so that I can. I justify it by telling myself I’m saving them from having to deal with learning something new or doing messy work. But the truth is that I’m retreating to my comfort zone. Whether you’re a team of 1, 10, or 100, your business needs you to lead — not simply to do the work. That means leaving space to focus on not just what needs to get done but where your business is actually heading. It means taking the time to gather information and talk to people who matter (colleagues, team members, customers). It means coming up to breath on a regular basis. If you’re making changes, if you’re up to a big project, or if you’re trying to find the space to grow your business — now may not be the time to do the work, it just might be the time to lead.

https://medium.com/help-yourself/this-is-when-doing-the-work-isnt-the-answer-bf64f0b98d6a

['Tara Mcmullin']

2018-11-02 15:47:58.473000+00:00

['Small Business', 'Startup', 'Mindset', 'Leadership', 'Freelance']

The Answer Mark Cuban Is Looking For: Wallstreet + Silicon Valley = ?

The Answer Mark Cuban Is Looking For: Wallstreet + Silicon Valley = ? Mark Cuban has been vocal as of late and he’s getting mixed reviews about his thoughts on venture capital funding and the state of business. Elon Musk has been going off the rails lately too, having a few meltdowns every day, talking about moving out of Silicon Valley, selling his house, etc. So I wonder how serious these two are about actually making something happen. How much of this is PR and Marketing? It seems like I’ve been hearing for the last 5 years about a need for a renaissance, especially with how forgettable the 2010s were. The buzz of Wallstreet in the 80s was electric and it had a cult-like aura to it drawing thousands of young men and women across the country to move to New York to be apart of it. And then eventually, the scandals and criminal thievery caught up to them, and now its a pretty tame version of what it used to be. But could you imagine if, say, Jordan Belfort used his ability to get the youth excited about their future for good? Imagine if that movement was put towards a useful innovation of some sort and the youth he inspired wrote history favorably. All the way on the other side of the country, the next closest thing to it is Silicon Valley, of course. Almost counterculture to the slick business attire with the flip flops and khakis, San Jose has been a hot zone that the top talents and entrepreneurs have been flocking to for decades, so what’s next? It seems like it would make sense to have a revival as trends are normally cyclical in nature as it is, so is it time for the modern ‘Wallstreeter’ to come back and put their bid in again? The thought of it is exciting and that kind of rivalry (assuming ethically, but I know, hope and a prayer) would be incredible. Almost like the Athens Vs. Sparta tug-of-war where two completely opposing cultures battle it out for the same thing. Enter the Major League of Sales. Just like the NBA, the NFL, and the MLB. A major league for the most competitive startup enthusiasts, coders, and entrepreneurs. Sales is a spectator sport and has been dragged through the mud to the point it's unrecognizable. It used to be a profession that didn’t require a lifetime of schooling or big loans and as long as you applied yourself, you could change your whole life. Venture capitalists fetishize the Silicon Valley brand and hand over blank checks for, well, pretty much anything. A modern ‘Wallstreeter’, (who doesn’t even necessarily have to be from New York, a lot of those guys & girls weren’t) would naturally flock to the big ticket items if there was a business boom and that would be the venture capitalists going big on Unicorns. It could be incredible for getting those inventors the voice they need to have their products get seen, perhaps even life-changing products, and would create many new jobs. With Small Business being consolidated and feasted on by the ‘Big Dogs’, acquiring them for pennies on the dollar, is there a better time than now to get some serious horsepower rounded up and having a friendly (yet heated) competition that gets economy booming again? Gen Z needs meaning in their life, according to them. Here you go, let’s repair the country and get the excitement going again. That early 2000’s feel. And Jordan Belfort, this is your chance for redemption too. You can invest in the youth and teach them to use their powers for good. I’ve issued the challenge to all three of them, so we shall see what happens. The 20’s: still early enough to write history

https://medium.com/@housestrategy/the-answer-mark-cuban-is-looking-for-wallstreet-silicon-valley-c910cb949567

[]

2020-05-15 14:47:08.082000+00:00

['Smart Cities', 'Wall Street', 'Silicon Valley', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship']

Data Harvesting simplified using Python, Flask, and SQL

Ever thought of having an app that could be used as a search engine to query an API, harvest data, and perform basic ETL operations before dumping the processed data into a SQL table. Seems a bit confusing? Of course, as there is much processing required before that data could be used for analysis. So, how about we build an app that handles all the data processing in the backend and keeps on populating a SQL table that we could use for further analysis. Interesting enough? Buckle up then, it’s a long one….. First things first, what exactly are we harvesting and where are we storing the processed data? I build this app to harvest music data from Spotify API and store the processed data in a SQL server database. And, it goes without saying that you can modify this application as per your project requirements. Now, before we jump into the interesting part of building the application, let’s first keep our database ready. How should database architecture look like? Fig 1.1. SQL Database As we can see from Fig 1.1, we will be needing a working table: WKR_SPOTIFY_DATA, to dump the raw data after processing, a final table: SPOTIFY_DATA, to store the data with correct datatypes, and a stored procedure: BLD_SPOTIFY_DATA, to insert data into the final table from the worker table. Let’s just take a quick look at the two table designs and the stored procedure. Fig 1.2. Database table designs So, our worker table just stores everything in VARCHAR format, and the final table stores them with the correct datatypes. We also have created columns for all the data that we need from Spotify, so now we have a clear idea of what we need to extract. Fig 1.3. Stored Procedure Declaration First, we need to create a stored procedure and we will be performing two operations with this stored procedure that are explained below. Fig 1.4. First functionality of the Stored Procedure This step populates the final table with the data stored in the worker table. Fig 1.5. Second functionality of the Stored Procedure Once the data is dumped into the final table, it is important to keep the worker table clean for the next data dump. All right then, we have our database set up to store the processed data, it’s time to start building our app. How will our application make connections to the API and the database? We will be using spotipy to connect to the Spotify API and sqlalchemy to create the database connection. Fig 2.1. Connection Manager A simple class to handle the different connection requests will always come in handy when dealing with multiple connection requests. Now that we have got different connections covered, as shown in Fig 2.1, it’s time to proceed to the main part of this project, and yes you guess it right, it’s time to create the architecture for extracting and processing the required information from the Spotify API request. What functionalities do we need to harvest and process the extracted data? Just to be clear, as the main focus of this article is on building a flask application, I won’t be going into details about each of the functionalities. I, however, will share the article in references that guided me while building this application. But, nothing to worry about, we will still discuss each of the functionality. Fig 3.1. Spotify Data Harvestor Construction So, here’s what our constructor looks like, as shown in Fig 3.1., we have instantiated all the variables that we will be needing throughout the class. We will be passing the Spotify connection, database engine, artist URI, and artist name when creating an object of this class. Fig 3.2. Function to extract the song features from an album A pretty straight forward functionality, shown in Fig 3.2, to extract the various features of a song using an album URI. As initially shown in our database tables, we need song features like album name, track number, song id, song name, and song URI from Spotify. Fig 3.3. Function to extract the audio features of an album songs We surely need more information about a song track, if have to perform some kind of audio analysis, right? Well yeah, and thankfully Spotify even got us covered in terms of the different audio features, required for any kind of audio analysis. All we need to do is to make the correct API call to Spotify. The function shown in Fig 3.3 covers all the steps required to extract the audio features of all the tracks of an album. Alright, so we have created the functions required to extract the features that we need, it’s time to start processing them into a pandas dataframe and finally dump them into the database worker table. Fig 3.4.1. Function to call the extraction methods The first part of our final method for building a database table, Fig 3.4.1, calls the extraction methods so that the spotify_albums dictionary instantiated in the constructor is ready for building our final pandas dataframe. Just make sure not to overkill the API calls when iterating over the Spotify albums, I would suggest calling the sleep function after every 5 iterations. Fig 3.4.2. Function to build the dataframe and dump data into worker table We have now extracted all the song and audio features. The last thing left, before we start dumping the data into the worker table, is to use a dictionary and extend it over all the album features. We will be converting this dictionary into a pandas dataframe, as pandas provides functionality to convert the dataframe directly into a SQL table. A few important things to note here: We will be passing the name of our worker table in the database, Sqlalchemy engine will be passed as the connection (don’t worry I will show you that configuration as well), Make sure you keep if_exists=’append’, so that you don’t create a new table in each session and use the existing table, Just keep index=False, we don’t need indexing here, We need multiple data to insert, so we need to keep method=’multi’, And keep the chunk to a safe size of 100, so that we don’t run into some issue while the data dump. Now that we have got data dumped into our worker table, the next thing left is to perform a little transformation to dump the data from the worker table to the final table. And, guess what we already have a stored procedure ready to take care of that for us. So, all we need to do is to call that stored procedure, right? Well, let’s see how easily can we do that with the help of the sqlalchemy engine, created in the Connection Manager. Fig 3.5. ETL Architecture for the final transformation Alright then, we have created the entire backend required for our app. And the good thing is that along with that all the heavy lifting is done, what’s left is just to create a web app and obviously a few more lines of code. And, trust me with a tool like flask, it will be a piece of cake. How do we build our flask web application? Fig 4.1. Call the dependencies Before we start building our flask app, make sure you call all the dependencies, as shown in Fig 4.1, before we move on to the application building. Fig 4.2. Flask App Architecture We are now ready with all the required dependencies, we can now start building the flask app. Let’s try to simplify the steps required for our flask app, as shown in Fig 4.2. Create a flask app. Define the __name__ variable to run the flask app. Build a function that renders the home page on running the application, and the flask way to handle that is with a simple annotation that routes to home page denoted by ‘/’. Build a function that takes input from the user in the form of a request, from the web page, and makes a call to the backend operations explained above. Our extract method does exactly that and again make sure to annotate the method with the web page extension, denoted by ‘/extract’. Finally, just to give an overview of the functionality of the extract method, it takes a user input, queries the Spotify API, using the Spotify connection created in the Connection Manager, to extract all the artist URI and artist name for all the items of a track, stores them in a dictionary, as shown in Fig 4.2., calls the SpotifyDataHarvester for each item in the dictionary to dump the data into the worker table, and finally when the worker table is prepared, calls the ETL to build the final table. And, now all that’s left for you is to design and built a UI for this app. You can refer to my GitHub repository, mentioned below, for the UI design that I used. Phewww….. that was a lot of code, wasn’t it? So, just give yourself a few moments of peace, before we jump into the good stuff. And, I believe you already know what’s left to do. Yes, you are absolutely right! It’s time to give our app, a test run. So, let’s get done with that. Final App Testing Fig 5.1. Home Screen Okay… so our app looks nice, and the home page loaded without any issue. Let’s try harvesting some data for a track. Fig 5.2. Harvesting in process So, the harvest has started, let’s take a quick look at what’s happening behind in the console screen. Fig 5.3. Backend Processing Console Screen Looks like the data extraction is going well and some data is already dumped into the working table. God! Don’t you love these little print statements……… Fig 5.4. Harvest complete screen Finally, the harvest is completed, we got our sweet little completion message. Now it’s time to see our final table is populated or not, plus the worker table should be truncated after each harvest as we discussed earlier. Fig 5.5.1. Final Table Ahaa.. we got our final table populated, let’s just make sure the worker table is truncated, before we wind up and celebrate all the hard work, we just did. Fig 5.5.2. Worker Table Here we go, the worker table is truncated, as expected, after the harvest. God, this was a long tour, wasn’t it…? But, thanks a lot for keeping up with me this long. I hope this app will help ease up the mundane data harvesting process and you will rather start enjoying the data harvest… You can find the full project on my GitHub repository mentioned below, https://github.com/AnkitRajSri/Music_Data_Extractor Happy harvesting….. References: https://rareloot.medium.com/extracting-spotify-data-on-your-favourite-artist-via-python-d58bc92a4330

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/data-harvesting-simplified-using-python-flask-and-sql-d7049fa14bea

['Ankit Raj']

2020-12-15 13:31:01.255000+00:00

['Database', 'Etl', 'Data Harvesting', 'Data Science', 'Flask']

For most nonprofit visual arts organizations, staying afloat is challenging even in the best of times.

For most nonprofit visual arts organizations, staying afloat is challenging even in the best of times. Tvus Oct 27, 2020·4 min read A pandemic presents even more difficulties, as venues remain closed and interaction is limited. The Pacific Art League (PAL) has decided to brave the storm and hold its annual anniversary exhibition while finding innovative ways to work around COVID-19 restrictions. The result is “Beyond 2020,” a juried competition encompassing work in a variety of media that can be viewed, until Dec. 31, on the organization’s website and in the League’s windows in downtown Palo Alto. This year marks 99 years that PAL has been in existence. Anniversary committee chair Kay Culpepper described the process that led to the decision to hold the show. “As the virus wore on, it became apparent that we needed this exhibition more than ever before. Now came the task of ‘How to do it in the midst of a pandemic?’ Our amazing committee made up of members, artists, instructors, board members and staff all working together made it feel possible.” As with previous competitions, staff got the prospectus circulated via call-to-artists listings and notifications to other arts organizations. Culpepper said that word of mouth was also a powerful communication tool. The exhibition was open to Bay Area artists who could hand-deliver their work if they wished to compete for space at the onsite gallery. Artists also had the option to submit .jpeg files. Artists had to pay a submission fee, as the event is a fundraiser for the organization, but Culpepper believes that this year’s show offered even more benefits than usual. Mara Catherine Sippel’s painting “Lights Out” is evocative of Edward Hopper. Courtesy PAL. “We had two amazing jurors, 10 prize awards, three full months of viewing time, offers of submission sponsors and 60% of sales going directly to the artists. In addition, the artist behind this year’s Best of Show (Katherine Filice for her ink on paper “Memory April”) will have a monthlong solo show in the main gallery once the building reopens.” What’s local journalism worth to you? Support Almanac Online for as little as $5/month. The jurors selected for this year’s competition have years of experience as artists, instructors and curators. Ric Ambrose works in large-scale drawings and has curated numerous museum exhibitions. Chun-Hui Yu is a painter and has taught Chinese brush painting and calligraphy at San Jose City College and at PAL. Both said that they were impressed with the high quality of submissions. Ambrose explained that the goal was to accept 100 works of art, which was roughly half of the total number submitted. Ambrose and Yu separately selected works then met, via Zoom calls, to compare their choices. They continued to cull the list until reaching the desired number. Award winners were reviewed in person and announced at a virtual opening that took place on Oct. 2. Yu shared her criteria for selecting art. “The first part is objective and includes technique, composition, color and light. The second part is subjective: creativity, imagination, emotion and feelings.” Joan Hancock’s “Safe” is part of Pacific Art League’s anniversary show. Courtesy PAL. She added that she feels that competitions like this are important, “to promote art and artists, encourage artists to create and inspire and support the community through these times.” A scroll through the online gallery reveals that the show has something for everyone. Enjoy the sunny landscapes of Early California art? Check out David Stonesifer’s bucolic “Saratoga History Orchard” or the rolling hills in Jack Culpepper’s “Golden State.” The cool stillness of Edward Hopper is mirrored in Mara Catherine Sippel’s painting “Lights Out.” And if the chiaroscuro contrasts found in the photography of Edward Weston intrigue you, Marj Green’s “Seeing the World Through Curtains” is sure to please. Joan Hancock’s “Safe” is a portrait of a woman against a patterned background, reminiscent of Henri Matisse. Stay informed Get daily headlines sent straight to your inbox. Sign up The intricate work of Dutch Masters is reflected in Nicole Golko’s stunning still-life “Oranges and Poppies.” And if abstraction is more your thing, Ken Brenner’s “Cascade” is a splash of complementary colors with a push/pull motif, similar to the work of Hans Hoffman. For those of us who cannot afford blue-chip prices, exhibitions like this offer a way to acquire affordable art as well as to support local artists and venerable teaching organizations like PAL. There is also an opportunity to see some of the art in person, even though PAL remains closed. Throughout the course of the exhibition, art will be installed on wall panels inside the perimeter windows. Currently, the display includes the award winners but, in future, the displays will change every two weeks so that all of the selected pieces can be seen. It is a clever way to work around the shuttered building and enlivens the neighborhood, as the windows are illuminated at night. As Culpepper noted, “We had to find a way to think outside the box and outside the building.” Having surmounted the obstacles presented by the pandemic this year, PAL can look ahead to next year and their centennial commemoration. Culpepper expressed optimism for the future, based on how “Beyond 2020” came together. “For the Art League itself the greatest reward is having art again online and outside, lighting up our windows on the world. But we hope our gift to the community is rewarding as well –- beautiful art for the public to view, enjoy and celebrate.”

https://medium.com/@7tvus7/for-most-nonprofit-visual-arts-organizations-staying-afloat-is-challenging-even-in-the-best-of-44a8664c89d0

[]

2020-10-27 21:55:25.437000+00:00

['Art', 'Health', 'Windows 10']

DoorDash survey finds restaurant takeout is on the rise, launches new pickup feature

DoorDash survey finds restaurant takeout is on the rise, launches new pickup feature DoorDash Follow May 20, 2020 · 4 min read Enjoying a hot meal prepared by your favorite neighborhood restaurant can lift your mood, satisfy cravings, and give you a little more time in the day to manage the newfound stress we’re all facing. While many customers prefer the ease and convenience of door-to-door delivery, we know that others opt for the pickup feature, ordering their food online for pickup at the restaurant. During the past few months the way we dine has drastically changed, which is why DoorDash wanted to give you more choice in how you’d prefer to experience a restaurant-quality meal at home while supporting your favorite local restaurants. We’ve onboarded tens of thousands of merchants onto pickup to help generate even more sales for merchants at zero cost to them while offering you another way to access your favorite cuisines. As more merchants adopted the pickup feature, we also saw more of you opting for takeout, a win-win for restaurants and customers who pay no fees on pickup orders. DoorDash surveyed customers to understand what’s motivating you to choose takeout. Here’s what we found out: Restaurant takeout is on the rise: 56% of customers said the amount they ordered takeout has increased amidst the pandemic as customers support their local businesses during COVID-19. as customers support their local businesses during COVID-19. Consumers ages 35–54 were the largest pickup adopters, ordering takeout multiple times a week in March and April. Parents are opting for takeout to get some much-needed alone time and a break from the house: One in five parents told us they are choosing takeout as an opportunity to go for a drive or get some alone time. With self-isolation extending into the summer, parents are looking for ways to grab a quick break and a little peace and quiet. Customers are looking for ways to order food affordably: 44% cited affordability as the top reason they chose pickup. At a time when many customers are looking to cut costs, skipping the wait while saving money is increasingly becoming a more popular option for online food ordering. We still prefer to eat our takeout in the comfort of our home: The vast majority of respondents, 82%, said they take their food home to eat after picking up their order at the restaurant. While residents look for a chance to get out of the house by ordering restaurant food for pickup, the vast majority still come home to enjoy their meal. Pickup is a product feature DoorDash launched nearly 2 years ago, giving merchants the option to offer customers the ability to order food online for carryout from the restaurant, skipping the phone call, the wait, and the fees. During the pandemic, we’ve onboarded new merchant stores onto pickup that are seeing incremental sales through this product feature, including national chains like Wingstop and Jollibee along with local independent restaurants including Duke’s Counter in D.C. and The Village Bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area. “We launched DoorDash Pickup in April and have been impressed out of the gate. Pickup represents a double-digit percentage of our overall DoorDash sales because our customers love the convenience of ordering and paying ahead. It’s a great way for customers who are outside the delivery radius to still enjoy Jollibee and the 0% commissions are greatly appreciated during these unprecedented times,” said Beth Dela-Cruz, President of Jollibee Foods Corporation North America, Philippine Brands. Now, DoorDash is making the pickup process even more efficient, launching a pickup product feature to ease the takeout wait time for customers. During this time when social-distance measures are continuing to be enforced, we wanted to make sure customers weren’t waiting for long at the curb for their order to be ready. Now, if customers choose to opt-in to share their location data when the app is running, merchants will be alerted when the customer is approaching the store so they can have their order ready upon arrival. “We are adapting daily to new realities, and DoorDash takeout has been especially instrumental during the pandemic. The volume exceeded expectations and continues to grow, allowing us to serve guests looking for affordable and convenient ways to pick up food from us,” said Daniel Kramer, Managing Partner of Duke’s Counter, Duke’s Grocery and Gogi Yogi in Washington, D.C. We’re doing all that we can to serve our community at a time when delivery and pickup have become lifelines for restaurants to earn sales and for customers to access a hot meal safely and affordably. So whether you’re looking to pick up a quick lunch nearby in between Zoom meetings or want to take a walk after work and scoop up dinner on the route, we’re here for you. Just toggle to the Pickup button at the top of the app. *Survey Methodology: DoorDash surveyed nearly 1,000 customers through SurveyMonkey to understand their pickup habits and sentiment towards the service. The survey was fielded to DoorDash users who had ordered on the platform for delivery or takeout at least once in the last 60 days. The questionnaire was conducted between Friday, March 1st and Wednesday, March 6th, 2020.

https://medium.com/doordash/doordash-survey-finds-restaurant-takeout-is-on-the-rise-launches-new-pickup-feature-e5ce35fd2d1d

[]

2020-05-20 14:01:01.458000+00:00

['DoorDash', 'Food Delivery Business', 'Food Delivery', 'Pickup', 'Logistics']

LIDAR vs. Camera — Which Is The Best for Self-Driving Cars?

The on going debate among self-driving car industry experts is whether LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) or cameras are the most adequate for SAE Level 4 and Level 5 driving. The argument is whether or not to use LiDAR with camera systems, or just use camera systems without the LiDAR. LiDAR’s proponents include Waymo, Cruise, Uber and Velodyne. Tesla has been the least supportive of LiDAR, in favor of camera systems. Which is the best solution? The answer is which is better at identifying objects and recognizing them. Self-driving cars need to have a way to identify what it sees on the road. Is one better than the other? A self-driving car using Cruise Automation LiDAR (Source Wikipedia) Tesla seems to be outnumbered, with more companies and developers in support of LiDAR. Elon Musk has explained his reasoning for not including LiDAR with his Tesla car models. You won’t find LiDAR on the Model 3 or Model S, but you will see it on Waymo’s robo-taxis. So far, neither technology has been universally accepted as the solution for self-driving cars since there are no fully autonomous vehicles on the road that have achieved Level 4 or Level 5 status (as of this writing in September 2020). A Tesla Model S uses Autopilot self-driving feature with camera systems (no LiDAR). LiDAR The use of LiDAR is not exclusive to self-driving cars. It has a variety of applications, including meteorology, seismology, geology and atmospheric physics among others. LiDAR uses pulses of light to detect the objects, much like how radar works using radio waves. These pulses can determine the distance and range of an object, providing much needed data to self-driving cars. For example, to avoid a collision, the LiDAR can detect the distance to an object and apply the brakes to slow down the vehicle. LiDAR has been a proven technology in measuring distance and it is for this reason engineers have used it for different applications including self-driving cars. LiDAR can help self-driving cars create a visual map based on the reading it receives from the light pulses. The LiDAR system sends thousands of pulses every second to create a 3D map using on-board software to provide the car with information about its surroundings. This provides a 360 degree view that helps the car drive in any type of condition. LiDAR is used in coordination with cameras in self-driving cars, so they are not a standalone solution in itself. LiDAR can create a visual map of its surrounding (Source: Automotive World) Cameras If you were to drive like a human, then visual recognition of objects is the way to go. That is the main argument for using camera systems. Cameras provide images which software using AI can analyze with a high level of accuracy. The cameras on Tesla models are used by its Autopilot self-driving feature to provide a 360 degree view of its surrounding. It is all visual and does not rely on ranging and detection like LiDAR. Instead of light pulses, the cameras use visual data returned from the optics in the lens to an on-board software for further analysis. With the developments in neural networks and computer vision algorithms, objects can be identified to provide the car information while it is driving. This helps the car avoid collisions, slow down when there is traffic, safely make lane changes and even read the text from signs on the road or highway using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). So far Tesla has shown that self-driving cars can perform without LIDAR by using cameras. Tesla Vision system using cameras with Autopilot (Source: Tesla) The PROS Elon Musk hails cameras as the most reliable type of visioning system. It has a better advantage at visual recognition, working with AI to identify objects on the road. It can also read text from road signs, which is important in case of situations where the self-driving car must be aware of detours and road work ahead. Cameras on Tesla’s cars use optics combined with computer vision that provides computational imaging that continuously analyzes the images on camera. LiDAR systems plot out points on a virtual map in real time, using light pulses. Autonomous vehicle or self-driving cars can use this data to safely navigate and avoid hitting objects. Being able to determine objects and their distance is a strong point for using LiDAR. LiDAR systems with a high level of accuracy and reliability can improve safety which is one of the main talking points about self-driving cars. The CONS LIDAR has been hailed for being able to see objects even in hazardous weather conditions, but it is not always reliable. LiDAR is affected by wavelength stability and detector sensitivity. The laser’s wavelength can be affected by variations in temperature while poor SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) affects the sensors in the LiDAR detector. LiDAR is also more expensive and requires more space to implement on cars, thus it tends to make self-driving cars look bulkier. Another issue with LiDAR is visual recognition, something that cameras are much better at. LiDAR requires much more data processing in software to create images and identify objects. Cameras, while more reliable as a visioning system, don’t have the range detecting feature of LiDAR. While cameras are good in imaging, as a standalone system it probably won’t be sufficient. This is why Tesla also uses other sensors including radar to detect range and distance. Critics say that cameras still cannot see well enough to avoid danger, especially when weather conditions are involved. They need to be able to accurately see in any type of condition, like a human driver. Safety is going to be a primary concern if self-driving cars are ever to hit the road legally. Fatalities have already occurred with self-driving cars using both systems. Tesla drivers using Autopilot have been involved in accidents, including fatalities on US highways. Other times it was due to distracted driving, as these cars are not fully self-driving and still require the driver’s attention. Uber became the news in 2018 when one of its self-driving cars hit a pedestrian who died on the scene. These cars are not yet fully self-driving so there could also be neglect on the drivers part. These are the pitfalls in the development of self-driving cars. CONCLUSION If safety is our primary concern, then sensor fusion incorporating the best elements of LiDAR and camera systems will be necessary. A combination of LiDAR and other sensors, including cameras can offer a lot in terms of public safety. LiDAR may become unnecessary if the visioning system (e.g. software, sensors) becomes more accurate and reliable for public safety. After all, one of the main reasons for self-driving cars is to minimize accidents caused by human error. The common factor between LiDAR and cameras in self-driving cars is the software. Both systems use AI techniques like machine learning and neural networks to analyze data. As the algorithms get better, the results should also lead to more accuracy in identifying objects and allow self-driving cars to make better decisions. That could spell the difference between an accident and safe driving. This is not a simple problem with a simple answer. Machines are not wired to think the same way as humans when it comes to critical decisions. That requires more data and training for software developers to improve upon. The current infrastructure will probably need to be modified as well, to accommodate self-driving cars (e.g. V2X). Until self-driving cars have shown consistent data pointing to the use of one technology over the other, then the debate remains open.

https://medium.com/0xmachina/lidar-vs-camera-which-is-the-best-for-self-driving-cars-9335b684f8d

['Vincent Tabora']

2020-09-15 14:09:48.242000+00:00

['Lidar', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Cameras', 'Automotive', 'Self Driving Cars']

Caught in a ‘Bewitched’ trap with Dick York

Image Credit: ABC Photo Archives “Sam!!!” “Oh my stars!” It takes patience, understanding, and accepting one’s inadequacy being married to a witch and her zany oddball in-laws, especially when your ogre of a mother-in-law Endora zaps you into a fish net. Agnes Moorehead may have depicted the most reviled character in sitcom history. Seen here is an exasperated Dick York — the first and best Darrin Stephens — and a drop dead gorgeous Elizabeth Montgomery in a summer 1968 publicity still for ABC’s enduring, 30-minute Bewitched sitcom. York recounted in Herbie J. Pilato’s fan-friendly Bewitched Forever tome that “Darrin had to work hard for everything he got in life. He had witches, neighbors, even his own parents to deal with, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was to be with Samantha.” York formulated three underlying reasons why the high-strung advertising executive from Westport, Connecticut, pursued a relationship with a supernatural housewife: It doesn’t matter what your mother does to me, I just want to be with you. [Darrin jumped back on his feet anytime Endora interfered. She grudgingly came to realize just how much Darrin loved her daughter]. I don’t expect you to be perfect — I just want you to be yourself. I love you, and I want you to know how much I care. York commanded respect as a capable actor of both dramatic intensity and rubber-faced comedic reactions. Turn the sound off, and York remains funny. It’s a shame that modern-day York incarnation Jim Carrey was not involved in the 2005 theatrical dud toplined by Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman. Severely injuring his spine in 1959 while propelling a railroad hand car in one of Gary Cooper’s final roles — the Mexican Revolution-era western They Came to Cordura — a decade later the pain medication-addicted actor was on a scaffolding with Maurice Evans [Samantha’s father] shooting the lackluster Bewitched episode “Daddy Does His Thing” when he became dizzy and collapsed. Rushed to a hospital and powerless to work any further, a bedside conference with Montgomery’s husband — producer William Asher — prompted York’s premature exit from Bewitched after completing 75% [22 episodes] of the fifth season. The bland Dick Sargent filled the role for the remaining three seasons, marred by repetitive plots and Montgomery’s waning interest. York’s disappearance was never addressed except for possible jabs the writers took in Sargent’s first filmed episode “Samantha’s Better Halves” where Samantha insists, “But I only want one Darrin!” Flat on his back for almost two years until kicking drugs cold turkey, nevertheless mounting medical bills, a wife and five children, and an unwise investment in an apartment building in West Covina that the family called home left York’s finances in precarious shape. A shocking mini television comeback in 1983 and 1984 — guest spots on Simon & Simon, Fantasy Island, and the proposed NBC pilot High School U.S.A. costarring Rick Nelson and a bevy of former small screen stars — was fleeting. York’s agent didn’t submit his credentials properly to the Screen Actors Guild, so casting supervisors sent job offers which were never relayed because of the incorrect listing. Decades of smoking multiple packs of cigarettes daily triggered a bout with emphysema. York finally succumbed to the debilitating lung disease at age 63 in 1992, but not before he became a savior to the homeless, valiantly raising donations via telephone through his Acting for Life charity. A month before his death, a bearded, gaunt York proudly revealed in an on-camera interview with Entertainment Tonight that over 20,000 people had been clothed and more than 250,000,000 meals had been served. The things we do for love. Tap on this Facebook link to watch a two and a half minute segment from the February 21, 1992, broadcast of “Entertainment Tonight” memorializing Dick York. Hosted by Mary Hart, the soul-tugging video contains York’s final interview. Video Credit: CBS Television Distribution © Jeremy Roberts, 2019. All rights reserved. To touch base, email jeremylr@windstream.net and mention which story led you my way. I appreciate it sincerely.

https://jeremylr.medium.com/caught-in-a-bewitched-trap-with-dick-york-20a6184e1c84

['Jeremy Roberts']

2020-11-09 15:33:36.796000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Television', 'Relationships', 'Humor', 'Love']

Is Facebook Buying Coinbase Exchange?

The Economist, that standing staple of old times, had something quite interesting to say buried deep into an article about tech giants and their monopolistic tendencies. They say: “The lack of an incumbent giant is one reason why there is so much investor enthusiasm for crypto-currencies and for synthetic biology today. But the giants are starting to pay more attention. There are rumours Facebook wants to buy Coinbase, a cryptocurrency firm.” Of course, neither Facebook nor Coinbase commented on the matter when the Independent reached out, so all we have to go by is an arguably irresponsible statement by the Economist as it does not detail how they learned of the rumor nor provides some information to give it some credence. Yet, the Economist, with its unnamed articles, wouldn’t lightly make such statement, so could it possibly be true that Facebook is eying Coinbase? The reasonable answer would have to be: probably. It would make sense from Facebook’s perspective. They recently established a blockchain unit. Days latter an unnamed source said they are planing a cryptocurrency. The problem for them is they don’t quite have the intricate knowledge and/or skills. Blockchain talent is in very short supply currently to the point where salaries “have gotten insane.” One easy way to secure all that talent is of course to buy out a company that already has it. That’s something Coinbase itself has been doing recently. Taking a leaf from other tech giants, they have been out in a buying spree for much of this year, scooping up start-ups left, right and center. That led us to suggest the crypto-broker is perhaps planing to become a monopoly ahead of a rumored Initial Public Offering (IPO), but might they become a chess piece in an even bigger monopoly? The crypto giant has an estimated valuation of some $8 billion. Considerably higher than their valuation of $1 billion last year, yet probably pocket change for Facebook. The question, therefore, might be just how much they want Coinbase, although Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, might put up a fight. His whole life has been the company, can he really relinquish control? Maybe, depending perhaps on what Facebook plans to do. The social networking giant is the biggest country on earth. Incorporating cryptos in their platform could be a game changer. Recently they announced they will allow some crypto ads after previously banning them all. That might suggest perhaps their plans have changed slightly. For Facebook to launch a cryptocurrency or token it would probably be a security and a second IPO of sorts with considerably regulatory labyrinths and potential entanglements. Maybe, therefore, they are thinking of incorporating an existing crypto. That option would raise scalability concerns, but there are ways to address them through payments or state channels or second layers and/or by the time they are ready something like sharding might have come out in ethereum. Alternatively, they might want Coinbase solely for its fiat pipeline. Their Facebookcoin, thus, could easily be accessible and exchangeable for fiat by ordinary people through some sort of Coinbase integration. It would also be a backdoor entry into this space. Coinbase has backed ethereum’s ecosystem almost since the inception in 2016 following a decision on the scalability matter by bitcoin miners which effectively said they won’t increase capacity. Since then they have supported some dapps, or have been involved indirectly, with some whispering accusations of utilizing Silicon Valley’s monopolistic techniques where a company tries to do everything by copying everyone. Toshi can be an example of it, stealing some of the thunder of Status. Both are fairly similar, with the idea being an app to browse dapps as well as chat and send tokens. So while Coinbase might be grabbing a fish here and another there, Facebook is perhaps looking at grabbing them. That’s probably with an eye towards decentralized social networks which Facebook might see as a threat. It would be an interesting move if it does occur, and it would clearly mark the beginning of the second stage of evolution in this space, but while it would be something, it might still be nothing more than sticking plaster. That’s because some very interesting decentralized social networks are kind of rethinking online interactions in a way that may well make something like Facebook look quaint. Yet how it all will develop remains very much to be seen as summer heat now reaches this space.

https://vidrihmarko.medium.com/facebook-rumored-to-buy-out-coinbase-ec5f5a7c511a

['Marko Vidrih']

2018-07-02 12:42:56.658000+00:00

['Crypto', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Bitcoin']

My Adventure with Invisalign

On December 7, 2016 I started wearing Invisalign. It was not easy. It was not fun. Nearly no one knew. This is my story. How it started I cannot believe how this all started. I spend my entire teenage years in orthodontia, jaw surgery at age 20 , and most of my early adulthood back in orthodontia to only be, at the age of 35 years, going back into this yet again. I remember the moment I discovered it. Just like every other day of every other human being visiting the restroom during the workday. Upon completing my business I looked in the mirror to check for anything embarrassing on my teeth to realize one of them had gone rogue. Yes, this single tooth had pushed passed the perfect line of soldiers in the bottom of my mouth. I was mortified. After all this time, all those dollars, all the pain, I was standing there looking into a bathroom mirror with a defeating look of disgust on my face, as I realized I was back into it. It took over a week to talk to my wife about it as I felt my vanity had been affected. Like all other incidences she met it with incredibly rationality. “This is just how it went, all you can do is have a professional look at it,” she said. So I moved forward with the plan and after seeing my dentist eventually got in to see an orthodontist. Although, I know from experience that moving teeth are bad news to some degree I didn’t expect it to be completely bad, more so just a “this is what we can do” mentality. On the day of the appointment I sat down in the first examination chair where my “case manager” spoke with me about what was going on and my background. I explained the orthodontia I had previously, but more importantly the jaw surgery I wanted everyone to be abundantly aware. She took a panoramic x-ray and put me back to waiting for the doctor to review. When the orthodontist sat down with me he had a very free look in his eyes. His face said “this is going to be easy” however, as soon as I closed my mouth that expression changed. He looked at the case manager and said “I am going to do a full workup.” To shorten the details a bit, the rogue tooth was pushing my top teeth forward as my perfect bite was starting to unravel. The progress was too advanced to simply “throw a retainer on it” as the Orthodontist put it and he said he would recommend doing Invisalign for a period of six months. This conversation led us into the reason I was there, I was unlucky. It was simple biology which drove me to the Orthodontist, although the surgery was done later in my growth period I still managed to grow and this is what killed my bite. The only positive I took away from this consultation was the opinion the Orthodontist thought I would have been here no matter the preventative measure I partook. I received all the information I needed to know about the process including a procedure called inter-proximal reduction of my bottom front incisors, which means shaving millimeters off those teeth to make room to pull them back more. I left the office with mixed emotions, but mostly negative ones, all because I was the old man back in Orthodontia…again. I sat in my car in the parking lot and rightly or wrongly had some thoughts. I felt stupid. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. How I decided I didn’t like being here again and I feared it greatly. My wife was on board with doing whatever I needed to do to regain my bite. She knew what I went through with jaw surgery, I was not going to give up on my teeth. In my work life the research I do is grand and the same in my personal life as well. I spent days doing research, consisting of speaking with prior patients, other dental professionals, even reading peer reviewed medical journals. I wish I could say I came to the decision gracefully, but I didn’t, I simply gave into it as the best way I could seek treatment and not end up in steel braces again. The other decision which was made this day was the need to keep this between my wife and I. I did not intend on telling anyone about this to spare the embarrassment of having to explain why the old man was back in Orthodontia. The Process To save some space I will briefly describe the process. They start out by scanning your teeth, which is exactly as it sounds. They take three dimensional scans of your teeth and bite, the Orthodontist moves your teeth where they need to be, they send the work to Invisalign, and Invisalign “prints” your aligners. Wearing Invisalign Aligners. You can see the bubble on the left which goes over the attachment on that tooth. When I came in to get my first aligner I got to find out how long my treatment plan was going to be. I was in luck and it ended up only being 14 weeks long. I was ecstatic I would only have to deal with this for an inconsequential course of time. On the same day receiving my first aligner they added attachments to my teeth. These attachments are little mounds of glue which create leverage points for your aligner to move your teeth where they need to go. I only had three, which the Ortho tech had never had a patient with so few (not surprising considering we were doing so little moving). They did the inter-proximal reductions, which smelled and sounded horrible, then showed me how to put the aligners on and take them off. I asked them many questions about the rules and there really was only one rule they enforced: they must be worn 22 hours a day. This one of the attachments on my lower teeth. I will describe the nuances of living with Invisalign later, but from beginning to end it was a drastic change in routine with much modification and abandonment of habits, both good and bad. I think I did even more research after I got them than before due to the drastic changes needed to make the Invisalign work. After the treatment they put me into a retainer for 30 days, which then became a nightly process from there on out, which is where I am now. I wish I could say it was easy, but it really was not.

https://medium.com/@Jason_T_Me/my-adventure-with-invisalign-9e239c1ffe75

['Jason T Me']

2017-04-20 01:56:23.635000+00:00

['Invisalign', 'Dentistry', 'Orthodontics', 'Dental Care']

4 Golden Rules of Problem Solving

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them — Albert Einstein Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash The ability to solve problems and successfully navigate challenges is one of the few qualities that differentiate star performers from average ones, it also differentiates happy and fulfilled people from others who are anxious and miserable. Problem-solving is important to success and happiness because it enables us to exert control over our environments, learn unique insights and improve personal performance and quality of our relationships. Mastering the art of solving problems is not only restricted to work or business settings; it also has its place in everyday life scenarios. We all regularly encounter minor and major challenges in our personal and professional lives that require our attention, these problems could present with the following questions: I don’t think my car is supposed to make that thumping noise, what do I do now? I recently got laid off, how can I find a new job in a pandemic? My business is now growing, how can I keep up with my bills? My proposal deadline got moved up to this afternoon, how can I finish everything on time? My academic performance has been sub-par this semester, how can I pass this course? Did I notice some strange swellings in my groin, am I sick? Geez! I made an ass of myself last night, did I damage my reputation? I am in a toxic relationship; how do I get out? The bad news is that as long as we are alive, there will always be problems we have to deal with, this is inevitable. The good news is that we can do something about it, we can change our perspective and approach to our problems. Norman Vincent Peale famously said that “every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds”. Our mindset is very important when it comes to successfully solving problems. If we approach problems with the wrong mindset, then we will most likely have a bad outcome. A problem well approached is a problem half-solved. The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem — Theodore Isaac Rubin As an entrepreneur and consulting professional, I have had to regularly face many minor and major problems that demand my attention. These problems ranged from day to day business operations like finding business clients and resolving conflicts with irate customers to mundane challenges like learning how to edit videos or dealing with the stress and anxiety of living in a pandemic. I generally have found success by using 4 rules to work my way through problems regardless of how small or big they are. These 4 rules are as follows: Personality Trait: Understanding my natural preference for absorbing and analyzing available information. Stoicism: Focusing on what I can immediately control. Emotional Intelligence: Awareness of my emotional state, skill-levels and motivation to deal with the problem. Vulnerability: Humility to know when I need to ask for help. Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash Problems are not stops, they are guidelines — Robert H. Shuller Personality Trait Personality typing is a psychological system of categorizing people according to their tendencies to think and act in particular ways. Personality typing attempts to find the broadest, most important ways in which people are different, and make sense of these differences by sorting people into meaningful groups. The most popular and well-known system of personality typing is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI. The MBTI system describes a person’s personality through 4 opposing personality functions, preferences in the use of these functions act as useful reference points to explain how and why you are the way you are. You can take a free 5 mins test here. This model tests your natural preference for the following dimension: Extroversion(E) or Introversion (I): How do you gain energy? Extroverts gain energy from people and their environments, introverts gain energy from alone-time and need regular periods of quiet reflection. Sensing (S) or Intuition (N): How do you collect information? Sensors gather facts from their immediate environment and rely on things they can see, feel, hear and touch. Intuitives look more at the overall context and think about subtle patterns, meanings and connections in their environment. Thinking (T) and Feeling (F): How do you make decisions? Thinkers look for logically correct solutions, whereas feelers make decisions based on their emotions, values and how their action impacts others. Judging (J) and Perceiving (P): How do you organize your thoughts? Judgers prefer structure and like things to be clearly regulated, whereas perceivers like things to be open and flexible and are reluctant to commit themselves. While all of these domains are sliding scales with varying degrees of preference to each of them, having an understanding of your personality type and your natural preference will help you better understand how you subconsciously interpret, process and act on available information. For example, if you observe your car making a thumping noise, and you have a preference for Sensing (S) as a way of collecting information, your natural preference will be to rely on what you can smell, see or touch to try and diagnose the problem. An intuitive might prefer a holistic approach to diagnose the problem which might involve taking a step back to look at the bigger picture. They might try to connect different information they have gathered over the years about their vehicle from previous problems to diagnose the problem. There is no wrong way to approach problem-solving, the issue arises when you don’t understand your preferred way of taking in and analyzing information and the potential blind spots these preferences can create as you make decisions. Understanding the inner mechanics of your subconscious will help you to be better calibrated to adjust your approach as needed while working through problems. Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced — James Baldwin Stoicism Often, it is very easy to feel overwhelmed when faced with a problem, particularly big ones. Worrying about them is often useless and unproductive, however, focusing your attention on what is under your control can help you to assume responsibility and take your first step to solve the problem. Focusing on what you can control will help you to stay levelheaded and centred regardless of external events. There are few things you usually can have full control over, they include your thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, actions and reactions. This is stoicism. A stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking — Nassim Taleb Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy founded in Athens around 300BC by a man called Zeno of Citium. Zeno was a former merchant who lost everything he had in a shipwreck before becoming a student of philosophy. You don’t have to be bankrupt to adopt this philosophy, you can choose to focus your attention on what is in your control when you deal with life problems. How can you apply stoicism? Choose to take responsibility whenever you can. Rather than just blaming the world or other people for your situation, you can choose to accept that at the end of the day, you are ultimately responsible for your own success and happiness, no one else! Draw a line between what you do and do not have control over. You can get easily sucked into the exhausting cycle of helplessness, powerlessness and bitterness if you don’t draw a line and acknowledge what you have control over. It is helpful to brainstorm and write down everything you have control over around the problem you are solving. For example, when I suddenly lost 2 key employees in my business, I still had control over how many job advertisements I could post to attract new candidates, I also had the option to hire temporary sub-contractors if I couldn’t find ideal replacements. Start acting on what you can control. The famous Chinese proverb says “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, start acting on the items on your list to begin solving the problem. You can control your attitude towards the problem, your willingness to put in the work, hustle and do your very best. Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash Sometimes problems don’t require a solution to solve them; Instead, they require maturity to outgrow them — Steve Maraboli Emotional Intelligence Renowned psychologist and researcher Daniel Goleman defines emotional intelligence as the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions as well as the emotions of others. Skills in emotional intelligence are critical to successfully solve problems; they help you to remain highly conscious of your emotional states whether positive — joy, love, gratitude or negative — frustration, sadness or resentment and helps you to build key relationships and collaborations that are usually needed to find solutions and help. How can you apply emotional intelligence? Emotional awareness: Awareness helps you recognize and label your emotions and feelings while they are happening. This awareness will help you to consistently align your response and actions with your long-term goals. Emotional management: Emotional management is helpful to control your feelings and how you express them. When we are frustrated, it is only natural to sometimes want to lash out or act impulsively. Emotional management helps you to stay calm and levelheaded during these tense and trying moments. This can often be the difference in escalating or de-escalating a tough situation. Empathy: Empathy helps you to notice and correctly interpret the needs and value you can add to others. Sometimes, solutions are found when you take an active interest in the concerns of others around you and when you are not just primarily motivated by your own self-interest. Self-motivation: Self-motivation helps you to continue to keep your actions aligned with your goals regardless of distractions or feelings as though nothing has changed. Self-motivation helps you to delay gratification and keep putting in the work even if you can’t see immediately see the light at the end of the tunnel. A positive attitude may not solve your problems, but it will annoy people to make it worth the effort — Anonymous Vulnerability In your quest to find solutions, you have to show humility, drop your ego and be willing to be uncomfortable. Adopting this approach when solving problems helps you easily change course, ask for help or reach out to others in your network. This is vulnerability. While you are working on strategies based on your list of what you can control, start making another list of people in your network who could help with your problem. Make a list of 10-15 people in your network you can ask for help or recommendations to someone in their network who could help. Oftentimes, solutions to problems are found when you take a chance, put yourself out there and risk rejection. Rejection is OK because, in the end, it’s all a numbers game, if you talk to enough people, there is a higher chance of finding someone who can help you with your problem. In Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, she shares her research on how the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love and lead. She explains that “when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives”. When we step back and examine our lives, we will find that nothing is as uncomfortable or hurtful as standing on the outside looking in and wondering what it would be like if we only had the courage to put ourselves out there and take a chance.

https://medium.com/swlh/4-golden-rules-of-problem-solving-5458b124a2a0

['David Owasi']

2020-10-27 14:51:53.452000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Work', 'Problem Solving', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Productivity']

Philly Based Entertainment Company to Team up with South Korean Esports Giant

Stadium Audience Watching Esports game [Image: Blizzard Entertainment] After a successful first season, the Overwatch League kicked off its second season in February, 2019. Overwatch is a popular first person shooter (FPS) game developed by Blizzard Entertainment, which also oversees the esports league of the same name. For the current season, the league has added eight more teams to its roster reflecting the rise in popularity not only in the game but also esports as an industry. Now with 20 teams, a total of 193 athletes compete in the Atlantic and Pacific divisions. The Philadelphia Fusion, which placed second in the previous inaugural Overwatch League, is owned and operated by Comcast Spectacor, a Pennsylvania-based sports and entertainment company which also owns traditional sports teams such as the Philadelphia Flyers and the Maine Mariners. And with the esports industry experiencing a period of explosive growth, Comcast is poised to tap into the expanding market by joining hands with South Korea’s largest telecommunications company, SK Telecom. In the same month that the Overwatch League season two kicked off, the two companies announced that they will form a joint venture to create T1 Entertainment & Sports, a company dedicated to everything esports. While Comcast Spectacor currently only owns an Overwatch gaming team, the new venture is expected to expand its portfolio by supporting teams playing other games such as League of Legends, Fortnite, and Super Smash Bros. Comcast’s decision to collaborate with SK telecom, owner of the League of Legends gaming team T1, signals more than a simple international joint venture. The Western esports industry has been looking East for growth opportunities, as Asia region is projected to account for 57% of global esports enthusiasts this year. Furthermore, teaming up with SK telecom from South Korea, home of esports, will help Comcast and the Western esports industry boost market presence in the lucrative Asian market. The United States is the world leader in esports revenue, being responsible for 37% of global total revenue. The annual revenue for esports in North America in 2017 was $345 million, and the industry is projected to reach near $1.8 billion globally by 2022. The momentum of growth in esports is backed by robust viewership from younger generations. Three-quarters of teens and young adults aged between 14 and 21 identify as gamers in the United States, and 58% of young Americans reported that they have watched a live or recorded video of other people playing video games. Furthermore, 38% of respondents identified as a fan of esports, not dissimilar to the 40% who responded they were fans of the NFL. Brian Kim is participant of the Young Professionals Program at the East-West Center in Washington. He holds a master’s degree in Korean Language and Asian Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

https://medium.com/asia-matters-for-america/philly-based-entertainment-company-to-team-up-with-south-korean-esports-giant-53375c5c0da3

['East-West Center In Washington']

2019-05-07 14:53:31.860000+00:00

['South Korea', 'Entertainment', 'Esport', 'Asia', 'Videogames']

Elrond to Provide the Blockchain Component for the TailPath Supply Chain Management Ecosystem

Their flagship product TailPath has already been successfully used in NATO military exercises, making it one of the world’s first blockchain use cases deployed for military purposes. Elrond’s blockchain infrastructure will be used to anchor supply chain data via the TailPath mobile app, with fast transaction times enabling real time reading and writing of data at negligible fees. Through a development grant offered by Elrond Inc, SupplyBlockchain will take possession of ERD tokens to cover the initial smart contract deployments and transaction fees for integration testing and customer acquisition. “Blockchain technology is a perfect fit to address the inefficiencies of supply chains. We are pleased to support TailPath integrate their product with Elrond in a native manner, without adding unnecessary complexity via secondary tokens. This will keep the costs for their customers as low as possible while also providing a meaningful use for our ERD token and our overall infrastructure.” concluded Beniamin Mincu, Elrond CEO. About SupplyBlockchain, Inc SupplyBlockchain is an internet startup tackling inefficiencies in supply chain management using blockchain and other technology innovations. It was established in 2018 in the US and has a growing portfolio of customers in the transport, logistics and distribution industries, who already enjoy substantial savings and loss reduction. Among its many innovations, It provided one of the world’s first blockchain deployment for the military. SupplyBlockchain focuses on achieving growth in the US markets via its TailPath ecosystem that include iOS and Android apps. About Elrond Elrond is a new blockchain architecture, designed from scratch to bring a 1000-fold cumulative improvement in throughput and execution speed. To achieve this, Elrond introduces two key innovations: a novel Adaptive State Sharding mechanism, and a Secure Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm, enabling linear scalability with a fast, efficient, and secure consensus mechanism. Thus, Elrond can process upwards of 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), with 5-second latency, and negligible cost, attempting to become the backbone of a permissionless, borderless, globally accessible internet economy.

https://medium.com/elrondnetwork/elrond-to-provide-the-blockchain-component-for-the-tailpath-supply-chain-management-ecosystem-5dfd67c144f4

['Lucian Mincu']

2020-04-22 11:51:41.253000+00:00

['Supply Chain', 'Scalability', 'Elrondbd', 'Dapps', 'Blockchain']

A College Student Used A Language Generating AI Tool To Create A Viral Blog Post

As writers, we like to tell ourselves that we’re in a profession that can’t be automated, not anytime soon anyway. But artificial intelligence and machine learning are being refined at a rate that should probably begin to worry us. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is a powerful language model that produces text that is remarkably human-like. It was created by OpenAI in San Francisco and is the third generation of their language prediction model. In late July 2020, a blog post about productivity and overthinking reached the number one spot on Hacker News. Upon reading the blog post, nothing seems amiss. The author, who goes by the screen name Adolos, makes the case for boosting productivity by engaging in creative activities and forms of thinking. Overgeneralizations about the human mind and a couple of dubious definitions of different forms of thinking are used to justify the point — it’s not unlike most self-help and productivity articles that are already published and perhaps that’s why very few people failed to realize that this blog post was written by GPT-3. Liam Porr is the college student behind Adolos and this experimental blog. In a “tell-all” meta blog post, he describes the process of using GPT-3 to generate content for his blog: Over the last two weeks, I’ve been promoting a blog written by GPT-3. I would write the title and introduction, add a photo, and let GPT-3 do the rest. The blog has had over 26 thousand visitors, and we now have about 60 loyal subscribers… And only ONE PERSON has noticed it was written by GPT-3. People talk about how GPT-3 often writes incoherently and irrationally. But, that doesn’t keep people from reading it… and liking it. Writers who engage in more journalistic and fact-based writing may breathe a sigh of relief knowing that GPT-3 does not do well when producing facts-based content. Porr also writes: There’s a reason I chose a self-help style theme for the blog. GPT-3 is great at creating beautiful language that touches emotion, not hard logic and rational thinking. Porr set out to prove that the writing produced by GPT-3 could be passed off as something written by a human and he succeeded with a simple script and access to the API via a PhD student at his school. OpenAI granted access to the API to a handful of researchers in a private beta. The company chose to release an API rather than open-sourcing the models partly because it would give them insight on and a chance to respond to potential forms of misuse of the technology. Porr isn’t the only one who’s proven how unnervingly human GPT-3 can sound. Manuel Araoz has also published a blog post chronicling his experience using GPT-3 which is best left for those who are interested to read on their own. (Seriously though, the post is well worth reading.) What does this say about our writing and our future? Part of coming to terms with AI generating believably human-written blog posts now is reflecting on the state of the writing that’s being produced by actual humans. With self-help and productivity both burgeoning niches within the content creation industry, it’s a little frightening to think that artificial intelligence can pick up enough patterns to write blog posts that sound human. Could this be telling us that most of the advice in these niches are just recycled sentiments of the same ideas? Perhaps. I think it also reaffirms what we already know but are hesitant to admit: that most of the advice is arbitrary and without substance. We read self-help and productivity articles because they make us feel better, not because they give us any concrete tools with which to transform our lives. They all pretty much echo the same sentiment: work smart not hard, show up every day and do the work, and avoid negativity. While GPT-3 will likely remain out of reach for most laypersons for the foreseeable future, it’s not a stretch to imagine that it will eventually have large impacts on the content creation industry. While the technology is not perfect, if media companies chose to utilize GPT-3 for more feelings and emotions based content I suspect most content writers would be relegated to the task of editing and proofreading these articles rather than being paid to write their own. GPT-3 would allow companies to churn out content at a faster rate than ever before. We may also see a migration of writers shying away from opinion-heavy niches like self-help, productivity, and self-improvement to more facts based pursuits such as journalism and other facts based writing. And in a market that’s already cutthroat to begin with, only writers who have already amassed a following of people who are interested in what they personally have to say may survive. I imagine the barrier of entry to actually making a living off of writing online will increase tenfold as writers are pitted against the mind-blowing efficiency of artificial intelligence and machine learning. While it’s safe to say that technologies like GPT-3 won’t replace writers completely within our lifetimes, I predict that it will have tangible effects on the industry of written content creation within the next decade or two. It will be up to us to adapt.

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/a-college-student-used-a-language-generating-ai-tool-to-create-a-viral-blog-post-944e6b828342

['Janice Bae']

2020-09-20 16:47:49.978000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Writing', 'Data Science']

3 lessons from my first month as a Digital Marketing Freelancer

So I did it! I took the plunge and set aside all my fears and self doubt to put up my freelancing website www.gauravtiwari.co out to the world. Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash This was not easy. I have struggled at times with telling people of what I am good at or what can I do easily that I see many people struggle with. So when I decided to make the move and start reaching out to people or friends or connections, it felt weird to do that. But nevertheless, I put my brave face on and move on fully expecting rejections to my cold calls and messages. The journey so far has not been that bad honestly. Within a month I landed my first client and that too in a field which I am really passionate about : Sports and wellbeing.

https://medium.com/@gauravtiwari-60159/3-lessons-from-my-first-month-as-a-digital-marketing-freelancer-89e722226bf8

['Gaurav Tiwari']

2020-12-11 13:40:08.824000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Freelancers', 'Lessons Learned']

The Physics of Back to the Future

Mr. Strickland: “I noticed your band is on the roster for the dance auditions after school today. Why even bother, McFly? You don’t have a chance. You’re too much like your old man. No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley!” Marty McFly: “Yeah, well, history is gonna change.” -Back To The Future A tale of wrongs righted and second chances, Back to the Future — the trilogy of iconic 80s movies — offers a tantalizing possibility to mistake-makers everywhere: the ability to travel to the past and fix your (or your ancestors’) mistakes, and the ability to travel to the future, scope out your (or your descendants’) misfortunes, and adjust your actions accordingly. It’s every perfectionist’s dream. Image credit: Back to the Future, 1985, via GoneMovie.com. But what does physics have to say about these scenarios? First off, the notion of time-travel is one that doesn’t belong on the “fiction” side of science-fiction: it’s the one thing in science that you can’t help yourself from doing no matter what you do! Whether you held perfectly still or accelerated to nearly the speed of light, you, in your own frame of reference, are always traveling through time at the same rate: one second per second. Sure, that doesn’t sound like a very profound statement, but when Einstein put forth special relativity in 1905, that was just one of its astounding implications. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Lookang. For another, we learned that photons — or any massless particle, for that matter — cannot experience time at all in their frame of reference: from the instant one is emitted to the instant it’s absorbed, only massive observers (like us) can see the passage of time. From the photon’s reference frame, the entire Universe in its direction-of-travel contracts down to a single point, and absorption and emission happens all at the same time: instantaneously. But we have mass. And for anything that has mass, you’re limited to always travel at less than the speed of light in a vacuum. Not only that, but no matter how fast you’re moving relative to anything else — whether you’re accelerating or not — you’ll always perceive light to be moving at that one constant speed: c, the speed of light in a vacuum. This is a powerful observation and realization, and it comes with a fascinating consequence: if you observe someone in motion relative to you, their clock will appear to run slow. Image credit: John D. Norton, via http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Special_relativity_clocks_rods/. Imagine a “light clock,” or a clock that works on the principle of light being bounced back-and-forth in the up-and-down direction between two mirrors. The faster the person in motion moves relative to you, the more the light’s velocity will move in that transverse (across) direction, rather than in the up-and-down direction, and hence the slower their clock will appear to run. By the same token, your clock will appear to move slow with respect to them; they’ll see time passing more slowly for you! Clearly this can’t be the case for both of you: when the two of you get together again, one of you will be older and one will be younger. Which one? That’s the nature of the Einstein “twin paradox” problem. The short answer: assuming you started off in the same frame of reference (at rest on Earth, for example), and you wind up in that same frame of reference at a later time, the person who did the traveling will have aged less, having had time pass at the “slow” rate, while the person who remained at home will have had time pass at the “normal” rate. Image credit: © 2015 Twin Paradox, via http://www.twin-paradox.com/. So if you want to travel ahead in time quickly, just accelerate to a fast (near-light) speed, move at that speed for some time, and then come back to rest at your initial location. (This will involve some turning around!) Do that, and you can — depending on the theoretical quality of your equipment — travel days, months, decades, eons, or billions of years into the future! You can witness the evolution and destruction of humanity; the end of the Earth and Sun; the dissociation of our galaxy; the heat death of the Universe itself. So long as you have enough power in your space ship, you can travel as far into the future as you like. Image credit: the Economist, via http://timelessbreakthroughs.economist.com/is-time-travel-already-happening/. But backwards is another story. Simple Special Relativity, or the relationship between space and time on a basic level, was enough to get us into the future. But if we want to go back — or into the past — we’ll need to go to General Relativity, or the relationship between spacetime and matter and energy. In this case, we treat space and time as an inseparable fabric, and matter and energy is what warps it, or causes changes in that fabric itself. For our Universe as we know it, spacetime is pretty boring: it’s almost perfectly flat, barely curved at all, and in no way, shape or (discernible) form loops back on itself. Image credit: Science News / Nicole Rager Fuller, via https://www.sciencenews.org/article/special-report-gravity%E2%80%99s-century. But in some model Universes — in some solutions to Einstein’s General Relativity — you can loop back on yourself. If space loops back on itself, you can travel in one direction for a long, long time, and wind up right back where you started: a consequence of a closed Universe. Well, you can not only have solutions with closed space-like curves, but you can have spacetimes with closed time-like curves as well, meaning you can literally go Back to the Future! Image credit: New Scientist / John Papasian. But that’s a mathematical solution; does that mathematics describe our physical Universe, though? It appears not to be the case. The curvatures and/or discontinuities we’d need our Universe to have are wildly incompatible with what we observe, even near neutron stars and black holes: the most extreme examples of curvature in our Universe. Our Universe could be rotating on a global scale, but observed limits on rotation are some 100,000,000 times too stringent to admit the closed time-like curves we’re craving. If you want to go forward in time, a souped-up DeLorean — assuming “souped-up” means relativistic — will get you there, as will a souped-up train, which was Einstein’s initial idea! Image credit: the “Jules Verne Train” from Back To The Future Part III. But going backwards? Perhaps it’s better that you can’t go back in time, prevent your father from marrying your mother, and creating a time paradox. Image credit: user Unit 3.0 of the Infosphere wiki, via http://theinfosphere.org/images/cache/4/43/File%253AFry_Family_Tree%252Epng.html. Futurama aside, the idea of traveling backwards in time will likely continue to fascinate humanity, but that half of time travel — the “back” half — will almost certainly remain a fiction eternally into the future. It’s not mathematically impossible, but the Universe is based in physics, which is a special subset of mathematical solutions. In this case, our dreams of correcting our mistakes by going to the past will likely exist in our imaginations alone.

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-physics-of-back-to-the-future-137774bb43e7

['Ethan Siegel']

2015-10-21 17:08:47.141000+00:00

['Science', 'Physics', 'Time Travel']

The Green Mile

By J. Michael Willard Walking through the gate and into the gothic, imposing structure of the Tennessee State Prison reminded me of horror movies I saw as a kid at the Rialto on Lauderdale Street in Memphis as I nervously gobbled jujubes. But that was the dreamy post-war pre-Elvis 50s, and now it is 1972. The Supreme Court had just — by a hair of a chin y-chin-chin — ruled the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment. As a reporter, I was dispatched to the prison on the outskirts of Nashville on a muggy June day to interview inmates on death row who were given a reprieve in a 5–4 court decision. One might have expect a celebration in their cramped cages. But they seemed less relieved than bewildered, though one young black man was nonchalant, as if to say, “Who gives a damn.” The decision was called Furman v. Georgia, and there was a feeling it could bring about a sea-change in the way cases that previously warranted the death penalty would be adjudicated. Was it possible the end of capital punishment was nigh in the United States of America? As usual, the devil was in the details. Basically, the decision allowed states to go back to the drawing board and conjure more creative ways and conditions that were, supposedly, not cruel or unusual. To me, those two words are synonymous with court sanctioned executions. The next person put to death was Gary Gilmore in Utah five years after the Supreme Court decision. He was a bad hombre. His death was by firing squad with a circular paper target pinned over his heart. Gilmore’s last words were “Let’s do it”, as if it were a ho-hum routine function of society. Executioners, one with a blank cartridge and others with live ammo, fired away. The hooded Gilmore slumped over, limp in a chair. At the time, there had been a decade-long interval between executions in America. Whether or not Gilmore’s “do it” utterance launched Nike’s “Just Do it” there seems little doubt. At least this is the story in advertising lore. The commercialism of it is dark poetry. I have never thought the death penalty not cruel and unusual, particularly in Saudi Arabia where beheading is the norm. I am informed, though, the condemned feel no actual pain from the sword. On the other hand, blotched executions do occur in the US. When it comes down to it, extreme cruelty is, perhaps, being forced to live behind bars in a six-by-nine cell (Florida’s dimensions) with a cot and toilet until death. Though I have nada hostility toward anyone these days — other than, say, an occasional editor — I personally would prefer an express trip to hell than a daily dose of drip, drip misery. The 1972 Supreme Court decision, in my view, was a bolt of judicial wisdom. Though temporary, It was a nod to we who are often called snowflakes, libtards and much worse. Most in America, Pew Research (June 2018) says 54 per cent, favor the death penalty. This number rises substantially with white evangelicals (73 per cent) and Republicans in general ((77 per cent). It was not my first visit to the Tennessee prison. I had been there to cover a hostage takeover and, another time, to interview the longest serving inmate, a poor sap named Ira Leighton who I believed innocent. The prison closed in 1992, and now is a rusting hulk of steel and concrete with paint peeling like waves of wallpaper coming unglued. It was a scary place, then an now. It was where Stephen King’s flick “The Green Mile” was filmed. Fast forward to the present. It wasn’t an accident I came on this topic. The motivator was the mid-term US elections, and especially a Florida amendment allowing felons — other than murderers and sex offenders — the right to vote under certain conditions. During post-election commentary, I learned Florida had 27 death row inmates exonerated after it was discovered they were innocent. In 90 per cent of those cases, at least two jurors had recommended life. You can argue percentages, but this seems an intolerable ghoul pool, nothing short of a post conviction lottery for the condemned. The personal question that always comes up is this: What if it were your wife or child who was raped and murdered? To this, I can only answer as did the late New York Governor Mario Cuomo: “I tremble at the thought of how I might react to a killer who took the life of someone in my own family. I know that I might not be able to suppress my anger or put down a desire for revenge, but I also know this society should strive for something better than what it feels at its weakest moments.” That day in Nashville back in 1972 I walked around the room that contained Old Sparky, the oft-used electric chair that had ended the lives of so many. I wondered if they were, perhaps, the lucky ones, and the poker-faced 23-year-old I interviewed — the man non-plussed at having a reprieve — was the unfortunate fellow. (Photo: The now shuttered old Tennessee State Prison in Nashville)

https://michaelwillard.medium.com/the-green-mile-ae49e4fbbef7

['J. Michael Willard']

2018-12-05 20:55:41.824000+00:00

['Supreme Court', 'Prisons', 'Florida', 'Election', 'Death Penalty']

Hurs’ Encounter

Hur settled back on the country side with his father’s sheep and couldn’t stop brimming with joy. The last 2 hours had been incredibly surreal. He rubbed his eyes wondering if they had actually happened or it had all been a dream but he was here and live. Chatter was everywhere amongst the shepherds. This wasn’t a day they were likely to forget. It shocked Hur that angels would appear to lowly shepherds as them. At age 15, Hur was beginning to understand the world system and how people like him were the bottom of the bottom of the ranks. But — Gods angels had appeared to them and not only that they had heard an angelic choir and gone to see the new born king. It still sounded impossible. In a time when no one had heard from God in centuries, his angels would appear to smelly shepherds. The angels narrated that the Messiah had been born. The shock had been so much that every one of the shepherds rushed to the Inn to see for themselves and their sheep had not strayed! One of the biggest wonders of the Night was seeing the wise men from the East! Hur fondly remembered his grandfather’s story of the one time he went to the east and met this noble men of wisdom! They were legends Hur never expected to see but he had seen them this night bowing before this baby in the manger. What child was this? That noble men from far would travel a great distance bearing gifts! And the child was born in the lowest of places a feeding through for animals! What capped the night was how his younger brother Jotham had played his Samba for the baby. It was weird at first but Hur had not heard a more beautiful sound. Hur looked over the hillside and smiled. This child wasn’t normal but special and he cared about low folk like him. The worship and events of the night convinced him that this child would grow to be great and do awesome things! 33 years later Hur would stand beneath the cross of Jesus — the wonder child and watch as he died and the world grew dark. His life began with supernatural displays and so did his death. What child was this but the promised Messiah! O Come let us adore him!

https://medium.com/@nenkinan-deshi/hurs-encounter-9ce8083afec0

['Nenkinan Nehemiah Deshi']

2020-12-24 07:41:51.927000+00:00

['Christmas', 'Fiction', 'Christian', 'Jesus', 'Worship']

Halo Platform Roadmap Update for 2019

Halo Platform Roadmap Update Feb. 15, 2019 Now that we’re well into 2019, we want to take a moment to sum up our deliveries in 2018 and share our 2019 roadmap with you. The information below is not exhaustive by any means, but it’s a way for new and old community members alike to see that we’re continuing to make great progress and that Halo Platform is in it for the long haul! Please note, the following list is not exhaustive and is subject to change, based on the needs of our community. What we delivered in 2018 Blockchain — Our 5000 TPS consensus-driven chain, which powers everything on our platform, including our own cryptocurrency. Feather — The client software with which users can access our diverse array of products. Extension — For Chrome browsers, which provides quick and easy access to your wallet and all applications in our platform. This is your one-stop-shop to manage and trade your currency. Wallet — Secure storage for your HALO coin. Masternodes — Quick and simple to set up and maintain. Users can buy whole or partial masternodes. Currency minted on the Halo blockchain and service fees are pooled and distributed to masternode holders. HaloDEX — Decentralized Exchange for instant trades across an array of supported coins for quick and easy transactions. Coin Split — In December, we conducted an 800:1 split of our coin to add more value and appeal for current and prospective users. AWS Partnership — In December we became an official partner of AWS. Our plan for 2019 We have a lot planned for 2019 and much of the following are already well underway. It is shaping up to be an exciting year for Halo Platform: Real time Data System — We are developing our world class real time data platform that rivals others in the pub/sub data market. This is the foundation of several products we are building, and as such it will be one of our first products released this year. Several benefits for developers and community members will be realized from this, such as block data delivered directly to extensions, contract event data delivered to dapps or back ends without the need to run your own node, real time exchange data for building your own data reports and dashboards, as well as data aggregations from other chains and systems being offered for free to the community. We will also release this as a service for other blockchain developers. All service fees from this software as a service would contribute to masternode pools and rewards. Chat system — Built on top of our real time data system, you will see the initial release of our chat and community system. This system will be targeted to large and small communities alike, with topic systems, chat systems, and community interactions being at the front of the user experience. Since it is built on top of our realtime data system, communities will be able to tap into the open data and utilize live data feeds for coins and data of their choice. Masternodes — You will see changes coming to masternodes that will improve user experience in the dapp. The dapp will be realtime fast, and include an improved marketplace. This year we plan to extend the masternode system to allow for multi asset payouts. This means you will be able to receive BTC, ETH, and other coins/tokens that are gained in service fees across our platform. The capacity to allow approved native platform project airdrops will be added along with multi coin rewards. With one masternode you will be able to generate a diverse portfolio. Extension — We plan to support multiple browsers this year, expanding support to Brave, Firefox and possibly Safari. We also plan to expand current send functionality in the extension to allow sending of supported tokens. As we verify more dapps on the network from 3rd party developers, we plan to add a catalog of verified dapps in an effort to give exposure to 3rd party developers. Wallet — Many new features will come to the wallet this year. The ability to easily add and interact with smart contracts and tokens is coming as well as a revamped UI. There are also plans to add native coin support (currently sending Halo wrapped coins is available only if manually added). HaloDEX — The DEX is going to see many new coin and token additions across many different chains. The new backend is being integrated now for release in our upcoming sprint. Improved history tracking and the possibility to export trades and transfers will come as well as different types of trading, such as market trading and others. HaloX — Trade a wide variety of financial products on our low latency Centralized Exchange. An exchange designed for both beginner and professional traders, featuring peer-to-peer Margin Trading, automated Risk Management, a rich User Interface and a wide variety of advanced order types. Secured by an intricate cold-storage mechanism and government grade encryption where needed, to ensure safeguarding of funds from deposit to withdrawal. Of course, the Block and Chain Games team is also very busy this year. The products below are just some of the games we plan to deliver. Follow us in social media or our forums to receive the latest updates and new game announcements. Blockfight — Blockfight is a visceral online gaming experience, where players pit monstrous behemoths against each other in high-res 3D environments as the dice roll. The fun doesn’t stop at launch, though. Through the year, we will introduce new monsters to fight, new arenas and new dice to roll. And after that, we are going to develop a PvP game where players can equip their creatures with gear and battle each other! Draggin’ Dragons — Breed, Hatch and Trade rare and powerful dragons. Send your Dragons into Speed and Battle races where they can level up their skills. Draggin’ Dragons is launching in 3 phases, beginning with open beta featuring speed races where you can wager and win. Players can buy a dragon and earn a portion of all their winnings! The second phase introduces breeding and battle dragons, which includes RPG elements and an in-game auction house, where players can trade and sell with one another. The 3rd phase will feature special events, where live races will occur and players can watch and participate in realtime! Game Partner Platform — Block and Chain doesn’t just make games. We empower indie developers to easily integrate their games into our system. We have developed API’s for player authorization, smart contracts for interfacing into the Halo Platform blockchain (which is fast enough for realtime gaming!), and wallet integration. These are just a few of the benefits our platform provides. All partner games are included in Player Central, where they are featured and cross promoted within the platform. The platform is live now and we will continue to build onto our stack of SDK’s and other tools throughout the year. Player Central — As gamers, we all enjoy platforms like Steam, Battle.net, Xbox Live Arcade and the Sony Playstore. There is a lot of appeal to an all-in-one platform where players can enjoy not just their favorite games, but a personalized space to celebrate their achievements and socialize with their friends. Block and Chain’s Player Central is our answer to those platforms, bringing your personalized player experience to life on the blockchain. Initially, Player Central will include features such as an integrated player wallet, single sign on to all our games, player profile & stats, achievements, live support, and a news feed. Additional features such as friends, live chat, guilds, and other enhancements will be added throughout the year. As you can see, we have a lot in store for 2019 and look forward to bringing these great products and systems to our community! Follow Us: Halo Platform Instagram Twitter Facebook Youtube Reddit Discord Telegram Medium Steemit Github

https://medium.com/haloplatform/halo-platform-roadmap-update-for-2019-71ffade734ae

['Halo Platform']

2019-02-18 18:48:07.901000+00:00

['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain Development', 'Haloplatform', 'Cryptocurrency']

Grandfather Frost: Communist Russia’s Alternative to Santa Claus

Grandfather Frost: Communist Russia’s Alternative to Santa Claus A history of the jolly gift-giver of Russia Image by Sergeev Pavel on Wikipedia. Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, is the version of Santa Claus that remains ever-popular in Russia even today. Originating in Slavic mythology, Ded Moroz was a wizard of winter or snow demon that evolved to become the symbol of Russian traditions of gift-giving. It is said that the original Russian gift-giver was Saint Nicholas, just like our very own Santa Claus. However, it seems that Grandfather Frost came to become the favored figure of Christmas in Russia, though he adopted various characteristics of proto-Santas as well as the traditions of having Christmas trees and gift-giving. Unfortunately, the celebration of Christmas and Santa Claus was banned after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Supposedly, the religious and bourgeoise connotations did not sit well with the communist leaders who espoused the goal of establishing “state atheism”. Even so, Grandfather Frost was permitted to re-enter Russian culture by the 1930s, cementing its fate as the symbol of the Russian winter holidays. Ded Moroz vs. Santa Claus Though both Grandfather Frost and Santa Claus are old men with long white beards that bear great gifts with their arrival, the similarities end there. For one, we can’t really imagine jolly old St. Nick in anything other than his red suit. On the other hand, Grandfather Frost is often seen in a blue fur coat — the result of Soviet attempts to distinguish him from Santa Claus. Ded Moroz also wears a fur-trimmed cap rather than a Santa hat and is never seen without his pikestaff. Instead of the eight reindeers that pull Santa’s sleigh, Ded Moroz is pulled by a troika, which is a sleigh pulled by three white horses (sadly, no red-nose Rudolph). Grandfather Frost also works with a granddaughter, Snegurochka, rather than a Mrs. Frost or some elves. Interestingly, Snegurochka is made of snow, which made me ponder over her prospects post-winter. It is much easier to look for Grandfather Frost than it is to find Santa Claus. Rather than having to search through the North pole, Grandfather Frost lives in Veliky Ustyug — just a few hours north of Moscow. He also welcomed President Putin to his residence in 2008 for a visit. Definitely not something Santa Claus can brag about. Most importantly, Grandfather Frost visits with gifts on New Year’s, not Christmas. This is also a remnant of Soviet rule since Stalin declared that New Year’s Day was to replace Christmas as the national family holiday in order to rid the country of Western influences and traditions. New Norms of 2020 In any case, whether you are more familiar with Santa Claus or Grandfather Frost, it seems like winter this year will be incredibly different for many of us. Some of us will not be able to return home for the holidays. Some of us may be struggling to even get through each day — much less Christmas. Furthermore, it seems neither Santa Claus nor Grandfather Frost will be able to bring gifts to us this year with quarantine and travel restrictions abound. So if you are able, be the gift-giver to those who need it most in your community. Merry Christmas!

https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/grandfather-frost-communist-russias-alternative-to-santa-claus-6b52dc231cd5

['Esther K.H. Ng']

2020-12-25 12:03:06.693000+00:00

['Soviet History', 'Santa Claus', 'History', 'Christmas']

Stock Portfolio Automatization with Python

Now we have the 30 stocks that are listed within the DJI Index and we can download the historical information of their prices. Creating functions to test the strategies Before continuing with the application of the general strategy, we need to create some functions that allow us to analyze how good the strategy is. In this case, we will use 4 methods that will help us verify how well the portfolio performs. 1.- Volatility Function Because we are not going to take into account the weights of the portfolio’s stocks, we are going to take volatility as if it were that of a single stock, but taking into account the portfolio’s performance. The function would be given by: 2.- Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) The Compound Annual Growth Rate allows us to see the annual performance of an asset or portfolio to obtain its current market value from its initial value. The CAGR assumes that the earnings obtained by the portfolio are reinvested at the end of each year and allows an easy comparison between different strategies. The function would by given by: Where N is the number of years that have passed since the stock was purchased. 3.- Sharpe Ratio The Sharpe ratio allows us to analyze the return obtained for each unit of risk assumed within the portfolio. On the other hand, the risk-free rate is used to isolate the returns associated with investments. We can use the 2 measures mentioned above to calculate the performance and volatility of the portfolio. The function formula is given by: Getting historical price data Now that we have the necessary tickers from the DJI Index, we can begin to download the historical information of each of the companies listed in the index and calculate their returns. The database will be the prices on a weekly basis from January 1, 2015 to January 1, 2020. Portfolio Strategy First, we need to take into account how many X stocks will make up the portfolio and how many Y stocks we want to remove from the portfolio each week. Second, we will review weekly which are the X best stocks with the highest returns and we will see which are the Y worst stocks within the portfolio, then we will eliminate Y stocks from the portfolio and replace them with the X best stocks from the DJI index, this process will be repeated weekly. Strategy vs DJI Index Now that we have the strategy for the portfolio, we will analyze its performance using the functions mentioned above. It is worth mentioning that in the case of the risk-free rate, I have considered an approximate of 2% for the 3 Month Treasury Bill Rate. To have a point of comparison, we are going to use the returns of the DJI Index to see its volatility and performance over the same period of time. The results of the tests performed on the portfolio strategy and the DJI index show that although the portfolio volatility is higher, the CAGR and the Sharpe ratio are higher in the strategy used. Finally we are going to graph the performance of the DJI index versus the portfolio performance to get a better view of both.

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/stock-portfolio-automatization-with-python-b0aa5a3731ab

['Flavio Valerio Roncagliolo']

2020-12-13 16:23:10.857000+00:00

['Python', 'Portfolio', 'Investment', 'Technical Indicator', 'Stock Market']

Overcoming The Negative Effects Of Working From Home

When I started participating in social gatherings with my friends and family and going out in public to somewhat mimic what my old routine used to look like, I started to notice that something wasn’t right with me. I was nervous all the time, I had this overwhelming feeling that something bad was going to happen, and I would suddenly start feeling uneasy for no good reason. What was wrong with me? I was being safe and so was everyone I chose to associate with, and I wasn’t abusing our newfound freedom so what could be the problem? Well, while I was basking in the delight of working from home and staying in my comfort zone, I failed to do two of the most important things, continue regular physical and mental stimulation. I went from working out, being social, working from home occasionally, and running around all day, every day, to being at home 24hrs a day and 7 days a week because that was all I could do. Although partially true, I could have at least continued to follow my fitness routine from home and stepped outside for some fresh air and a daily walk or run but I didn’t do any of it, for almost a full year. It may seem like common sense but with everything else that was going on I never thought about how not engaging in any physical activity could be so harmful. Regular physical activity is proven to promote several overall health benefits including but not limited to mental and emotional health. Photo by erica steeves on Unsplash After realizing that my feelings of anxiousness and panic were due to lack of movement, I did what I always do when I realize that a change needs to be made, I started making moves fast and in this case quite literally. Walking around my neighborhood every day (1 mile), and tracking my activity on my Apple Watch became my go-to workout. Meditating was also something that I incorporated into my daily routine; and while walking helped me with physical activity, meditating helped me exercise my mind and manage my anxiety and stress levels. As I became more concerned with my physical and mental health, I also worked on improving my nutritional health by joining Weight Watchers. I also discovered that Apple Fitness+ is a great tool to do your workouts at home; I’ll have an article about my experience with that service coming soon. In addition to being mindful of my physical activity, I also made it a point to start leaving the house more frequently even if it was just to run to my local grocery store to pick something up, or hop in my car and take a ride for a change of scenery. Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash As simple as these changes were, they played a major role in improving my overall well-being and mental state. I can confidently say that I am feeling much better than I did when I was staying at home in my comfort zone. When attempting to establish any new routine or habit, we must remain focused and consistent if we want to see lasting results; if you put your mind to it you can truly overcome any obstacle.

https://medium.com/motivate-the-mind/overcoming-the-negative-effects-of-working-from-home-42c107b6974e

['All The Things Heidi']

2021-09-06 18:30:38.946000+00:00

['Move', 'Stress Management', 'Working From Home', 'Overcome', 'Mindful']

ENTERPRISE SALES PROCESS & FORECASTING DONE RIGHT — ADDENDUM

Pipeline Slippage: How to Factor this in Your Analysis and Efforts Many people reached out to really bare their soul around those darn deals that always slip and how best to decide what is truly “Lost to No Decision” versus still alive. Instead of calling them dead, why not just push the close dates farther out in the pipeline as that 1) sure feels better psychically and 2) makes your close rates (as I previously defined them) look better to your board as they are excluded from your denominator. As Chuck put it best, especially for new category creation companies: “You’ll see deals sit around and move from quarter to quarter in best case. Yes — one should be rigorous about closing them out, but hope (or fear) keep them lingering. And as we know hope (or fear) is not a strategy.” Here is how I would address slippage: Understand it — Go look at your deals that seem to consistently slip and ensure that all the deals have been properly codified against the new more rigorous buyer-oriented stages. I tend to see slippage more often in companies that have poorly defined their sales stages and processes because they mistake the actions that their sales team are doing for confirmation of buyer intent and commitment. You should also be rigorous in defining what “Closed-Lost to Decision” means to your company and avoid just pushing the ‘dead” forward quarter after quarter unless you for some reason want an improperly inflated future pipeline. If you have confirmed from a buyer that they are not moving forward with anything (which includes not replacing what they have if you are a swap-out sale), mark it as “Closed-Lost to Decision” and be consistent with the close date you use (either the date you have this information or when it was targeted to close — one could argue that neither of these approaches is precise but whatever path you choose, just be consistent in your approach). For those prospects that just go silent and never respond to tell you if they picked someone or did nothing or fell off a cliff or joined a monastery and took a vow of silence, I don’t know what to tell you — make your best judgment. Address it — As I have previously discussed, you need to dig into what is driving a lower conversion rate from the VOC Negotiations phase (Commit Forecast Pipeline Category) to signed in-hand contracts and properly prioritize removing the friction and obstacles to the final stages of the buying cycle. For example, I met with a portfolio company this week with this problem. It is a pre-Series A company that sells to large enterprises who, regardless of the company’s size, has a hard time buying products that have not yet solved for GDPR, SOC2, Info Security, etc. My guidance was, other than “fake it until you make it”, was that they had to properly commit to solving for those requirements in their roadmap over the next 12–18 months. For other companies that do not have clear compelling events (i.e. replacing an existing solution whose renewal date is X), I spend time with their sales enablement and product marketing teams to improve sales’ ability to create artificial compelling events often tied to the buyer’s fear of missing out on all the amazing kudos and fame they will get from deploying your solution :) Account for it — if, despite all your efforts in the two points above, you continue to have significant slippage then I recommend that companies start to calculate an additional form of the close rate calculation that incorporates slippage as follows: Close Rate = Closed Won / (Closed Won + Closed Lost to Competition + Closed Lost to Decision + Deals that Slipped out of the period). The difference between this close rate and my original definition will allow you to understand the scope of how big your slippage problem actually is. It will also allow you to understand, especially if slippage is a consistent problem, how much pipeline coverage you would actually need entering a quarter to hit your targets. For example, if your slippage adjusted close rate = 25%, then you would need 4X coverage rather than the traditional 3X coverage most companies shoot for. That being said, in general, I do not hold marketing and the demand generation engines accountable for adjusting the amount of pipeline they need to create to cover this slippage — in my mind that is on sales to go and clean up. There is one exception — for certain companies, their buyer persona (who looks very much like power and the ultimate decision maker) simply doesn’t have the power to jam deals through procurement and legal. Therefore, instead of shaving your head with a cheese grater and dipping it into ghost pepper oil or questioning the meaning of life and your small infinitesimal role within it (because that is what it feels like when your two big deals that were supposed to close just didn’t because the CXRO or EVP actually have no juice), just recognize that 1/4 of your deals will always slip and as such, you need more pipeline coverage as a company.

https://medium.com/@brettqueener/enterprise-sales-process-forecasting-done-right-addendum-6fb07f41cf4c

['Brett Queener']

2019-02-09 21:30:40.123000+00:00

['Startup', 'Pipeline', 'Sales Operations', 'Sales', 'Forecasting']

Babe Ruth is the Greatest Player Ever — But He’s Far from the Best

A new list to argue about Bill James, who has thought more about how to quantify and contextualize player performance than the next best two people combined, recently tackled a vexing hypothetical that has proved irresistible to baseball fans for generations: How would Babe Ruth perform in today’s game? The short of it: James suspects Ruth would perform at a “superstar” level if we were able to pencil him into the lineup for opening day 2019. He wouldn’t be Ruthian, of course; but he’d still be pretty great. The reasoning behind this line of thought (if I’m understanding James correctly) is that while the overall quality of play at the league level has improved significantly since 1927, Ruth was so much better than his league (James puts him at two or three standard deviations better, which translates to impossibly better) that even 90 years later, quality of play hasn’t passed The Big Fella by. It’s impossible to really know, of course. As James points out, baseball in 2019 bears little resemblance to the game in Ruth’s time. “Changes in HOW the game is played are not necessarily changes in how WELL the game is played,” he writes. “Not all changes in the game are changes for the better.” In other words, the game is fundamentally different today. Players aren’t necessarily better — they’re just different. I don’t know that I buy it. But we’ll get to that in a bit. Anyway, the James post got me to thinking about the notion of greatness. Or, more specifically, what it means to be the “greatest” in one’s field of athletic endeavor. How it translates across time and circumstance. I haven’t the foggiest notion how to truly quantify it — sure, we can come up with formulas to determine who had the “most” of something. But “most” doesn’t mean “best.” Context has a say in the matter. Take Walter Johnson: More powerful than a locomotive, Johnson barreled to a 16-WAR season in 1913 (36–7/1.14 ERA/243K). That’s better than great. It’s better than historic. As ranked by WAR, it’s the best season of the 20th century. Except… it’s not. Not really. Johnson threw 346 innings in 1913, using soft baseballs the color of tobacco juice. He was basically allowed to do whatever he wanted to the ball to make it sing and dance (not that he had to). Hitters wielded beams better suited for framing a barn than lifting the ball. And just imagine stepping into the box with no batting helmet, no body armor, against Walter Johnson as the late-afternoon shadows crept from behind the plate toward the mound. Getting on base was probably secondary to getting out alive. So yes, Johnson set an obscure statistical record that will likely never be broken. A pitcher could never approach Johnson’s WAR total in today’s game. Conditions just don’t allow it. WAR is essentially a counting stat, dependent to a large degree on accumulation, and today’s front-line starters barely eclipse 200 innings in a season — not because today’s players are brittle, coddled divas; not because MEN were MEN in Johnson’s day; because, as James points out in his piece, the game has fundamentally changed since The Big Train’s day: Teams today know there’s a competitive advantage in not allowing your starter to face a lineup for the fourth time; teams know it’s exponentially more difficult to get through innings today than it was in Johnson’s time; teams know they’ll win more games by going to the bullpen early and often. WAR may rate Johnson’s 1913 the best, but there’s no way you’re going to convince me it was even as good as the best seasons produced by Maddux, Clemens, or Martinez (or Jacob DeGrom, if you prefer a more recent vintage). But Johnson’s 1913 might be the greatest pitching season ever.[1] Because when taken as a whole (16 WAR! 36 wins! 1.14 ERA! 29 Complete Games! 11 Shutouts!), it leaves one wide-eyed. [2] Greatest. But not nearly the best. Greatest vs Best So what, exactly, do we mean by “Greatest” and “Best?” In boxing circles, Muhammad Ali is usually recognized as worthy of his self-proclaimed status as “The Greatest”; Sugar Ray Robinson is probably the consensus best fighter who ever lived. I suspect both would be more than happy with the designation. Why? Because Ray Robinson was the better fighter, the more skilled fighter — but Muhammad Ali was the greater fighter, the Greatest fighter. I suspect you know why, since more has been written and recorded on Ali than even the Babe. OK, OK. I know. Boxing vs baseball. Like comparing apples to sardines. Maybe another way to look at it is this: Greatest is a measure of impact and accomplishment; best is a designation of skill-level, an amalgam of athleticism, technique, and level of competition. To borrow an example from yet another sport: The 1972 Dolphins are the only undefeated team in NFL history; by that measure they are the greatest team to ever take the gridiron. Except nobody with even a passing knowledge of professional football thinks the 1972 Dolphins would stand the slightest chance against even an average NFL team today. Too small, too slow, too… 1972. Greatest is relative; best is absolute. Which brings us back to Bill James and his thought-piece on Babe Ruth. James, if you remember, mused that despite the significantly improved quality of play, Ruth would probably be a superstar if we were able to space-time him into today’s game (Make it so, Number One). Now, if anybody from pre-integration baseball could make the leap, it would be the Babe. But my feeling is that while James correctly rates Ruth’s greatness relative to his time, he probably overestimates Ruth’s level of competition, and underestimates how much better players have gotten over the years (and yes, I realize how absurd it must read for a relative neophyte such as myself to assume anything about Bill James’ intentions). As famously explained by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould in his essay “The Extinction of the .400 Hitter” and subsequent baseball essays, it was far, far easier for individuals to produce outlier performances in decades past. Guys like Ruth, Cobb, Hornsby, Wagner, Johnson, etc. essentially represented the next stage of baseball evolution; the game played by most of their peers was too primitive for more highly evolved baseball organisms. But over the decades, the game’s rate of evolution began to accelerate: Players as a whole got bigger, faster, stronger, more knowledgeable. The game began to catch up to the Speakers and Lajoies and, perhaps, Ruths. Athleticism, strategy, technique, and statistical analysis are so advanced in the modern game that it’s much more difficult to produce extremes in individual performance as compared to 90–100 years ago. As Gould wrote, “Wee Willie Keeler could hit ’em where they ain’t, because fielders didn’t yet know where they should be.” James posits that the quality of play has improved incrementally and at a slower pace than most folks might expect (and he cautions we should take care to decouple player ability from advances in technology, i.e. medical care, nutrition, protective padding, vision correction, etc). If I had to guess, I’d say the baseline talent level required to play in the major leagues improved incrementally as the game grew in popularity over the first decades of the 20th century. But I’d also argue that the baseline talent level improved dramatically in the 1960s, as the true effects of integration were being felt (before leveling off and continuing to improve at a slower rate through today). In other words, players weren’t just better than ever in the 1960s, they were being selected from a much deeper, much broader, much more Darwinian talent pool: The best black players didn’t replace the best white players; they replaced the worst white players. Ruth competed against his fair share of farm boys and railroad porters; Aaron competed against… Gibson, Mays, Banks, Robinson, Clemente, McCovey (helping to explain how black players claimed 14 of 21 NL MVP awards from 1949–1969 — a number that could easily have been 16 or 17 had voters properly appreciated Mays). This didn’t represent incremental change; integration was a seismic change, evolution on, er, steroids. It became much more difficult for even the best players to distance themselves from this superior talent pool. Willie Mays was undoubtedly a more skilled player than Babe Ruth — he just couldn’t dominate his league like Ruth. No one could: Ruth was a killer whale swimming with fluke. Mays was a killer whale… leading a pod of killer whales. And that’s just through the 1960s. Things don’t get any easier for the Babe from there. As noted by Mark Armour and Daniel Levitt in “Baseball Demographics, 1947–2016,” trends in player demographics have undergone a profound shift since the days of the Babe (and, in fact, the days of Willie Mays). In 1947, white players comprised 98.3% of the player population (prior to 1947, this number was almost certainly 99.9% of the player population). African Americans, naturally, represented an infinitesimal sliver of MLB rosters: .09%, while Latin players accounted for even less: Just .07%. By 1965 (the year Willie Mays captured his second MVP award), whites represented 78.3% of the MLB population; African Americans 12.7%; Latinos 8.8%. In other words, once non-whites were allowed to play, they captured 22% of available roster spots in less than 20 years. The African-American player population peaked in the 1980s (reaching as high as 18.7%), and has dropped steadily over the last thirty-odd years (7.7% in 2018). Over that same time-frame, as MLB scouting operations became truly international, the Latino player population grew to 32%, while Asians comprised 2.5%. As of 2018, white players held just 57.5% of available roster spots — with the highest concentration of white players in pitching roles. In other words: Over the last 92 years, the player population has gone from 99.9% white (and likely the same percentage American) to 57.5% white, 42.5% people of color. And those are just the demographics of the player pool; we haven’t yet touched on the size of the player pool. Back when the Babe was chasing skirts, eating steaks, and challenging “some sonofabitch to beat that!”, the U.S. population was approximately 119 million people — a fraction of whom were eligible to play MLB (which restricted its talent pool to able-bodied white males between the ages of 17–30, give or take). By 2017, the U.S. population had nearly tripled to 325 million. Huge difference? Sure. But we’re just getting started. Add to that 325 million the population of Mexico (130 million), Japan (128 million), South Korea (51 million), Venezuela (32 million), Cuba (12 million) and Dominican Republic (11 million), to name a few. The potential pool (again, able-bodied males of a certain age) from which MLB finds, recruits, and develops talent has grown from, say, approximately 10 million in 1927 to more than 75 million in just the seven countries we list above. According to Major League Baseball, 19 countries and territories were represented in the Big Leagues in 2017; a record 259 players (or 29.8%) were born outside of the United States. When the full international scope of MLB operations is taken into account, the potential talent pool has increased by at least a factor of eight (and the actual number is probably far greater) since Ruth was out-homering entire teams. At the same time, the number of roster spots has about doubled from 16 teams in 1927 to 30 teams today. Do the math: There are at least eight times the number of players competing for less than double the number of roster spots. It is much, much more difficult to make the Show today than it was at any time in the game’s history. Ruth was the best player of his day. He was the greatest player of any day. But “Greatest” is relative; “Best” is absolute. The Lists You’ve made it this far, so here they are: The lists. We’ll start with the 20 greatest position players of all time. The 20 Greatest Position Players of All-Time Ruth 2. Wagner 3. Mays 4. J. Robinson 5. Bonds 6. Cobb 7. Aaron 8. Mantle 9. Speaker 10. Williams 11. Hornsby 12. Collins 13. Gehrig 14. Musial 15. Schmidt 16. A-Rod 17. Rickey 18. DiMaggio 19. Lajoie 20. Bench And before you ask, someone had to be #21. I’d guess this list looks similar to other such lists you’ve seen. And it should. Many lists contain many of the same names, in what I suspect is a pretty similar order (in case you’re wondering, the methodology used to reach these rankings is a witch’s brew of WAR, WAA, OPS+, additional positional adjustments, minor timeline adjustments, a pinch of whim and a dash of whimsy). Ruth, of course, is by any rational measure the greatest player to ever step on a field. His was a sui generis, elemental, transformative greatness, and one might argue the gap between Ruth and the #2 man on this list approximates the difference between #2 and #10 (this in no way denigrates Honus Wagner, or Willie Mays, or Hank Aaron). On a relative basis, no one touches him save peak Bonds, and Ruth towered over his game in ways even Bonds couldn’t approach. At some point, the numbers, while rote to most fans at this point, become incomprehensible, measurements beyond our grasp. Here, a morsel: Ruth set the career HR mark in his third full season as a hitter; at one point, his total was twice that of the next man on the career list (and that man, as of 1931, was Rogers Hornsby, who had 295 career tallies to Ruth’s 611). It would take another four seasons before another player accumulated as many as half the career home runs as Ruth (and that player, who we will discuss at some length in a moment, was Lou Gehrig). As a hitter, the Big Guy was a cosmic mystery, beyond the kin of understanding (and we’re choosing to ignore the fact that he was an ace pitcher his first few years in the league). And that’s Ruth the player. We haven’t touched on Ruth, the myth; Ruth, the man who “saved baseball”; Ruth, the man who invented sport celebrity. His HOF plaque inscription is understatement bordering on parody: “The greatest drawing card in the history of baseball.” It was true then and it’s true now: Ruth occupied a place in the popular imagination never again reached by an American athlete. This list, after Ruth, is familiar — and fungible. Again, you want to quibble with the list, quibble away. Mays is a consensus #2 across most lists of this type, and really, who’s going to argue with that? (I will, however, argue with any list that ranks Wagner any lower than #3). Maybe you need to find a place for Jimmie Foxx, or Joe Morgan, or Albert Pujols. Maybe you need to take Bonds down a peg or two or 10, maybe bump Joe D. up a dozen notches. Maybe you disqualify all Deadball guys; maybe you disqualify all pre-integration guys. Maybe anybody ever associated with PEDs gets consigned to your personal baseball purgatory. These all seem like valid reasons to adjust, tweak, tear-up the list. Have at it. I won’t be offended. Because now we get to the complicated stuff. Some time ago, I posted an article that advanced the premise that maybe, just maybe, Lou Gehrig isn’t the greatest first baseman who ever lived. Maybe — just maybe — it’s Albert Pujols. [3] We won’t argue Gehrig-Pujols here, but a few passages from that article (written prior to 2018 season, so Pujols’ OPS+ has taken a hit since then) are relevant: “We began this exercise by comparing the greatest first baseman of all-time as ranked by Adjusted Production (OPS+). OPS+ is a useful metric because it allows us to compare, on a relative basis, how a player performed within the context of his league. With a career OPS+ of 179, Gehrig was roughly 79% more productive than a league-average hitter. Pujols, over the course of his career, has been about 52% better than an average hitter. Clear advantage Gehrig, right? Well… probably not. OPS+ tells us how a player performed relative to his league — but it doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of that league, about the degree of difficulty attendant to that league. And Gehrig, like every player who stepped onto a major league field prior to 1959 (when Boston finally integrated), suffers by way of this comparison. Simply put, the talent pool is much larger, much deeper, much better today than it was in Gehrig’s time — to say nothing of surgically calibrated defenses and bespoke bullpens stocked with fire-breathing robot dragons. Larrupin’ Lou competed in an eight-team league comprised exclusively of white players born in America. We can say with utter certainty that this talent pool did not represent the best players in the world at the time: Roster spots that should have been taken by the likes of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson instead went to vastly inferior players of a preferred skin tone. None of this is Gehrig’s fault, of course. But the fact is, he was a thoroughbred who competed against a field that had its share of pack horses. Pujols, on the other hand, has competed in a 15-team league (more, really, when one considers inter-league excursions) against nothing but thoroughbreds (and some chemically enhanced thoroughbreds at that). It’s true Pujols has dominated his league to a lesser extent than Gehrig — but Pujols has played in a much bigger, much tougher league. How much tougher? We can’t say with any certainty — but is it a stretch to think the level of competition in Pujols’ time is, say, 15% better than Gehrig’s era? Because if you buy that, you buy that Pujols has been just as good a hitter as the Iron Horse relative to his league (on a percentage basis, Gehrig’s OPS+ is 15% better than Pujols’). And if you buy that, you buy that Pujols is a viable alternative at first base on your “all-time team.” Because if Pujols is Gehrig’s equal as a hitter, and his superior in every other facet of the game, he’s the best first baseman of all-time.” Which is as good a segue as any into another list (again, the criteria is the same: WAR, WAA, OPS+, but with significant timeline adjustments): The 20 Best Position Players of All-Time 1. Bonds 2. Mays 3. A-Rod 4. Aaron 5. Mantle 6. Schmidt 7. Rickey 8. Trout 9. J. Robinson 10. Pujols 11. Morgan 12. Ruth 13. Wagner 14. Williams 15. Ripken Jr. 16. Cobb 17. Musial 18. F. Robinson 19. Bench 20. Griffey Jr. This, to me, is the more interesting and contentious list. Ruth, being Ruth, still ranks among the best players of all-time (he was also a front-line major-league pitcher, after all). Like James, we’ll give the Babe the benefit of many doubts and assume his hypersonic hand-eye coordination and immense strength transcend eras and translate to today’s game. It’s highly probable I’ve ranked Ruth too high, but in the end, it IS the Babe. If I’m being honest, I could probably re-order slots 6–20 tomorrow, and not lose any sleep. It might be too early for Trout. Griffey Jr. might be ranked too high, while Wagner and Cobb are out of their depth. I might’ve convinced myself Johnny Bench belongs over Eddie Mathews or Wade Boggs because I wanted a catcher on the list. Like I said, have at it. You’ll notice five players place among in the top-10 on both lists: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle. A few odds and ends: · Barry Bonds. Issues, I know. But all we have are the numbers, and the numbers tell us Barry Bonds is the best player who ever lived. Bonds didn’t have some of the defensive gifts of his godfather Mays, but he was plenty good in left field. Mays gets the nod in base running, but again, Bonds was excellent. Bonds overflows all gaps between them with his production at the plate: While Mays was a great hitter, Bonds defers only to Ruth and Williams (and a strong case can be made that they defer to him): Competing against the broadest, deepest talent pool ever assembled, Bonds led his league in WAR 11 times (no one did it more often); OBP 10 times; adjusted production nine times; slugging seven times. He claimed seven MVPs (more than twice as many as any other player) and should probably have nine. · Willie Mays was pretty good at baseball. In fact, he was better at baseball than almost anybody else who ever lived. How good was he? Among position players, his career WAR (156) ranks third, behind Ruth and Bonds. If you prefer “peak value” over “career value,” Mays averaged 9.9 WAR over 13 seasons (1954–1966), an extended run second only to Ruth in baseball history. Yes, it’s a bit silly to call a decade and a half of playing time a “peak,” when a typical peak is 5–7 years. But Mays never got the message that it was OK to have an off-year once in a while. · As a teenager, Mickey Mantle was the fastest player in the game and the most powerful. In 1951, Casey Stengel, describing his rookie outfielder, said, “He has more speed than any slugger I’ve ever seen, and more slug than any other speedster — and nobody has ever had more of both of ’em together. This kid ain’t logical.” His legend includes the fastest “recorded” time to first base from home plate (3.1 seconds) AND the longest home run ever “measured” (565 ft). Both of these records are fiction — but the fact they were plausible for decades speaks to Mantle’s talent. · Hank Aaron’s records are legion, yet he ranks behind Mays on both lists. Mays, who led the league in charisma and flair, was the more famous of the two, and undoubtedly the bigger drawing card. Aaron, a man of quiet dignity, was every bit his equal as a hitter. Mays is the nominally better player because of his defense and base running, but it’s much closer than many might think. Aaron’s 6856 total bases seems as safe a record as Cy Young’s 511 wins. · For reasons that should be obvious, Jackie Robinson’s inclusion among the top-5 “Greatest Players” is, of course, beyond debate. But his ranking among the 10 “Best” might surprise some. He deserves to be here. Despite playing but 10 years (the last four hobbled by various injuries), Robinson led his league in WAR three times; he claimed an MVP in 1949, and probably deserved at least one more. He generated the highest per-game and per-season WAR of any post-integration second baseman (61.4 WAR in 1382 G). If we (correctly) give Ted Williams credit for time missed due to military service, we should extend the same courtesy to Robinson, who was prevented from reaching the majors until he was 28 years old. Now factor in the fact he played under the most extreme pressure faced by any athlete of the 20th century. What Robinson achieved against the acid drip of racism seems impossible. Like I said, the more interesting and contentious list. Have at it. Jeremy Lehrman is the author of Baseball’s Most Baffling MVP Ballots. For more baseball writing, click here. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — NOTES [1] It’s not. That would be Dwight Gooden, 1985. [2] Johnson actually tallied 16.4 WAR in 1913. His pitching netted him 15 WAR, while his hitting and base-running added another 1.4 to his total. [3] That was on the heels of another article that declared, with certainty, that Clayton Kershaw — not Sandy Koufax — is the best pitcher in Dodgers’ history. But I digress. Additional reading: Lapchick, Richard. The 2018 Racial and Gender Report Card: Major League Baseball, April 2018

https://medium.com/@jeremylehrman/babe-ruth-is-the-greatest-player-ever-but-hes-far-from-the-best-f2f5a6b965cf

['Jeremy Lehrman']

2020-09-25 19:45:49.545000+00:00

['Sports', 'Baseball History', 'Baseball', 'Rankings']

Overthinking & Guilt: A Letter to Myself

Let’s talk about overthinking. I didn’t always overthink I wasn’t born this way. It developed over time. Maybe it started when the custody battle started between my parents, and I had to decide which parent to live with, which is the hardest decision I ever had to make. I loved them both, but I feared that if I made the wrong decision, one wouldn’t love me anymore, or things wouldn’t be the same. Ironically I didn’t get to decide, but the courts decided. However, I still received the blame. Guilty is what I felt because I didn’t do what someone wanted me to do. Guilty because I couldn’t make the right decision. Guilty because I thought everything was my fault which makes it hard to make a decision still and stand on it. If I could go back in time, I would wrap my arms around that ten-year-old girl that was scared, anxious, confused, and I would tell her, you’re human. Trust in your gut that everything will be okay. You are a child. Don’t feel guilty about doing what’s best for you. I love you, and I see you. Even though you’re not sure about who you are YET, you’re not going through this for nothing. You will touch many lives one day but work on yourself first. I love you. Learn more about overcoming your guilt in my book, The Magic of Getting Uncomfortable: 8 Strategies to Help You Forgive Yourself and Others While Setting Boundaries to Elevate Your Confidence. My book will be available for pre-orders soon.

https://medium.com/@elevate-29227/overthinking-guilt-a-letter-to-myself-e90e2c81e603

["Shatara De'Nay"]

2021-07-06 20:20:00.664000+00:00

['Overthinking', 'Personal Development', 'Letters', 'Motivational', 'Guilt']

Introducing Windmill

Windmill is exploring how to make developer tools (source control, build, and test) cloud-based, simple, and easy. Our Product Every good codebase we’ve worked on has a testing document: “If you’re working on the UI, run test suite X. If you’re working on the DB layer, run test suite Y. Running all tests in Y is slow, so use command Z to test one file. Or command ZZ to only do one test case. But don’t forget to run lint first to catch dumb mistakes. Install the linter with steps A-K.” Every bad codebase we’ve seen locks this in the senior developer’s head. The product we’re building will unlock this knowledge. Every time you save, Windmill uploads your change to the cloud and immediately runs the best analysis (lint, compile, test, etc.) It gives you live, intelligent feedback that makes your inner loop tighter. Unlike your IDE, it’s faster and deeper because it runs in the cloud. Unlike your CI server, it’s part of your inner loop, running on each save and keeping you in flow. Windmill uses your workflow with no extra sync or push commands. We integrate at the Unix level (filesystem and processes). We use machine learning to run the right test first so you get fast feedback. You keep your editor and our plugins pull error messages from Windmill. Our Hypothesis Developers waste time waiting for their development tools. Continuous feedback makes developers more productive. Our product is powered by new abstractions that make it easy to build reactive developer tools. Our insight is the common shape of developer tools: they’re composed of functions over immutable snapshots of filesystem state. When you express your tool in this framework, Windmill can run your tool at the right time, in isolation and in parallel. Our technical hypothesis is that this framework will open up new possibilities for development tools, like how MapReduce opened up data analytics, or how Deep Learning opened up AI. More cloud capacity will let developers waste less time waiting. Our business hypothesis is that we can turn cheap cloud compute time into valuable developer productivity. We’ll have revenue and positive gross margin starting with our first customer. Customers can make their developers more productive by increasing their budget. Our Values Continuous feedback makes us all more productive. We want to build an organization where everyone can succeed; not just white cishet male software engineers with good pedigrees. We need to be diverse to have enough teammates and perspectives to build good products. We’ll do the work of inclusion to help everyone succeed. We’ve started by donating every month to orgs that make tech less toxic (e.g. Black Girls Code, Code2040, Hack The Hood, Project Alloy). We want to help explain why these orgs are important. We’re a partial sponsor of the diversity tickets for this year’s GothamGo. Our Team We’re currently tiny (two people, NYC-based, VC-backed). We’re publishing this post because we’re looking to hire people that want to help build the next generation of tools, and figure out how to make our peers more productive. Dan Bentley — Ten years as a software engineer at Google: Google Code, Open Source Programs Office, internal build tools/continuous integration, Google Sheets. Two years on internal development tools at Twitter. $2.56 check from Donald Knuth. Nick Santos — Seven years as a software engineer at Google building consumer editing tools (Sheets, Forms) and Closure Compiler (a type checker for JavaScript). Four years at Medium, leading the implementation of its writing tools. David Carr wrote “[The editor] is such a pleasure to work with, Medium has become something of a pleasure object for writers.” We saw Google change office productivity tools by building a technical foundation for cloud-based collaboration. We’d love to do that for developer tools. Interested? Curious? We’d love to chat. You can find us at Work-Bench in New York City. Follow us @windmill_eng.

https://medium.com/windmill-engineering/introducing-windmill-98036ed5d824

['Nick Santos']

2017-10-20 03:18:36.405000+00:00

['Software Engineering', 'Continuous Integration', 'Test Automation']

7 Reasons You Should Choose Solar Energy

Solar energy is the most abundant energy resource on earth. It is a powerful source of energy and the most abundant energy resource on earth. The radiant light and heat from the sun are harnessed employing a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar architecture, solar thermal energy, molten salt power plants and artificial photosynthesis. Solar Energy is the cleanest and renewable energy source available. It is an essential source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending upon how they capture and distribute the solar energy r convert it into solar power. The photovoltaic systems and concentrated solar power are active solar techniques used to harness the energy. Passive techniques involved are orienting a building to the Sun, employing materials with favorable thermal mass or light- dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air. Why You Should Use Solar Energy? Increasing number of homeowners and business owners are going solar globally considering the substantial benefits. Cutting energy costs and clean environment are among the most attractive factors. These compelling reasons will reassure you, why should you use Solar Energy. Amazing Benefits of Solar Energy 1. Solar is a Free Source of Energy It is an interesting fact that the sun provides us energy, which can never be exhausted. Once you install the system, then you do not need to pay for the resources and you end up using free electricity and heating solutions. 2. Greater Returns on Investment (ROI) If you look at Solar Energy utilization as an investment than an expense, you will be amazed to see the Returns on Investment in comparison with electricity bill savings. 3. Solar Energy is Environment Friendly Solar energy is a clean and green source energy, which makes it very popular. Solar energy helps in reducing the carbon footprint in the nature. The fact that it does not emancipate greenhouse gases gives it a very advantageous standing. Solar power is a self-sufficient resource and you contribute towards a sustainable future when you employ this. 4. Cost-effective Electricity Source Installing a solar panel on your roof top, you can easily cover yourself against any unpredictable increase in electricity prices. You will be able to utilize electricity from a dependable source. Your Solar Battery storage system will enable you to store electricity for days you do not have enough sunlight and for nights. 5. Significant Drop in the Electricity Bill Electricity Bill is one of the major monthly expenses of a household or business. Employing a solar panel, you will generate free electricity for your business/home which will significantly reduce the expense of electricity. 6. Effective Use of Unutilised Land for Power Generation Bigger Panels installed at unutilized/vacant land can be useful for power generation for a greater number of homes and can be used commercially. This can be beneficial for remote areas where larger area of vacant lands is available. 7. Electricity Loss is very minimal Considering the short distance of transmission in comparison with traditional transmission methods, the electricity loss will be minimal. Solar Panels are installed on the rooftop to get energy from the sun and the minimal distance to the application increases the efficiency. Get a Free Quote on Solar Power Wish energy is paving the way for a cleaner, safer and sustainable energy by constant innovation, research and analysis. The sole objective of WiSH (Wind-Solar Hybrid) is to bridge the energy gap and making renewable energy accessible and affordable to all. Contact us for highly customized, smart and integrated renewable energy solutions.

https://medium.com/@samkinalath/7-reasons-you-should-choose-solar-energy-8904a4ea8c14

['Sam Varghese']

2020-12-15 05:46:23.084000+00:00

['Solar Energy Company', 'Solar Energy Solutions', 'Save Electricity Bill', 'Solar Energy', 'Solar Energy System']

The Last Star

Standing in the meadow, In fields of golden wheat, Wind thrashes at your hair, Your substance hums with heat. Grayblue clouds smear purple haze. Flat disc sun divides the sky. You did not come here for the view, You came to say goodbye. The aftermath of sunset, Skies now clear and fair. Now your world has gone to sleep, There’s nothing left but air. Our colony returns, Releasing death upon your land. Your offspring will not sing, Your existence will not stand. We mark the end of man, So new cycles can begin. The end of your ambition, The remnants of your sin. You’ve told your tale to others, But none longed for your lies. Further stars shine brighter, When darkness coats your skies. So drink your poison, drink your blood, It’s time you’re frozen into gray. Leave behind you everything, Your histories and pomp displays. There’s nothing left to say, Except to say goodbye. We brought you here but end you now, As the last star burns the sky.

https://medium.com/scribe/the-last-star-536b161167ff

['J.A. Taylor']

2020-12-05 11:50:11.043000+00:00

['Aliens', 'Science Fiction', 'Judgment', 'Poem', 'Poetry']

Intent vs impact

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” ‭‭(Genesis‬ ‭50:20) Intent vs Impact. This is a phrase used more frequently the older I get. I’d like to think it means someone is a bit more emotionally mature when they understand the difference. If someone says something that can cause me to take up an offense, I have to make a conscious decision to use phrases like this when communicating with said person: “Your intent did not have the desired impact.” If these things are not spoken, people will continue to upset/offend and over time, it will chip away at our resolve and ability to look past the hurt. I want to always trust someone’s intent is good. Usually the phrase is a bit more flowery (#Enneagram2) and I say, “I hear you and know you didn’t mean it this way… but can I please share with you how that landed for me? Again! I know this wasn’t your intent!!” For small things, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But Joseph. Man. His brothers DID intend to hurt him. That was their intent AND impact. This was no small thing or offense. Yet Joseph was able to see past the intent and forgive. He didn’t need someone to brenebrown (yes, using her name as a verb 😜) the language and help him relay to his brothers that he had been hurt. He said “this was your intent, But God.” Why is it still so hard for us to forgive people whose intentions are NOT to harm us? Just as love isn’t a feeling, forgiveness isn’t either. It’s a choice. We can either choose now to forgive or we can hold on to it for years to come. We choose.

https://mindacorso.com/intent-vs-impact-d69cb358ae14

['Minda Corso']

2021-04-07 12:10:36.623000+00:00

['Joseph', 'Forgiveness', 'Impact', 'Genesis', 'Intent']

Stripe Payment Gateway with Golang (GIN),GORM and Mysql

Before we start let discuss about what is payment gateway? Well,Payment gateway is a technology that merchants accepts the debit card or credit card from customer while purchasing goods from online. This is amazing isn’t is?. Payment gateway is the essential part for any e-commerce business to be successful and it is a integral part of any e-commerce organization. The world is upside down with corona virus and they are shifting toward the online payment. There are lots of payment gateway service provider like Stripe ,Paypal, Amazon pay, Payoneer, WePay and many mores. In this tutorial I am going to use Stripe Payment gateway and excited to share my ideas with you. What is Stripe Payment Gateway? It is a famous payment gateway that helps in financial transaction between merchants and customers. It accepts 133+ countries currency . It is a powerful payment engine that makes money move easily. Millions of big company like Google, Shopfiy, Salesforce, Uber ,Slack use Stripe payment gateway. This makes you crazy isn’t it? Now its time to focus on our Work : I am going to use Golang Gin framework which claims 40X faster than other platform. Gin framework provide faster, robust and great performance. So I decided to use this platform. Before start I assume you have mysql , code editor and postman install in your device. Lets start our work: Go and create a folder for Stripe payment Gateway in your directory. Now Inside that folder create three folder called bin, pkg and src. I assume you already know about these folder. Open Folder in your favorite code editor. I am using famous vs code. Now all set to go. Now Its time to install our packages Init mod go mod init Install gin go get -u github.com/gin-gonic/gin Install Stripe go get github.com/stripe/stripe-go Install GORM go get -u github.com/jinzhu/gorm Once all packages installed lets go inside src and create a folders. We are using MVC pattern so to save information in our mysql lets create a config folder and inside config folder create a mysql.go file . In this file we are config our application with mysql database. Config you database accordingly. I configured as: Once you configured your database go and create models for the application. Inside models we defined our attributes that are going to save in our database. I created a models and inside model folder create a charge.go file. I created a three models you can create accordingly. We are using gorm which provides attribute like ID created_at, deleted_at and updated_at automatically. GORM is a fantastic library for any golang developer. Using the advantage of gin and gorm I am creating table “charge” automatically. Once model is created now create a service folder inside src and create a file name charge.go In this section we save models information in our database . In this section we create a function SavePayment which save payment information in our database. Now Create a controller folder inside src and inside that we need to create a controller.go file which control our api. This is the important section of our application. We need apikey provided by stripe. we will discuss later how to generate secrete key in stripe. we need to pass charge parameter. we provide amount, description of transaction, source of payment and and receipt mail address. It accepts in cents. so we may need to calculate accordingly. I payment is unsuccessful we handle error as shown below. Now we need to create a router file. it routes our api. For that go and create router folder and inside router folder create route.go file. we user payment function inside our controller and we create a post route method. All set to go now go and create main.go file inside root folder. main.go is the file that initiate our application.Inside our main.go file Now go deep inside stripe website. Go to www.stripe.com and create a account if you dont have. Once you create a account go to dashboard Now go to developer >> Api key section of the dashboard. There we can create as many as for different project we need . I am using default standard key . Now its time to reveal test key token i.e secrete key and add in our project which i mention earlier . My suggestion is user env file to store key.Now all good to go. Go to code editor and and start our application Don’t forgot to start your mysql server go run main.go Open postman service and hit http://localhost/stripe/payment Now go to our stripe dashboard and see what happens BOOM !!! I receive my payment Did you receive your amount?? Check your mysql database . Mine is below and it works as expected!! As always all the codes are in git repository https://github.com/Bikash888/stripe.git Well, this is the simple tutorial on stripe with golang and you can go and learn more. I hope you enjoy this tutorial. See you in next article Thank you !!!

https://medium.com/wesionary-team/stripe-payment-gateway-with-golang-gin-gorm-and-mysql-866a9cf6678f

['Bikash Dulal']

2020-08-21 15:26:40.069000+00:00

['MySQL', 'Golang', 'Payments', 'Stripe', 'Payment Gateway']

Get ready for the big green Indian wedding! Flower Decoration Bangalore

Intimate weddings in the pandemic, and more awareness about environmental impact due to various flower decoration bangalore weddings have resulted in more people choosing to go waste free and green while tying the knot. Right from borrowing cutlery, to sourcing décor items locally — this is how big fat Indian weddings are getting a green makeover. Borrow, use, wash, repeatTraditionally, weddings are at least 3–4 day-functions in our country, and each function has a different menu. While reception nights have caterers bringing in non-plastic crockery and cutlery, other functions and numerous snack and drink counters generate a lot of plastic waste with disposables. For this, crockery banks let you borrow, use, wash and reuse steel utensils. “Four years ago, I started taking my own crockery and cutlery to social events and giving it to people to be used at their functions. Back then, it was not a popular thought, but now, with increased awareness about plastic pollution from weddings, many couples and families are opting to borrow crockery and cutlery from our bank,” she says. Once peoples’ apprehensions and curiosity are put to rest satisfactorily, many are willing to do the same. “We are already booked for the upcoming season,” adds Tulika.Going vocal for local Eco-conscious young couples are weary of the glitz and bling of unsustainable decorations. They would rather source seasonal flowers, reusable decoration material and furniture. Nupur Agarwal, a marketing consultant from Kolkata who had a low waste green wedding with her husband Ashwin last year, throws light on this. “My husband and I met during beach cleanups in Mumbai. When we decided to get married, we were absolutely sure that we didn’t want to generate the kind of waste we were picking. We also realised that people don’t know how to host a green wedding,” she shares. For their wedding, Nupur and Ashwin personally went about sourcing all decorations and flowers from local vendors. The groom arrived in an electric car, and saplings were given to guests at their wedding.

https://medium.com/@pmflowerdecorator/get-ready-for-the-big-green-indian-wedding-flower-decoration-bangalore-bfa8475ec486

['Poonammayank Decorator']

2021-12-26 16:10:47.333000+00:00

['Flowers']

Mastering Instagram Hashtags

According to Instagram, over 95 million pieces of content are shared on the platform each day. How do you keep track of all that information? Hashtags have become our best hope — and Instagram uses them really well. If a librarian like old Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification system, was around today, he’d give hashtags a thumbs-up and a happy-face emoji wink wink. Instagram hashtag Where Did Hashtags Come From? Twitter user Chris Messina created the concept of using the hashtag for social media conversations. On August 23, 2007, he tweeted a suggestion to use the # sign before the keyword or phrase as a method of categorizing conversations within the site. His innovation didn’t gain widespread acceptance immediately. People complained that including # signs made messages difficult to read. The system gained real social acceptance later that year during the San Diego wildfires. The hashtag #sandiegofire became the organizing phrase that enabled people to communicate quickly and conveniently on the site. The method of using the # sign in front of a word or phrase, although distracting to people reading the message, proved very useful. Twitter coined the name hashtag, and on July 1, 2009, the company began hyperlinking the hashtagged words together in search results, making the function of using hashtags very convenient. The list of social networks and related sites that have adopted this practice is fairly extensive. How Instagram Uses Hashtags So how do hashtags work on Instagram? When you share content on Instagram and include a hashtag in the caption, anyone can tap that hashtag and see other images that have used it too. The content is displayed via the Explore tab with three useful options. See below. Instagram hashtag mastering 1. Related hashtags As the name implies, this displays similar hashtags that may be of interest. There aren’t related hashtags for every hashtag, but for the more popular hashtags there are and it can be a useful way to identify similar user groups within a topic or industry. 2. The Top view This view displays content that has the most engagement — the most likes and comments. The nice part about this feature is that the cream rises to the top. So if you’re trying to make yourself known using a specific hashtag and your content happens to be well liked, then viewers of that hashtag will likely see it, even long after you’ve shared the content. For example, when looking at the top content for #instagrampower, you can still see posts that came out during the initial book launch for the first edition in 2013 by scrolling down the feed just a bit, even though it’s been used over 1,500 times. 3. The Recent view. As its name implies, this view shares the content with the most recent use of the hashtag at the top of the feed. For less popular hashtags, the most recent images will be visible toward the top for longer. For more popular hashtags, you’ll have to scroll farther down the feed to find them. MARKETING STRATEGY TIP — HASHTAGS YOU CAN “TRY” TO CONTROL If you include a very popular hashtag with your content, it will likely be shown at the top of the Recent feed for just a split second, and it will also be very hard to get ranked in the Top view for that hashtag. But if you include a less popular hashtag, it will stay on the top of the Recent feed for a longer period of time. It will also be much easier to get it to rank in the Top view. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle — hashtags that are used in your niche, but not so popular as to be hard to influence and impossible to be a leader in. How to Use Hashtags Hashtags have enormous utility for creative marketers. Let’s review a few of the powerful ways you can leverage them. 1. Include them on your posts to expand the reach of the content. You can include up to 30, but that is probably a little excessive. 2. You can create your own hashtags and use them creatively in your business for things like contests, promotions, and thought leadership. 3. You can look for hashtags, and now you can follow them as well, to research popular trends and participate in conversations within your industry or niche by commenting, liking, or sharing your own content using that hashtag. 4. You can identify new prospects by looking to see who is using relevant hashtags. Create Your Own Hashtags Creating your own hashtags enables a nice collection of marketing activities, including leading conversations and creating topics that rally customers and interested prospects in ad hoc conversations and sharing. Being the thought leader also positions you as the leader of your tribe. Creating a hashtag for a specific customer purpose also gives you the opportunity to ask people to use that custom hashtag as a social media reply device. This approach is what powers most Instagram contests, which we’ll cover more deeply in future. Hashtags can be set up by anyone simply using the # symbol before a word or phrase. You can use any hashtag you’d like without needing anyone’s permission. That’s good news for creative types, but an obvious problem occurs — hashtag wars! When two dueling marketers try to use a hashtag for different purposes, things can get confusing. Hashtags can also be used in association with negative or inappropriate images, so practice care. As a marketer, there are some best practices that you need to keep in mind when you start to consider how best to create and utilize hashtags. Let’s review them: 1. Be brief — use either one word or a short phrase. 2. Try to create a hashtag that is memorable and easily understood. 3. Check to make sure the hashtag is not open to multiple interpretations, or else it runs the risk of being used for the wrong purpose. Be careful here, weird things can happen. 4. Check to make sure the hashtag is not already in use before creating it. Make your hashtags unique or they’ll be used by others and therefore become more problematic as people use them for random things. 5. Don’t create hashtags that include another company’s brand or product name, except for rare occasions, like this book — please take a picture and share it using the #instagrampower and #instagrampowerbook hashtags. 6. Remember that once you set up a hashtag, it becomes a communication tool for anyone to use. What you popularize, others can hijack. You cannot control its use. Research Trends in Your Niche Even in a tiny niche, like the doll clothes market, there are new topics, trends, and concepts being created all the time. New competitors come into the market, new events happen, and industry news comes and goes. By following thought leaders in your industry and watching their use of hashtags, you can quickly keep your finger on the pulse of trending topics. Because of the visual nature of Instagram, this type of research is even more helpful for product sellers because you can get a quick look at new items you might not otherwise see. hashtag research Save and Cut and Paste Search for terms through Instagram’s Explore tab until you discover what your niche’s customers are commonly using. Then consider making a list of the hashtags on your phone’s notes function so you can easily cut and paste them into your Instagram caption each time they are needed. Find Prospects Using Hashtags You have an opportunity to identify people who are interested in your niche or industry. Simply look to see who is sharing pictures using the related hashtags. This is a significant opportunity that is easy to do. You can also follow a hashtag. When you do that, you see the items shared that use the hashtag and you can quickly like and comment on the content. The Great Placement Debate In the early days of Instagram people were sensitive to not use more than a couple of hashtags, and they would frequently only place them in the first comment, rather than in the caption. Those practices have shifted. Now people use tons of hashtags, and they also include them in the caption. To make the caption statement stand out and not be crammed into one giant paragraph with a lot of hashtags, users often add a space or two under their comment, include a period or two, and then add all their hashtags. That separates them nicely from your written comments. Join in the Sharing In some industries or niches, using the common hashtags can feel like a giant waste of time, and it might be. But in other niches, participating in the trending topics is a simple way to engage with prospective customers. You’ll have to decide whether this is a good approach for your situation. One indicator of whether your time will be well spent joining a conversation via a hashtag or using it for an Instagram image is whether you are (or your brand is) fairly well known and respected. If so, then you have an easy way to make a strong social impact. If not, then you’ll need to work much harder to make yourself known, and you’ll have to determine if that is time well spent. If you are a product marketer, the answer is probably a strong yes. If you are a service provider, then you’ll likely want to focus on local hashtags to connect with local prospects. As with all other forms ofadvertising, you probably need to take a long-term view and not make up your mind based on one or two attempts. Cautionary Tales As mentioned previously, companies have learned that hashtags can be hijacked and used for customer complaints. Hashtags are wild and free. Once created, they take on a power of their own. Creating a hashtag associated with your brand is the equivalent of setting up “open mic night” on the Internet. Be afraid, be very afraid. Setting up a popular hashtag and giving it prominence through your other media channels, only to have it constantly used to trash your company, is a PR nightmare. Be careful to consider your brand’s reputation in the marketplace and whether it might be wiser to simply participate in industry conversations rather than creating unique hashtags that can be used against you. McDonald’s and the #McDStories Hashtag McDonald’s learned this the hard way when it set up a Twitter hashtag campaign. The initial hashtag it created was #MeetTheFarmers, which the company used effectively to share stories of healthy produce and locally sourced ingredients. McDonald’s paid to promote the hashtag, so it gained wide prominence. A solid effort — no problems so far. But the second hashtag, #McDStories, was much more problematic. Soon the hashtag was being used to share food poisoning stories, broadcast customer service complaints, mock the company with funny insults, and generally bash the brand. The anti-McDonald’s sentiment turned into a competitive sport. Twitter users took turns coming up with the most sarcastic tweets they could, and happily tacked on the #McDStories hashtag to broadcast their messages. The initial error was only one layer of the ordeal. Social media bloggers also took the opportunity to publicly correct the company on its approach. Not only did McDonald’s receive mockery from the public; it received public criticism from social media marketers, too. There are plenty of lessons to learn from the McDonald’s story. Let’s review them briefly: A hashtag is a communication tool, and like any good tool, it can be used to build up or tear down. Hashtags are like a megaphone, and if you create one, it has power. If you take it a step further and advertise it on your other media channels, you give it even more prominence and power. 2. Crafting hashtags in a focused way that shapes the conversation in a direction of your choosing is wiser than making them more general. The #MeetTheFarmers hashtag didn’t provide an easy on-ramp to complaints like the #McDStories hashtag did. 3. Your brand resides in the mind of the consumer. If you ask people to share their thoughts publicly, you might be surprised at the level of negativity. Don’t expect them to be “on message.” In social media, this inability to control the message is particularly problematic for larger brands that have negative consumer sentiment to deal with. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t use social media; it means they should be careful how they structure the engagement. Hashtag Dos and Don’ts We hope these cautionary tales have helped clarify the importance of getting your plan nailed down when it comes to using hashtags. Let’s review a list of best practices. Hashtag Dos Do take the time to research the hashtags associated with your industry and learn how they are best used. 2. Do participate in the use of hashtags to extend your message to a broad audience. 3. Do look to see who is using your niche or industry hashtags and follow them. 4. Do use caution when creating new hashtags to ensure you can shape the dialogue as much as possible. 5. Do create hashtags that are brief and easily understood. 6. Do use websites that help you learn about new hashtags and keep up on trending topics. Hashtag Don’ts Don’t forget that hashtags are a tool that can be used to do damage. 2. Don’t underestimate the negative sentiment that might be bottled up about your brand and unleashed via hashtags. 3. Don’t create hashtags that are too general and open to broad interpretation or multiple meanings. 4. Don’t use general trending hashtags for marketing purposes. 5. Don’t create hashtags with brand names that you do not have express permission to manage. 6. Don’t overuse hashtags. Most people suggest using between 2 and 10, but no more. Technically you can add up to 30, but that is not recommended unless you’ve really considered the impact. Adding a long list of hashtags could make you look a little too desperate. An Interview with a Hashtag Pioneer — Josh Decker One of the most creative uses of hashtags I’ve ever seen is at professional sporting events. For example, at Seattle Mariners games, where the fan content was shared on the jumbotrons in near real-time as they posted using hashtags. Have you seen that at events you’ve attended? When I first saw it, I was blown away by the beauty of the idea — turning fans into the stars of the show. It’s one of my family’s favorite parts of the day! See below. instagram hashtags The company behind the technology is Seattle-based Tagboard, founded by Josh Decker. Tagboard partners with more than 200 major sports teams, and its technology is used at the largest events around the world. Tagboard also powers on-air sharing of social content for TV broadcasts. I asked Josh to share more about his journey and his perspective on hashtags: Q: How did you come up with the idea for Tagboard? A: The idea for Tagboard came about because communities all over the world were using digital communication channels, but those conversations were disconnected. We wanted to connect these people. We wanted it to work across social networks and be opt-in. The hashtag became a way for people to connect. When I had the idea for Tagboard, it was 2010 — you should have heard me trying to explain this idea to my mom. She thought I was crazy. But we thought, Hey, we think this hashtag thing will catch on and spread, and we’ll have something pretty awesome to work with. And that’s the idea of what you see at a Mariners game. You use that hashtag and you get added to the pool of content that the Mariners team can choose to put up onscreen. It’s a way for the fan to get rewarded for communicating and connecting with the community. Q: Was there a specific breakthrough moment when you realized this was going to be a commercially successful idea and that hashtags were going to power the idea? A: It was the first time I saw a hashtag used in a commercial on TV. I’m an Audi guy. I had the idea for Tagboard because I was part of an Audi community and wanted to improve the way we communicated online. Audi, being a very digitally savvy brand, had the first commercial with a hashtag. It was a Super Bowl commercial in 2011, and I thought, Oh snap! We’re going mainstream. This was around the same time we launched the company. We’d been working on it for six months, but when I saw that hashtag, I knew we were on the right track. Q: Is Tagboard just for big brands, or can smaller businesses use it too? What are some use cases that our audience might be surprised to read about? A: Tagboard, when we started, was not supposed to be a software-as-a-service company. It was a user-focused tool. It was more about helping anyone connect with their community online. We didn’t get traction on the user side, but brands and marketers saw the value in it. We’ve proudly kept a free search option on our website that anyone can use. We’ve had over 5 million hashtags searched on our website. The great thing is that we’re able to work with the NBA Finals, or World Cup, but we believe that it should be accessible to anyone. We have large enterprise-level solutions, but we also have our free search tool, so we’re able to serve anyone. Q: At a social/cultural level, what do you think the highest and best use of Tagboard and hashtags is? A: I continue to be blown away when Tag board is used to not only share breaking news, but to connect the people who are affected by that news. I’ve seen it used for earthquakes, wildfires, building fires, crane collapses, and shootings that are becoming way too common. Any time a big event happens, news networks are using Tag board to break the story, because Tag board is the only way to help them access that breaking news content, live from the scene, in real time, on any social network, giving them the ability to find that content and use it to tell the news and share updates and alerts from the government or other official sources. Q: How have you seen the commercial use of hashtags change since 2011 ? A: Hashtags started as a way to thread conversations, and we lost that at some point, but now I feel like we’ve gone from this attitude of “Who can come up with the cutest hashtag” to more of a foundational component of a marketing campaign. It’s cleaner, it’s to-the-point, and it’s more broadly used as a tactic to maintain consistency and relevance. You’re not seeing as much of the noise around hashtags, and we’re starting to see the signal come through. We’re seeing hashtags used for more longer-run evergreen campaigns. Hashtags have gone back to the community. It started there, and then marketers got ahold of it, and overdid it, and it became a marketing thing, and we’re seeing it shift back to a community orientation, even in the way marketers use them. Q: Are there any tips or suggestions for readers that are trying to effectively use hashtags in support of their online work? A: Listen to your community. If you’re trying to come up with a new hashtag for your campaign? Don’t. All you have to do is go online and see what your community is already using. Ninety percent of the time, the best way to come up with your hashtag is to listen to your audience. If you need to come up with your own, keep it short and simple. Q: How about any cautions, warnings, or things to watch out for? A: I’m always a fan of camel casing — capitalizing the first letter of a new word within the hashtag — because sometimes you can miss some double meanings that won’t show up otherwise. And don’t overdo it. Don’t force it. Communities are built on trust, and when they feel like you’re forcing something down their throat, they won’t trust you. At the end of the day, you can’t force it. Q: If readers want to learn more about using Tagboard, what should they do? A: Check out our website, tagboard.com, or scroll through our Twitter feed @Tagboard. We share a lot of the work our clients do on Twitter, so you can get a great taste for how the product works, and how it’s used in the real world. SNAPSHOT 1. Hashtags are a great tool for engaging with customers. 2. Include them with your content as you share it. 3. Use hashtags to research your industry and connect with new prospects. 4. Remember that if you create a hashtag in association with your brand, anyone can use it, including haters. source :

https://medium.com/plus-marketing/mastering-instagram-hashtags-172b00584b10

['Jasem Karrar']

2020-12-08 20:15:13.549000+00:00

['Instagram Stories', 'Instagram Hack', 'Instagram', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Hashtag']

ARM- Apple’s Righteous Macs

Battery Life We can all truly agree that although the rated “10-hour” battery life for the Intel Macbook Pro 13" for example is just utter crap. I’m currently on this device, I can honestly say that the advertised rated battery life is just an advertisement and not the truth. From my non-Pro work usage on my brand new Mac, the average battery health I’ve gotten is 5.5 to 6.75 hours of battery life with mixed usage. That was a major disappointment. At the November event, they claimed that they basically double the battery life without actually changing the battery size. Many companies do claim things to make the product “awesome” and “worth it” but it's just pure lies. However, these claims Apple made about battery life as drastic as this sounds… is true! Marques Brownless specifically says in his review of the M1 MacBook Pro, “I didn't plug it in for four days, totalling a little over ten hours of mixed usage, with 17% left” Memory The A14 chip for the iOS devices has accelerators for memory compression. M1 chip will also have memory compression accelerators since they are based on the same architecture. This means that M1 Macs may have better memory performance compared to Intel-based Macs. As a result, you may not need as much RAM. 8GB of ram may be sufficient? Because all of the components of the SoC are so-to-speak, Unified Memory is proving to be more “better” in tests. Max Tech did a wonderful video detailing this department. But in layman's terms, memory is more useful on the M1 Macs. Performance This article isn’t being written by someone that is intelligent as Linus Sebastian in tech. In layman’s words, Apple Silicon performs better compared to Intel Macs. The M1 Macbook Air is able to perform a score of 1700 in single-core GeekBench 5. That is the highest single-core of ANY Intel Mac. Including the new iMacs. For more information, click here: Here Here Here Software Compatibility. According to Apple, the M1 MacBook Air is 3.5x faster at CPU-based workloads; 5x faster at GPU-based workloads; and 9x faster at ML-based workloads. It is also more power-efficient allowing you to use the Mac for longer between charges. Benefits aside, there is an elephant in the room that we shouldn’t ignore, software compatibility. The M1 chip is based on the ARM ISA. This means older apps will run on an x86 compatibility layer called Rosetta 2 until reworked for ARM. Problem? Many apps will run “properly” on Rosetta 2 at this point in time and many won’t. A wonderful channel called Max Tech went into detail and showed off some apps that worked perfectly great. Hooray. Then Marques Brownlee gave the name of an app that he uses, Pixel Maker Pro. That my friend didn't run great at all. In addition, CPU bound apps may run slower on Rosetta 2 compared to running natively on Intel-based systems. My father uses a MacBook Pro 16" for his work. He uses Creative Cloud apps as well. Now, Creative Cloud apps will be updated by 2021 for Apple Silicon. Many more apps will take a while. There are Rosseta 2 versions but they will have “hiccups. ”This goes for everyone that uses their Mac for their work that the answer getting an M1 Mac is no. The other underrated benefit of using Apple’s own mobile chips is that it makes all Apple products more appealing. There are harmony and union between all platforms/products. These Macs are getting access to the biggest app store in the world because Apple is bringing together two different user bases. A popular game called “Among Us” is available from the App Store. But that doesn’t mean that it’s sunshine and rainbows. Many developers might as well pasting their coding and whatnot into macOS and BAM — the app is made. That's not the problem. The problem is that there are just a tad adjustments needed. What’s happening is that the Mac apps are just the exact iOS apps. That just won’t work. This is a bitter-sweet situation at the moment. Pricing The new Macs come with 8GB of RAM and at least 256GB of storage. You can upgrade the RAM to 16GB for $200. The storage can also be upgraded to a maximum of 2TB because these are technically base-line computers. Take note that you cannot upgrade the RAM or storage later on so get what you need when you order. This is again a bittersweet moment because having all the components “talk to each other” inside the chips makes ARM better also means no more self upgrading. Apple now officially has all the power. The shocking drop in price was the M1 Mac Mini of $300. Their ARM chips are cheaper to produce compared to Intel but Apple is well…Apple. I think you get the gist. Let’s just hope Apple doesn’t become a tyrant. Or more…

https://medium.com/swlh/arm-apples-righteous-macs-622662af7b50

['Doctor Marvel']

2020-12-13 21:13:24.180000+00:00

['Apple', 'Computers', 'Mac', 'Tech', 'Technology']

Amy Coney Barrett, originalism, and the Second Amendment

Amy Coney Barrett, originalism, and the Second Amendment Madame Justice Barrett may channel the spirit of Antonin Scalia, one of her mentors. Image copyright © 2020 Bill Cawthon. All rights reserved. Judge Amy Coney Barrett is now Madame Justice Barrett, the newest member of the Supreme Court. She joins Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas on the conservative side of the bench. Associate Justice Thomas is the one who administered the judicial oath of office, the final step needed for her to take her seat on the bench. A lot of people consider Chief Justice John Roberts to be a conservative and there is a lot of talk about a 6–3 conservative majority, but those people and such talk doesn’t include gun owners. It’s widely believed that the decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago were watered down to gain Roberts’ agreement and the decision to moot the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association’s lawsuit against New York City may well have come about because Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas felt Roberts wouldn’t sign off on any ruling that wasn’t so narrowly focused it would have been worthless. After the ruling on the New York Case, the court passed on ten other Second Amendment cases for this session, many of which raised important issues that have begged for Supreme Court review for years. With Justice Barrett on the bench, the conservatives not only have the needed votes to grant certiorari to Second Amendment cases, the votes would be there for a majority ruling. If Roberts joins the conservatives, he has the right to pen the opinion; it he joins the dissent, Thomas writes the opinion as senior judge among the majority. This could be huge. Thomas has long held the belief that the right to keep and bear arms should be recognized as being among the privileges and immunities of the American citizen instead of merely being protected by case law. This would put them on equal footing with the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other civil liberties. Why is this huge? By definition, a civil liberty cannot be licensed. That would turn it into a privilege that can be granted or withheld at the government’s pleasure, which is already forbidden to the federal government. By determining the right to keep and bear arms is one of the privileges and immunities, it become forbidden to the states, as well. [Comments about drivers licenses will be ignored as they demonstrate the commenter’s ignorance about civil rights, civil liberties, and drivers licenses.] This would mean that state requirements for a license or permit to possess or purchase firearms could be declared unconstitutional. While this would produce a reaction not unlike that of scorched cats, it’s not really that big a deal. It would invalidate state possession laws only in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York and purchase laws in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa (handguns only), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (handguns only), Minnesota (handguns only), Nebraska (handguns only), New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. Forty-seven state do not require a permit to possess a firearm and thirty-seven states don’t require a permit to purchase any type of firearm. The Scalia opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller left a number of questions unanswered and the lack of any Supreme Court action in Second Amendment cases since McDonald v. Chicago allowed, if not encouraged, legislatures and lower courts to enact and uphold restrictions that exceeded some of the standards set in the Heller decision. But Barrett’s dissent on the restoration of gun rights to non-violent ex-felons might be a sign she is willing to carry originalism farther than Scalia and be part of the answer to those knotty questions. Licenses to carry could also be in some trouble, thanks to the state of Hawaii. Hawaii has a permit to carry; they just don’t issue them to anyone except security guards and armored car crews. George Young sued the state, saying the policy violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. A district court upheld the state’s position but the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the lower court’s ruling, saying that not only was Hawaii’s law unconstitutional but that the rights covered by Second Amendment included the right to bear arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense. If concealed-carry was to be regulated, open carry (firearm visible) had to be the covered right. This means open carry restrictions would be subject to strict scrutiny, not on the sliding scale that has become so popular in judicial rulings. While this might sound like the end of the world to some readers on Medium, it’s not. Subject to restrictions in some areas, citizens in 31 states can already openly carry a handgun without a license or permit. Citizens in 16 of those states can carry a handgun openly or concealed without a permit. Restrictions on magazine capacities could also be tossed, this time thanks to California and the persistence of Attorney General Xavier Becerra. California’s ban on possession of magazines capable of holding more than ten cartridges was ruled unconstitutional on two grounds by a federal district judge in the Ninth Circuit, so AG Becerra appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Circuit, which had traditionally been sympathetic to gun control. The appellate court upheld the district court’s ruling and Becerra is now waiting to hear if the Ninth Circuit will grant an en banc review. If the court turns him down or if the en banc panel upholds the appellate ruling, Becerra has to decide whether to give up the California laws or roll the dice in Washington. Reminds me of Clint Eastwood’s challenge in Dirty Harry (it’s hard to believe that movie will be 50 years old next year). And that is what’s riding on this: if the Supreme Court affirms the appellate decision, magazine cap laws are out the window in every state in which they have been enacted. Challenges to restrictions on rifles such as the AR-15 could be in trouble, as well. Since Americans own an estimated 17 million of these rifles, they will easily meet the “in common use” standard set out in the Heller decision. Contrary to what some may believe, Scalia said only that M16 rifles could be regulated, even though they would be not only permissible but even required by Justice James McReynolds’ opinion in U.S. v. Miller. Scalia was an avid hunter; he knew what the difference is between an M16 and an AR-15, even beyond the fact that one is an assault rifle and one isn’t. A bill like the Bipartisan Background Check of 2019 could also be doomed to an early grave. Not because of the background checks themselves; Congress does not have the constitutional power to impose them on a nationwide basis. The proposed law not only exceeded Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause, it stretched into forbidden territory by proposing to regulate transfers that didn’t involve commerce at all. States, which have more regulatory power than the federal government in this type of issue, can still impose them. It’s even possible that a more originalist court could rein in Congress’ self-expansion of its commerce clause powers that has been ongoing since the decision in Wickard v. Filburn in the 1940s. When something leaves the channels of commerce between the states, or was never in them to begin with, the state has regulatory authority, not the federal government. Since red flag laws have the effect of stripping a citizen of their rights without due process, which violates the Fifth Amendment, it’s a reasonable possibility that they could also be in jeopardy. Since they haven’t shown a positive impact on the suicide rate and they have already been misused, resulting in one death, that’s probably not much of a loss. I am not saying all of this will happen. By all accounts, Justice Barrett is a brilliant jurist and scrupulous in the application of the law: I have every reason to believe she will judge cases presented to the court fairly and with an eye toward the need for intervention by the court. But I am hopeful.

https://medium.com/@billcawthon/amy-coney-barrett-originalism-and-the-second-amendment-2cbcca5a8fdb

['William Connell Cawthon Jr.']

2020-10-31 10:00:27.961000+00:00

['Second Amendment', 'Supreme Court', 'Gun Control', 'Amy Coney Barrett', 'Guns']

Philosophy

Image: Philosophy by mjboyce 10 April 2019 I’ve been writing philosophy for a long time. I’ve been writing it online and elsewhere in a way that does not identify itself strictly as philosophy in the traditional sense. At least, I don’t believe so. As a student, I wrote my papers, including my PhD thesis in a creatively atypical way (for example, my PhD thesis had no footnotes, and the bibliography was structured like an autobiography). Yet I did very well as a student and had very close relationships with my teachers, some of whom I consider among the greatest intellectuals of the 20th Century. I would say the same about my peers, who were incredibly smart and inspiring scholars, many of whom are now the star teachers in the Universities they are employed by. I have never been interested in the academic convention that informs the departments of philosophy. All three of my degrees were done in inter-disciplinary programs—even my bachelor’s, which was a 4-year program with a thesis supervisor. I have never been interested in mastering the canon in such a way that I could then teach classes that recycled commentary about certain key figures (Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, etc.). I was not particularly interested in teaching, although I very much enjoyed running seminars—which are much more conversive than the traditional lecture model. And it was conversation that I was interested in, not filling students heads with the thoughts of others. So, I didn’t take the graduate route to stream myself into a teaching job. Instead, I took the route of an artist. I wrote novels, poetry, art reviews, I created video works, photographs and musical works— and produced them all as though I were writing philosophy. None of that made me much money, so I’ve always had to have a job on the side. These days, it seems, that the idea of getting a“job” as opposed to realizing a career, is tantamount to a moral failure. Employers seem to expect office workers to dedicate themselves with the devotion of a surgeon and the utter fealty of a knight to banal administrative tasks. I am not invested in such an identification, and yet, I’m still able to do a good job—imagine that! It is possible to have a passion and still provide good value to an employer doing work that is not part of one’s personal passion. Perhaps I have been pretending to be more artistically inclined than philosophically inclined. Perhaps I have been more apt to present myself as a writer of fiction, than as a writer of philosophy. This is because, on the surface, it may more readily look like fiction or poetry writing than philosophy. There are expectations about what these different kinds of productions look like. And there are also expectations about how these productions preferably register on us, reach us or resonate with us. There is a mental (psychological, perceptual and emotional) frame we may put upon a piece of writing (or any creative production), which defines our wants and needs, and puts our interest in realizing them before any desire to discover something else, to engage (read, watch, look, listen) without foreknowledge of what to expect. My work probably does not satisfy such expectations often. But, if I frame the work as experimental creative writing, whether as poetry or long form fiction, then I believe I have alerted the reader that they will likely be engaging with something that will be unusual, that they may have to work a bit to get. I do not often refer to what I’m doing, however, as philosophy. Art, as defined by how I understand my culture to define it, seems to have been granted more license to be strange. Therefore, I tend to frame my work as art. But to me truly, it is philosophy before it is art in the way I believe my culture typically defines art — in the sense that the important thing is not its form or its style (although that is part of it), but rather its subject matter, what it’s thinking about. I have discovered through a long history of writing about things that the style I use to write with makes a difference to the quality of the thinking and the understanding. Which is to say that the oblique style I often use allows me to uncover greater insights (for myself, if not for others). This may not be popular but I do find it effective, particularly for the way that the form and meaning conspire to reflect one another. As an example, I think about how some people have complained to me about the writing of Jacques Derrida, who is a writer I have enjoyed as much as I have enjoyed the work of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. I have also heard people complain about the writing style of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. Many people simply cannot read a good deal of Gertrude Stein’s work—other than the autobiographies. But with Joyce and Stein, there is a tolerance of their difficulty, I think partly because of the social recognition that they are important creative artists. Whereas with Derrida, perhaps because he is framed as a thinker, I think there is an expectation that clarity should be a defining characteristic of his writing. I don’t share this conviction. Or rather, what passes as a popular definition of clarity is different from what passes as clarity for me. I think Derrida’s work is crystal clear, and inspiringly so. But there is an idea about clear, simple writing, which some readers who are required to read him in school or who believe they are required to read him in order “to be on top of things” don’t see in his writing, and it angers them that they cannot understand his writing. Clarity, I think, is not just about style, or about expression in the superficial sense, it is about communication (communion) of idea—that is, the ability to impart to someone, to inspire them with a way of looking at things. This way of looking can be as much or more about the process of looking, of thinking, of analysis—like the process of thinking through a mathematical argument—as it is about the declarative definition, resolution or solution to a “problem.” It can be as much about the way (action, verb) of thinking as it is about the what (name, noun) of thinking. So, I have used an oblique, creative, artistic approach to writing philosophy because I have found that it gets better results for me as a writer and thinking, but I recognize that this has limited the number of readers I reach. Is this important? Apparently, it is to some degree. And thus, recognizing this, I am electing to write some philosophy is a less oblique manner, to see what happens—both with respect to my getting at what I am making an inquiry about, and with respect to communicating (communing) well (better?) with others. To this end, I was going to start another publication and simply title it Philosophy. But I really do like the title of this publication —Writing Thinking Saying—because it is itself a philosophical signifier with respect to communication, which I am still sorting out. The style, therefore, may be shifting for this publication, but I won’t abandon the antecedent writing by annexing it, or separate it as though there isn’t a relationship between them.

https://medium.com/writing-thinking-saying/philosophy-18b75f39a13b

[]

2019-04-10 21:46:00.750000+00:00

['Philosophy', 'Creativity', 'Writing', 'Creative Writing', 'Art']

Edition 13: An eco-friendly way to mourn your loved ones

(This newsletter was sent to email subscribers on February 28, 2020.) Happy Friday, muggles. Need some encouragement to power through the last day of the week? Just take some cues from the 62-year-old former marine who spent 8 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds in a perfect plank position. 😱 Congrats on setting a new record that’s out of this world! NASA approves plans for the first round-trip mission to Mars Mon Feb 10 The Mars Sample Return mission is officially a line item in the NASA 2021 proposed budget. This first-of-its-kind mission will attempt to bring back rock and soil samples from the red planet, collected and left behind by the new Mars 2020 rover. Why is this a big deal? NASA has sent rovers to Mars in the past, but those expeditions have always been a one-way trip. This new mission promises to be one of the most complex engineering feats attempted thus far, posing unique challenges such as launching a rocket from the surface of Mars for the first time. Mars has long fascinated us Earthlings being one of the likeliest candidates in our solar system to host extraterrestrial life. Scientists hope that the results from this mission will finally answer the question: Was there ever life on Mars … and if so, what happened to it? The Mars 2020 rover is set to launch in July. If all goes according to plan (aka if Congress approves NASA’s proposed budget for 2021), the Mars Sample Return mission will be on track to launch the pick-up rover by 2026 and return its first Martian cargo by 2031. New policy restricts immigration based on income Mon Feb 24 A new policy is now in effect that makes it even harder for low-income immigrants to be approved for citizenship, green cards, or extended visas. The Trump administration has created a vetting process that judges applicants based on the chance that they will rely on government programs, such as Medicaid or food stamps, in the future. How many people will be affected by this change? It’s too early to say, but based on records from the past five years, 69% of the 5.5 million people approved for green cards would have had at least one strike on their record under these new parameters. Since the law was first introduced last year, immigrant families have been withdrawing from public benefits programs — despite being entitled to use them. Immigrant advocacy groups are also hesitant to convince them to re-enroll, as it might actually jeopardize their applications for green-card status. Know someone in this situation? Share these resources that offer support for low-income and migrant families (or donate to any of the listed charities). Supreme Court to decide if adoption agencies can reject same-sex couples Mon Feb 24 This particular case started in 2018, when Philadelphia stopped sending displaced children to a Catholic foster-care agency that refused to work with same-sex couples. This prompted the agency to sue the city, arguing that this exclusion violated its right to religious expression. The first verdict ruled unanimously against the agency … but the case will now be decided in the Supreme Court, where it will essentially get a “do-over” in a more conservative forum. The Court’s decision will affect over 400,000 children currently in the foster system and — should its ruling favor the religious adoption agency — may weaken anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community. The trial is scheduled for October 2020. States pitch composting over cremation as a new burial practice Mon Feb 24 California hopes to become the second state, after Washington, to legalize an unconventional burial process: composting. This practice offers an *eco-friendly* alternative to embalming and cremation, both of which come with hefty environmental costs (either in the form of carbon dioxide emissions or non-biodegradable chemicals). How does it work? Essentially, your loved ones’ remains are left to decompose in a container filled with wood-chips, alfalfa, and straw. A month later, the end-product — roughly one cubic yard of soil — is delivered to the family or donated to land conservation efforts. Although the Catholic Church says the method shows a lack of respect for the dead, proponents of the idea are excited by the potential cost savings and ecological benefits. The law will go into effect in Washington on May 1st. Meanwhile, California lawmakers are waiting for the bill to be scheduled for a hearing. Colombia struggles to control an unusually large problem: hippos Sun Feb 23 Residents of the rural town of Doradal are trying to find a humane way to deal with 80 hippos. The problem started 40 years ago… The current hippo population descended from a herd originally housed in the private zoo of the infamous drug lord, Pablo Escobar. After his estate fell to ruin, the hippo population thrived in peace, uncontested by any other predators. Now that they’ve wandered off the property, these aggressive three-ton animals pose a huge safety risk for locals — and an environmental threat to the region. The town’s current solution is sterilization — a dangerous, labor-intensive effort, but still the most humane option. Luckily, locals have yet to experience any dangerous encounters with their invasive neighbors. That’s all for this week. Have a magical weekend.✨

https://medium.com/belowthefold/edition-13-an-eco-friendly-way-to-mourn-your-loved-ones-7f74f58c33d5

['Judith Alba']

2020-02-28 17:33:49.527000+00:00

['Sustainability', 'Lgbtq Rights', 'Archive', 'Immigration', 'Mars']

8 Thoughts after Downloading Instagram

Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Gen-Z’er. No, I’m not like other girls. It’s December 2020, and I just downloaded Instagram. Technically, I had an account in December of 2018, but promptly deleted it after overthinking about the true purpose behind it. I re-downloaded the app to help with my college’s club recruiting. While Instagram may be harmful to mental health, it’s absolutely fantastic to use while marketing. Here are eight thoughts I’ve realized since downloading Instagram. Again. image from Unsplash

https://medium.com/@tina-talks/8-thoughts-after-downloading-instagram-98cea95e61b4

['Tina Yang']

2020-12-21 03:29:04.031000+00:00

['Teenagers', 'Followers', 'Teens And Social Media', 'Instagram', 'Social Media']

Founders — Why Creating The Best Company Culture Right From The Start Matters

One of the most exciting prospects for a startup founder is creating a company from the ground up. Building a team and creating a strong culture that echoes the values of your brand has its own rewards. But in the rush to launch a company and hit the ground running, a few things get sidelined and often overlooked. There is hardly any workplace immune to offensive, inappropriate, and unacceptable behavior. In an average US company, 10% of employees will experience sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination in some form every year. And more than 85% of employees that experience offensive behaviors do not report it for several reasons, including fear of retaliation, while the founders are far too removed or caught up with daily operations to realise these issues that exist inside their company. As founders or senior managers, it is important to be aware of the main factors that increase the risk for offensive behaviors among team members in order to be more attentive to these teams and address offensive behaviors before they escalate. There’s no denying that offensive behaviors have a negative impact — they cause stress, anxiety, health issues, and drive high turnover and loss in productivity. According to research, it’s not only employees that experience offensive behaviors that are affected but it has a knock-on effect on their colleagues that notice these behaviors. Unless people are held accountable, these instances of sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination lead to discontent, simmering tensions, loss of morale with adverse consequences on the company culture. As founders or senior managers, it is important to be aware of the main factors that increase the risk for offensive behaviors among team members in order to be more attentive to these teams and address offensive behaviors before they escalate. While there are several factors, below are some examples of the main ones. Workplaces with “Superstar” Employees In cases where some employees are perceived to be particularly valuable to the employer — for example, a top sales manager that does wonders for your numbers or a highly sought-after researcher with a fair amount of clout with the top management. Here, the senior management team may be reluctant to challenge the behavior of their high-value employees for fear of losing them to their competitors. This ‘culture of silence’ leads to these high-value employees cultivating a belief that the general rules of the workplace do not apply to them and they act with impunity. Decentralized Workplaces A fair amount of our customers often reach out to us because they felt that, owing to the decentralized nature of their company, it is more challenging to raise awareness about any inoffensive behavior and for their management to stage a timely intervention. There is no dispute that decentralized workplaces often operate in relative isolation and are marked by limited communication between organizational levels. This may foster a climate where harassment may go unchecked. If there is a company with more than 10 branches in different locations, some managers may feel unaccountable for their behavior and may act outside the bounds of the workplace rules. Workforces with Many Young Workers Workplaces with many young adults that lack workspace experience often raise the risk for harassment. These are employees in their first or second jobs and are often less aware of laws and workplace norms. Their lack of experience often means that they fail to distinguish any civilized interaction that switches to inappropriate behavior. Young workers that engage in harassment may lack the maturity to understand or care about consequences. Also, vulnerable young workers that are targets of offensive behaviors may lack the self-confidence to resist any offensive conduct that makes them uncomfortable. Homogeneous work environment Offensive behaviors are more likely to occur where there is a lack of diversity. For example, racial or ethnic harassment often takes place where one race or ethnicity is predominant. Workers belonging to the majority might feel threatened by those they perceive as “different”. They could be concerned that their jobs are at risk or that the workplace culture might change, or they may simply be uncomfortable around people from other cultures who are not like them. Workplaces with Significant Power Disparities Although most workplaces have power disparities between different groups, a significant power disparity can be a severe risk factor. Workplaces where either the executives and administrative staff work closely together or senior managers frequently collaborate with outsourced employees, these pose opportunities for harassment and untoward behavior. Low-status workers may be particularly susceptible as high-status workers may feel emboldened to exploit them. The power dynamics here often mean that low-status workers tend to be less aware or fail to understand how internal complaints channels work and are reluctant to report harassment as they fear the ramifications of reporting — they don’t want to be embarrassed or be branded as troublemakers. Positions that rely on customer service or client satisfaction In cases where an employee’s compensation is directly tied to customer satisfaction or client service, the risk for offensive behaviors is often higher. For example, a sales representative that receives a hefty bonus for closing the deal may prefer to endure inappropriate or harassing behavior rather than suffer the financial loss. To conclude, though there is no simple solution to tackle offensive behaviors but creating and maintaining awareness about the risk factors is always the first step. Founders and managers should be aware of these factors and pay more attention to teams and individuals at higher risk of suffering from such behaviors. As the company grows, it becomes more challenging to observe team dynamics and to be aware of these problems that slowly get embedded in the company culture. Overlooking these will eventually lead to an unpleasant and toxic environment that hampers productivity and efficiency. It’s better to set the guidelines and have the right infrastructure and technological tools to tackle this in place from the start.

https://medium.com/apxberlin/founders-why-creating-the-best-company-culture-right-from-the-start-matters-42d2ea2eeba5

['Shiran Yaroslavsky']

2019-04-11 12:25:40.316000+00:00

['Organizational Culture', 'Impact', 'Bullying', 'Sexual Harassment', 'HR']

The researcher’s journey: leveling up as a user researcher

I. Process mastery At this execution-focused stage, your questions around projects will focus on the nuts and bolts: Who? - Target audience What? - Method When? - When do you want it? When a product manager says “we should do a usability test” or a designer “needs to talk to customers,” it’s a chance to hone basic skills. Growth comes through experience and reflection, forcing yourself to ask “why do we want to do this?”, “what are we really trying to find out?”, and “is this the right way to get there?” II. Technical competence Every interview in and of itself can be a hurdle, and it’s hard to see the forest (project) for the trees (each instance of execution). As a junior level researcher, you must become competent in executing on the basics: Recruiting Interviewing Interview note-taking Interview debriefing Observation Data collection Surveying User testing Simple reporting Research synthesis outputs are facts, incidents, and simple behavioral insights. You’re ready to move on when these basic pieces can be smartly combined and deployed to ensure a successful project. III. Organizational influence Junior researchers strive to empower the organization with insights, and answer on-hand questions. Your influence develops on the strength of that execution, and the sense of judgment that you hone as you learn what your users need and how they do their work: Credible reporting Fair, honest judgement of design and product Interaction-level and usability authority Failure to have an impact (e.g. aforementioned report on January 3, 2011) is especially instructive: “It’s so clear to me that X is true, and I believe we should do Y. But nobody else sees it — what’s happening?” There’s an outside-in perspective flip that precedes growth, akin to the ideas underlying the practice of service design. It’s not about the great studies that you can do, it’s about finding out what the team needs to push work forward.

https://uxdesign.cc/the-researchers-journey-leveling-up-as-a-user-researcher-a85cd35b53f5

['Dave Hora']

2020-06-17 20:02:24.316000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Customer Experience', 'User Research', 'UX', 'Design Process']

Onboarding users to data visualisation tools

Part of my vision is to create a data ecosystem which enables people within an organisation to access, consume and understand data. While amazing looking dashboards and a fast, clean and governed database will all play huge roles in achieving this data driven objective, enabling access is an often overlooked element. Go back to the first day of a new job. I can remember spending many hours speaking with IT support trying to get the right software installed, new accounts set up, speaking with my colleagues to check what else I needed or how do I access something. Painful. When I stepped into my role and managing a variety of data visualisation software tools I put myself back into the shoes of a new starter. I went and spoke to end users and looked to understand these type of issues. If I could make just one thing easier for them on their first day or first week then for me that is a success. Tableau Server Our Tableau server had been implemented years before I started and all the foundations were in place. I wanted to build on this and streamline the access points for new server users — simply by leveraging only active directory configuration. We had a bit of housekeeping to sort out. Locally created groups where users needed to be added to for access. This was eliminated straight away. I set about requesting IT to set up active directory groups (AD groups) for use to provision access for Tableau Server. The reasons for this approach were: I was running Tableau Server solo — an accidental admin so I didn’t have the time to continually add users to groups every day No delays for access. No contact to IT support, access to 90% of business reporting on day 1, or whenever their laptop was available If users did need additional access, they had to contact IT to be added to the relevant group. Again, mainly to help me save time precious time When a new user joins and they get access, an email is sent (Server welcome pack). This contains an email explaining some of our bespoke company information and security guidelines. Also included is a slide deck giving the user information about some of the features and functions useful on Tableau server. Creating alerts, setting subscriptions up, finding out who the report owner is and downloading as pdf or now as slides. These slides are also located on our wiki page along with other “how to” articles. Tableau Desktop A bit more complex in terms of onboarding, but equally important. My main users of desktop are within our data community and require Tableau to do their day-to-day job. As I’m known as “the Tableau guy” it was a bit of a word of mouth approach. A manager would have a new hire so they would email me about this. The issue lies with not all managers were as organised as some. So there were times where someone would need a desktop licence for their job almost a week in. Not professional for the manager or me, or the company. My relentless drive for process kicked in and took over. An AD group dedicated for the data department gave everyone the permissions for that of a desktop licensed user, even if they didn’t need one. If a manager forgot to include Tableau desktop on the new starter form or didn’t speak to me about this prior to the start they would be reminded of the process (Jira ticketing) in order to obtain a licence for their new starter. Once we have our ticket, a valid business case and approval to assign (normally approval from me as the Tableau owner) we will assign a key and distribute our desktop welcome pack.

https://medium.com/cmding-tableau/onboarding-users-to-data-visualisation-tools-9c222583a2d6

['Kris Curtis']

2019-08-15 09:58:57.820000+00:00

['Tableau', 'Thoughtspot', 'Microsoft', 'Onboarding', 'Data Visualization']

We all have issues

Everybody has their own issues but when we tell ourselves that or we are told that, lets be honest we think “but mine is different.” I mean maybe but, back to the beginning we all have issues. which leads me on to mine. I am 13 years old and I have OCD. OCD stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Excessive thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Obsessive-compulsive disorder is characterized by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead to compulsive behaviors. I have intrusive thoughts, that are very unsettling that lead me to believe if I don't do certain things something will happen. I end up doing the thing my OCD tells me to do to prevent what I think will happen from happening. I am in 8th grade now but, I have come a long way from where I started. follow me for more writings about my journey and my ability to trying to overcome OCD. -Lola Sheff

https://medium.com/@lolasheff07/we-all-have-issues-7cf1786bc53b

['Lola Sheff']

2020-12-18 03:56:38.245000+00:00

['Obsessive Compulsive', '13', 'Ocd', 'Journey']

Singapore businesses test the use of digital health passports to check the results of the COVID-19 test for travelers

Digital health passports have been developed by Singapore companies that can check the COVID-19 test results of travelers, as the country is steadily reopening its borders with safe management measures in place. Affinidi said that it is working on trials for inbound travellers with government agencies and private sector partners, while two other companies said they were involved in pilots for the Singapore-Hong Kong air travel bubble, which was expected to launch on Nov 22, but has since been postponed. Digital health passports allow clinics and hospitals, using technologies such as blockchain, to securely exchange healthcare data across borders. Developers issue a QR code with the test result, which travelers show to immigration authorities, after prospective travelers take their COVID-19 test at a healthcare provider operating with these applications. Officers may see information when scanned, such as whether the laboratory is on the whitelist of the destination country, what type of test was taken, and whether it was completed within the timeline necessary. “According to Mr. Quah Zheng Wei, co-founder and CEO of Accredify, “We actually work directly with clinics, hospitals and laboratories, where they securely send us data either through an API or through our cloud-based solution, and we take that data, make it into a verifiable document, and put it in the individual’s hands in their digital health passport. This is to ensure that test reports have not been tampered with, while ensuring that only those with which the consumer wishes to share confidential personal health data are shared. This contrasts with alternatives such as opening up centralized medical records systems to countries around the world, which poses data privacy concerns and may potentially target cyberattacks by healthcare providers. Accredify, through collaborations with private healthcare providers such as Parkway Pantai and Raffles Medical Group, has 80 laboratories and clinics in Singapore and Hong Kong on board. It aims to expand its network next year to approximately 440 clinics in Singapore that have been approved to offer COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction tests, and as research gets ramped up, it expects more to come on board.

https://medium.com/@tasianaffairs/singapore-businesses-test-the-use-of-digital-health-passports-to-check-the-results-of-the-covid-19-f7a17fab7a1

['The Asian Affairs']

2020-12-21 17:04:40.740000+00:00

['Asean', 'Singapore', 'Travel', 'Flight', 'Technology']

Golang: gorm with MySQL and gin. Golang is a relatively young and…

Golang is a relatively young and “future-proof” language. It is the prettiest programming language in the world nowadays, it’s simple but provides high performance though. There are many benefits of using Golang over languages like PHP, Java and RoR. It’s famous among programmers for its amazing scalability and concurrency features. Gin is a high-performance micro-framework that delivers a very minimalistic framework that carries with it only the most essential features, libraries, and functionalities needed to build web applications and microservices. It makes it simple to build a request handling pipeline from modular, reusable pieces. It does this by allowing you to write middleware that can be plugged into one or more request handlers or groups of request handlers. I’m writing this article to describe how to use ORM(Object Relational Mapping) in Golang with gin. For that Go is providing a package named gorm. So, let's get to dive into it... Photo by Kai Wenzel on Unsplash To run gorm with MySQL we need below packages, so kindly add them into the project. 1. github.com/gin-gonic/gin 2. gorm.io/gorm 3. gorm.io/driver/mysql As we are going to use MySQL database we need a package for it. Yay ! we are done with basic package information, let’s go for code. main.go package main import ( "github.com/gin-gonic/gin" "gorm-test/controllers" "net/http" ) func main() { r := setupRouter() _ = r.Run(":8080") } func setupRouter() *gin.Engine { r := gin.Default() r.GET("ping", func(c *gin.Context) { c.JSON(http.StatusOK, "pong") }) return r } db.go package database import ( "fmt" "gorm.io/driver/mysql" "gorm.io/gorm" ) const DB_USERNAME = "root" const DB_PASSWORD = "root" const DB_NAME = "my_db" const DB_HOST = "127.0.0.1" const DB_PORT = "3306" var Db *gorm.DB func InitDb() *gorm.DB { Db = connectDB() return Db } func connectDB() (*gorm.DB) { var err error dsn := DB_USERNAME +":"+ DB_PASSWORD +"@tcp"+ "(" + DB_HOST + ":" + DB_PORT +")/" + DB_NAME + "?" + "parseTime=true&loc=Local" db, err := gorm.Open(mysql.Open(dsn), &gorm.Config{}) if err != nil { fmt.Println("Error connecting to database : error=%v", err) return nil } return db } parseTime=true will scan DATE and DATETIME automatically to time.Time loc=Local sets system’s timezone, you can set required timezone instead of Local. Now, It’s a time to get in touch with Tables and Schema, also how migration works with gorm. Create models/user.go and paste the below content into it, we are using a very basic example here, by doing CRUD operations in the users table. models/user.go package models import ( "gorm.io/gorm" ) type User struct { gorm.Model ID int Name string Email string } //create a user func CreateUser(db *gorm.DB, User *User) (err error) { err = db.Create(User).Error if err != nil { return err } return nil } //get users func GetUsers(db *gorm.DB, User *[]User) (err error) { err = db.Find(User).Error if err != nil { return err } return nil } //get user by id func GetUser(db *gorm.DB, User *User, id string) (err error) { err = db.Where("id = ?", id).First(User).Error if err != nil { return err } return nil } //update user func UpdateUser(db *gorm.DB, User *User) (err error) { db.Save(User) return nil } //delete user func DeleteUser(db *gorm.DB, User *User, id string) (err error) { db.Where("id = ?", id).Delete(User) return nil } User model will auto add the following three fields on migration: CreatedAt — used to store records created time UpdatedAt — used to store records updated time DeletedAt — used to store records deleted time, It won’t delete the records just set the value of DeletedAt’s field to the current time and you won’t find the record when querying i.e. what we call soft deletion. One of the greatest advantages of using ORM is we don’t need to write raw queries, complex schema relations can be handled efficiently using ORM, gorm does the same job. You can find more about gorm methods here. Now, let’s add a controller to deal with the model. controllers/user.go package controllers import ( "errors" "github.com/gin-gonic/gin" "gorm-test/database" "gorm-test/models" "gorm.io/gorm" "net/http" ) type UserRepo struct { Db *gorm.DB } func New() *UserRepo { db := database.InitDb() db.AutoMigrate(&models.User{}) return &UserRepo{Db: db} } //create user func (repository *UserRepo) CreateUser(c *gin.Context) { var user models.User c.BindJSON(&user) err := models.CreateUser(repository.Db, &user) if err != nil { c.AbortWithStatusJSON(http.StatusInternalServerError, gin.H{"error": err}) return } c.JSON(http.StatusOK, user) } //get users func (repository *UserRepo) GetUsers(c *gin.Context) { var user []models.User err := models.GetUsers(repository.Db, &user) if err != nil { c.AbortWithStatusJSON(http.StatusInternalServerError, gin.H{"error": err}) return } c.JSON(http.StatusOK, user) } //get user by id func (repository *UserRepo) GetUser(c *gin.Context) { id, _ := c.Params.Get("id") var user models.User err := models.GetUser(repository.Db, &user, id) if err != nil { if errors.Is(err, gorm.ErrRecordNotFound) { c.AbortWithStatus(http.StatusNotFound) return } c.AbortWithStatusJSON(http.StatusInternalServerError, gin.H{"error": err}) return } c.JSON(http.StatusOK, user) } // update user func (repository *UserRepo) UpdateUser(c *gin.Context) { var user models.User id, _ := c.Params.Get("id") err := models.GetUser(repository.Db, &user, id) if err != nil { if errors.Is(err, gorm.ErrRecordNotFound) { c.AbortWithStatus(http.StatusNotFound) return } c.AbortWithStatusJSON(http.StatusInternalServerError, gin.H{"error": err}) return } c.BindJSON(&user) err = models.UpdateUser(repository.Db, &user) if err != nil { c.AbortWithStatusJSON(http.StatusInternalServerError, gin.H{"error": err}) return } c.JSON(http.StatusOK, user) } // delete user func (repository *UserRepo) DeleteUser(c *gin.Context) { var user models.User id, _ := c.Params.Get("id") err := models.DeleteUser(repository.Db, &user, id) if err != nil { c.AbortWithStatusJSON(http.StatusInternalServerError, gin.H{"error": err}) return } c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{"message": "User deleted successfully"}) } db.AutoMigrate() automatically migrates our schema, to keep our schema update to date. Keep in mind that AutoMigrate() will only create tables, fix missing columns and missing indexes, and won’t manipulate data or type of existing column. The controller will invoke respective model methods. One mostly liked thing is gorm auto handles soft deletes, You can learn more about types of deletion provided by gorm. Let’s add routes to hit controller methods. In main.go add following lines of code. r.POST("/users", controllers.CreateUser) r.GET("/users", controllers.GetUsers) r.GET("/users/:id", controllers.GetUser) r.PUT("/users/:id", controllers.UpdateUser) r.DELETE("/users/:id", controllers.DeleteUser) final main.go will look like this : package main import ( "github.com/gin-gonic/gin" "gorm-test/controllers" "net/http" ) func main() { r := setupRouter() _ = r.Run(":8080") } func setupRouter() *gin.Engine { r := gin.Default() r.GET("ping", func(c *gin.Context) { c.JSON(http.StatusOK, "pong") }) userRepo := controllers.New() r.POST("/users", userRepo.CreateUser) r.GET("/users", userRepo.GetUsers) r.GET("/users/:id", userRepo.GetUser) r.PUT("/users/:id", userRepo.UpdateUser) r.DELETE("/users/:id", userRepo.DeleteUser) return r } Let’s build the project and you are ready to go…!! You will find a server running on port 8080. You can check CRUD operations with above-defined API endpoints. Hope it helped you to get basic interaction with gorm and gin with MySQL. Full demonstration code available here. Happy coding!

https://medium.com/canopas/golang-gorm-with-mysql-and-gin-ab876f406244

['Nidhi Canopas']

2020-11-25 09:22:36.839000+00:00

['MySQL', 'Golang', 'Orm', 'Gin', 'Gorm']

Content Strategy: Why we’re a centralized team

Content Strategy: Why we’re a centralized team And proud of it! Hi, my name is Christina and I’m an… organizer. Yep, I’ll admit there isn’t a drawer or closet in my house that isn’t working over-time to bring order to my life. I live for expandable desk trays, KonMari folds, and clear snack canisters. Don’t even get me started on the heart eyes I give my label maker. Plain and simple: good clean organization just makes my heart happy. So, imagine my excitement when NerdWallet reached out almost five years ago asking me to start their Content Strategy team. This meant, not only establishing our discipline and voice but also determining where we lived within the organization. Words and organization: two of my biggest loves all rolled up into one amazing opportunity. Taking the job was pretty much a no-brainer. Fast-forward to today and we’ve grown to a team of 13, highly-talented, content strategists. We’re a centralized team that supports Brand, Product, and Marketing, and we sit on NerdWallet’s Brand Studio team — a smaller sub-team within our larger Design and User Experience department. Why centralized? So glad you asked. It really all boils down to efficiency. As a centralized team, we can more easily align on critical foundations like brand and voice. It also allows for more seamless collaboration and communication between team members. Of course, both of these things take time and dedication to get right, but we’ve found that being on one team makes it a heck of a lot easier. Unfortunately, centralized Content Strategy teams are still somewhat uncommon. From what I’ve observed, this is the case for two reasons: 1. Most Content Strategy teams just aren’t big enough to span multiple departments. Shout-out to all you teams of one (or two!). We see you. 2. Some Content Strategy teams are created by mistake. This sounds controversial, but it’s true. Because we’re still a relatively new discipline in tech, most companies and teams lack the understanding of what content strategists do or the impact we can make. Because of this, companies might hire one-off writers to support a team or project. They report into a design or marketing or product manager. Sometimes more writers are added, but the discipline never truly takes shape because of the haphazard way folks were hired on. In the rare case where a company has invested in content strategy as a discipline, the teams are usually split. One set of writers supports the Marketing team and, sometimes, the Brand work. And another set of writers supports the Product team and, sometimes, the Brand work. In this model, Content Strategists are divided up by the teams they support and Brand initiatives have no clear content strategy owner. This means we usually go unrepresented in these conversations. And that’s a real bummer since good storytelling and voice are arguably some of the most valuable aspects of a brand’s identity. The decentralized model also assumes that the Product and Marketing Content Strategy teams are proactively collaborating. Spoiler alert: They’re not. But, not because they don’t want to. Because, as it turns out, it’s really hard to find alignment when teams are busy chasing separate goals. Unfortunately, this lack of proactive collaboration leaves important work like iterating on voice and style and identifying critical overlaps in user flows to fall by the wayside. Teams just don’t have the capacity to take on this work or they get into an unfortunate tug-of-war about who should own what. At the end of the day, I’ve found that the decentralized model doesn’t produce better work. Instead, it produces stressed-out writers, less-than-ideal user experiences and a Content Strategy function that isn’t empowered to meaningfully contribute to or action off of critical brand insights and/or identity work. Why Brand Studio? That’s easy. As members of our Brand Studio team, we’re at the forefront of our brand’s strategy, expression, guidelines, and execution across all consumer touchpoints. Content strategists, at NerdWallet, no matter what part of the organization we support, not only contribute to brand conversations, we lead them. We don’t just write for the brand, we’re some of its biggest advocates, ambassadors, and architects. We see our voice as an extension of our brand and personality. It’s the foundation of everything we write — influencing the decisions we make every day, from our overall approach down to each and every word we use. This foundation is what empowers and unites us as we embed into teams and projects across almost every aspect of our business. It makes it easier for us to make informed decisions, push back on partners who like to wordsmith and help identify where our work overlaps. Speaking of overlaps… Being a centralized team empowers us to more easily connect the dots across experiences — from first awareness through long-term product usage. We’re one of the only teams at NerdWallet that spans our user’s entire lifecycle. What power! But, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. And ours falls in the form of making sure we’re identifying all the overlaps to create the very best experiences for our users. But we can only see it all if we share it all, which makes communication and collaboration key to our success. So, we’ve instituted a few very tactical touchpoints to ensure we’re always connected: Share. Every week, we meet as a team to share what we’re working on. These sessions provide visibility into our work, help us develop a culture of giving and receiving feedback, encourage rapid exploration, allow us to share tools and frameworks, and leverage our collective experience to help each other grow as writers and strategists. Share is just as beneficial to the development of our team as it is to the work itself. Every week, we meet as a team to share what we’re working on. These sessions provide visibility into our work, help us develop a culture of giving and receiving feedback, encourage rapid exploration, allow us to share tools and frameworks, and leverage our collective experience to help each other grow as writers and strategists. Share is just as beneficial to the development of our team as it is to the work itself. Slack. We love Slack and rely on our content strategy channel to stay connected. We do daily standups to keep each other in the loop on the projects we’re working on, which often leads to fun aha moments like “Oh-you’re-working-on-the-email-that-kicks-off-my-user-flow-let’s-talk!” We also like sharing photos of dogs, babies and food — but mostly stick to sharing word nerd inspiration or getting gut-checks about word choice or syntax. We love Slack and rely on our content strategy channel to stay connected. We do daily standups to keep each other in the loop on the projects we’re working on, which often leads to fun aha moments like “Oh-you’re-working-on-the-email-that-kicks-off-my-user-flow-let’s-talk!” We also like sharing photos of dogs, babies and food — but mostly stick to sharing word nerd inspiration or getting gut-checks about word choice or syntax. Meet. Larger forums are great, but sometimes you just need 1:1 time with an expert. Because our content strategists are deeply integrated into the teams they support, they’ve been able to really develop into true subject matter experts on stuff like how our account linking feature works or how we talk about refinancing a mortgage. As our feature set expands and our product becomes more interconnected, these conversations are happening more and more — much to the delight of our close-knit, very collaborative team. Hey, we’re not perfect. All this to say, we’re proud of what we’ve built, but we’re constantly working to optimize and iterate on our centralized model. With the right structure and systems in place and all the exciting work that lies ahead, we’ve never been more ready and excited for the challenge!

https://medium.com/nerdwallet-design/content-strategy-why-were-a-centralized-team-29ded5cb5825

['Christina Cartal']

2020-07-08 16:46:53.600000+00:00

['UX', 'Leadership', 'Marketing', 'Content Strategy']

Bringing SaaS to Korea

We all love traveling. In fact, one of my favorite things to do is visit startup ecosystems around the world. There’s just so much to learn and absorb. But as we all know, traveling became impossible this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, MWC was canceled. Then so did Web Summit, SXSW, Slush, and every other major tech or startup event around the world. So, we came up with an idea. Instead of traveling, let’s bring startup ecosystems directly to us with a virtual tour. And to keep things relevant to 2020, we decided to choose SaaS as an overall theme. Why SaaS? Korea is a country more traditionally known for hardware than software. But in a post-COVID world, businesses are realizing the importance of pivoting to online business models. In fact, the global SaaS (Software as a Service) market, valued at $158 billion in 2020, is projected to double by 2026. SaaS could be the next boom for Korea’s startup ecosystem, but first, we need to raise more awareness. So, at PowerPT, we ran a SaaS-themed virtual pitch competition (see more here). Once we saw how successful it was, we decided it was time for our global SaaS tour. Finding a global SaaS partner In order to introduce SaaS from cities around the world, we needed a partner who already had connections. That’s when we found SaaStock, a global community of SaaS founders, executives, and investors. So, we partnered with SaaStock and created a series of Global Startup Tours. Touring the world Our first event was a virtual trip to Europe where we learned about the SaaS scenes in London, Munich, Krakow, and Ljubljana. Even SaaStock’s CEO, Alex Theuma, joined and spoke about London’s SaaS scene.

https://medium.com/powerpt/bringing-saas-to-korea-aaf93430a702

['Jonathan Moore']

2020-12-22 14:43:47.304000+00:00

['Software As Service', 'Virtual Tour', 'Ecosystem Building', 'Ecosystem', 'SaaS']

Saudi, Oman ban international flights for a week over mutant Covid-19

Saudi Arabia and Oman halted global flights and closed their borders for per week over fears approximately the fast-spreading new pressure of the coronavirus. Saudi Arabia and Oman halted global flights and closed their borders for per week over fears approximately the fast-spreading new pressure of the coronavirus. State-run Saudi Press Agency stated the dominion might also additionally increase the suspension for every other week relying on the character of the virus spread. Oman halted passenger visitors via its air, land and sea ports for per week beginning Tuesday, however freight offerings are exempt from the ban.

https://medium.com/@ajayvaseegaran/saudi-oman-ban-international-flights-for-a-week-over-mutant-covid-19-f962d00e4f22

['Ajay Vaseegaran']

2020-12-21 12:39:26.282000+00:00

['Oman', 'Middle East', 'Saudi Arabia']

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIE(S)

Sidney Hargro — President of the Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia, stated in the report How Employers Give: A Look at Philanthropy and Volunteerism in Philadelphia, that “when companies engage in the community and with the nonprofit sector, they help improve the social cohesion of our region.” This cohesion builds relationships between not only companies and the community, but it can also build loyalty and relationships between companies and their employees, and help define corporate social responsibility within their organizations. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the practice of creating socially accountable programs within an organization that engages itself, employees, and stakeholders with the community. This engagement creates opportunities to strengthen business while contributing to society at the same time. While CSR programs and goals vary between companies, there are several principles companies should focus on for success; (S)upport from Employees for Corporate Priorities, (S)ensitivity Around Employees’ Charitable Behaviors, and (S)ocial Impact Support from Employees for Corporate Priorities When employees give to and volunteer with corporate-focused causes, the buy-in can be low and it can be difficult for genuine impact and relationship-building to be made. While one time donations and acts are valued, each year community organizations need to expend time and funds to rebuild those relationships and meet their goals. How can Corporations gain support and make an impact? Allow employees to vote on grants — set your focus and let employees have a voice on which nonprofit organizations receive funds. — set your focus and let employees have a voice on which nonprofit organizations receive funds. Actively engage employees and build a community around philanthropic priorities outside of volunteer days and giving campaigns — build your CSR program to allow multiple opportunities for employees to engage and learn about nonprofit organizations — build your CSR program to allow multiple opportunities for employees to engage and learn about nonprofit organizations Create engagement opportunities that build skill sets and leadership opportunities for employees — allow employees to volunteer their personal skills to nonprofits through administrative support and programmatic implementation. This will provide impact to those organizations, build-up the employee’s skills and allow them to gain experience that will benefit your organization as well. Actively engaging employees in initiatives that build on core values and inspire employees, can lead to improved motivation, loyalty, and your ability to attract and retain talent. Sensitivity Around Employees’ Charitable Behaviors Employees are individuals who have personal and philanthropic priorities of their own. They live and work in the communities where companies operate, understanding the issues that everyday people face and the impact that needs to be made. Employees want to maintain and share their personal interests and if companies allow them to share them and have a bigger say in CSR efforts, it can improve employee productivity and retention. How can companies align corporate priorities with employee interests? Build your match-giving programs — promote opportunities to give to nonprofit through payroll and provide matching support. This will allow you to support your employees’ priorities and see where else your company impact can be made. — promote opportunities to give to nonprofit through payroll and provide matching support. This will allow you to support your employees’ priorities and see where else your company impact can be made. Offer paid time off for volunteering — while corporate volunteer days get employees out and provide impact, allowing employees several hours to engage in causes they care about at times convenient for them and the nonprofit, offers a level of care that employees can appreciate and often not get anywhere else. — while corporate volunteer days get employees out and provide impact, allowing employees several hours to engage in causes they care about at times convenient for them and the nonprofit, offers a level of care that employees can appreciate and often not get anywhere else. Allow employees to make sit on grant-making committees and drive volunteer programs — allow employees to define grant programs and where volunteer efforts should be focused. Allow them to have a voice in defining some of your CSR goals. By allowing employees to bring their relationships and philanthropic priorities to their company, employees are satisfied and companies are making an impact. Social Impact Now that employees are driving efforts aligned to corporate priorities, how do you strengthen and align your impact? Be Strategic — aligning company priorities, employees interests, and societal needs can be challenging. While CSR programs are being developed and implemented, companies must take into account their mission, services, and reputation while ensuring that they reinforce their values and build synergy between shareholders and stakeholders. Impact will not be fully realized overnight, set strategic goals and make a plan that will work for you and your company priorities. — aligning company priorities, employees interests, and societal needs can be challenging. While CSR programs are being developed and implemented, companies must take into account their mission, services, and reputation while ensuring that they reinforce their values and build synergy between shareholders and stakeholders. Impact will not be fully realized overnight, set strategic goals and make a plan that will work for you and your company priorities. Deliver Benefits — from business growth and employee satisfaction, to strategic community engagement and support, your CSR program should focus on the benefits its offers to further your impact. Internally companies are beginning to provide paid time off for employees to engage in their communities and utilize their involvement as skills that are gauged for leadership advancement. Externally, companies are building partnerships and collaborations with other companies and nonprofits to invest in communities to work on issues collaboratively. Determine which benefits will work best for your company and employees. Get employees involved in the conversation and deliver something that will be impactful and work for everyone. — from business growth and employee satisfaction, to strategic community engagement and support, your CSR program should focus on the benefits its offers to further your impact. Internally companies are beginning to provide paid time off for employees to engage in their communities and utilize their involvement as skills that are gauged for leadership advancement. Externally, companies are building partnerships and collaborations with other companies and nonprofits to invest in communities to work on issues collaboratively. Determine which benefits will work best for your company and employees. Get employees involved in the conversation and deliver something that will be impactful and work for everyone. Track Your Impact — by tracking dollars employees have given, matches made, volunteer hours worked, skills shared, and organizations served, companies can see and share how much and where impact has been made. Not all impact has to be made or be defined directly by the company, learn how those within your company community are making an impact and see your company as a whole is serving your community. CSR is not one size fits all. However, when companies are thoughtful about their Corporate Social Responsibility, they will increase giving, employee involvement, impact, and the bottom-line, while building cohesion between their internal and external communities.

https://medium.com/@philanthropos/corporate-social-responsibilitie-s-de335c8c27ae

[]

2019-08-24 18:10:21.126000+00:00

['Csr', 'Impact', 'Volunteering', 'Corporate Culture', 'Charitable Giving']

Plotly Dash: A beginner’s guide to building an analytics dashboard

Hello World, Welcome to my first medium article! I believe you’re here because you want to create an aesthetic dashboard but don’t know where to start or don’t know what skills you require. Don’t worry, I have got you covered. This article will walk you through the journey one step at a time and I will try to keep it as simple as possible. Let’s get started! Why bother? We all have heard this infinite number of times — ‘Data is the new oil’. Well, it’s true, but what does it mean exactly? Data is everywhere. Businesses keep track of user’s activity such as their purchase habits, previously viewed products, location details, etc, and spend a lot of money to refine this data to get valuable insights. Data visualization helps decision-makers to make informed business decisions on the basis of this extracted information that was unseen before which results in increased customer retention and increased profits. Hence, this a very useful and in-demand skill. What is Plotly Dash? Dash is an open-source python framework used to build interactive data visualization web applications. It is developed by the plotly team and was released in mid-2017. It is built on top of Flask, Plotly.js, React.js. It is super easy to learn as Dash abstracts away all the hard parts. Prerequisites I would recommend you to create a virtual environment for this but it's optional. These are all the things you will require to create a Dash application : Supports both Python 2 and Python 3 Pandas — Data manipulation and analysis python library pip install pandas 3. Plotly — Interactive Data visualization python library pip install plotly-express 4. Dash pip install dash==1.18.1 That’s all you need. (Note: starting with dash 0.37.0, dash automatically installs dash-renderer, dash-core-components, dash-html-components, and dash-table, using known-compatible versions of each. You need not and should not install these separately any longer, only the dash itself. — Dash Documentation) Let’s get started... Dash apps are composed of the following: 1.Data source / database connectivity 2. Dash Layout consisting of dash_core_components and dash_html_components 3. Interactivity via callbacks. import dash import pandas as pd import plotly.express as px import dash_core_components as dcc import dash_html_components as html # Initialise the app app = dash.Dash(__name__) # Connect to database or data source here #Define graphs here # Define the app Layout here app.title = 'Analytics Dashboard' app.layout = html.Div() # Define callbacks here # Run the app if __name__ == '__main__': app.run_server(debug=True) “Dash includes ‘hot-reloading’, this features is activated by default when you run your app with app.run_server(debug=True) . This means that Dash will automatically refresh your browser when you make a change in your code.” — Dash Documentation Data Source / Database connectivity There are two ways to get data: 1. CSV file df = pd.read_csv('dataset_name.csv') 2. Connecting to a SQL database (if using this, you need to install Python MySQL connector) # Database Credentials ENDPOINT=”co9od6lav8.ap-south-1.r1ds.amazonaws.com” #replace PORT=”3306" USR=”admin” REGION=”ap-south-1" DBNAME=”mysql” # Database connection try: conn = mysql.connector.connect(host=ENDPOINT, user=USR, passwd=’sih2020’, port=PORT, database=DBNAME) c = conn.cursor() c.execute(‘SELECT * FROM table_name’) query_results = c.fetchall() #print(query_results) except Exception as e: print(“Database connection failed due to {}”.format(e)) df = pd.read_sql_query('SELECT * FROM table_name',conn) Dash App Layout This component describes how the front-end of the app will look like. The app won’t start if we don’t define the layout. dash_html_components This is the coolest thing about Dash. One only needs basic knowledge about HTML and CSS. The dash_html_components library provides HTML components that can be rendered via python. The html.div(children='Hello Dash') component generates a <div>Hello Dash</div> HTML element in your application.The children property is always the first attribute but can be omitted. dash_core_components The dash_core_components includes a set of higher-level components like drop-downs, graphs, markdown blocks, and more. Graph component uses plotly.js to render interactive data visualizations/graphs. app.title = 'Analytics Dashboard' app.layout = html.Div() Dash Callbacks Dash helps us to design dynamic UIs that are customizable through reactive and functional Python callbacks. In simple words, callbacks come into the picture when you want to render a graph that depends on user input via dropdown menus, radio buttons, sliders, etc. Callbacks link input components like dropdown menus with output components i.e graphs. “Every element attribute of the declarative components can be updated through a callback and a subset of the attributes, like the value properties of the dcc.Dropdown , are editable by the user in the interface.” — Dash Documentation Let’s create a dashboard using all the concepts I explained above… OUTPUT: Additional Resources: https://www.kaggle.com/babyoda/women-entrepreneurship-and-labor-force https://dash.plotly.com/ Conclusion Plotly Dash is a great open-source python framework to create an analytics dashboard with good-looking visualizations at no cost. It is beginner-friendly as Dash abstracts away most of the time-consuming work. In this article, you have learned to create an analytics dashboard from scratch. Kudos! The next step will be to understand how callbacks work in Dash. All the best! Keep Learning. Follow me: https://github.com/skothari07

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/plotly-dash-a-beginners-guide-to-building-an-analytics-dashboard-cedf297e01f1

['Saurabh Kothari']

2020-12-18 07:41:20.391000+00:00

['Analytics', 'Dashboard', 'Data Visualization', 'Dash', 'Plotly']

Granite Countertops Would Make Karen Less Bitter

I blame granite countertops for the reason we Generation X Karens are bitter. If we had had nicer countertops when we had our first apartments like our Millenial children, we would be in much better moods. My first apartment of my own had the crappy countertops with the metal edges and I thought I was living in high cotton. My daughter has some kind of beautiful stone countertops in her first apartment and she makes roughly the equivalent of what I did. I did not take this pic. It is from the apartment website. If you want to find out more, check it out: https://marendc.com/amenities/ Furthermore, colleges and cities plan in advance to provide the kinds of amenities that will attract these children of privilege: dog parks, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Starbucks, trendy restaurants, yoga studios, FULL FABULOUS GYMS in their apartment buildings, swimming pools on roofs (the pic is of my daughter’s actual pool which I hope she will be able to use next year if COVID goes away), and the list goes on. I know this is inequitable because she lives within blocks of the exact same place I lived in when I came to Washington, D.C. in 1990. I lived two blocks from the Capitol on North Carolina Avenue, S.E. She lives on Potomac Avenue, S.E., directly across from the Washington Nationals stadium. In my day, that was a semi-inhabited area with mostly broken windows. Today, it’s a millennial playground. When I came to D.C. all those years ago as a very unworldly 24-year-old, adults did not give one fig about young people. D.C. was run by the “fat cats” in politics and it was very much an adult world and we were just the little peons who were dumb enough to work for congressmen and senators and still not be federal employees. We supplemented our diets by sneaking into official receptions, pretending to represent our offices. No one cared if we ate or not, just that we showed up to work. I lived in a studio apartment in the attic of a former convent turned apartment building. I paid $585 and it included everything but cable plus some lovely carpet of indeterminate color and an actual eat-in kitchen, if you didn’t stand up straight. That was during the end of the crack wars in D.C. Sometimes at night, I could hear automatic gunfire. My McDonald’s on South Capitol Street was a risky trip at best. It is now gone and covered up by a character-less high-rise that millennials seem to love. The only amenities we had were a front door that locked and tiny little individual mailboxes in the lobby. I had to park on the street, which was easier said than done, and go to the grocery store in Alexandria cross the bridge in Virginia because there was only one questionable Safeway in southeast at that time and I’m not even sure where it was. I did, however, have a million-dollar view of the Capitol out my little attic window. That was pretty cool. But it was not designed and placed there to attract me. More than likely, it was put there so some poor nun or servant who had to live in the attic could have light to perform her chores by. At my daughter’s apartment, a sparkling high-rise with studios and one and two-bedroom apartments designed for young single folks, there is a bevy of fabulous things put there to draw these incredibly special children to live in them. The place is set up for millennials and their rescue dogs and designer dogs. There is a gigantic dog park right outside. The concierge (I’ve never had a concierge) even hands out plastic bone-shaped poop bag carriers (he graciously gave me one for my two pooches, fast asleep at home in my 1964 rambler with no concierge in sight). There is a gym, a pool, a beautiful bar/meeting room, sitting areas, fabulous outdoor grills and seating areas, a seasonal bar outside with picnic tables and a parking garage. And did I mention it is waterfront (although it is the Anacostia River)? And across the street from the Nationals Stadium? And near a metro? And grocery stores, and bars and coffee places and shopping and cool restaurants? They even have Uber. When I was her age, if you went out on the town and drank yourself into oblivion, you had to either crash at your friend’s house or get on the Metro by midnight because it stopped running after that. We didn’t take taxis because taxis did not have ratings systems like Uber. And don’t get me started on phones, or computers, or the Internet or all the other things that make life so easy that millennials just have to show up. And yet, there is more anxiety among that generation than we experienced. I think it’s because adults ruled the world then and they would not allow us to do anything but follow orders. Whatever, I still think that maybe if I had had nicer countertops in my first apartment and maybe a nice chair in the lobby, I might be less bitter. I’m really not asking for much. My generation knows better than to ask.

https://medium.com/@shannoneubankshowell/granite-countertops-would-make-karen-less-bitter-68d747936ac4

['Shannon Eubanks']

2020-12-23 20:22:28.985000+00:00

['Washington DC', 'Home', 'Family', 'Millenials', 'Generation X']

How to Build Google Social Login in Django Rest Framework and Nuxt Auth and Refresh its JWT token Part 1

How to Build Google Social Login in Django Rest Framework and Nuxt Auth and Refresh its JWT token Part 1 Photo by Taras Shypka on Unsplash Overview Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a side project. One of the requirements is to enable the user to sign in to the application using Google social login. The web app is built using Nuxt for the frontend and Django REST Framework for the backend. Initially, building the social sign in flow was not hard at first, but I struggled with refreshing the JWT token in the web app. Most of the resources on the internet do not discuss how to refresh the JWT token. In this tutorial series, I will show how to build a basic JAMstack app with Nuxt as the frontend and Django REST Framework for the backend and allow social login from a Google account. What we’re going to build We are going to build a simple Nuxt app that accepts user login with Google accounts. It will connect to a Django API Server as a backend. How Nuxt Auth Google Login Works Before we start, it’s good to know that the Nuxt Auth Google scheme is inherited from the OAuth2 login scheme. If you intend to use other OAuth2 providers (e.g., Apple, Facebook, etc.), the flow should be somewhat similar. This is how the login flow will work behind the scene: Nuxt OAuth2 sequence diagram When this.$auth.loginWith("google") function is invoked (typically by clicking a button), the browser will be redirected to the Google OAuth2 login screen with a URL like https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?protocol=oauth2&response_type=token&access_type&client_id=to%20xxx&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A3000%2Flogin&scope=openid%20profile%20email&state=XKVqiO-8r9Pwky8viP9dS&code_challenge_method=implicit . Notice the client_id & redirect URI parameters in the URL. When the user choose which account he/she wants to connect to the login screen, Google will authenticate the user and return the code and access token to the Nuxt callback page. NuxtJS will request a JWT access token from the Django API server by supplying code & access token payload obtained from Google in step #2. Django API Server will revalidate the code and access token from NuxtJS with the Google authentication server. If the code and token are valid, Django API Server will create a user account in the DB and then returns the JWT access token & refresh token. Nuxt then receives the new access token and refresh token from Django API Server and store the JWT tokens in both browser's local storage & browser cookies. However, it’s always recommended to store the JWT token in cookies only and never store it in browser local storage. Nuxt Auth will then requests user information from Django API Server. Django API Server will reply to the request with the user information. Nuxt Auth will store the user information. How Nuxt Auth Refreshes JWT Token for OAuth2 Flow Provided that the user’s access token has expired, and when you click a page in NuxtJS that sends a request to Django API Server, the Django API will reply with 401 Unauthorized access Nuxt Auth will intercept the failed API requests to refresh the token and retry the API request earlier. Nuxt Auth will refresh the token at the endpoint you set in the URL endpoint in nuxt.config.js Django API Server will reply with a new access token and refresh token Nuxt Auth will replace the old access token and refresh token in cookies & browser local storage with the new one Nuxt Auth will retry the API call made earlier with a new access token Voila! You got a correct 200 OK result from the API server Let’s begin Prerequisites These are the software I’m using to write this tutorial: Python v3.7.3 Django v3.1.3 Django REST Framework v3.12.2 django-allauth v0.42.0 dj-rest-auth v1.1.0 PyJWT v1.7.0 (djangorestframework-simplejwt library does not support the latest version of PyJWT yet) Node v10.15.3 Nuxt v2.14.6 Nuxt Auth module v5.12.3 You also must have access to the Google Cloud console in order to obtain Googel OAuth Client ID & Secret Key. Step 1: Build a Nuxt app First, let’s begin by bootstraping a new Nuxt app $ mkdir google-login $ cd google-login $ npm init nuxt-app frontend create-nuxt-app v3.4.0 ✨ Generating Nuxt.js project in frontend ? Project name: google-login ? Programming language: JavaScript ? Package manager: Npm ? UI framework: Buefy ? Nuxt.js modules: (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection) ? Linting tools: (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection) ? Testing framework: None ? Rendering mode: Universal (SSR / SSG) ? Deployment target: Static (Static/JAMStack hosting) ? Development tools: (Press <space> to select, <a> to toggle all, <i> to invert selection) ? What is your GitHub username? sdil ? Version control system: Git I’m using the Buefy UI framework as I’m familiar with it the most. You can use other UI frameworks if you wish to. Next, let’s install the Nuxt Auth v5 module: $ cd frontend $ npm install --save-exact @nuxtjs/auth-next $ npm install @nuxtjs/auth-next @nuxtjs/axios Add Nuxt Auth module in frontend/nuxt.config.js file and define google strategy: Now, create a login page frontend/pages/login.vue with the following content: login.vue In line 15, we are logging in the user with the google strategy we defined in nuxt.config.js file. Next, create a protected page at frontend/pages/protected.vue protected.vue In line 12, we enabled the Nuxt Auth middleware, which means this page is only accessible when the user is signed in. Otherwise, the user will be redirected to the login page. Let’s test our Nuxt app to make sure that Nuxt Auth is actually working. Run nuxt dev command to run the development server and navigate to localhost:3000/login . It’s expected for you to see a Google login error at this point since we haven’t set up the Google OAuth yet. Step 2: Build Django API Server Start a Django project & install the dependencies. $ cd google-login $ django-admin startproject backend $ pip install django-rest-framework dj-rest-auth django-allauth django-cors-headers djangorestframework-simplejwt PyJWT==1.7.0 Update 16 Feb 2021: You’ll need PyJWT version 1.7.0 in your system because djangorestframework-simplejwt library does not support PyJWT latest version yet. Refer here: https://github.com/SimpleJWT/django-rest-framework-simplejwt/issues/326 Let’s create a new social-login app. $ django-admin startapp social-login Write backend/social-login/views.py file like below: Install the social login app URLs in the root URL at backend/backend/urls.py : Add the following lines in backend/backend/settings.py like below: Let’s test the login endpoint with curl CLI: # Run DB migration first $ python manage.py migrate # Start Django webserver $ python manage.py runserver 0:8000 # Run in another terminal $ curl -i -X POST localhost:8000/social-login/google/ -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{"code": "test", "access_token": "test"}' HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error ... $ curl -i localhost:8000/auth/user/ HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden ... {"detail":"Authentication credentials were not provided."} localhost:8000/social-login/google/ endpoint will be used to validate code & access tokens given by Google. This endpoint will also be used for a token refresh. localhost:8000/auth/user/ endpoint will be used to retrieve user information. This 500 error & 403 error are expected as we haven’t set up the Google OAuth login yet. This proves that our Django app is serving correctly. Step 3: Setup Google OAuth Flow Login to console.cloud.google.com and navigate to the API & Services > OAuth consent screen. We’ll first need to create an OAuth consent screen for our project. Fill in the App name, user support email & developer contact information. For scopes, add user email & profile and hit Save & Continue. Next, go to Credentials & click Create New Credentials, and select “OAuth client ID”. Fill in the details like the following. Make sure you write the correct Authorized redirect URLs. In our case, it’s http://localhost:3000/login . If you’re deploying on the production server with a valid domain, change it accordingly. Keep the Client ID & Secret shown after creation. Step 4: Add Google Client ID to Nuxt app Set the client ID obtained in Step #3 in nuxt.config.js file like below # frontend/nuxt.config.js auth: { strategies: { google: { - clientId: 'to be added', + clientId: '<your cliendID here>', + codeChallengeMethod: '', + responseType: 'code', + endpoints: { + token: 'http://localhost:8000/social-login/google/', + userInfo: 'http://localhost:8000/auth/user/' + }, }, } }, By now, our Nuxt app should be able to authenticate users using their Google account. See below: Yay, it works! Step 5: Add Google Client ID & Secret to Django app First, you’ll need to create a new Django superuser $ python manage.py createsuperuser Username (leave blank to use 'fadhil'): admin Email address: Password: Password (again): Superuser created successfully. $ cd backend$ python manage.py createsuperuserUsername (leave blank to use 'fadhil'): adminEmail address: admin@test.com Password:Password (again):Superuser created successfully. And then, go to localhost:8000/admin and navigate to the “Social applications” section. Click “Add new” and fill in the details. Fill in the Client ID & Secret Key obtained in step #3. Lastly, in the Sites section, add the “example.com” site by clicking the arrow button in the middle. Let’s test the web app from end to end. Yay! It works as expected. Our Nuxt & Django API Server are well integrated. To be continued… That’s all for part 1. We’re not done yet. For the coming part 2, we will refactor the Django API server so that it can refresh the JWT token and ensure that the user is logged in throughout his/her session.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-build-google-social-login-in-django-rest-framework-and-nuxt-auth-and-refresh-its-jwt-token-752601d7a6f3

['Mohamad Fadhil']

2021-02-16 12:38:41.727000+00:00

['Django Rest Framework', 'Python', 'Vuejs', 'Nuxtjs', 'Django']

A Musical Village Takes Root in New Orleans

A Musical Village Takes Root in New Orleans After four years of semi-permanent and roving installations, the arts organization New Orleans Airlift is ready to build a permanent town of musical architecture. This article was originally published in 2016. New Orleans Airlift is back on Kickstarter with a new project to take a new Music Box Village installation on a cross-country tour of the United States. See it here. Five years ago, Jay Pennington faced the weathered remains of a collapsed eighteenth-century Creole cottage. Sitting on a plot of land in the Bywater section of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and battered by the winds of Katrina, the cottage was a fragile remnant of the city’s history he wanted fiercely to preserve. From that urgency an extraordinary idea emerged. “We asked [New York-based street and installation artist] Swoon to come down and look at the property,” says Delaney Martin, with whom Pennington co-founded the arts organization New Orleans Airlift in 2008. “Jay knew he wanted to do something with performance and installation. In talking about music and performance and houses, and performers playing in the house, we had the eureka moment: they’re not playing in the house, they’re playing the house.” Photo: Melissa Stryker Along with Pennington, Martin, and mechanical sculptor Taylor Lee Shepherd, Swoon (a.k.a. Callie Curry) conceived the idea for Dithyrambalina, a “sonic playground, performance venue, and laboratory for musical architecture” made of salvaged materials from the cottage. Step on a floorboard here, and tuned creaks and groans might reverberate through an amplifier. Pull a rope there, and a whirring fan might force air through corrugated tubes, creating otherworldly tones. This wouldn’t just be a novel art installation paying tribute to New Orleans’ distinctive architecture and musical heritage. To the creators, it was more: a symbol of resurrection and rebirth, and of the value of pleasure and play in a community still struggling to rebuild. The creators decided to prototype the musical house concept before building the more imposing Dithyrambalina. The first Music Box was their proof of concept: a “shantytown sound laboratory” comprised of several musical houses. New Orleans Airlift invited twenty-five visual and kinetic sound artists, architects, and inventors to build the sonic structures. “Sometimes five people were working on a single house, working to make a musical village that harmonized, that felt of one piece,” Martin says. “That became a guiding principle — everybody knows they’re part of a bigger vision.” The first Music Box installation opened to the public in 2011. By day, people from the community were invited to pass through and experiment, creating cacophonous and harmonious sounds. A visitor might create a slide guitar-like wail out of a set of sliding doors, or run a hand along clapboard siding for a percussion-like rat-a-tat. One could pick up a telephone and send their voice sailing over loudspeakers, or call another phone in another house to set off an orchestral chorus of rings. A stethoscope broadcast the heartbeat of passers-by through a spinning speaker. A singing wall sampled the voices of those who walked past, then filled the empty space with their echoes.

https://medium.com/kickstarter/a-musical-village-takes-root-in-new-orleans-a43f5e1d911a

[]

2018-04-30 10:51:25.700000+00:00

['Music', 'New Orleans', 'Architecture', 'Arts']

Bandits, WebAssembly, and IoT

A part of the Bootstrap Thompson Sampling algorithm (image by author). Bandits, WebAssembly, and IoT The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a relatively simple (to describe that is, not to solve) formalization of a sequential learning problem that has many applications. In its canonical form, a gambler faces a slot machine (colloquially called a one-armed-bandit) with k >1 arms (hence the term multi-armed bandit). Given a (finite) amount of coins, the gambler sequentially chooses which arm to play — subsequently she inserts a coin and pulls the arm — after each play observing some reward (e.g., a win or a loss — typically not winning coins that can be re-used). As the gambler one-by-one squanders her coins, she hopes to attain as high a cumulative reward as possible: this is tricky since each arm is assumed to have a different (static) probability of paying out. A successful strategy of playing the machine’s arms needs to on one hand explore the options (i.e., the gambler needs to play the arms whose expected rewards she is uncertain about to learn more), while on the other hand exploiting the available knowledge (i.e., the gambler needs to play the arm with the highest expected pay-off as often as possible). The simple gambling setup above matches, sometimes somewhat loosely, many applied problems. Consider the following alternatives for the terms in bold above: Gambler, medical doctor, online marketeer, e-commerce manager, … Arms, medical treatments, advertisements, products, … Rewards, medical outcomes (e.g., live or death), customer responses (e.g., click on the ad), purchases (e.g., yes or no), … Because of this generality, the bandit problem formalization has been used to study many applied problems. Furthermore, effective strategies (often coined policies in the bandit literature which are formally mappings from the historical data to the next arm) to address bandit problems are used in many applications. Effective bandit policies Before discussing how we implemented effective bandit policies on edge devices using WebAssembly, it is good to explore a few possible bandit policies: Just choose one: One simple, but not very effective, strategy is to just choose the arm you think is best and play it all the time. This policy does not have a formal name in the bandit literature, but it is common in practice: (e.g.,) online marketeers often simple create a single ad based on their own expert knowledge without doing any experimentation. e-first: A better — in terms of the expected cumulative reward where the expectation is over multiple executions of the policy to address bandit problems — strategy is to first devote a fixed number of n plays to randomly explore the different arms. After this exploration period, one selects the arm with the highest (observed) average reward for the remaining plays. Note that this strategy is known as the A/B test or the RCT depending on the field one is in. e-greedy: Where e-first effectively first explores and subsequently exploits, it is relatively simple to do both continuously: with probablity p the agent selects a random arm, and with probability 1-p the arm with the highest (observed) average reward is selected. Often, p is relatively small (<.1) UCB methods: The thoughtful reader should have noticed that exploitation means playing the arm with the highest expected reward (as estimated using the average of the historical observations), whereas exploitation effectively reduces the uncertainty surrounding this expectation. UCB methods combine both objectives quite intuitively: the gambler plays the arm with the highest upper confidence bound (i.e., the average reward + some quantification of its uncertainty). Thompson sampling: UCB methods can be shown to achieve (asymptotically) optimal rewards (or rather regret, but we won’t get to theoretical here). However, UCB methods are very frequentist in nature. Thompson sampling provides a (also asymptotically optimal) Bayesian alternative: the gambler plays each of the arms with a probability that is proportional to her belief (quantified in a Bayesian way) that the arm is the best arm. While both 4. and 5. above can be shown to be asymptotically optimal — depending a bit on the exact bandit setup and the exact bounds etc. involved — even 2 and 3 above can be extremely useful and generally grossly outperform 1. For a comprehensive overview and analysis of bandit algorithms see this amazing book. Bandits on the edge? Bandit policies are often implemented on servers: the gambler effectively lives in a single “location”. For example, the sequential selection of ads to maximize CTR is often centrally coordinated. However, there are various applications in which one would like to deploy a bandit policy on an edge device: for example, the problem of selecting the fastest route through a network can often be formalized as a bandit problem. To implement bandit policies in a software system, one effectively needs to implement 2 functions: An action assignment function: When called this function returns the next arm to pull. An update function: When called this function, based on an arm-reward combination, updates the internal state of the application such that a next call to the action assignment function can be based on the collected history. This is detailed quite clearly in this recent Journal of Statistical Software paper. Perhaps surprisingly, both functions are easy to implement — even in a modular way — on edge devices. Using WebAssembly both steps can be implemented efficiently and effectively be deployed on any edge device. We recently used the Scailable platform to provide a small demo for one of our clients: We implemented e-greedy in the standard exposed predict function of a Scailable binary (see this tutorial), and we used orthogonal persistence to implement the update function such that the state of the machine could be update: see this Towards Data Science post for details. Iteratively calling the predict and update functions allowed us to implement a bandit policy on a ESP32 MCU. Pretty neat! Conclusion The bandit problem formalization provides an extremely useful model for many real-world sequential learning problems. Furthermore, the idea of splitting up a bandit policy into two simple function calls is both simple and powerful and can easily be extended to implement contextual bandit policies and batched policies. Finally, doing so in WebAssembly binaries allows for the efficient deployment and monitoring of bandit policies on various edge devices. This is pretty cool since, although rudimentary, we can now have each little chip learn from its direct interactions with its environment! Disclaimer It’s good to note my own involvement here: I am a professor of Data Science at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science and one of the cofounders of Scailable. Thus, no doubt, I have a vested interest in Scailable; I have an interest in making it grow such that we can finally bring AI to production and deliver on its promises. The opinions expressed here are my own.

https://towardsdatascience.com/bandits-webassembly-and-iot-a670ede2798b

['Maurits Kaptein']

2020-11-24 15:27:40.905000+00:00

['Webassembly', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Multi Armed Bandit']

How to Create the Ultimate ‘Use of Funds’ Slide for your Pitch Deck

Positions BEFORE People We all want the cream of the crop when hiring for those first few positions at a startup––those so-called A-Players––ultra-high achievers who share our same passion and enthusiasm for 80-hour workweeks, smashing through milestones and GSD (getting stuff done). But in reality, A-Players only belong in the highest-impact positions. Moreover, it’s simply too expensive (and not feasible) to attract, select, develop, and retain these top performers for every last position on the org chart. Lastly, high performers aren’t going to add much value if they’re engaged in work that isn’t essential to the company’s business strategy. Therefore, before we go looking to hire the A-Players we think we need, we must first identify the strategic work that is most crucial to the company’s success metrics. As Huselid, Beatty & Becker highlight in their 2005 HRB article, “…it’s surprising how few companies systematically identify their strategically important A positions — and then focus on the A players who should fill them.” Common Misconceptions: What IS Strategic? To better understand this people management strategy, we can divide the specific work of our organization into three groups, as described by Huselid, Beatty & Becker: Strategic work: has a profound impact on the creation of customer and economic value. Support work: enables the strategic work. Surplus work: at one time may have created value for the company, but no longer contributes much to its strategic success––work that remains in a company for reasons of tradition, politics, or inertia. In the startup world, we can largely ignore surplus work since it typically only applies to larger, mature organizations. However, when cash is finite and the end of the runway is visible, strategic and support work are vital. Furthermore, it’s easy to convince ourselves that certain positions are inherently strategic. However, (perhaps with the exception of the Co-founder(s)/CEO) determining whether a position is in fact strategic depends entirely on the unique needs and goals of the organization. For example, software developers are most strategic to an enterprise SaaS company, whereas the Marketing Director is most strategic to a consumer hardware company. Only once we identify our most strategic positions can we then begin hiring. So how do we determine what positions are most strategic? By identifying the strategic capabilities unique to our organization.

https://medium.com/alliedvp/how-to-create-the-ultimate-use-of-funds-slide-for-your-pitch-deck-e8150b759d3c

['Matthew Wilson']

2020-12-21 22:34:18.609000+00:00

['Founder Stories', 'Use Of Funds', 'Fundraising', 'Pitch Deck', 'Founders']

Submission for Queen’s Children

We’d like this network to be a Mutual Aid and Inspiration Community. FIRST OF ALL, FEEL FREE IN YOUR EXPRESSION MY FRIENDS! WE LOVE EACH ONE OF YOU AND WE FORM A MOSAIC! 🌑 🌘 🌓 🌕 🌗 🌒 🌑 Feel free to propose anything to empower the feminine : words of love, words of wrath or words of humor, real life stories, tales, poems, essays, fictions and art (photos, paintings, digital…). We ask you to take your time, to reread your texts. We won’t correct you but we’ll communicate in a private message. You may propose non-English translations too but only while or after the English one has been published in our publication. We hope to have a diversity in cultures, languages and continents. How to propose your text If you are enlisted as a writer Once you have achieved your draft, click on the three little dots between the bell and the Publish button in the right hand corner of your draft page. Select Queen’s Children in Add to publication and click the submit button. If you are not in our writer’s list, feel free to comment this page so that we can enrole you in our list. For other topics, feel free to write to QueensChildren@sten.33mail.com Some rules Your story should empower the feminine. This means respect and elevation, even if it is not precisely about the Sacred Feminine. The Sacred Feminine includes casual things too. Any word is allowed depending on the right context, as long as you don’t abuse it. Choose carefully your image. Make sure that all images are attributed to the author, with a link. For your first image, please choose the right position, the fourth one which allow to adapt to any screen size. Please write some alt text to describe it for those who use an audio browser. Of the five tags you are allowed. One tag must be Sacred Feminine. With it, you should add one of those : * POETRY for poetry and tales * STORIES for life stories and fiction * ESSAY for reflections * ART for art work We ask you to take your time and reread your texts. We will communicate with you in a private message, if needed. Submit only unpublished drafts published work with agreement from the publisheer and with a mention with alink to the original publication. After 30 days, you can publish in an other publication, if so, please write at the top of the post: “Originally published in Queen’s Children” with a link to your story. The delay won’t more than a day. We are happy to build this community around the Sacred Feminine.

https://medium.com/queen-s-children/submission-for-queens-children-3b64bdacfab

['Jean Carfantan']

2020-05-18 09:03:41.232000+00:00

['Sacred Feminine', 'Writing', 'Writers On Medium', 'Feminine Energy', 'Feminine Power']

Microsoft Surface Series Pro 7 — Review

The Microsoft Surface Pro 7 is one of the best 2-in-1 laptops that comes with strong 10th Gen Intel performance and a long-overdue UBC-C port. It comes with sharp display, lavish power and the best part is, it has optional type cover keyboard that makes it one of the best laptop which you can if you want to buy a detachable laptop. The laptop comes with a feather touch screen. It comes with new impressive internal. The battery backup is really high.All day battery life up to 1o.5 hours and also has ability to go from empty to full faster about 75% in just an hour.The tablet comes in matte black and silver aluminum finishes. The rear Webcam resolution of the laptop is 8 MP. In addition, you can type, touch, draw, write, work and play more naturally. In the other words you can say it is one of the most versatile laptop. Checkout the product now!

https://medium.com/@duttamilan664/microsoft-surface-series-pro-7-review-1c76ddad7037

['Milan Dutta']

2020-12-16 17:29:25.256000+00:00

['Gadgets', 'Laptop', 'Microsoft', 'Writer', 'Review']

A Dedicated Social Media Hotel, Yes It’s True #SocialWave @SolWaveHouse

A couple of weeks ago we brought you a story about a hotel that would offer users of Instagram a free nights stay if they had over 50K followers. Today we bring you a story of a hotel dedicated to social media and Twitter. Sol Wave House Majorca is the “first Tweet Experience Hotel in the world.” as they put it whereby users can Tweet what they need and a team of staff will attend to the users needs. The hotel has specific places throughout where people can snap a selfie and post to their networks. To keep users Tweets and private locations private users log into the hotel WiFi and connect to a specially designed app that only they and hotel staff can use and see. ITB would only be too happy to come out and experience the hotel first hand should any PR people be reading this…..seriously we would :-) The Sol Wave House has rooms from €70 and features some of the below highlights. Privileged location right on the beach Free WIFI Meet people, make friends, and have fun in our new #SocialWave community Join up with friends to enjoy the #PartySuite, and discover a totally unique experience Try Flowboarding in our incredible wave pools Enjoy the magnificent terrace with 2 pools, an infinity pool with sea views and direct beach access Relax and connect with new friends in our 14 Balinese beds and jacuzzi Visit the #SocialWave with guest DJs, Friday #PartySuite and many other activities Guaranteed fun for all of our guests with the Sol Katmandu FUN PASS FIRST LIFESTYLE DESTINATION IN MALLORCA Discover an unprecedented combination of unique lifestyle accommodation in Mallorca: fun and casual atmosphere; exciting experiences; sport and shows; open-air parties; live music… all in the most contemporary ambience with bars, restaurants, and clothes and surf accessory stores with the leading brands The area also provides great facilities for sports and water sports, 5 golf courses, shops, restaurants, bars and pubs, shows and nearby attractions such as Katmandu ParkTM, The Pirate Show, Marineland,… The region of Calvià where the Sol Wave House is located also offers an endless choice of cycling and hiking routes, and all the cultural, culinary and historical attractions of Mallorca Visit

https://irelandstechnologyblog.com/a-dedicated-social-media-hotel-yes-its-true-socialwave-solwavehouse-5730e60aca6b

["Ireland'S Technology Blog"]

2016-09-14 21:43:51.173000+00:00

['Hotel', 'Holiday', 'Social']

Judge scolds State Depts Blackwater murders

The Blackwater private security company that polices U.S. military zones has been in hot water. The guards of the company were accused of shooting 14 Iraqi civilians without justification. This was in violation of deadly-force rules that legally pertained to American security contractors in Iraq at the time. The shootings occurred in September 2007, but the case has yet to be resolved due to some discrepancies over evidence. Read The Final Call’s story on how a United States federal judge scolded the State Department for delaying the prosecution of these contractors.

https://medium.com/ramel-media/judge-scolds-state-depts-blackwater-murders-9eb9cf1441f0

['Afeef Nessouli']

2016-08-26 20:46:36.020000+00:00

['Donald Ball', 'Politics', 'Law', 'Iraq']

Marriage is the Hefty Bag You’ll Use to Bury Your Heart in the Woods

“Wedding season has begun. How am I going to get through it?” — Single Sal Marriage is a Medieval Tradition in which we give away daughters and get cows back. It’s kind of like NBA Draft Day. I’ll give you the #1 pick and you give me #1 picks in 2020, 2022 and 2025. Or whatever. You probably won’t even want those picks in the 20s. It’s an antiquated system meant to squash everyone’s individual sexuality into something capitalists can use against you. Without marriage everything would be cheaper. One Bedroom apartments wouldn’t be $2000 a month, that’s for sure. If everyone just picked up someone in a bar and got laid occasionally instead of hooking up semi-permanently with people they will wildly outgrow, would the world be a better place? There would be a lot more seats on the L Train, that’s for sure. Sure, fall in love and get married and have kids. That’s just what the 1% wants! So they can control you your whole life! They’ll make you dance like a monkey for health care and keep schools bad so your kids can polish their silverware for a living. But weddings are the most fraught social events of the summer. Getting dragged to some gazebo with pelicans circling while some family friend reads a poem by Rumi over the happy couple who then promise each other to not act like most human beings. On the plus side, there’s cake. You gotta wait forever, but there’s cake. It might be vegan free-range seaweed cake, but it’s still cake. Single people and weddings go together like single people and funerals. It’s an unwelcome reminder that you will die alone and no one will give a fuck. Weddings are long and boring. Getting invited to a wedding, a supposedly-joy-filled event for the participants, is a clusterfuck of responsibilities. Getting tuxes, flowers, lube, booze, cocaine, strippers, dildos. And don’t forget shovels, tarps, lye. It’s the hidden costs that get you the worst. Most of my pals are on their 2nd marriages. That means I’ve already worn taffeta for you! How dare you make me buy you another gravy boat! Your other gravy boat is in storage. The key to getting through a wedding is just to get as drunk as possible and possibly laid. You’ll get in trouble for doing either one of these things. But it will be worth it. There is usually a cool DJ who will play all the songs from the ’80s. And every open bar will only be open for a little while. So you’re going to need your own stash of booze. And possibly ’80s songs. People may want you to give a funny and sweet speech at a wedding. If you pretend to cry at the very beginning of this speech, it will go way better. People who get all choked up about love and the beauty of marriages, you will get through this with flying colors. Anyone who rolls their eyes at the mere mention of enduring love, this is going to be a piñata full of things that suck for you. People can smell your suspicion on you. It’s like those blond kids who point at each other and scream “One of us! One of us!” If you fundamentally refuse to play along with the zero sum game of Love and Marriage with the rest of “Decent Society” you will be smoked out as a mutant and disinvited to all weddings down the road. Not a bad outcome! Divorced friends are way more fun, anyway. They have zero fucks to give and can really be there for you when you need them. They won’t have to go to “Date Night” at Applebee’s. If one date per week could save the American Marriage it would be “Date the Nanny/Gardener Night.” Monogamy is the lie we keep on telling ourselves, because it just keeps getting funnier. Show up drunk and just kind of blend in. If you can leave early, go for it. You can always tell them you had a bad clam somewhere, no one will follow that up in search of more info. Some day when we’ve found the cure for harmful emotions like love and compassion we will all live happier, alone and well-fucked by some kind of thing you plug into your computer or phone. Let’s stop pretending that humanity deserves to last forever. It’s not you, it’s everyone. Everything is terrible and we all keep making the same mistakes expecting different results. You know what they call that? Life.

https://medium.com/the-awl/how-to-get-through-wedding-season-1a2cecd0503e

['Jim Behrle']

2017-06-19 15:40:39.822000+00:00

['Summer', 'Unsolicited Advice', 'Events', 'Marriage', 'Weddings']

Justin P. Moore Shares Recipes from his Vegan Ethiopian Cookbook

Justin P. Moore has spent over two decades traveling the world. He’s visited some 50 countries, “working as an artist and designer, taking lots of photographs, and eating and cooking everywhere and anywhere.” Six years ago, after a year spent teaching in India, he returned to his home in Berlin with a hunger to try something new: making a cookbook. The Lotus and the Artichoke reflected his wanderlust, his plant-based diet, and his love of trying new recipes from around the globe. And the vegan cookbook resonated: his 2012 Kickstarter campaign found support from over 350 backers. The success of the book surprised him: “Like booking a one-way ticket for an indefinite adventure to India in 2001, or moving to Berlin to learn German and resurrect my artistic ambitions, it was just a dream I intended to pursue,” Moore says. Now it’s a full-time career. Moore has since published a version of the original cookbook in German, as well as cookbooks focused on the cuisines of Mexico, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and India. He’s back on Kickstarter to publish The Lotus and the Artichoke: Ethiopia, which includes over 70 vegan recipes for classic Ethiopian and Eritrean dishes. As his sixth Kickstarter campaign enters its final days, we spoke to Moore about the challenges of cookbook publishing, his approach to authenticity when it comes to cuisine, and how his cookbook projects have made him more accepting of imperfections. Read to the end for a delicious bonus: two recipes from the new book. — Rebecca Hiscott Justin P. Moore (right) at a cooking lesson with Cisco from Unique Restaurant in Lalibela, Ethiopia Kickstarter: What’s the hardest part of making a cookbook? Justin P. Moore: Maintaining a strong sense of accuracy in how I reflect the cultures and the cuisines that hosted, enriched, and inspired me. Sometimes I struggle with creative or culinary doubts, and when that happens I have to trust my experience, hit the books and blogs, or go back to the source. With the India cookbook, I’d spent almost two years there on six different visits, but I knew I needed to go back twice more and enhance my understanding of the many diverse cuisines, especially in regions like Assam, Sikkim, Kashmir, and Ladakh. Sometimes I also have to let go, accept imperfections, and chance misconceptions. As an artist you know that not everyone will appreciate your expressions, and as a cook, you accept that not everyone is going to lick their plate clean and ask for thirds. As an artist you know that not everyone will appreciate your expressions, and as a cook, you accept that not everyone is going to lick their plate clean and ask for thirds. My travels and cookbook projects entail an immense amount of work, expectations, and challenges. The production schedule is intense. When I get stressed, I remind myself that eventually I’ll be unwrapping a massive shipping pallet of a few thousand books, but right now I’m just going back into the kitchen to fire up the stove and start cutting vegetables and grinding spices. Minchet abish (spicy soy mince and walnuts) How do you approach accuracy, and authenticity, when it comes to representing cuisines from cultures that aren’t your own? Especially in the last six years of intense travel and cooking, I’ve learned that authenticity is a relative concept. Cuisines are like languages: they grow, evolve, influence, merge, and adapt. A “real” dish in one restaurant or home might be considered an imitation or abstraction across the street. Cuisines are like languages: they grow, evolve, influence, merge, and adapt. I invest an immense amount of creativity, energy, and expense into making these cookbooks, but at the same time I acknowledge the privilege in my ability to go where I go and do what I do. Honesty and communication are vital, and I do my best to respect the cultures, communities, and individuals that host and inspire and support me. Whether it’s recipe choices, cooking techniques, terminology, or cover artwork, I speak with the source and talk with people who know the real deal better than me so that I can hopefully portray, promote, and celebrate the cultures and their cuisines favorably and truthfully. Abebech (right) teaches Moore how to make misir wot in a village in the Ethiopian Highlands I also attempt to acknowledge when I adapt something or alter it. I emphasize that what I’m doing isn’t an improvement on something that was lacking, but rather an attempt to make a recipe more accessible to a wider audience, whether that’s people who avoid animal products or those who just can’t buy jackfruit or berbere at their local store. I don’t see myself as an authority or expert on any culture or cuisine. I’m manifesting my personal experiences and presenting my culinary adventures and experiments, hoping to inspire, enrich, and engage with others in the process. I don’t “own” any recipes, and most of my sources and inspirations would be equally unwilling to claim that they “invented” something or have the definitive code for cooking it. Understanding this better over the years has brought more humility and creativity into my projects and how I present them. Food should unite and excite us, not divide and discourage us. What has the response to your books been like? The response to my travels and culinary representations has been overwhelmingly positive, but I need to be ready to listen and reflect if someone raises concerns, especially those who are directly affected or represented by my projects. Making injera (Ethiopian sourdough crepes) An amusing example: as I was posting my various experiments in learning how to ferment and prepare Ethiopian injera (sourdough crepes, which serve as both utensil and component of almost every meal), I got lots of feedback on Instagram, mostly from the Ethiopian diaspora, that my injera were “scary” and an “insult to the holy injera.” So I wrote to a lot of my critics and hit up more restaurants in Berlin and London, asking for pointers. We laughed about my fails, and I made some friends. I also got back in the kitchen and upped my injera game over the next few months, and the comments reflected my improvements. What’s an aspect of the cookbook publishing process that most people don’t know or think about? Mistakes in recipes are far more common than most people would imagine. Errors can sneak in easily, like missing ingredients, or cooking times and ingredient amounts that were typed in incorrectly. I’m grateful to work with a group of about 100 recipe testers worldwide who provide an amazing amount of insight. It’s a rewarding experience, similar to the collective participation, involvement, enthusiasm, and communication that crowdfunding the cookbook projects on Kickstarter enables.

https://medium.com/kickstarter/justin-p-moore-shares-recipes-from-his-vegan-ethiopian-cookbook-82b51936cc4b

[]

2018-09-21 16:32:02.341000+00:00

['Vegan', 'Kickstarter', 'Cooking', 'Recipe', 'Food']

Trezor Suite update April 2021

The latest version of Trezor Suite beta, version 21.4.1, is now available. From this month onward, updates will be delivered securely through the Trezor Suite desktop application. Installing these updates is optional. Users who have already updated Trezor Suite to version 21.2.1 or later can choose to install the latest version the next time they open Trezor Suite. If you are currently using an older version of Trezor Suite, you should uninstall it and then download the update directly from the Trezor Suite landing page, suite.trezor.io. Other issues with the auto updater should also be resolved by removing the software and manually installing this latest version. You can check what version of Trezor Suite you have installed by clicking on the gearwheel in the top-right to open the Settings tab, and then scrolling to the bottom of the General settings menu. What’s included in this release? Building on last month’s developments, the focus of this release is again to make sure that everything is primed and ready for Trezor Suite to leave its beta phase and become the main interface for managing your Trezor device. That means a lot of behind-the-scenes improvements and bug fixes, so have a peek into our April Github project to see the progress we’ve been making in full detail. New design for your accounts Users who have become acquainted with Suite over the last few months will notice that a cleaner, more intuitive design for the Accounts section to clearly distinguish between account data such as transaction history, and actions such as sending, receiving or trading. Not only does this make it easier to find your way around, it also introduces a separate tab for Account Details, which identifies the type of account you’re using for a particular coin (e.g. Bech32, P2SH or P2PKH for Bitcoin), and lets you access your account public key (XPUB) more easily. While you’re checking it out, you might also notice that we’ve also added Bech32 support for Litecoin! Remember, sharing an XPUB will let others view all balances across all addresses derived from that key and therefore compromise your privacy, so only share it if you are sure of what you’re doing. As before, you’ll find Invity’s Buy, Exchange and Spend features by clicking the Trade button. Very soon we’ll be introducing the Sell feature, too, so there’s some incentive to keep hodling on in the meantime! Set a custom time for auto-lock By default, your Trezor will automatically lock after ten minutes of inactivity as long as PIN protection is enabled. This is to prevent anyone from accessing your device while you are not around. Now, as long as you are running recent firmware (1.9.4 for Trezor Model One and 2.3.5 for Trezor Model T), you can easily set a custom auto-lock timeout in Suite between 1 minute and 6 days, to suit your personal usage environment. Note that you can also configure a more precise auto-lock time and specify an exact number of seconds by using the trezorctl command-line interface. In case you missed it Admittedly, this isn’t the flashiest feature-packed release we’ve had, but we’re getting to the good stuff. Last week we gave a quick rundown on Twitter of where it’s all heading. Check out the thread below for an early look at the most interesting and empowering features yet to come. From CoinJoin and full node support to a brand new Trezor Mobile App, we’ve got a busy year ahead. Make sure you don’t miss out and Download Trezor Suite today!

https://blog.trezor.io/trezor-suite-update-april-2021-9b54841a6974

[]

2021-04-14 14:16:53.253000+00:00

['Updates', 'Wallet', 'Product', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency']

Culture Shock: Everything You Need To Know About “A Garfield Christmas”

“A Garfield Christmas” follows everyone’s favorite Monday-hating, lasagna-loving feline through a Christmas with his family. If you’ve never seen Garfield, Jon, and Odie celebrate Yuletide, use this primer to catch yourself up! Garfield is voiced by Bill Clinton when he’s happy but by Diana Ross when he’s mad: When “A Garfield Christmas” was made in 1987, Garfield’s voice was supposed to be performed by then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. However, Clinton couldn’t capture the raw power of Garfield’s anger, so scenes in which Garfield is furious were re-dubbed by Supremes singer Diana Ross. “A Garfield Christmas” reveals that Odie has an IQ of 164: An eight-minute-long subplot in the middle of the special revolves around Odie discovering an unsolved equation on a blackboard at MIT, solving it, and eventually being tested for mathematical genius. Jim Davis later sued Ben Affleck and Matt Damon when they ripped off the idea ten years later in Good Will Hunting. Binky’s original catchphrase was “I’m Gay!” before Jim Davis’s brother came out: Binky, the titular character of the in-universe book Binky: The Clown Who Saved Christmas, was originally supposed to be a flamboyant homosexual stereotype. However, after Jim Davis’s brother came out as gay in 1986, Binky’s sexuality was integrated into the storyline in a more respectful manner. The letters to Grandma that Garfield finds in the attic are written in the same Enigma code solved by the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park: While the Arbuckles do a good job of hiding the truth from Garfield and Odie, keen-eyed viewers can spot the clues that suggest that Grandma was secretly communicating with the Nazis until at least 1942. Jon Arbuckle is a deeply depressed man who ingests large quantities of hallucinogens to give himself the illusion that his pets are talking to him: You really think a fucking cat knows what day of the week it is?

https://medium.com/brandhole-the-website-for-brandon/culture-shock-everything-you-need-to-know-about-a-garfield-christmas-3eff3f5d07b1

['Gavin Byrnes']

2017-12-24 02:42:25.558000+00:00

['Brandhole', 'Movies', 'Christmas', 'A Garfield Christmas']

Toxic solutioning, form vs function, blurred vision

The UX Collective is honored to have been recognized as the Best Design Publication of 2020 at the Brazil Design Awards. 💙 The results of the State of CSS survey are out, and the State of JS survey is now open. The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices, reaching over 401,100 designers every week. Curated by Fabricio Teixeira and Caio Braga I disguised as an Instagram UX influencer for 4 months; this is what I learned → By Teisanu Tudor Form vs. function: when is it okay to be weird? → By Jason Brush The problem of toxic solutioning → By Nathan Robinson Do stories make social media more addictive? → By Anna E. Cook Learn like a scientist, think like a PM, work like a designer → By Boon Yew Chew More top stories: News & ideas Look to speak → Google’s tech lets you speak with your eyes. → Google’s tech lets you speak with your eyes. Yahoo’s icons → Refining Yahoo’s weather icon suite. → Refining Yahoo’s weather icon suite. Alternative maps → Intriguing maps that reveal alternate histories. → Intriguing maps that reveal alternate histories. Going deeper → Non-obvious ways to have deeper conversations. Tools & resources Platform abuse → A guide for safer product development. → A guide for safer product development. Octopus → Generate visual sitemap from any sites. → Generate visual sitemap from any sites. Awkward convo → A framework for having design conversations. → A framework for having design conversations. Blurred vision → Stark’s new burred vision simulator tool.

https://uxdesign.cc/toxic-solutioning-form-vs-function-blurred-vision-cffd37d8f56f

['Fabricio Teixeira']

2020-12-12 13:29:29.193000+00:00

['Product Design', 'Design', 'Startup', 'Productivity', 'UX']